Chris Hani book copy

Lobster Issue

[…] Research (SAIMR), but it is so incompetently done I abandoned it after reading/skimming a third of its 450 pages. It begins badly, with the LaRouche magazine Executive Intelligence Review (EIR) quoted at length on pages 6 and 7. EIR claims that SAIMR was a front for MI6 but offers no evidence for that; nor […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 58 (Winter 2009/2010) FREE

[PDF file]: […] concerned. Page 104 Winter 2009/10 Lobster 58 of his trips to the Soviet bloc during the Cold War Wilson did talk to someone who was a Soviet intelligence officer with some kind of cover – as a trade official, say. Perhaps Wilson had a few vodkas and talked about British politics. Our Soviet intelligence […]

Secret Justice: Public Interest Immunity Certificates (PIICs) and their use in the Asil Nadir trials

Lobster Issue 66 (Winter 2013) FREE

[PDF file]: […] PIIs were issued to prevent an officer of Special Branch, DS Wilkinson, from verifying that Paul Grecian had been acting with official backing in order to gather intelligence on Iraq. The Public Interest Immunity certificates were signed by Kenneth Baker and Peter Lilley, relying on an assessment by the prosecuting council that the documents […]

Moscow Gold: ‘the Communist threat’ in post-war Britain

Lobster Issue 25 (1993) £££

[PDF file]: […] replacement. (This, rather than MI5 incompetence, may explain why so few Soviet operations were exposed in post-war Britain.) More cynically — and cynicism is appropriate where all intelligence and security services are concerned — MI5 had two compelling reasons not to ‘blow’ the CPGB-KGB link. While they would get some temporary kudos for so […]

Team mercenary GB: Part 1 – the early years

Lobster Issue 72 (Winter 2016) FREE

[PDF file]: […] operation into motion. Each time, however, it seemed as if the usual unofficial sanction was not entirely forthcoming. From impounded arms shipments to stern warnings from the Intelligence community, the plot seemed doomed. Indeed, 2 See Christopher Kinsey, Corporate Soldiers and International Security: The Rise of Private Military Companies, (London: Routledge, 2006) pp. 46-49. […]

Henry ‘Chips’ Channon: The diaries 1938-1943 Edited by Simon Heffer

Lobster Issue 83 (Summer 2022) FREE

[PDF file]: […] of Hamilton, Lord Steward of the Household: ‘ . . . it was not until nearly the end of February that Hamilton received a letter from Air Intelligence inviting him to a meeting in London; not until mid-March that the meeting took place and the Duke was asked if he would like to go […]

South of the border (occasional snippets from)

Lobster Issue 91 (2025) FREE

[PDF file]: […] same as the old ‘C’ Much fanfare – huge media excitement, it seemed – at the appointment of a woman as the new Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (the ‘C’ of SIS, for the acronym enthusiasts). The whole point of this, it would seem, was to herald a gentler, more feminine touch to […]

The Colonel and I: My Life With Gaddafi by Daad Sharab

Lobster Issue 83 (Summer 2022) FREE

[PDF file]: […] a constant jockeying for power and favour, like a medieval court. At the centre of all this, as I increasingly found to my cost, was Abdullah Senussi’s intelligence service.’ (p. 50) She was also an interpreter of the world outside Libya – and outside the Middle East – to Gaddafi. Like most of those […]

The long goodbye? Taking on the consultants

Lobster Issue 90 (2025) FREE

[PDF file]: […] project’s ‘ballooning’ costs which is due to report in winter 2024/25. The latest opportunity for consultants will be how will departments fare with the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI), a technology which former PM Tony Blair has set great faith in solving no end of public sector challenges. With former Tory leader William Hague […]

Did the Mossad steal John le Carré’s cunning plan?

Lobster Issue 79 (Summer 2020) FREE

[PDF file]: […] le Carré’s cunning plan? Andrew Rosthorn In the July 1982 foreword to his 1983 novel The Little Drummer Girl,1 John le Carré 2 thanked the Israeli ‘ intelligence fraternity’ for their ‘advice and co-operation’. The author (whose 25th spy thriller, Agent Running in the Field,3 was published by Penguin in October) offered ‘sincere thanks’ […]

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