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 […]

South of the border

Lobster Issue 82 (Winter 2021)

[PDF file]: […] you’ll get the fuller drift. Many of the ex-spooks are quite open about their past employment. Take, for example, Dr Gerhard Conrad PhD – Visiting Professor in Intelligence Studies who, ‘is a former senior member of the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND)’.7 Mr Keith Beaven, a Visiting Research Fellow, is more circumspect. His profile […]

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 60 (Winter 2010)

[PDF file]: […] of what he sees as his ouster from Lobster. 105 Winter 2010 Lobster was a journal of parapolitics, primarily covering the activities of the British Security and Intelligence Services. It was co-founded/edited with Robin Ramsay, who went through something of a self-confessed mid-life crisis and unceremoniously ejected Stephen Dorril, stole the Lobster name, subscription […]

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 […]

Undercover killers at the BBC

Lobster Issue 84 (Winter 2022)

[PDF file]: […] Lobster on the professional and political activities of Guest More’s father,4 I wrote the foreword to Undercover Killers. Atkinson’s discovery of a devastating leak of raw police intelligence that dropped into the hands of professional criminals in Manchester has exposed the danger of Westminster government schemes that were pioneered by Margaret Thatcher – to […]

Consultants Challen

Lobster Issue

[…] 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 […]

Gordon Brown: in the country of the blind…

Lobster Issue 60 (Winter 2010)

[PDF file]: […] how much it resembles the way business was transacted in the 18th century. A system has developed where patronage and privilege appear to count for more than intelligence, life experience and hard work. Groups of young ambitious people cluster around significant ‘king makers’ (for the New Labour ‘project’ these appear to have been Peter […]

Apocryphilia

Lobster Issue 71 (Summer 2016)

[PDF file]: […] of Burgess and McLean in 1951, expansive liberal types like Klop were not in vogue. A strong case can be made for him being the most competent intelligence officer the British had working for them 1935-1950. At first glance it might appear that John Freeman, like Ustinov, was a casualty of the Cold War. […]

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 […]

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