Searchlight again

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 […]

Cloak and Dollar, and, Know Your Enemy

Book cover
Lobster Issue 43 (Summer 2002)

[…] behind US foreign policy…..was the defence of democracy’, is a joke. Or a lie. The ‘essential idea’ was to defend US economic and geopolitical interests and never mind how much (non-white) blood was spilt. It gets worse. I always look at the assassination of John Kennedy as a touchstone for academics writing about America […]

Decoding Edward Jay Epstein’s ‘LEGEND’

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

Re:

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

The Pinay Circle and Destabilisation in Europe

Lobster Issue 18 (1989)

[…] with the resistance in Scandinavia. Reflecting on the Pinay Circle and its apparent role as European coordinator of media manipulation, several other avenues for investigation come to mind. The UK: the role of Arthur ‘Dickie’ Franks. Before the publication of the Langemann papers in 1982, Franks’ only known connection to the Wilson story was […]

Feedback

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, […]

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

Book cover
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 […]

Briefly

Lobster Issue 38 (Winter 1999)

[…] OX4 1BG. UK 44 (0) 1865 203661 http://www.undercurrents.org Project Freedom Network is the name of the first group in this country campaigning against what it calls ‘remote mind control weapons’. I don’t know anything about this group, its personnel or its leader, George Farquhar, other than this: according to a letter from Mr Farquhar, […]

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

Book cover
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 […]

Accessibility Toolbar