JFK’s assassination: a big new book and a strange memoir

Lobster Issue 61 (Summer 2011)

[PDF file]: […] military, anti-Castro Cubans, FBI, Oswald and Ruby, LBJ, ‘Mac’ Wallace….but not, apparently, the CIA. The CIA are almost entirely missing from this story. It’s the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) Mackenzie writes about frequently. For a JFK buff the oddity of Mackenzie’s account is the way he brings together a collection of minor trails – […]

South of the border

Lobster Issue 79 (Summer 2020)

[PDF file]: South of the border (occasional snippets from) Nick Must Spook joke department ‘UK spies will need artificial intelligence’ reads the headline to a Gordon Corera piece on BBC news online.1 Yes, the gags are pretty much writing themselves now. Deferred prosecution agreements – buying your way out of trouble ‘A deferred prosecution agreement, or […]

‘We did good work together’: JFK in Ireland, 1963

Lobster Issue 89 (2024)

[PDF file]: […] by Russian submarines. The function of the on-shore Ireland was represented in the talks by Joseph Walshe (Secretary of External Affairs) and Colonel Lionel Archer (Irish Military Intelligence) and the UK by Lieutenant Colonel Dudley Clarke. 25 See a report setting out Ireland’s assistance to the UK, by Viscount Cranborne, Secretary of State for […]

‘Nobody told us we could do this’

Lobster Issue 64 (Winter 2012)

[PDF file]: […] at Ditchley Park, in November 2009, under the auspices of The Institute of Government. A selection of academics, civil servants, politicians and the chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee were invited to attend. Following this event O’Donnell drafted ‘A Compendium of the Laws, Conventions and Constitutional Underpinning of the UK System of Government’. Apparently […]

The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro’s Investigation into The Octopus and the Promis Software Scandal by Cheri Seymour

Lobster Issue 61 (Summer 2011)

[PDF file]: […] the other hand, if you want a fascinating kaleidoscope of crimes and covert operations from the dark side of American life, facilitated by American moral hypocrisy and funded by the largely unregulated development of the military-industrial- intelligence complex, with enough ‘stories’ to keep a Sunday Times ‘Insight’ team going for decades, this is for you.

Phil Shenon – a cruel and shocking twist

Lobster Issue 74 (Winter 2017)

[PDF file]: […] much truth as possible’, it isn’t just the Castro Cuban commies who must be scrutinised, but everyone who associated with the alleged assassin, including the anti-Castro Cubans, intelligence officers and others who became entwined in the assassination story. It is pure speculation on Shenon’s part that Oswald even read the news reports of Castro’s […]

The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War by Craig Whitlock

Lobster Issue 82 (Winter 2021)

[PDF file]: […] coup to seize power for himself. He ‘did little to hide his involvement in drug trafficking’ and, according to an interview with Col. Russell Thaden, the NATO intelligence chief, on one occasion he ‘blew his stack upon learning U.S. and British forces had jointly bombed a large drug lab in northern Afghanistan’. He calmed […]

Swedish echoes

Lobster Issue 71 (Summer 2016)

[PDF file]: […] short notice as it was deemed too serious a topic for the ‘family friendly’ Wogan. Captain Hayward’s book mentioned nothing at all about his service in 14 Intelligence Company. No doubt, rightly or wrongly, he felt abandoned by the British state (which he had protected by sanitising what could have been a much juicier […]

Parish Notices

Lobster Issue 60 (Winter 2010)

[PDF file]: […] military power; indeed its subsidiary status is shown by the cables which show diplomatic staff being asked to gather ‘biometric’ data, as if they were low level intelligence assets. Digital security simply isn’t possible. In two years Ministry of Defence staff lost 340 laptops.1 The simple but uncomfortable truth is that to be secure, […]

Accessibility Toolbar