Historical Notes: Channel 4 SOE mystery. Venona Decrypts

Lobster Issue 39 (Summer 2000) £££

[…] and died in 1962 as a result of an air accident in South-East Asia. Faulks, in reporting this tale, suggested that Bodington may have been an MI6 agent before the war (he had been a journalist) and that the connection between him and Dericourt involved more than friendship. Curiously, Faulks left it there. But […]

Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico: new leads

Lobster Issue 6 (1984) £££

[…] code-named ‘solo’. (12) Childs, a member of the CPUSA, and an informant for the FBI, was sent by Hoover to Cuba in early 1964 as an undercover agent to learn what he could about the assassination from Castro. ‘Solo’ returned to tell Hoover that Castro said Oswald in Mexico City “vowed in the presence […]

After Iraq: some FCO/SIS issues

Lobster Issue 48 (Winter 2004) £££

[…] has linked his name to ‘saving’ Africa. Previously it was Palestine.) The ‘benefits’ of torture Meantime, Chief Scarlett is presented to the public as an expert in agent running and recruitment: i.e. the PR ‘legend’ being created is that his ‘strategy’ will be to put the demands of intelligence, rather than what can be […]

Operation Black Dog

Lobster Issue 35 (Summer 1998) £££

[…] US B52 bomber launching from Offut Air Force Base in Nebraska, and flying a round-trip to the Persian Gulf. The bomber carried one bomb containing VX nerve agent, the most potent chemical weapon in the US CW armoury. The bomb was dropped on elements of the Republican Guard in Southern Iraq, I was informed. […]

The DFS, Silvia Duran and the CIA-Mafia connection

Lobster Issue 31 (June 1996) £££

[…] 1985 drug scandals. (Jose Antonio Zorrilla, the ex-DFS chief arrested and indicted in 1989 for murder, was in 1963 private secretary to Fernando Gutierrez Barrios, the DFS agent whose signature attested to the validity of the most radically altered version of Duran’s statement.) At least two ex-DFS officers who were also former CIA agents […]

Hilda Murrell: a death in the private sector

Lobster Issue 16 (1988) £££

This is the first anonymous article we have ever printed. However, we know the identity of the author and have absolute confidence in the person who provided us with the document. In places we have removed small sections, indicated by the use of brackets (—–), which provided personal details which would have made identifying the … Read more

Kincoragate: More Bodies

Lobster Issue 3 (1984) £££

[…] alive. John McKeague at the beginning of the seventies was the most important paramilitary figure in N. I. He had overthrown Terence O’Neil by a series of ‘agent provocateur’ bombings and street disturbances which backed Paisley’s political agitation with devastating effect. He became leader of the Red Hand Commando Loyalist paramilitary group set up […]

Rebel, rebel

Book cover
Lobster Issue 56 (Winter 2008/9) £££

British Spies and Irish Rebels British Intelligence and Ireland, 1916-1945 Paul McMahon Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2008, h/b, £30 First up, I have no specialist knowledge of this area, so if there any howlers in here, I’m unlikely to spot them. However, I know a good book when I see one. This has been … Read more

Spooks. Hollis. Tomlinson

Lobster Issue 37 (Summer 1999) £££

[…] a famous Estonian footballer, called Evald Mikson. Mikson, learned Sanden, had worked with the Germans when they invaded Estonia in 1941, and had interrogated a captured Estonian agent of Soviet military intelligence, the GRU. (One may imagine that in such circumstances – an Estonian working for the Nazis – such an ‘interrogation’ was, as […]

Feedback

Lobster Issue 40 (Winter 2000/1) £££

[…] Hambling also asks why fuel air explosives were used in Operation Black Cat. One explanation might be that planners were concerned that a residue of VX nerve agent might have been blown back towards coalition troops and, therefore, utilised air fuel explosives to incinerate every last surviving particle of nerve agent. The best approach […]

Accessibility Toolbar