Secret Contenders

Lobster Issue 8 (1985)

[…] bass” and landed in Havana in 1959, just as the first Russian freighter was arriving. Fairly early on Beck’s narrative begins to resemble the ‘Get Smart’ TV spy spoof. He dresses up as a tourist and hangs around the docks with his Brownie, in the bar of the Hilton, and at a travel agents’ […]

How many divisions does the Pope have?

Book cover
Lobster Issue 44 (Winter 2002/3)

[…] materialised. In 1942 Gehlen had been unable to predict the time and place of the Soviet counter-attack at Stalingrad.(5) In his new role running a major US-funded spy organisation, Gehl-en produced numerous reports claiming a Soviet invasion of the west was imminent, that the Soviets were building a fleet of flying wing jet fighters, […]

More JFK Assassination books

Lobster Issue 27 (1994)

First off, a slight digression. There’s been much talk recently about just how many books have been published on the assassination. ‘Over 2000’ is the figure that has been thrown around and this may be traced to the very opening sentence of Gerald Posner’s egregious Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK … Read more

Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat and the CIA

Lobster Issue 8 (1985)

Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat and the CIA Jim Hougan (Random House, US 1984) Those who read Hougan’s last book Spooks will know that the arrival of a new one is something of an event. As expected, his latest has so many trails to follow, intriguing little titbits to ponder that one read is insufficient … Read more

Conspiracy, Conspiracy Theories and Conspiracy Research

Lobster Issue 19 (1990)

[…] Later I mentioned the idea that the spooks fed material into novels to Fred Holroyd, and, to my surprise, he told me that one of Britain’s leading spy fiction writers had cheerfully confirmed that the spooks did indeed send him material they wanted planting in his books. The perceptible increase in this country of […]

Sex scandals and sexual blackmail in America’s deep politics

Lobster Issue 73 (Summer 2017)

[PDF file]: […] and transgressions by past American presidents. 5 See, for example, Phillip Knightly, ‘The History of the Honey Trap’, ForeignPolicy.com, 12 March 2010 at ; Christopher Beam, ‘The Spy Who Said She Loved Me’, Slate.com, 9 December 2010 at ; Jonathan Zimmerman, ‘Petraeus and the Blackmail Myth’, Los Angeles Times, 16 November 2012; Wikipedia, ‘Love, […]

Tokyo legend? Lee Harvey Oswald and Japan

Lobster Issue 70 (Winter 2015)

[PDF file]: […] Harvey Oswald 3 in which Epstein tries to prove that Oswald fell victim to an elaborate Soviet intelligence ‘honey trap’ while in Japan that led him to spy for the KGB. Shortly after Legend appeared in print, however, investigators for the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) interviewed some of Epstein’s purported sources. The […]

Olivia Jayne Frank, 1956-2023

Lobster Issue 88 (2024)

[PDF file]: Andrew Rosthorn Olivia Jayne Frank, alias Ruth Mayer, Ruth Alison Peacock, Rebekah Stern, Joanne Olivia Gold and Olivia Jayne Hart, a transgender spy for the Mossad, MI5 and MI6, died of pneumonia and kidney failure in the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital on September 11, 2023, 67 years after her birth at Crumpsall Hospital in Manchester. […]

Olivia Jayne Frank, 1956-2023

Lobster Issue

[PDF file]: Andrew Rosthorn Olivia Jayne Frank, alias Ruth Mayer, Ruth Alison Peacock, Rebekah Stern, Joanne Olivia Gold and Olivia Jayne Hart, a transgender spy for the Mossad, MI5 and MI6, died of pneumonia and kidney failure in the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital on September 11, 2023, 67 years after her birth at Crumpsall Hospital in Manchester. […]

Accessibility Toolbar