A Pretext for War; Ghost Wars

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Lobster Issue 48 (Winter 2004) £££

A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the abuse of America’s intelligence agencies James Bamford, New York: Doubleday, 2004, h/back, $26.95 Ghost Wars: The Secret history of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, from the Soviet invasion to September 10, 2001 Steve Coll New York: Penguin, 2004, h/back, $29.95   These books cover some of … Read more

A ‘great venture’: overthrowing the government of Iran

Lobster Issue 30 (December 1995) £££

[…] January 1952. After an assault by Egyptian rebels on a British military base, Britain occupied the town of Ismaila, surrounded the police headquarters and then proceeded to kill fifty people and wounding a hundred before the surrender.(28)) In Iran, however, despite Labour’s inaction, Churchill noted a few months into his term that ‘by sitting […]

History Will Not Absolve Us (Book review)

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Lobster Issue 34 (Winter 1997) £££

Orwellian control, public denial, and the murder of President Kennedy E. Martin Schotz Kurtz, Ulmer and DeLucia, Brookline, Massachusetts, 1996 Distributed in the UK by Plough Publishing House (at 01580 883344), £15.50 This is a very odd book. It is beautifully printed, bound and laid-out – a pleasure to handle. Unfortunately the content doesn’t match … Read more

Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico: new leads

Lobster Issue 6 (1984) £££

[…] had learned from a reliable informant that Oswald had told two officials of the Cuban Consulate, more than a month before the assassination, that he planned to kill the American president. According to the memo (of June 17 1964), the informant said that he learned of Oswald’s threat from Fidel Castro. (2) The memo […]

Wallace Clippings planted on Chapman Pincher

Lobster Issue 16 (1988) £££

[…] charge of propellant – even, perhaps, with a dash of explosive – that when it is fired it will blow up the gun and injure or even kill the gunman. Examine Explosives experts who helped to compile the memo report, according to their “contact” – presumably a spy in the Government service – hundreds […]

NB

Lobster Issue 48 (Winter 2004) £££

Srebrenica In Lobster 46 I noted that the publisher of Cees Wiebes’ Intelligence and the War in Bosnia 1992-1995 had declined to supply a review copy. Mr Wiebes subsequently informed me that the full report on Srebrenica, commissioned by the Dutch government, including the material which made up his book, is on-line, in English, at … Read more

The View From The Bridge

Lobster Issue 29 (1995) £££

Blob of the month Hear the one about the supposedly spook-watching magazine whose editor misspelt the name of the head of MI5? Yep: Rimmington, I had in the last issue: Rimington it should have been. Searchlight News Their campaign against Larry O’Hara has reached new depths. In the March issue they published his picture and … Read more

Orders for the Captain

Lobster Issue 15 (1988) £££

Publications Orders for the Captain James Kelly (Kelly-Kane, Bailieboro, Ireland, 1971/86) Kelly’s Genesis of Revolution, reviewed in Lobster 13 gave an overview of the Irish situation during the period 1969-73, from the Dublin arms trials to the failure of Sunningdale. It advanced the theory that a war of attrition between the British Army and the … Read more

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 52 (Winter 2006/7) £££

[…] Daily Express, 31 July. My problem with the Kelly murder theory is that it has never been clear to me why anyone would think it necessary to kill him. With a senior British civil servant like Kelly there are more subtle threats – status, pension – that are effective. The two are similar but […]

Dr Mary’s Monkey

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Lobster Issue 55 (Summer 2008) £££

[…] Harvey Oswald. The underground lab is ‘known Mafia asset’ David Ferrie’s mouse research where, says Baker, they were trying to develop a rapid-acting cancer with which to kill Fidel Castro (which is – just – within the extant parameters of the known attempts to kill him, not much crazier than some of the CIA’s […]

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