Spy Wars

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Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8) £££

Spy Wars: Moles, mysteries and deadly games Tennent H. Begley London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007, h/b, £18.99   Begley was one of James Angleton’s allies in CIA counterintelligence and this book is the Angletonian view of the Nosenko case, one of the touchstones or causes célèbres of the CIA in the post-war […]

Are spies useless? A Hack’s Progress

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Lobster Issue 34 (Winter 1997) £££

[…] with hundreds of times the resources of SIS, a ‘man from the FO ’ replied: ‘Ah yes, but you have to take account of the fact that MI6 is the most professional and efficient intelligence in the world. This is not to criticise the Americans, of course, but….'(13) The third theme has been that […]

The Blairs and their Court

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Lobster Issue 50 (Winter 2005/6) £££

[…] They present a devastating picture of Blair and his court that brims over with telling detail. Of particular interest to readers of Lobster is the revelation that MI6 head-hunted Charles Clarke when he was Neil Kinnock’s political adviser. It is good to know that the Home Office is in a safe pair of hands. […]

Reading Italy

Lobster Issue 6 (1984) £££

[…] itself, involved in them. Christie’s book presents great problems for this reviewer. Who, in this country, is qualified to say anything intelligent about it? Some members of MI6 maybe. This kind of parapolitical research into anything just isn’t practised here: Christie’s book is virtually without precedent in this country. So, the first thing to […]

Hacks, pols and PR

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Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8) £££

[…] this small but powerful ‘Political Class’ has, through the practice of ‘manipulative populism’, done to a variety of British institutions, including the Civil Service, the Foreign Office, MI6, the legal system, the monarchy and Parliament. Oborne writes well and his anger-fuelled text carries the reader along at a great lick. One thing that made […]

PSYOPS in the 1980s

Lobster Issue 17 (1988) £££

[…] the Centre for Conflict Studies, Washington.’ (Presumably sponsored means paid for by.) It includes a paper by ex ISC Peter Janke, now Director of Research for the MI6 operation, Control Risks. Editor Tucker is a former Deputy Head of IRD. No team like the old team. (Thanks to H. G. in Canada for the […]

The Citizen Smith case or the spy who came in from Oporto

Lobster Issue 40 (Winter 2000/1) £££

[…] Portuguese readers that he came to Oporto in a KGB training mission as it was said in court in November 1993……. And I recall that the ex- MI6 officer, Richard Tomlinson saw an MI5 report on the case which concluded that Mr. Smith had not given any important or damaging information to Victor Oschenko. […]

The covert origins of the Biafran War

Lobster Issue 25 (1993) £££

[…] Office, bugging, tapping, intercepting mail — as well as producing inept anti-communist propaganda. Then as independence loomed, the Colonial Office/MI5 team were replaced by the Foreign Office/ MI6 people. Smith’s encounter with colonial corruption climaxes with his discovery that among his duties was election rigging for the British. ‘I had been ordered during the […]

Who’s afraid of the KGB

Lobster Issue 6 (1984) £££

[…] society. On this it is worth looking at Stephen de Mowbray’s Soviet Deception and the Onset of the Cold War in Encounter (July/August 1984). De Mowbray, ex MI6, is one of the quartet who wrote the introduction to Golitsyn’s New Lies For Old, discussed in Lobster 5. He argues that the Soviet Union misled […]

PR, espionage and language

Lobster Issue 50 (Winter 2005/6) £££

[…] regard for your family, your children or you.'(21) There, too, was that old chestnut: ‘SIS insists it is not dominated by a macho culture – indeed female MI6 officers play on people’s emotions in a way men cannot…’ (22) Yes, some women do. However, only the dated believe this is their unique value to […]

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