New Labour Notes

Lobster Issue 37 (Summer 1999) £££

John Smith: Old Labour’s lost leader? In non-New Labour Labour Party circles the late John Smith is remembered with great reverence.(1) Quite what this is based on escapes me. All I can identify is his dislike of Peter Mandelson: Smith kept him at bay therefore Smith was a good man seems to be the argument. … Read more

Like books we should have so many witnesses?: Some recent JFK literature

Lobster Issue 26 (1993) £££

Some recent JFK literature In front of me is a copy of Guth and Wrone’s The Assassination of John F. Kennedy: A Comprehensive Historical and Legal Bibliography 1983-1979 (1980), nearly 450 pages, running to some 5,134 entries covering books, magazine articles, records, TV programmes, and news items from both the New York Times and the … Read more

In a Common Cause: the Anti-Communist Crusade in Britain 1945-60

Lobster Issue 19 (1990) £££

A small section of this appeared in Lobster 12. Although this is incomplete and under researched, we thought it worth putting out now. The origins of IRD 1947 saw the creation of the Foreign Office’s Information Research Department (IRD). It is generally accepted that IRD was the brain-child of the then Labour M.P. Christopher Mayhew, … Read more

What Price National Security?

Lobster Issue 40 (Winter 2000/1) £££

Conference Report by Jane Affleck On November 10 2000 the Freedom Forum’s European Centre in London, in association with Article 19, Index on Censorship and Liberty, hosted a debate on National Security. (1) Three panels spoke on The Nature of National Security, British State Security in Northern Ireland, and The Internet – Circumventing Censorship? The … Read more

Michael Ledeen again

Lobster Issue 49 (Summer 2005) £££

As the election for the new Pope began a fascinating US radio interview with a former senior CIA official was broadcast in which the name Michael Ledeen (See Lobsters 31, 45, 47) came up in connection with the forged Niger uranium documents cited by both the US and UK governments in the build-up to the … Read more

Agca: true confessions

Lobster Issue 9 (1985) £££

During the current farcical trial of Ali Agca a most interesting snippet appeared in the press which looks like finally seeing off the alleged ‘Bulgarian connection.’ Signor Giovanni Pandico, a jailed former member of the upper echelons of the Naples-based Camorra, claimed that it had played a part in convincing Agca to accept the role … Read more

Official: CIA does mean Cocaine Importing Agency after all

Lobster Issue 37 (Summer 1999) £££

On October 8 1998 the CIA’s Inspector General published a report on the recent CIA-cocaine controversy which – apparently – more or less copped the lot, acknowledging that the CIA had ignored drug smuggling by its Contra allies. (See for example The Independent 7 November 1998, ‘CIA turned a deliberate blind eye to Contras’ drug … Read more

Gordon Winter: Inside BOSS and After

Lobster Issue 18 (1989) £££

Introduction Intelligence officers who blow the whistle get attacked by their erstwhile employers. Agee, Stockwell, Marchetti,Wallace, Holroyd, Jock Kane, Cathy Massiter – they all have variously suffered for their decision to go public. Their allegations and their characters are rubbished; operations are mounted to discredit them and disrupt their lives – and worse. Gordon Winter … Read more

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