London’s Secret Tubes: London’s Wartime Citadels, Subways and Shelters Uncovered

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Lobster Issue 49 (Summer 2005) £££

Andrew Emmerson and Tony Beard. London: Capital Transport, 2004, £25.00, h/b   Gimme Shelter(s)! The secret underground government structures that originated during the Second World War and were later adapted, enlarged and augmented for the Nuclear Age were given a once-over by Peter Laurie in Beneath the City Streets (1970) and given much more detailed … Read more

There’s no smear like an old smear

Lobster Issue 23 (1992) £££

The Spycatcher’s Encyclopedia of Espionage Peter Wright Heinemann, Australia, 1991 The cover-blurb says this is ‘the rest of the story’. It feels more like the out-takes from Spycatcher spiced with a few more fragments of interesting gossip. And I do mean fragments: the interesting bits of 260 pages — largish print and much white space … Read more

Spooks

Lobster Issue 41 (Summer 2001) £££

[…] concealing the identity of their agents is the reason they won’t open their files, why did they reveal Nicholson’s identity? Twitchers or traitors? In ‘Did twitchy MI5 spy on bird lovers?’ (Sunday Times 11 March 2001) Nick Fielding reported what appeared to be evidence from within MI5 of an MI5 investigation of the Royal […]

Shorts

Lobster Issue 23 (1992) £££

[…] (14 March ’92) reported the admission by the Ministry of Defence that in an operation called HORNBEAM, trawlers had been used during the first Cold War to spy on Soviet shipping. But the MOD spokesperson refused to confirm that some trawlers had carried intelligence officers. Statewatch Bulletin (Jan/Feb 1992) includes an important update to […]

The Pentagon’s Psychic Research

Lobster Issue 30 (December 1995) £££

[…] at Semipalatinsk in Kazakhestan. It also led to the location of crashed Soviet TU-95 ‘Backfire’ bomber in Africa. (The accuracy of this information was later verified by spy satellites.) In 1978 the DIA took over as its office of primary responsibility.(29) Pat Price gave an equally incredibly detailed account in the course of his […]

Hacks, pols and PR

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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, […]

Northern Ireland Act 1974

Lobster Issue 14 (1987) £££

[…] successfully passed. Certainly, over a decade later, having met him, I can see no evidence whatsoever that he was in some sense mentally unbalanced. He was a spy who realised that the operations of the British Government were counter-productive. He started to object, and was pushed to one side for his pains. I raise […]

Letters

Lobster Issue 10 (1986) £££

[…] saying that their indictments were a hoax, and that they were actually in the employ of the CIA – having been sent to the Middle East to spy on the various factions there. Frank later told me that Korkala signed a document to that effect, while Frank himself continued to do so. Korkala, then, […]

The View From The Bridge

Lobster Issue 29 (1995) £££

[…] the churches in the Soviet bloc as the plot of the current Len Deighton series – soon to be a trilogy of trilogies! – tells us. Try Spy Line or Spy Sinker. Quigley again Pat Robertson, the evangelical Christian politician, erstwhile Presidential candidate, wrote a book expounding his world views, The New World Order. […]

‘Privatising’ covert action: the case of the Unification Church

Lobster Issue 21 (1991) £££

[…] Conference, cited by Le Caballac p. 35. The source in question says that the North Koreans originally arrested Moon for heretical teachings and because ‘he was a spy for the President of South Korea’. See Matczak, p. 7. Normally, one would assume that this was merely proferred as a post facto justification for his […]

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