[…] He canters briskly and amusingly over the field of spook foul-ups in the post-war period to ‘show the pointlessness of so much of the work of the intelligence services everywhere.’ The result is an entertaining but very sharp analysis of that peculiar mixture of ruthless patriotism and utter incompetence which characterises so much of […]
[…] in some ‘lesser publication’ later in the day.(1) And it wasn’t MI6. This assumes that, as former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove would have us believe, Secret Intelligence Service service personnel follow the rules. A less trusting Michael Mansfield QC, for Mr Al Fayed, suggested ‘there are things countenanced within the service that do […]
[…] to know that they can now visit a website with some interesting further information about this maverick figure. The site can be found at < http:// www.pharo.com/ intelligence >, and is run by the team which produced Double Standards, last year’s interesting study of the Hess affair. Some of the material will be familiar […]
[…] Affair which was reviewed in Lobster 38, this account of MI5’s adjustment to the post Cold War world is one of the best books on the UK’s intelligence services, up there with Stephen Dorril’s MI6 book, Paul Lashmar and James Oliver’s book on IRD and Richard Aldrich’s The Hidden Hand. Rereading it, I was […]
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 […]
[…] believed that “Castro was somehow involved in a plot to assassinate President Kennedy.” The story turned out to be a disinformation exercise – Alvarado was a Nicaraguan intelligence officer (9) – though the real reason it was dropped was probably because the Nicaraguan was too close to CIA officers like David Phillips. Interestingly enough […]
THE LOBSTER is a journal/newsletter about intelligence, parapolitics and so forth. This is an atypical issue. No 1, which covered British Intelligence operations in Northern Ireland, the work of the Round Table, recent events surrounding the Papacy etc. gives a better idea of what we’re interested in. We welcome clippings, articles, letters, reviews, on […]
[…] to the North should the situation demand it. Captain James Kelly (b.1929) joined the Irish Army in 1949 and, after other duties, was transferred to G2 ( Intelligence) in 1960. On the appointment of Col. Michael Hefferon to the post of Director of Intelligence in 1962, Kelly became his Personal Staff Officer until Hefferon’s […]
How perceptions have changed! In Leveller 51, March 1981, there was this snippet: ‘Why all the fuss about the Panorama programme on British Intelligence? Eventually there was just one cut — Gordon Winter, BOSS agent, former freelance journalist, in a pre-title sequence: “British intelligence has a saying that if there is a left-wing movement […]
[…] mostly from the Fiji Sun 9th July 1987. “Paul Freeman was involved in a destabilisation action against a NZ labour government in 1975. He received a Security Intelligence Service (SIS) file from an SIS employee, Rohan Jays, with embarrassing information about a Labour MP. Freeman publicly handed the file to the Prime Minister, thus […]
