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. […]

UDA: Inside the heart of Loyalist terror

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Lobster Issue 49 (Summer 2005) £££

Henry McDonald and Jim Cusack London: Penguin, 2004, £12.99, p/b   Henry McDonald’s highly readable recent book with Jim Cusack on the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) is everything that other recent offerings on the subject were not. On the one hand, it avoids the kind of borderline homo-erotic sensationalism, in which the atrocities of self-serving … Read more

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 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 […]

The Road to Jerusalem: Glubb Pasha, Palestine and the Jews

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Lobster Issue 45 (Summer 2003) £££

[…] story about which Morris has written elsewhere, and which will only be of use to historians of the period.(1) Notes 1 Since then Morris has changed his mind somewhat and has since become anti-Palestinian; or, at any rate, anti-Yassir Arafat. This political shift does not seem to have yet intruded in his research if […]

Let us now praise famous researchers

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Lobster Issue 55 (Summer 2008) £££

[…] back then? And whither Thomas G. Buchanan? These are small cavils though and Kelin has done a remarkable job of research and writing. It’s a good read, but at the back of my mind I keep thinking, shouldn’t he have been out investigating the case now, and wouldn’t 20 to 30,000 words have been enough?

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 […]

Re:

Lobster Issue 49 (Summer 2005) £££

Brice is right? An ‘immoral’ government has undermined human rights in Northern Ireland and is threatening to do the same across the rest of the United Kingdom, argued Professor Brice Dickson, the then Chief Commissioner of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission,([1]) in an interview with ePolitix.com to mark Human Rights Day last December.([2])He claimed … Read more

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