William Massie With Chapman Pincher retired from the Express group of newspapers, somebody had to take up his position as the spooks’ number one outlet. That person appears to be one William Massie. His name has appeared on some interesting material recently: viz: 14th February 1988, front page story in the Sunday Express based on … Read more
Giles Scott-Smith London: Routledge/PSA 2002, £55 This is a welcome addition to the growing literature on the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA-funded operation that ran for two decades after World War II of which Encounter magazine was the best-known British component. Giles Scott-Smith has added to the historical record well illuminated by Christopher … Read more
The Spy who came in from the Co-op David Burke Woodbridge: the Boydell Press, 2008, h/b, £18.99 The author was conducting a series of interviews with 87-year old Melita Norwood about her childhood among a group of pro-Soviet radical exiles in England in the 1920s and 30s, when it was revealed in the press, via … Read more
Accountability I will be discussing a non subject – the accountability of the intelligence services. By accountable we mean the ability to be brought to account, to be answerable for their actions, to be subject to scrutiny and ultimately to have their actions adjudicated upon in a court of law. I will be looking at … Read more
Turning up the Heat: MI5 after the Cold War Larry O’Hara Phoenix Press, London, 1994, £6 (p and p included) from BM Box 4769, London WC1N 3XX; cheques payable to Larry O’Hara. Since 1945 MI5 has had three main domestic targets: Soviet bloc espionage, the British Left and the IRA. With the Soviet target gone, … Read more
In the ramblings by this non-scientist in this field since I blundered into it in 1989, there have been two themes: e-m technology is dangerous and the bastards are lying to us about this; and the claims of mind control victims might be true because the technology may exist. Thus, in the first category, we … Read more
This may be a bit of a long-winded note but I think it is on an important topic and may have some things of interest for Lobster readers. Because of the nature of the subject it will have to rely, at least in part, on unattributable sources, but I’ll reference it as much as possible. … Read more
Inside Intelligence Anthony Cavendish Palu Publishing Ltd. 1987 Although many hundreds of books have been written on British Intelligence, very few have tackled post-war intelligence in any kind of depth or with any degree of reliability. By contrast, we tend to believe that we know quite a lot about the workings of the CIA. But … Read more
In its Supplement ‘Corporate Security’, the Financial Times (11 April 2002) provided private security companies with a five page ‘advertorial’. If they are thought of as a service industry, the puff may have done the companies some favours. If they are thought of as consultancies, however, it merely reinforced the emerging superiority of specialist boutiques, … Read more
The incompetence which has been the hallmark of the world’s ‘most powerful man’ has left the world with a legacy we can only begin to rub our eyes at: George W. Bush’s successful derailing of concerted action on climate change; an energy crisis; a $3 trillion war (that’s just the cost to the Americans of … Read more
