The View from the Bridge

Lobster Issue 37 (Summer 1999)

[…] by all manner of spooks to run all manner of disinformation while he was editor and this spiel of his on Chile looks very much like an intelligence briefing – maybe even one of those distributed at the time of the Chile coup when Neil was working for the Economist, a regular outlet for […]

Still hazy after all these years

Lobster Issue 57 (Summer 2009)

[…] hinted that something might turn up from an unexpected quarter. Turner suspects that Farewell America was that something; that although the book was put together by French intelligence people, it was the contact with Kostikov which led to it. The pseudonymous writer of the book was Thomas Buchanan, author of the 1964 Who Killed […]

Ken Livingstone’s questions

Lobster Issue 16 (1988)

[…] two further occasions in 1983. 26 NOV 72 Serial No: D 7364 C. I. A. This Certificate of Credentials is issued under the authority of the Central Intelligence Agency. It is requested that the bearer be afforded the necessary help to enable him to satisfactorily discharge his duties. 15 November 1971: Harold Wilson visits […]

My encounter with George K. Young and Tory Action, 1979-1988

Lobster Issue 52 (Winter 2006/7)

[…] MI6 no. 2, George Kennedy Young, loomed large in the imagination of the section of the British left which was interested in the political activities of former intelligence officers. His activities with Unison in 1973-5 remain unclear but here John Andrews describes the group which succeeded it, Tory Action. Lobster 19 contained an autobiographical […]

The Rhodes-Milner Group

Lobster Issue 13 (1987)

[…] issues, then there is some conspiring that goes on in CFR, not to mention in the Committee for Economic Development, the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency.” G. William Domhoff, “Who made American Foreign Policy 1945-1963?” in David Horowitz ed. Corporations and the Cold War, (Monthly Review Press, New York, 1969) p34n […]

The crisis

Lobster Issue 57 (Summer 2009)

In Parish Notices in the last issue I wrote ‘there isn’t much in this issue about the economic situation because there really isn’t much to say that hasn’t already been said, for example by Larry Elliot in The Guardian every week.’ Well, I changed my mind about that and here are the bits I found … Read more

Euro-bound? Or: the same river twice

Lobster Issue 39 (Summer 2000)

[…] In the Sunday Times of 5 December 1999 Stephen Grey reported: Tony Blair is under pressure from European leaders to support the creation of a ‘federalised’ EU intelligence service to help manage world crises. The move, proposed by Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor, and President Jacques Chirac of France, is seen as the first […]

A ‘great venture’: overthrowing the government of Iran

Lobster Issue 30 (December 1995)

[…] had gained in popular strength, although its steady infiltration of the Iranian government and other institutions continued’.(69) As for the Tudeh’s attempting a coup, a State Department intelligence report of January 1953 noted that ‘an open Tudeh move for power……would probably unite independents and non-communists of all political leanings and would result……in energetic efforts […]

The Road to Jerusalem: Glubb Pasha, Palestine and the Jews

Book cover
Lobster Issue 45 (Summer 2003)

Benny Morris London: I. B Tauris, 2002, £24.50, h/b   In report after report on the major media we hear about or see pictures of ‘refugee camps’ in Israel – and no-one ever explains from where the refugees came. Perhaps editors think we know already. Benny Morris is an Israeli historian who became well known … Read more

Wilson, MI5 and the rise of Thatcher

Lobster Issue 11 (April 1986)

[PDF file]: […] and the following week; Guardian 16 July 1976; Searchlight nos. 18 and 21. 7. Private Eye speculated that the documents had been leaked by “moderates” inside British intelligence, alarmed at the activities of some of the “wild men”. This view, attractive though it is, has no evidence to support it. 8. Best collection of […]

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