The drip feed of information on the attempted assassination of President Nasser continues. In a recent episode of the Channel 4 TV series ‘The End of Empire’, Sir Anthony Nutting, former Minister of State at the Foreign Office, who later resigned over Suez, recalled that he had been “horrified” to receive a telephone call from … Read more
Why do they do this? In the previous issue I referred to the fictitious comments attributed by Tony Blair to a doctor in Africa. They’ve done it again. In February Blair’s spin doctor in chief, Alastair Campbell, claimed to have saved a man from being beaten by muggers, The Mail on Sunday (23 February) traced … Read more
Korean war biological warfare? Issue 11 of the Bulletin of Cold War International History Project contained what appears to be evidence that the allegations by North Korea and the Chinese that the US were using biological warfare during the Korean War were false – were in fact disinformation. Documents apparently from former Soviet archives seem … Read more
Here is a selection of sites on the Internet that may interest Lobsterreaders. The usenet newsgroups are for discussion of issues and anyone can contribute; some of the contributions are pretty far-out, or just plain abusive, and much of the material is US-oriented. The content of newsgroups is continually changing, and the examples I have … Read more
Barry Davies Bloomsbury, 1994, £14.99 The Lufthansa jet hi-jack and associated events of October 1977, of which this book purports to provide a first-hand account, have always worn a fulsome, fearful beard. This book leaves those events far from clean-shaven. What would help clear away quite a lot of the hair would be access to … Read more
Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre Nashville (US):Nelson, 2005, Distributed in the UK by New Holland Publishers, London, at £14.99, h/b RFIDs are acoming. RFIDs are radio frequency identification or identifiers, little chips which can be fixed to, implanted in, built into almost anything from paper money to human beings; and which can then be … Read more
MI5 and the Wilson Plot The MI5 website (www.mi5.gov.uk) has a section called ‘myths and misunderstandings’, which features, among other things, ‘the Wilson Plot’. The paragraph it devotes to this episode is worth studying. It refers the reader to Spycatcher and Peter Wright’s allegation that ‘up to 30 members of the Service had plotted to … Read more
Mr Tony was a spook? Issue 7 of Larry O’Hara’s Note from the Borderland ([1]) includes a section from the Anne Machon and David Shayler book, Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers (reviewed in Lobster 49), which was apparently dropped by the publisher. The key section is this, from an unnamed MI5 officer: ‘Blair was recruited [by … Read more
