[…] from Thatcher. (Guardian 8th December 1983). Simkins spent several of his declining years preparing the massive tome drawing on time expired spy documents, backed by his old boss, Sir Howard Smith, Director General of MI5 until 1982. The veto was a shock since the book was commissioned by the Cabinet Office. It may have […]
[…] decent index. I imagine that most of it will be new to most Lobster readers, as it was to me. There is a section early on covering BOSS in Britain in the 1960s and 70s, which was familiar to me having researched this in the 1980s; and it is a very good account, well […]
Why is a Portuguese journalist writing a book about an almost unknown British spy? Recently I had to answer this same question from Igor Prelin, my favourite ex-KGB officer whom I first meet in Cannes, France, during the Television Market Fair of April 1994. After I met Igor Prelin in Cannes, I travelled to Moscow … Read more
[…] not naive. It is said that Dr. Savimbi was recruited by British intelligence 1964-66.(Covert Action No 4 April/May 1979). Even stronger are his links to Lonrho. Its boss, ‘Tiny’ Rowland, has visited Savimbi at the residence in Rabat, lent by the King of Morocco to Unita’s President; and Lonrho executives have visited Unita’s headquarters […]
[…] In the final chapter Willan recounts how a young Silvio Berlusconi joined the P2 secret society a couple of years before it was exposed, and describes P2 boss Gelli’s plan to take control of Italian society by buying the media and the unions, and forming a new kind of political party – some of […]
[…] when he met Oswald in Texas and New Orleans. He saw him daily and got to know him well. Lewis claims Clay Shaw was Guy Bannister’s intelligence boss and that both Jack Ruby and Roscoe White were Camp Street regulars. Presents a convincing picture of the shadowy intelligence world in the Crescent City. The […]
[…] me letters from the US Ambassador to Cairo and Gemal Abdul Nasser ……, plus copies of correspondence between Herbert Hoover (then under secretary of state) and my boss Jim Allen of Booz Allen and Hamilton ………..’. Booz Allen remains one of the global management consultants. Copeland also made the link with the public affairs […]
Andreas Malm, and Shora Esmailian London: Pluto Press, 2007, P/b £17.99 At a time when Iran is in the news on a daily basis, when war and rumours of war are being constantly circulated and global warming and peak oil are finally filtering into the public consciousness, the release of this book could not … Read more
Just ten years ago the issues were so simple, the arguments so clean. The concept of hackers was cute and quaint, best understood through Hollywood thrillers like ‘War Games.’ The major media had yet to use the word ‘cyberspace,’ a term just then created by William Gibson in Neuromancer, his first masterpiece in a strange … Read more
[…] deliberately undermined by security scandals. No one as yet knows whether or not the Soviets manipulated these scandals but as H J van den Bergh, ex-head of BOSS, used to say to Gordon Winter, ‘They’d be stupid if they didn’t’. Exceptionally so. Rothschild the puppet-master? Perhaps the most interesting part of this book is […]
