Lobster Issue 52 (Winter 2006/7)
Mr Tony was a spook? Issue 7 of Larry O’Hara’s Note from the Borderland () includes a section from the Anne Machon and David Shayler book, Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers (reviewed in Lobster 49), which was apparently dropped by the publisher. The key section is this, from an unnamed MI5 officer: ‘Blair was recruited […]
Lobster Issue 38 (Winter 1999)
I invited David Turner to begin writing a regular column for Lobster. He agreed then rang to tell me his computer had been attacked by a virus and could not meet my deadline. (He is the second contributor to this issue to have been virused recently.) But I had on file this splendid polemic written […]
Lobster Issue 37 (Summer 1999)
Introduction What follows is an interim report about Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple. In so far as it has a central thesis, it is that Jones initiated the Jonestown massacre because he feared that Congressman Leo Ryan’s investigation would disgrace him. Specifically, Jones feared that Ryan and the press would uncover evidence that the … Read more
Lobster Issue 49 (Summer 2005)
[…] of what could happen to them too …….. I am astonished that, in the British press, so far as I am aware, none of the specialist ‘ spook’ journalists commented on ‘Nicola Calipari’s’ death. In PR terms, if the shooting was deliberate, it could come under the heading ‘event management’, with all this implies. […]
Lobster Issue 32 (December 1996)
[…] With Wilson dead, we only have Joe Haines’ word for this. Should we believe Joe Haines? Why do I always get the feeling that Haines was a spook? What with the new book, Rinkagate, and the ‘Secret Lives’ programme on Channel 4 in November on Jeremy Thorpe and Norman Scott, this is deja vue, […]
Lobster Issue 37 (Summer 1999)
Hollis again What with the opening of the KGB archives and the testimony of Oleg Gordievsky, you might be forgiven for thinking that the question, Was MI5 Director-General Roger Hollis a Soviet spy? had been answered conclusively and resoundingly ‘No’. You would be wrong – or so says the doyen of British espionage writers, Chapman … Read more
Lobster Issue 35 (Summer 1998)
Patriots not sneaks After a year of New Labour I feel beholden to write something on this subject, but what is there worth saying that isn’t blindingly and depressingly obvious and predictable? Jack Straw, who took over as Home Secretary, and thus formally as the boss of MI5, is determined to sedate any sleeping dogs … Read more
Lobster Issue 33 (Summer 1997)
The CIA In a recent ‘Witness Seminar’ on the 1975 British referendum on entry into the European Economic Community (EEC), the Conservative MP, Sir Richard Body, who in 1975 was co-chair of the anti-EEC National Referendum Campaign, had this to say: ‘At the very beginning of the campaign two CIA agents came to see me … Read more