The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8)

[…] state is taking steps to counter it. Hence, in part, the formation of the state-sponsored youth group Nashi (Russian for ‘Our’).(6) Similar activities are taking place in Iran. Hence the arrest, earlier this year, of Iranian academics with links to American-funded organisations.(7)Similar techniques are being used in South America.(8)Little of this is secret: the […]

Deep Black: the secrets of space espionage (Book Review) & Journals

Lobster Issue 16 (1988)

[…] Irangate. He shows America’s failure to spot the storm to the subsequent reinforcement of the CIA contingent following a twin-track policy of supporting anti-Khomeini exile groups outside Iran while building up agent networks within the first post-revolutionary government of Medhi Basargan. They succeeded in winning over Bani Sadr (President of Iran), Amir Entesam (Deputy […]

US involvement in the Fiji coup d’etat

Lobster Issue 14 (1987)

[…] Agency and retired a General in 1976. 1953 The General admits to being involved in the coup against Mossadegh which resulted in the Shah taking over in Iran. 1960-62  Military attache in Rome, helping CIA distribute funds to right-wing parties. 1964 In Brazil. Described as “lynchpin” in General Branco’s bloody coup against Goulart. Branco […]

Yo, Blair!

Lobster Issue 52 (Winter 2006/7)

[…] British Government to the Americans’ in MI6’s house journal, The Sunday Telegraph (9 July 2006). What that ‘kow-towing’ looks like was illustrated in ‘Blair beefed up his Iran speech to please Bush’ (Sunday Telegraph 28 May 2006) in which Toby Harnden and Patrick Hennessy reported: ‘Tony Blair made significant changes to one of his […]

Was the Director of Central Intelligence a Soviet agent?

Book cover
Lobster Issue 51 (Summer 2006)

[…] such instance, the September 11, 2001 attacks are another. Operations can fail – as with the Bay of Pigs – or succeed only too well – Guatemala, Iran, Congo – their unforeseen consequences bringing disaster for the locals or the masters of the operatives. Counterintelligence can fail to find spies – Aldrich Ames – […]

Secrecy and Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq

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Lobster Issue 49 (Summer 2005)

Robert Parry Arlington (VA): The Media Consortium, 2004; $22.95 (US); p/b Order from   This is the book I have enjoyed most since the last Lobster and it is one of the best books I have read on American politics and parapolitics. Robert Parry really is very good indeed: he has the serious investigative journalist’s […]

The CIA and the Culture of Failure

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Lobster Issue 57 (Summer 2009)

[…] advance of Hamas and Hezbollah, the wreckage of Iraq, with more than two million external refugees and the ethnic cleansing of its Christian population, the rise of Iran as a major regional power, and now the implosion of Afghanistan and Pakistan, prob-ably the most dangerous development of all.’ But for whom has this been […]

Saddam Hussein on Trial

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Lobster Issue 56 (Winter 2008/9)

[…] the party massacre, ‘no one dared to question anything. This meant that the regime of Saddam Hussein acquired infallibility through fear and silence.’ (p. 50) War with Iran was Saddam Hussein’s second mistake. Egged on by the West, both sides prodigiously expended blood and treasure. Peace in 1988 was closely followed by widespread circulation […]

Fifth Column: The decadence of our political system

Lobster Issue 55 (Summer 2008)

[…] it was wrong, the UK became complicit in a strategy that could only be used on terms that must now result in the mass murder of civilians. Iran has now become the case study. The Iranian revolutionary right has crushed the liberal opposition precisely because it is associated with the West, confrontation is growing […]

Pipe Dreams: the CIA, Drugs, and the Media

Lobster Issue 33 (Summer 1997)

See note(1) Like some Russian high official come to treat with Chechen rebels, CIA Director John Deutch arrived in force — by heavily-armed motorcade, and with helicopter cover. SWAT teams swarmed over the building that was Deutch’s destination. But on November 15, 1996, Deutch’s destination was in fact only the auditorium of Locke High School […]

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