Brainwash: The secret history of mind control

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Lobster Issue 52 (Winter 2006/7) £££

Dominic Streatfeild London: Hodder and Stoughton 2006, £20, h/b   One of the gaps in the parapolitical library has been a great pull-together of the material on ‘mind control’. And Streatfield has done it, and done it rather well. He is a documentary film-maker and some of the chapters here read rather like scripts. All … Read more

The Enemy Within (Whitehall)

Lobster Issue 27 (1994) £££

It is a difficult time for Britain’s security and intelligence agencies. Not only have the old certainties collapsed with the Berlin Wall, Britain’s economy is in increasingly dire shape, and current levels of government funding for the agencies can no longer be taken for granted. (1) As a result, both the major agencies, MI5 and … Read more

The Pinay Circle and Destabilisation in Europe

Lobster Issue 18 (1989) £££

In Lobster 17 we published two German intelligence reports on a covert propaganda group called the Pinay Circle. In this article we give background and investigate the Pinay Circle’s activities. Member of Parliament ‘G’: I don’t know if it (the Pinay Circle) has any political significance, but, in any case, it has little impact. For … Read more

The Iron Triangle: inside the secret world of the Carlyle Group

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Lobster Issue 46 (Winter 2003) £££

Dan Briody Hoboken (USA): John Wiley and Sons, 2003, £17.50 (hb)   According to the Carlyle Group, once you ‘peel away the layers of factual errors and self-righteousness of The Iron Triangle, ‘… all you’re left with is baseless innuendo… [and]… this book should be exposed for what it is: a compilation of recycled conspiracy … Read more

Everything You Know is Wrong: the Disinformation Guide to Secrets and Lies

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Lobster Issue 44 (Winter 2002/3) £££

Russ Kick (ed.) New York: the Disinformation Company, 2002, pb, $24.95. Distributed in the UK by Turnaround () £17.99 in the UK   Another massive anthology from the Disinformation people. This is 11″ by 9″ – roughly A4 sized – 345 pages, weighing in at 2 lbs and 11 ounces. Picking it up probably counts … Read more

Shorts: James Rusbridger. Illuminati. Gordievsky. Cavendish

Lobster Issue 27 (1994) £££

The usual suspects Fascinating piece by Paul Webster in the Guardian (1 February, 1994) about the Dreyfus Affair. He quotes a book by the French historian Jean Doise who has examined French Army documents from the time. Doise has discovered that the affair developed because of French secret service attempts to disinform the Germans about … Read more

Acid: a new secret history of LSD

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Lobster Issue 43 (Summer 2002) £££

David Black London:Vision Paperbacks, 20001, £9.99 This a revised edition of the book which was reviewed in Lobster 35. I’m not sure how new it is. I no longer have the original edition but this seems pretty similar to it. What is new is some material on the activities of Steve Abrams, one of the … 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

The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence

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Lobster Issue 42 (Winter 2001/2) £££

Richard J. Aldrich London: John Murray, 2001, £25   Another huge book, 645 pages of text and 70 pages of index, bibliographies and notes. How do you review something this size? I simply don’t know. Short of doing a London Review of Books-sized job and working through it chapter by chapter, all I can really … Read more

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