South of the Border (updated 4 Aug 2022)

Lobster Issue 84 (Winter 2022)

[PDF file]: […] insider’s account of how the CIA spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan (New York: Presidio Press, 2007). 17 5 locals, asking that it be prioritised for intelligence purposes because ‘much more money was available for purely military purposes’. The author states he found it assuring to see the Afghani men going through the […]

Thatcher’s Secret War Subversion, Coercion, Secrecy and Government, 1974-90

Lobster Issue

[…] lines later there is the following quotation. ‘Brutally summarised……Mrs Thatcher and Thatcherism grew out of a right-wing network in this country with extensive links to the military- intelligence establishment. Her rise to power was the climax of a long campaign by this network which included a protracted destabilisation campaign against the Labour and Liberal […]

Team mercenary GB: Part 2 – This is the modern world

Lobster Issue 73 (Summer 2017)

[PDF file]: […] to take any photographs.2 9 Additionally, Erinys was tangentially involved with exKGB/FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, who was poisoned with polonium in November 2006. Litvinenko was producing ‘business intelligence’ reports into high profile Russian figures for Titon International, which was a subsidiary of Erinys.3 0 27 See footnote 3. 28 See . 29 For the […]

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 […]

Spookaroonie!

Lobster Issue

Contents Lobster 58 Spookaroonie! Inside British Intelligence 100 years of MI5 and MI6 Gordon Thomas London: JR books, 2009, £20 Page 132 Winter 2009/10 Lobster 58 Spooks The Unofficial History of MI5 Thomas Hennessy and Claire Thomas Stroud (Glos.): Amberley, 2009, £30 I haven’t properly read either of these books and cannot really review […]

South of the border (occasional snippets from)

Lobster Issue 91 (2025)

[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 view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 58 (Winter 2009/2010)

[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)

[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 […]

Thatcher’s Secret War by Clive Bloom

Lobster Issue 70 (Winter 2015)

[PDF file]: […] lines later there is the following quotation. ‘Brutally summarised……Mrs Thatcher and Thatcherism grew out of a right-wing network in this country with extensive links to the military- intelligence establishment. Her rise to power was the climax of a long campaign by this network which included a protracted destabilisation campaign against the Labour and Liberal […]

The long goodbye? Taking on the consultants

Lobster Issue 90 (2025)

[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 […]

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