Misc reviews

Lobster Issue

[…] in the foreword, that in 1965 he was asked by a CIA officer if he would ‘volunteer’ to kill Fitzer. The CIA officer said Pitzer was a spy, a traitor. Marvin declined – but only because the CIA officer wanted it done in the US: Marvin wouldn’t kill at home, only overseas. (To my […]

Operation Chiffon by Peter Taylor

Lobster Issue 87 (2023)

[PDF file]: […] anniversary. See . 8 Personally, I adhere to the adage that in intelligence ‘there is no such thing as coincidence’ (© John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy). 9 Oxford: OUP, 11 March 2021 or . 10 
 3 that collusion was involved in the attack. What other possible evidence does Taylor think should […]

Taylor Operation Chiffon

Lobster Issue

[…] Taylor is also cheap with the facts when he recounts the time that Brendan Duddy was interrogated by the IRA because they thought he was a British spy. He says: McGuinness suspected Brendan might be playing a double game as a suspected British spy. Shortly afterwards, four senior IRA men arrived at Brendan’s house, […]

The Western Union Clandestine Committee: Britain and the ‘Gladio’ networks

Lobster Issue 72 (Winter 2016)

[PDF file]: […] who were sequestrated by the Americans under the umbrella of the now infamous Operation Paperclip. Both Klaus Barbie (the infamous ‘Butcher of Lyon’) and Reinhard Gehlen (Hitler’s spy chief) were integral to the founding of several ‘Gladio’ networks through their connections to other ex-Nazis, some of whom were, like Barbie and Gehlen themselves, war […]

Taylor Operation Chiffon

Lobster Issue

[…] Taylor is also cheap with the facts when he recounts the time that Brendan Duddy was interrogated by the IRA because they thought he was a British spy. He says: McGuinness suspected Brendan might be playing a double game as a suspected British spy. Shortly afterwards, four senior IRA men arrived at Brendan’s house, […]

Miscellaneous reviews

Lobster Issue 64 (Winter 2012)

[PDF file]: […] in the foreword, that in 1965 he was asked by a CIA officer if he would ‘volunteer’ to kill Fitzer. The CIA officer said Pitzer was a spy, a traitor. Marvin declined – but only because the CIA officer wanted it done in the US: Marvin wouldn’t kill at home, only overseas. (To my […]

Beaumont novel copy

Lobster Issue

A Spy Alone Charles Beaumont London: Canelo, 2023, £9.99 (p/b) Robin Ramsay This is only the second novel I have reviewed in Lobster.1 The cover and the author blurb tells us that author Beaumont is a ‘former MI6 operative’. ‘Operative’? Why not ‘officer’? The author tells me the word was chosen by the publisher. […]

On getting it wrong and getting it right: Ronald Stark, LSD and the CIA

Lobster Issue 78 (Winter 2019)

[PDF file]: […] by other historians, he eventually conceded, ‘I made some claims about facts which have turned out to be unwarranted’. Of his claim that Bruno was the embassy spy, code-named ‘Henry Fagot’, Bossy wrote, ‘I thought so at the time, but have turned out to be mistaken’. Bossy, however, had dragged a lot of fascinating […]

Pegasus: The Story of the World’s Most Dangerous Spyware

Lobster Issue 86 (2023)

[PDF file]: […] Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft, according to people familiar with its sales pitch. NSO Group’s flagship smartphone malware, nicknamed Pegasus, has for years been used by spy agencies and governments to harvest data from targeted individuals’ smartphones. But it has now evolved to capture the much greater trove of information stored beyond the […]

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