Eternal Vigilance? 50 years of the CIA

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Lobster Issue 36 (Winter 1998/9) £££

[…] of things is uninteresting. This collection contains three essays of note. The first is Bob de Graff and Cees Wiebes’ study of the CIA and the Dutch Intelligence Service, which is the first of its kind that I can think of; and is, presumably, a template for the relationship between the CIA and the […]

Everything is going to change

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Lobster Issue 56 (Winter 2008/9) £££

[…] convincing. While establishing his thesis of a Kennedy newly devoted to the cause of peace, he also stakes his ground quickly on Oswald, establishing his credentials in intelligence – a familiar argument to anyone who knows the JFK case – but also showing that, far from hating Kennedy or seeing him as a target […]

Fifth Column: A brief sojourn East of Suez: a last gasp for British great power status

Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8) £££

[…] its turn, was not merely Islamist and tribal but it had relationships that spread back to the major cities of Pakistan and even into its military and intelligence services. Western operations in West Asia have to deal with a world beyond Afghanistan that encompasses Pakistan, Iran and Central Asia – as well as India […]

The British Watergate

Lobster Issue 13 (1987) £££

[…] 30th Something very strange happened in British politics almost a decade ago. A Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, and the journalist with the closest links to the British intelligence services, Chapman Pincher, both said that elements of MI5 had been trying to bring down the Labour Government during 1974-76 – and nothing happened. There was […]

Ten Thirty Three: The Inside Story of Britain’s Secret Killing Machine in Northern Ireland

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Lobster Issue 40 (Winter 2000/1) £££

[…] their recognition that military victory was impossible? There can be little doubt that one factor was the improved performance of the security forces, in particular of the intelligence and surveillance arms. So effective had they become that the journalist, Jack Holland, could write, with only slight exaggeration, that in the 1990s the safest thing […]

The Committee

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Lobster Issue 36 (Winter 1998/9) £££

[…] into a cohesive, province-wide, secret organisation, the Ulster Central Coordinating Committee. This worked with an ‘Inner Force’ which had formed inside the RUC. The Inner Force supplied intelligence on IRA members and sympathisers to ‘the Committee’, who directed assassins to chosen targets with protection provided by the ‘Inner Force’. This book is about that […]

The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence

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Lobster Issue 42 (Winter 2001/2) £££

[…] tremendous piece of research and though there are half a dozen of the 27 chapters which I didn’t find of much interest – the technical side of intelligence gathering, chiefly; and some of the espionage stuff – for the most part the book is dotted with fascinating bits and pieces. Large chunks of it […]

Big Boys Rules

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Lobster Issue 24 (December 1992) £££

[…] of the weight of the British state descending upon Channel 4 TV and the production company Box in retaliation for the Box/Channel 4 programme alleging military and intelligence collaboration between the British state and the Protestant paramilitaries in Northern Ireland. (See The Independent 29 July 1992 for an account, including reports of break-ins and […]

The Gospel according to Saint Jim

Lobster Issue 24 (December 1992) £££

[…] did indeed use the alias Bertrand, second, that he knew Oswald, and third, that he was a significant CIA asset. (7) Clay Shaw, CMC and Permindex Shaw’s intelligence connections appear to go back to World War Two. In any event a CIA document declassified in 1977 confirmed that Shaw had worked with the Agency […]

Clippings Digest. June/July 1984

Lobster Issue 6 (1984) £££

Police use of computers Unreported in the daily papers in this country, Merseyside County Council recently decided to refuse the funding for Merseyside Police’s criminal intelligence computer. (Detailed account in Computing 13th September 1984) This is the most significant step to date in the struggle to get some kind of control established over policing […]

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