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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Hilda Murrell and the FOIA

Lobster Issue 75 (Summer 2018) FREE

[PDF file]: […] fourteen specified intelligence, security and national policing bodies5 – only five of which were in existence at the time of Hilda Murrell’s murder: those five being MI5, MI6, GCHQ, the special forces and the Security Commission. Considering that ‘As the exemption under section 23(5) is absolute; it is not necessary to consider the public […]

Hack Attack: How The Truth Caught Up With Rupert Murdoch by Nick Davies

Lobster Issue 68 (Winter 2014) FREE

[PDF file]: […] damaging the war effort in Afghanistan. In an unprecedented step, he arranged for Murdoch and Brooks ‘to be given an off-the-record briefing by the then head of MI6, Sir John Scarlett….. Sir John warned them that the Taliban were using Sun stories as propaganda and that they were damaging British military morale’. Brooks apparently […]

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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