[…] the Phoney War remains a taboo subject in many respects – even at the level of popular fiction. Len Deighton made his name with the Harry Palmer spy thrillers, three of which, The Ipcress File (1962), Funeral in Berlin (1964) and Billion Dollar Brain (1965), were immediately filmed. The other book in the series, […]
By Peter Dale Scott (18,734 words) 10/29/05 See also A Ballad of Drugs and 9/11 (I wish to acknowledge the invaluable assistance in the preparation of this essay from N, a Russian who for the time being prefers to remain anonymous.) Tajik authorities have claimed repeatedly that neither the US nor NATO exerts any … Read more
[…] squeeze an early reply into his next column in the Guardian: ‘The professor’s caricature of this most principled, independent and forthright of journalists as just another suborned spy is ridiculous.’ Andrew’s attack on Ransome united two experts on Ransome’s days in Russia, who had previously been arguing about the meaning of Russian documents concerning […]
[…] a number of long pieces about Wallace and Holroyd – and about Kincora – for the Catholic end of the Irish media. (See, for example, ‘Framed? The spy caught up in his own web of intrigue’, Sunday World, 31 May 1987, ‘Garda “Spy” Now A Hero’, Sunday World, May 3, 1987, and ‘The MI5 […]
[…] – on the grounds that he was such a selfish little shit, he lacked the necessary patriotic motivation (I am not making this up) to be a spy. Lawson did move into a series of increasingly expensive houses through the eighties and nineties, however. But his wife’s family are rich. Ayer’s final years were […]
[…] Coleman the Pentagon has never forgiven President Truman for turning OSS into a supposedly civilian entity, and is well on the way to running the entire US spy apparat. I don’t really believe this strict military-civilian dichotomy. CIA has long been full of military spooks – General Charles P. Cabell and Admiral Stansfield Turner, […]
Charlie Bubbles One of Lobster’s contributors had dinner a few years ago with Charlie Falconer, the current Lord Chancellor, and reported that he was a fount of information on the B-sides of pop singles of the 1960s. Well, pop-pickers, our civil liberties are safe in his hands then. Or not. As New Labour prepares to … Read more
GEHEIM (“SECRET”) is West Germany’s representative in the international stable of state research publications. Geheim has appeared three or four times a year since 1983, and its editors are experienced state research journalists in the Federal Republic – Rudolf Gossner, author (with Geheim contributor Uwe Herzog) of an exhaustive work on the undercover activities of … Read more
Richard B. Spence Los Angeles: Feral House, 2003 , $29.95, h/b Boasting over 1800 footnotes and a magnificent bibliography (including texts published in Turkmenistan) this would be awarded A for Application if such a prize existed in academia. The author, Professor of History at the University of Idaho, appears to be something of an … Read more
[…] July 1989 (syndicated column) Memo from Acting Assistant Commissioner, Office of Enforcement, to Commissioner of Customs, 30 October 1985. Mark Perry, The Secret Life of an American Spy’, Regardie’s, February 1989 Testimony of Ambassador Oakley, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and Committee on Judiciary, hearings, International Terrorism, Insurgency and Drug Trafficking, May 13-15 1985, […]
