The Intelligence Game: Illusions and Delusions of International Espionage

Book cover
Lobster Issue 23 (1992)

[…] 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 […]

RE:

Lobster Issue 55 (Summer 2008)

[…] 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 […]

French vendetta: from Rainbow Warrior to the Iranian hostages deal

Lobster Issue 16 (1988)

[…] essential features of such parallel services – clear even before Colonel Oliver North agreed to tell all – can be noted in recent developments in the French intelligence community, fractured by rivalry, innumerable leaks and spectacular failures. It was perhaps to avoid this minefield that Chirac’s Interior Minister, Charles Pasqua, former founder of the […]

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 […]

The ‘Tsarevich’ Nikolai Chebotarev and his links to British Intelligence

Lobster Issue 83 (Summer 2022)

[PDF file]: The ‘Tsarevich’ Nikolai Chebotarev and his links to British Intelligence. Peter Luce The recent review of Kevin Coogan’s The Spy Who Would be Tsar: The Mystery of Michal Goleniewski and the Far-Right Underground1 prompted me to re-read the work of another claimant to the Russian imperial succession. In 1998 Michael Gray, a former Technical […]

Understanding Shadows The Corrupt Use of Intelligence by Michael Quilligan

Lobster Issue 66 (Winter 2013)

[PDF file]: Understanding Shadows The Corrupt Use of Intelligence Michael Quilligan Atlanta (GA): Clarity Press, 2013, $21.95 (USA), p/b The author is or was – it isn’t clear which – one of the writers for Intelligence, the Paris-based fortnightly intelligence newsletter1 (and this has an introduction by Intelligence’s founder/editor, Olivier Schmidt.) In the early years of […]

Some examples of corporate, cultural and state PR

Lobster Issue 52 (Winter 2006/7)

[…] for the state to keep control (PR) of these histories because openness and demands for change can impact on existing complex relationships, e.g. with India or Pakistan’s intelligence communities. () Targeting a wholly different area, SIS used a sophisticated version of multiple single messaging on 13 August, summarised in the press by the heading: […]

The British Right

Lobster Issue 16 (1988)

[…] MA; Professor of Politics and Comparative Ideologies, University of Colorado at Boulder, USA. Dr Alan Sabrosky PhD MA The Duke of St Albans OBE Former Colonel in Intelligence T F Utley CBE Dr M H Waring PhD MA (Brazil) Norris McWhirter Now in charge of the resources generated by Guinness Book of Records, McWhirter […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 50 (Winter 2005/6)

[…] cover seemed interesting and publishing the names seemed to be some kind of act against the-powers-that-be. But in 1985 there was very little information available about the intelligence services, and every scrap seemed significant. These days, if you want them, you can receive e-mail bulletins with more information about the world’s intelligence services – […]

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