Lobster Issue 43 (Summer 2002) £££
1: The Investigatory Powers Tribunal Malcolm Kennedy (1) complained to the recently established Investigatory Powers Tribunal because he believes his telecommunications are being monitored and interfered with, and his persistent attempts to seek answers have led to brick walls and confusion. His case is currently proceeding. (2) But concerns have already been raised about the … Read more
Lobster Issue 38 (Winter 1999) £££
Gregory Palast is the journalist who broke the ‘cash for access’ story in The Observer. Here is the text of a letter he wrote on August 18 1999 to the Committee on Standards in Public Life, the Neill Committee, by way of a preface and request to give oral evidence to that committee. My recommendations … Read more
Lobster Issue 2 (1983) £££
In this essay I offer some informed speculation on the assassination of John Kennedy. I have called this a new hypothesis, but in fact it is the elaboration of a hunch about the case – but an interesting hunch, I think. I take as proven that there was a conspiracy to murder Kennedy and a … Read more
Lobster Issue 30 (December 1995) £££
An extraordinary claim in The Times by the Cambridge historian Professor Christopher Andrew, that Arthur Ransome has been identified in KGB documents as ‘the most important secret source of intelligence on British foreign policy’ for the Cheka, the terror organisation of Bolshevik Russia, has infuriated lovers of Ransome’s work. Unlike Michael Foot, similarly traduced, Ramsome … Read more
Lobster Issue 26 (1993) £££
Stephen Dorril Heinemann, London, 1993 It turns out that the ‘silent conspiracy’ of the title is a conspiracy which ‘has surrounded Britain’s secret state’ — a blindingly obvious tautology. Dorril has done as much as any other to lift the veil of secrecy from the British secret state, so it is somewhat disappointing to read … Read more
Lobster Issue 42 (Winter 2001/2) £££
‘The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it and ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.’ – Winston Churchill On July 17, 1996, 230 people boarded TWA Flight 800 at Kennedy airport, New York. About twelve minutes after take-off, 8.31 pm, the plane exploded and crashed into the waters off Long … Read more
Lobster Issue 48 (Winter 2004) £££
The Enemy Within: The Secret War Against the Miners Seumas Milne London: Verso, 2004, p/back, £8 GB84 David Peace London: Faber & Faber, 2004, p/back, £12.99 On the 20th anniversary of the most significant power struggle in post war Britain, two very different books on the miners’ strike of 1984-85, read alongside each other, … Read more
Lobster Issue 39 (Summer 2000) £££
A Channel 4 SOE mystery In January and February this year Channel 4 broadcast a history of the war-time Special Operations Executive, SOE, written and presented by the novelist Sebastian Faulks, called Churchill’s Secret Army. It was an interesting series with some excellent first-hand material and footage. But there were two mysteries. The first, and … Read more
Lobster Issue 37 (Summer 1999) £££
War stories Evidence that the Royal Air Force colluded with their German enemies in the most secret air mission of the Second World War has been discovered in the Czech Republic. The personal log books of some of the 87 Czechoslovak fighter pilots who escaped the 1939 German occupation of their country to fly RAF … Read more
Lobster Issue 15 (1988) £££
GEHEIM (“SECRET”) is West Germany’s representative in the international stable of state research publications. Geheim has appeared three or four times a year since 1983, and its editors are experienced state research journalists in the Federal Republic – Rudolf Gossner, author (with Geheim contributor Uwe Herzog) of an exhaustive work on the undercover activities of … Read more