Harold Smith (Lobster 25) Observer editor Jonathan Fenby replied to a letter from Harold Smith on 17 June, 1993: ‘I don’t think it is a story we want to go back over.’ Back over? On 4 July the Observer ran a third of a page on the political situation in Nigeria, ‘New rules, new date, … Read more
Louis Kilzer Presidio Press, U.S., 2000, £18.99 (1) Louis Kilzer has won two Pulitzer Prizes and is the chief investigative writer of the Denver Rocky Mountain News. A couple of chapters into this book it became clear why Kenneth de Courcy sold so many newsletters in the American Mid-West. A low point – or … Read more
British Spooks “Who’s Who” part 2 Steve Dorril See also: Part 1: Forty Years of Legal Thuggery (Lobster 9) Intelligence Personnel Named in ‘Inside Intelligence’ (Lobster 15) Philby naming names (Lobster 16) First supplement to A Who’s Who of the British Secret State (Lobster 19) Spooks (Lobster 22) CABLE, ERIC GRANT CMG (1938) B 25.2.1887 … Read more
The American boomerang In America, Mayor Bloomberg has banned smoking in public places, especially in restaurants, inadvertently turning New York into an unlikely but almost spook-free zone. (1) American intelligence officers may not smoke, but some of their overseas contacts will. If meeting in the West, they will prefer to do so in London; or, … Read more
In this article I amplify and update my account of the crash that killed Diana, Princess of Wales, Dodi Fayed and Henri Paul which appeared in Lobster 37. Since it was written there have been a number of interesting developments – the publication of Trevor Rees-Jones’ book; James Hewitt’s impromptu recreation of the fatal car … Read more
See note(1) The Conventional Wisdom It is generally assumed that the economist J. M. Keynes was instrumental in establishing the post-war Anglo-American economic relationship. The argument is that, along with the US Assistant Secretary to the Treasury Harry Dexter White, Keynes created the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (now … Read more
Who was who? The newly published Oxford Dictionary of National Biography not only surveys the lives of the great and the good, but also includes accounts of individuals in the murkier fields of human endeavour. Over fifty spies are listed, for example, including historical figures such as ‘Parliament Joan’ (c1600-1655?) and ‘Pickle the Spy’ (c1725-1761). … Read more
A Wapping mystery I noticed with some interest that Sunday Times editor, Andrew Neil, was described in the Guardian on May 27 as having been labour correspondent of the Economist in the 1970s. Was he, I thought, one of the correspondents recruited by MI5 in the big F branch expansion circa 1973-5? Did that explain … Read more
Volume 1: Reflections of the Participants, Mark Baimbridge (ed.) Volume 2: Current Analysis and Lessons for the Future, Mark Baimbridge, Philip Wyman and Andrew Mullen (eds.) Exeter (UK) and Charlottesville (USA): Imprint Academic, 2006, single volumes £17.95 (uk ) and $34.90 (US) Andrew Mullen, who has written about the EU in these columns, brought … Read more
A Note on MRA, CIA and L. Ron. Hubbard In response to my snippet in issue 38 (p.22) on Moral Rearmament and the CIA, Daniel Brandt (1) sent me the following from Miles Copeland’s, The Game Player: Confessions of the CIA’s Original Political Operative (London: Aurum Press, 1989, pp. 176-177). This is a nice demonstration … Read more
