Secrecy and Power in the British State: A History of the Official Secrets Act

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Lobster Issue 34 (Winter 1997)

[…] that an effective analysis of the use of power “should refrain from posing the labyrinthine and unanswerable question who then has power and what has he in mind?” Instead, it is a case of studying power at the point where its intention, if it has one, is completely investigated in its real and effective […]

Crozier country: Free Agent: the unseen war 1941-1991

Lobster Issue 26 (1993)

Brian Crozier HarperCollins, London, 1993 This is a very interesting book which greatly adds to our knowledge of the clandestine shaping of British politics in the 1970s and 80s. It is also a book which, like Chapman Pincher’s Inside Story, will repay repeated re-reading. But amidst all the new material a surprising amount of these … Read more

Eye Spy!

Lobster Issue 42 (Winter 2001/2)

[…] Hanssen was bad! (But no info about his specific badness, and no mention of the tunnel the Americans dug under the Russian embassy, or vice versa). Never mind! Bin Laden bad! The longer articles similarly crash on the rocks of recycled press reports. ‘Peru is a nation not usually associated with spy dramas’ begins […]

Book reviews

Lobster Issue 4 (1984)

Behind World Revolution: The Strange Career of Nesta H. Webster. Vol. 1 Richard Gilman, Insight Books, Ann Arbor (U.S.) 1982 As one of the major sources of the Jewish/Illuminati fantasies of the loony right on both sides of the Atlantic, Nesta Webster has a lot to answer for. Her books, it has to be said, … Read more

Combat 18 and MI5: some background notes

Lobster Issue 30 (December 1995)

[…] White Aryan Resistance against charges of state collaboration laid against them by Covington. Not having seen yet the primary sources to which the NSV report refers, my mind is still open on this episode. If their case against Covington here is correct, then his hurling of false accusations would be just the sort of […]

Updates

Lobster Issue 46 (Winter 2003)

[…] Ward Boston, senior legal counsel for the Navy’s Court of Inquiry into the incident broke his silence and stated, inter alia: ‘There is no question in my mind that those people tried to kill every one on board. I was the counsel. I put witnesses on. I talked to kids never exposed to combat […]

Welcome to Mars: Fantasies of Science in the American Century 1947-1959

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Lobster Issue 57 (Summer 2009)

[…] were the other stories. Some were the horror stories with which we have become familiar: for example MK-Ultra and Ewen Cameron’s insane experiments with reprogramming the human mind which Hollings discusses. But also: by 1959 Cary Grant had taken LSD over 60 times as part of a Hollywood set who were using it with […]

In a Common Cause: the Anti-Communist Crusade in Britain 1945-60

Lobster Issue 19 (1990)

[…] 1960pp. 485-6. The World of Learning, 1980-81 (Switzerland) p 1236 See Chapter 9, ‘Human Ecology’ in John Marks, The Search for the ‘Manchurian Candidate’: The CIA and Mind Control (Allen Lane, London 1979). In 1955 the CIA incorporated the Society for the Study of Human Ecology which was renamed the Human Ecology Fund in […]

Our Friends in the North West: The Owen Oyston Affair

Lobster Issue 34 (Winter 1997)

[…] Peter Blaker discuss newly-appointed Minister Robert Atkins Blaker You know that Robert’s in the government now? Murrin Yes, I did. Yes. Blaker Which is good for him. Mind, he deserves to be. Done a great job. …. I think we should keep Robert in on this, by the way. Murrin Oh everything that you’ve […]

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