Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8) £££
[…] had to be rethought. Inevitably, which contributions seem most important in a collection such as this reflects the interests and concerns of the reviewer. Bearing this in mind, of particular interest in this are Piotr Wrobel’s ‘An NKVD Residentura (Residency) in the Warsaw Ghetto’, Hilary Earl’s ‘Confessions of Wrongdoing, or How to Save Yourself […]
Lobster Issue 26 (1993) £££
[…] apparent when he insisted on trying to foist an unusable programme idea on colleagues of Gerry in television. A free lunch always at the forefront of his mind, Riley went off, leaving his unlocked briefcase in their office. Gerry promptly opened it and copied Riley’s rather uninteresting address book.(7) Watch this space. O’Hara cannot […]
Lobster Issue 38 (Winter 1999) £££
[…] a Philip Agee of the 1990s; and I for one am still unclear as to why he blew the whistle in the way he did. But never mind: thanks to Shayler’s information we have an insider account of MI5’s recent activities. The authors have compiled a quick sketch of MI5’s history up to the […]
Lobster Issue 30 (December 1995) £££
[…] have received no reply. The murder of WPC Yvonne Fletcher Joe Vialls’ exploration of this murder – which he thinks he committed, while under some kind of mind control – has taken a significant lurch forward. In the Australian magazine New Dawn number 27 (GPO Box 3126FF, Melbourne, 3001), Vialls has a long analysis […]
Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8) £££
The Triumph of the Political Class Peter Oborne London: Simon & Schuster, 2007, £18.99 Thinker, Faker, Spinner, Spy: Corporate PR and the Assault on Democracy Edited by William Dinan and David Miller London: Pluto, 2007, £15.99 End Times: The Death of the Fourth Estate Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair CounterPunch and AK Press, Oakland … Read more
Lobster Issue 48 (Winter 2004) £££
Who was who? The newly published Oxford Dictionary of National Biography not only surveys the lives of the great and the good, but also includes accounts of individuals in the murkier fields of human endeavour. Over fifty spies are listed, for example, including historical figures such as ‘Parliament Joan’ (c1600-1655?) and ‘Pickle the Spy’ (c1725-1761). … Read more
Lobster Issue 38 (Winter 1999) £££
[…] Did the £12 million donation to the Dome buy the tax exemption? We can’t know (though prevarications on chronology to investigative reporters suggests a guilty state of mind). Certainly, the donation made turning down requests for meetings and secret negotiations difficult. Secret meetings are held for the purpose of keeping others out. In the […]
Lobster Issue 2 (1983) £££
As Steve Dorril shows in his essay on Permindex, the lack of a satisfactory resolution to the assassination of Kennedy allowed Soviet intelligence to use the event to their own ends. The French also had a go with the pseudonymous book Farewell America which made public considerable information about the CIA’s activities while pretending to … Read more
Lobster Issue 40 (Winter 2000/1) £££
[…] for this sensitive mission, there was only one crew-member, the pilot. This makes sense in terms of secrecy, a consideration that would have been paramount in the mind of the CIA planners. Because of this necessary limitation, is it not possible that the aircraft was adapted to carry its munitions on wing pylons that, […]
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 […]