There have been several notable assaults on the good ship Lobster since number 24.
On Thursday, 19 November 1992 a journalist researching a piece on MI6 rang me. He said had been to talk to the KGB defector, Oleg Gordiefsky, who told him that the KGB were big fans of Lobster. Since Gordiefky defected in 1985, his conversations with the KGB about Lobster can only have been, at best, about issues 1-6. In other words, this is bullshit, Mr Gordiefsky merely passing on a smear from his new employers in that funny Lego building being erected on the bank of the River Thames in London.
On 22 November, three days after this curious telephone call, I was sent a photocopy of the review of Smear! by Robert Cecil from the Winter ’92 issue of the Journal of Intelligence and National Security. To quote the biographical material on his book about Guy Burgess, A Divided Life (Bodley Head, London, 1988), Mr Cecil is a former Head of the Cultural Relations Department of the Foreign Office, and war-time intelligence officer. This may be the most inaccurate review I have ever read. But then accuracy wasn’t what he was after, was it?
The Journal of Intelligence and National Security was founded and is co-edited by Dr Christopher Andrew. Oddly enough, Oleg Gordiefsky co-wrote a couple of books with Dr Andrew. Of course, none of these things are connected.
New Scientist
In New Scientist of 20 March 1993, the column ‘Feedback’ sneered at the piece I wrote in #24, ‘The Alien on the grassy knoll’, calling it ‘nonsense’, and ‘very worrying’. (Though precisely what was worrying wasn’t clear.) How sad that Britain’s flagship popular science magazine should be so detached from what is actually going on. C.f. the piece by Armen Victorian in this issue.
Searchlight etc
Anyone sceptical of the joint Ramsay/O’Hara account of Searchlight in issue 24 might care to read the full page in the February issue of Searchlight devoted to rubbishing O’Hara, me and even Daniel Brandt. There was some talk of them suing Lobster. Good luck guys: Lobster’s total assets wouldn’t pay Searchlight’s subsidy for one month. (By the by, anybody know who is paying that subsidy?)
For the record
In defence of Chip Berlet, criticised by Daniel Brandt, Searchlight described Brandt as ‘totally discredited’ by his contacts with the followers of Lyndon LaRouche. I sent this to Brandt who pointed out in his reply that ‘[Chip] Berlet as of last July was referring to [Brandt’s database] NameBase as “indispensable” and Dennis King, his close colleague — particularly on anti-LaRouche research — refers to NameBase as “crucial”‘.
And yes, with the letter he included photocopies of the evidence. The rest of the Searchlight article is about as accurate.
Searchlight is being used to character assassinate Larry O’Hara. That’s all there is to it. Apart from the ‘why’… on which….