The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East

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Lobster Issue 51 (Summer 2006)

[…] 1953. This is Fisk’s observation on that 1997 meeting at Woodhouse’s retirement home in Oxford: ‘The coup against Mossadeq, the return of the Shah, was, in Woodhouse’s mind, a holding operation, a postponement of history. There was also the little matter of the AIOC, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company – later British Petroleum – which […]

Willy Brandt: the “Good German”

Lobster Issue 22 (1991)

[…] advice which, looking back, I should not have taken. I was right to shoulder the political responsibility …… I could not have soldiered on with an easy mind.’ He was a sensitive person who placed a great deal on personal integrity and loyalty. At the moment of crisis “government officials and even Ministers, hastened […]

The Politics of Apolitical Culture: The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA and post-war American hegemony

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Lobster Issue 43 (Summer 2002)

Giles Scott-Smith London: Routledge/PSA 2002, £55   This is a welcome addition to the growing literature on the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA-funded operation that ran for two decades after World War II of which Encounter magazine was the best-known British component. Giles Scott-Smith has added to the historical record well illuminated by Christopher … Read more

Coach into pumpkin: some problems with Paget

Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8)

[…] I might take this as a claim that Britain’s security and intelligence institutions have been involved in assassinations (the attempts to get Nasser or Lumumba spring to mind). Paget’s reply to Fayed’s assertion is: ‘It is important to note in the Stevens (Northern Ireland) Report that the term “agents” is used to refer to […]

Secret Contenders

Lobster Issue 8 (1985)

[…] Russians. The KGB did the same with Russian students. The intelligence value was nil. In the early sixties the CIA placed a lot of hopes on ‘ mind control’, experimenting with drugs, hypnosis and programming a la ‘Manchurian Candidate’. The most bizarre episode in Beck’s book concerns an attempt by a CIA shrink to […]

Spy Master: The Betrayal of MI5

Lobster Issue 31 (June 1996)

[…] (p. 222) (emphasis added) ‘Hollis had set up the entire operation, without the knowledge of his staff’ (p. 255) A one-man Hollis operation? Hollis the Superman? The mind boggles. According to West, ‘The only conclusion possible from all of this is that Hollis was personally responsible for the Profumo debacle from start to finish. […]

Secret Underground Cities, and, Secret Nuclear Bunkers

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Lobster Issue 43 (Summer 2002)

Secret Underground Cities: an account of some of Britain’s subterranean defence, factory and storage sites in the Second World War N. J. McCamley Barnsley, Yorkshire: Leo Cooper, 1999, £14.95 (sb) Secret Nuclear Bunkers: the passive defence of the western world during the Cold War N. J. McCamley Barnsley, Yorkshire: Leo Cooper, 2002, £19.95 (hb)   … Read more

The Man Who Knew Too Much

Lobster Issue 27 (1994)

Dick Russell Carroll and Graf, New York, 1992 This is one of the most interesting JFK assassination books to have emerged from the movie and 30th anniversary tie-in crop. Given the vast amount of attention paid to Gerald Posner’s ‘Oswald did it after all!’ apologia, Case Closed, it is unfortunate that Russell’s book still hasn’t […]

Miscellany

Lobster Issue 8 (1985)

[…] the standard academic studies of domestic Italian post-war politics the ‘apertura’ merits merely a line or two. But with hindsight, and the recent events in Italy in mind, this is surely an area which will repay further study. This reminds me again of how important it is to re-read everything. I haven’t looked at […]

The Internet: a strategic assessment by the US Department of Defense

Lobster Issue 31 (June 1996)

[…] counter-intelligence purposes, but ‘if it became widely known that DoD was monitoring internet traffic for intelligence or counterintelligence purposes, individuals with personal agendas or political purposes in mind, or who enjoy playing pranks, would deliberately enter false or misleading messages’. Offensive uses of the internet: ‘Politically active groups using the internet could be vulnerable […]

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