The Open Side of Secrecy: Britain’s Intelligence and Security Committee

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Lobster Issue 52 (Winter 2006/7)

Anthony Glees, Philip J. Davies, and John N. L. Morrison London: The Social Affairs Unit, 2006, £20, h/b   The Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) is a recent addition to the roster of Whitehall bodies; the motives of those who created it, as the authors show, are obscure and its role to some extent […]

Pipe Dreams: the CIA, Drugs, and the Media

Lobster Issue 33 (Summer 1997)

[…] with its state-of-the-art website and a political storm began to blow. Soon Maxine Waters of the Congressional Black Caucus was calling for an investigation, and the Senate Intelligence Committee had scheduled hearings. Belatedly, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and New York Times all recognized that, this time around, they couldn’t ignore the story. […]

Rebranding SIS

Lobster Issue 40 (Winter 2000/1)

[…] (including internal and/or ‘friendly’), as ‘enemy’, even if the attack was out-sourced to an individual or terrorist organisation – knew exactly what they were doing. No national intelligence agency, including SIS, defines its product since this changes according to local markets. It is the ‘branding’, targeted overseas at both the status quo and the […]

Rebel, rebel

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Lobster Issue 56 (Winter 2008/9)

British Spies and Irish Rebels British Intelligence and Ireland, 1916-1945 Paul McMahon Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2008, h/b, £30 First up, I have no specialist knowledge of this area, so if there any howlers in here, I’m unlikely to spot them. However, I know a good book when I see one. This has […]

KAL 007 and Overhead Surveillance

Lobster Issue 16 (1988)

There has been much discussion about whether KAL 007 was an overhead intelligence platform or not. This article does not attempt to directly answer this question. Instead it reviews the reasons why the US should attempt technical intelligence gathering around September 1983 – when KAL 007 was downed – and the means available to […]

Non-lethality: John B. Alexander, the Pentagon’s Penguin

Lobster Issue 25 (1993)

[…] and Janet Morris, two of the main proponents of the concept. (1) The concept of non-lethal weapons is not new. Non-lethal weapons have been used by the intelligence, police and defence establishments in the past. (2) Several western governments have used a variety of non-lethal weapons in a more discreet and covert manner. It […]

JFK: The two Oswalds. One Hell of a Gamble

Lobster Issue 37 (Summer 1999)

[…] impersonating the real LHO, we’re talking about a shadow Oswald who can be documented from the early 1950s onwards. As Armstrong states: In the early 1950s an intelligence operation was underway that involved two teenage boys: Lee Oswald from Fort Worth and a Russian-speaking boy named ‘Harvey Oswald’ from New York. Beginning in 1952 […]

Surf’s up! Internet sites of interest

Lobster Issue 31 (June 1996)

[…] search the EPA publications catalogue. CIA http://www.odci.gov/cia Includes general information about the CIA (its history, mission, and a virtual tour), publications (including World Factbook and Factbook on Intelligence, Chiefs of State and cabinet members of foreign governments, handbook of economic statistics and CIA maps). US Intelligence Community http://www.odci.gov/ic A group of 13 US government […]

The Assassination of John Kennedy: An Alternative Hypothesis

Lobster Issue 2 (1983)

[…] apparently perceived by some of those who have studied the case. Not that the idea of a meta-conspiracy isn’t attractive. Faced with a cover-up extending across the intelligence services, the mass media, and the political establishment, many of the JFK researchers made the not unreasonable assumption that it was co-ordinated, and that its purpose […]

Body of Secrets and Echelon

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Lobster Issue 42 (Winter 2001/2)

[…] In liberalised free markets, the successful nation or company is the one which has a competitive advantage. In the ‘knowledge-based’ economy, one might reasonably expect to find intelligence agencies playing a leading role in securing that advantage. As with the supermarket shelf, where things can literally be stacked in one manufacturer’s favour, so too […]

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