The Hess flight: still dangerous for historians – even after 75 years

Lobster Issue 73 (Summer 2017)

[PDF file]: […] frequently accused the Foreign Office minister Lynda Chalker of obsessive secrecy in closing the archives. Between 1973 and 1978 the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service MI6, a man then known usually as ‘C’, was himself a real historian. Maurice Oldfield had studied history under A. J. P. Taylor at Manchester, earned his […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 68 (Winter 2014)

[PDF file]: […] Website of John Young, who has been publishing information about states and especially their intelligence services for about 15 years.14 He recently published a list of putative MI6 officers15 and I was struck by how little it interested me. In 1989 I published A Who’s Who of the British Secret State, over a thousand […]

The Clandestine Caucus

Lobster Issue Clandestine Caucus (1996)

[PDF file]: […] memo to Bevin. In any case, why would propaganda in favour of social democracy have to be hidden?67 IRD was in a kind of management limbo between MI6, who supplied it with some of its information and tasks, and the Foreign Office, whose budget concealed it. IRD was, very clearly, simply the Political Warfare […]

South of the border

Lobster Issue 78 (Winter 2019)

[PDF file]: […] link to a page on Cryptome.5 That page is in four parts. The second part (about one third of the way down) is a reproduction of the MI6 intelligence report CX 95/53452, which is central to the nexus of MI6, the LIFG and Tunworth. The third part of the page (about two thirds of […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 69 (Summer 2015)

[PDF file]: […] Kincora scandal’s place in the Elm House-Savile-paedos-in-high-places thicket. However one story caught my eye. In the Daily Express (12 April) James Fielding began his story, headlined ‘ MI6 covered up historic child sex abuse ring discovered during surveillance operation’, with this: ‘MI6 infiltrated the Kincora boys’ home in east Belfast to spy on William […]

Using the UK FOIA, part II

Lobster Issue 75 (Summer 2018)

[PDF file]: […] meeting attendees had been redacted. The name that was not being redacted was ‘Major General Sinclair’ (aka John ‘Sinbad’ Sinclair who was at the time deputy-chief of MI6). If nothing else, this name alone told me I was on the right track. See my article ‘The Western Union Clandestine Committee: Britain and the “Gladio” […]

AFRICOM, NATO and the EU

Lobster Issue 67 (Summer 2014)

[PDF file]: […] craft flew overhead.1 5 Many cities, including Sirte, are ruins; others, including Tawergha, were literally cleansed of their Black populations by the UK-armed and trained rebels (whom MI6 were training as early as October 2010 to overthrow Gaddafi); and key infrastructure, including water pipeline factories, were bombed. On 15 April 2013, via the North […]

The View from the Bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] the covert forum, the Cercle Pinay and its complex of groups. Amongst Cercle intelligence contacts are former operatives from the American CIA, DIA and INR, Britain’s MI5, MI6 and IRD, France’s SDECE, Germany’s BND, BfV and MAD, Holland’s BVD, Belgium’s Sûreté de l’Etat, SDRA and PIO, apartheid South Africa’s BOSS, and the Swiss and […]

The Secret War: Spies, Codes and Guerrillas, 1939-45 by Max Hastings

Lobster Issue 74 (Winter 2017)

[PDF file]: […] though he corroborates the general view of their brilliance. This stands out particularly by contrast with the stupidity of Britain’s main overseas espionage organisation at that time, MI6 (SIS), staffed by ‘men of moderate abilities, drawn into the organization by the lure of playing out a pastiche of Kipling’s “Great Game”, and often after […]

South of the border

Lobster Issue 93 (2026)

[PDF file]: […] say, however, that my archived version of that CompanyCheck page is still live and kicking!7 I wish I’d paid more attention to other similar information, because the MI6 censor has gone a little redaction-happy. I’m referring here to the details of the directorships held by her family relatives. These seem to have now also […]

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