Veterans of a notorious Miami-based CIA dirty tricks team have boasted that they were helped by British Intelligence officers to sink an East German ship loaded with British-built Leyland buses. Three years after the CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, the MV Magdeburg was hit by a Japanese ship in the River Thames. When … Read more
Peter Levenda Waterville (Oregon); TrineDay; 2005, h/b, $29.95 This has a foreword by Jim Hougan who describes it as ‘one of the darkest and most provocative books that you are likely to read’. I’m a big fan of Hougan’s but I didn’t get this book. Not that it isn’t an interesting read: it is. … Read more
Henry Brandon died (Obituary, Independent, 23 April, 1993). Brandon was one of the post-war school of journalists who were happy to act as mouthpieces for the secret services and foreign policy establishments of the NATO bloc. Had he been on the Soviet side of the Cold War, he would have been long dismissed as an … Read more
Are raw prawns pink? Fun and games Down Under where a great brouhaha developed over allegations that Australia’s most famous – and left-wing historian, the late Manning Clark, was a Soviet agent. It started when the Australian poet Sid Murray reported that 26 years before he had seen Clark at a dinner wearing the Order … Read more
Larry O’Hara See also: Part 1: British Fascism 1974-92 (Lobster 23) Part 2: British Fascism 1974-92 (II) (Lobster 24) Part 3: British fascism 1983-6 (Lobster 25) The 1986 National Front Split (Lobster 29) A left turn for the NF? Having described some of the multiple policy initiatives undertaken by the National Front in part 3 … Read more
Books Alan Turing: the enigma of intelligence Andrew Hughes (Unwin 1985) If you have a chance, read Alan Turing: the enigma of intelligence by Andrew Hughes (Unwin 1985). Now in paperback, Hughes’ excellent biography rescues from near obscurity a true eccentric genius. It is of interest to us because of Turing’s essential work on the … Read more
Two pieces here by Tim Pendry. The major piece is followed by an addendum, which began as the text of a letter from Pendry to Dr Sean Gabb of the Libertarian Alliance in response to an article of Gabb’s. Pendry copied me his letter and I saw that it would go nicely with the longer … Read more
From David Guyatt: David Hambling’s comments in Lobster 39 (Feedback) underscore the extreme difficulties involved in firstly accessing, then corroborating and, finally, reporting stories that are as obviously sensitive as Operation Black Cat and Operation Black Dog. It is easy to raise what appear to be realistic technical objections, but the Black Dog story consumed … Read more
Books St. Peter’s Banker, Michele Sindona Luigi Di Fonzo (Mainstream, Edinburgh, 1984) This is an important publication from a new Scottish publishing house, Mainstream. It runs through Sindona’s life, showing how he came to be in such a strong financial position that he could buy the Franklin National, one of the largest banks in the … Read more
The attack on the USS Liberty The short piece in Lobster 45 on the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty was curiously timely. Soon after it appeared Captain Ward Boston, senior legal counsel for the Navy’s Court of Inquiry into the incident broke his silence and stated, inter alia: ‘There is no question in … Read more
