The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 86 (2023) FREE
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[PDF file]: […] children wept bitter tears on camera and no-one mentioned UK military aid to radical Islamists fighting Gaddafi. There are no references in the official report to SIS, MI6 or the Secret Intelligence Service.102 On the other hand, Nick Must noted that the report contains 76 references to ‘MI5’ and 213 to ‘Security Service’ – […]

Suddenly in September?

Lobster Issue 82 (Winter 2021) FREE

[PDF file]: […] the Middle East was reflected in the contribution of Lady Manningham-Buller, the former MI5 deputy chief. She told the Lords that when she and the head of MI6 met the Bush team in Washington shortly after 9/11, ‘the decision was about al-Qaeda, its base in Afghanistan and its close relationship with the Taliban. I […]

Romeo Spy by John Alexander Symonds

Lobster Issue 63 (Summer 2012) FREE

[PDF file]: […] Mitrokhin’s files, or had it been added by Dr Andrew?’ (p. 313) Symonds does not tell the reader that Andrew’s sources could only have been MI5 or MI6: perhaps he thinks it too obvious to state. ‘Another bizarre assertion was that I had “made the dramatic claim that Denis Healey, the Secretary of State […]

South of the border

Lobster Issue 82 (Winter 2021) FREE

[PDF file]: […] students.5 Among the luminaries are the Daily Telegraph’s Con Coughlin, who is a Senior Visiting Fellow.6 His profile is light on any detail, especially his relationship with MI6. Enter ‘Coughlin’ into the search engine on Lobster’s home page and you’ll get the fuller drift. Many of the ex-spooks are quite open about their past […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 72 (Winter 2016) FREE

[PDF file]: […] question and no-one on the committee asks him what he means. And no wonder he evaded it: for it was the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) that MI6 (SIS) had been dickering with since the 1990s and which was the subject of some of the most disgusting real politik in which the British state […]

MI5 speaks to the nation!

Lobster Issue 79 (Summer 2020) FREE

[PDF file]: MI5 speaks to the nation! Nick Must ‘How MI5 is adapting to fight coronavirus’1 was the headline on a BBC news online piece by Gordon Corera. In relation to that potential change in working practices, it quoted soon-to-depart MI5 chief, Sir Andrew Parker, thus: ‘You’ll understand if I don’t go into exactly the ways in […]

A Spy Alone by Charles Beaumont

Lobster Issue 88 (2024) FREE
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[PDF file]: […] Robin Ramsay This is only the second novel I have reviewed in Lobster.1 The cover and the author blurb tells us that author Beaumont is a ‘former MI6 operative’. ‘Operative’? Why not ‘officer’? The author tells me the word was chosen by the publisher. It is set in post–2020 UK, with a recognizable Boris […]

The Shadow Man: At the Heart of the Cambridge Spy Circle by Geoff Andrews

Lobster Issue 72 (Winter 2016) FREE

[PDF file]: […] and was having him tailed. Nothing came of this surveillance however. According to Andrews, it is most likely that ‘Kim Philby, by now head of counter-espionage at MI6…. acted to protect him’. Klugmann remained in fear of exposure as a onetime NKVD agent with the attendant risk of trial, conviction and imprisonment. Klugmann had […]

Debunking the Myth of America’s Poodle: Great Britain Wants War by Nu’man Abd al-Wahid

Lobster Issue 79 (Summer 2020) FREE

[PDF file]: […] at this time, Sawers went on to briefly serve as British representative in occupied Baghdad, was from 2007 British representative at the UN, and was head of MI6 from 2009-2014. He ‘is now nonexecutive director of BP’ among other things. (p. 15) Sawers is also on the governing body of the Ditchley Foundation, a […]

And in 5th Place? The long march to Freeport UK

Lobster Issue 80 (Winter 2020) FREE

[PDF file]: […] – getting as far as meeting Sir John Smith MP, Chair of the Trust. (In Douglas’s account of this meeting, Smith was ‘accompanied by two operatives from MI6’). It all ended in disarray, with it being made very clear that the Douglas/Webber offer was not being entertained. Subsequent to the meeting in the presence […]

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