The Strength of the Wolf

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Lobster Issue 48 (Winter 2004) £££

[…] Phoenix, about which Valentine has written a widely-praised book, involved identifying and assassinating supporters of the North Vietnamese, while Operation Chaos was a domestic surveillance and counter- intelligence operation. But still: these quibbles aside, this big book (500 plus pages) is a fascinating collection of stories, and adds some major pieces to the vast […]

All the news that fits

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Lobster Issue 55 (Summer 2008) £££

[…] exact opposite: he ‘believes’ no such thing. He is well aware of past weaknesses and details many of them, including sections on the media activities of the intelligence services and the Information Research Department. Davies’s belief is that today’s situation is bad and that the future looks bleak. Something troubling is going on when […]

US General Accounting Office Reports

Lobster Issue 29 (1995) £££

[…] be required. Mission-critical systems: defense attempting to address major software challenges (27 pp.) GAO/IMTEC-93-13, December 1992. Billions of dollars in defense weapons and command, control, communications and intelligence systems depend on high-performance, correctly functioning real-time computer systems capable of withstanding severe stresses without failing. This report identifies the many software problems affecting weapons and […]

The Washing Machine: how money laundering and terrorist financing soil us

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Lobster Issue 50 (Winter 2005/6) £££

[…] of England’s regulatory role is finally being examined in the High Court. That book raised awkward and far-sighted questions about the role of the British and American intelligence services in relation to BCCI and to the corrupt bank’s clear links with prominent politicians and international terrorism: there aren’t many places outside Court 73 of […]

The CIA and the Marshall Planks

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Lobster Issue 23 (1992) £££

[…] for example, he talks of the CIA in its ‘great, early days ….. manned by the flower of American youth…. something almost entirely new in history, a secret intelligence service that was dedicated to doing good in the world by stealth.’ Ah, the self-confidence (and self-delusion) in ‘doing good in the world by stealth’. RR

Profits of Peace: The Political Economy of Anglo-German Appeasement

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Lobster Issue 31 (June 1996) £££

Scott Newton, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1996, £30 This is the book Newton was working on which produced the spin-off pieces published in Lobster: ‘The economic background to appeasement and the search for Anglo-German detente before and during WW2’ in Lobster 20, and ‘The Who’s Who of Appeasement’ in Lobster 22. As those essays showed, Newton … Read more

John Maynard Keynes and the Anglo-American Special Relationship: a Reinterpretation

Lobster Issue 36 (Winter 1998/9) £££

[…] have been characterised by a special Anglo-American relationship, running in parallel with the strategic one based on collaboration in NATO and the UN, as well as in intelligence sharing and nuclear weapons policy. The ideological rationale for all this has been the defence of liberal capitalism (equated with freedom of speech and national self-determination) […]

When David met Stella

Lobster Issue 42 (Winter 2001/2) £££

Dr David Turner went to former MI5 Director-General Stella Rimington’s book-signing at Hatchard’s, Piccadilly, on 18 September 2001, where the following exchange took place.   Turner (presenting book for signing after queuing briefly behind several people, including a woman wearing an Anarchist badge) ‘Hello. Do you mind a lengthy inscription?’ Rimington (smiling, flanked by several […]

House of Bush, House of Saud

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Lobster Issue 48 (Winter 2004) £££

[…] Epstein’s website, but sadly doesn’t repeat my favourite Bush I conspiracy anecdote – the one about the FBI memo in which ‘Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency’ denounced a Republican (!) political rival, for JFK-assassination-related activities, in 1963. In the end, maybe the pressing reason to keep the book out of Britain […]

Systemic Corruption, Systemic Solutions

Lobster Issue 38 (Winter 1999) £££

[…] would announce the creation of a new housing inspectorate. Lucas passed this on to his affected clients. He gave me other examples of what he called ‘… intelligence which in market terms would be worth a lot of money.’ The firm of GJW obtained advance word on the moratorium on gas-fired power stations which […]

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