Letters From JIM HOUGAN, Washington, USA. (NB this letter was written between the reviews of Hougan’s book Secret Agenda which appeared in Lobsters 8 and 9) After reading No 8 I thought I’d share the following with you in re: Secret Agenda and, on another topic, Frank Terpil. Throat Secret Agenda is deliberately ambiguous on … Read more
By Robin Ramsay See also: Lobster (magazine) at Wikipedia. Updated June 2022 The first issue of Lobster appeared in 1983. It was written by Stephen Dorril and myself. We met through the late Harry Irwin, who lived in Northern Ireland and was what Americans call a book scout: he bought and sold rare books. But … Read more
Covert Action: The Roots of Terrorism Edited by Ellen Ray and William H. Schaap Melbourne and New York: Ocean Press, 2003, £14.95 The Politics of Anti-Semitism Edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair Oakland (US) and Edinburgh: AK Press, 2003, £9.00/$12.95 The Betrayal of Dissent: Beyond Orwell, Hitchens and the New American Century Scott … Read more
Christopher Simpson, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 1994. This is the Simpson who wrote Blowback. This is hard to describe. From the cover blurb: the author demonstrates how the government-funded psychological warfare programs of the Cold War years under-wrote the academic studies that formed the basis for much of modern communication research.’ I … Read more
[…] out for late night drinking. The Ron Horn stories were a complete red herring. Back in ’72 and ’73 Hugh Mooney was well known as a ‘ spook’ by most journos. I encountered him when I was writing The Guineapigs – published by Penguin and withdrawn after one week on the orders of Lord […]
[…] are included in Geller’s section of The Geller Effect which he co-authored with Guy Lyon Playfair. (Jonathan Cape, London 1986; Grafton 1988, paperback) ‘Hey, Uri’, says the spook, ‘Let’s see if you can project an idea into President Jimmy Carter’s mind’. And worse. Though there is no evidence of Geller being a fake, there […]
[…] know or care how her one-dimensional script would insult/inflame/alienate audiences outside America; nor why it mattered to so many, including, incidentally, those responsible for US spook recruitment.(14) Her failure meant that others could write an alternative ‘script’, on a subject, and at a time, of their own choosing. The ‘best’ meaning […]
A new royalty? A few weeks before former BBC political editor Andrew Marr received two Broadcasting Press Guild awards – one as ‘best TV performer in a non-acting role’ – his journalistic colleagues were quietly made aware of a little drama in his own life. Typical of the message from editorial lawyers circulated among Britain’s … Read more
[…] the ICDP came from two American sources, and if any of Lobster’s readers wish to pursue this curious story further down paranoia gulch, trying to spot the spook, start with Duff pages 237 and 240. The latter section begins: ‘A number of young people from peace movements and CNDs met that summer in a […]
See note (1) David Phillips, the former CIA officer considered by the Select Committee on Assassinations as a possible candidate for the true identity behind the cover name ‘”Maurice Bishop” -(2)- reacted strongly when this book was published in the summer of 1980. He contacted top executives in newspapers and television, making himself available to … Read more
