Malcolm Kennedy: secrecy ruling

Lobster Issue 45 (Summer 2003) £££

Abstract The Tribunal established to investigate complaints about phone-tapping and the activities of the intelligence agencies has, at its first ever public hearing, quashed rules made by the Home Secretary forcing the tribunal to hold all its hearings in secret. However, the Tribunal procedure remains too secret, and its decisions cannot be appealed. Malcolm Kennedy’s … Read more

Blinded by the light: Puppet Masters: the Political Use of Terrorism in Italy

Lobster Issue 23 (1992) £££

Puppet Masters: the Political Use of Terrorism in Italy Phillip Willan Phillip Willan’s Puppet Masters: the Political Use of Terrorism in Italy, (Constable, London, 1991) is a detailed and interesting book, dealing in a thorough (if partially flawed) way with a fascinating subject. It covers a wide array of interlocking subjects including the infamous P2 … Read more

Lying about Iraq

Lobster Issue 45 (Summer 2003) £££

NB This issue of Lobster went to the printer in late May. At that stage no Iraqi ‘weapons of mass destruction’ had been found by the ‘coalition’ forces. Before the furore over the British government’s ‘dodgy dossier’ in February, in truth I hadn’t been really paying much too attention to the then impending assault on … Read more

Our Secret Servants: the Shayler affair

Lobster Issue 34 (Winter 1997) £££

Our Secret Servants: the Shayler affair Things had been going rather well for the British security and intelligence services in the 1990s. Under pressure from the Wright-Wallace-Massiter revelations of the 80s, they had conceded a notional form of parliamentary accountability with the creation of the Intelligence and Security Committee. With members who either knew nothing … 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

Body of Secrets and Echelon

Book cover
Lobster Issue 42 (Winter 2001/2) £££

Body of Secrets: How America’s NSA and Britain’s GCHQ Eavesdrop on the World James Bamford, London: Century, 2001, £20 Report on the existence of a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications (ECHELON interception system) Rapporteur: Gerhard Schmid European Parliament, 11 July 2001 [Online in Adobe Acrobat PDF Format ~1Mb]   In … Read more

Another layer of cover: Nick Cook’s ‘The Hunt for Zero Point’ examined

Lobster Issue 42 (Winter 2001/2) £££

Nick Cook is a defence journalist of high repute, having been an Aviation Editor for the authoritative Jane’s Defence Weekly for fourteen years. When he says that UFO reports conceal a new technology with the potential to change the world, a technology kept secret by the US military-industrial complex for decades, he should be worth … Read more

After Kelly: ‘After Dark’, David Kelly and lessons learned

Lobster Issue 55 (Summer 2008) £££

You might remember the red sofas, leather Chesterfields recovered in quieter fabric. You might remember that the talking didn’t end at any specific time, unique in an era when all television channels closed down at night. You might remember Oliver Reed getting drunk, although he was hardly the only disruptive guest. Reading Norman Baker’s book … Read more

Brief Notes on the Political Importance of Secret Societies (Part 2)

Lobster Issue 6 (1984) £££

See also Part 1 in Lobster 5 United States Anna Anderson was not the only Anastasia claimant; her chief rival in the United States was Mrs Eugenia Smith. Smith’s claims, although considered shaky by the best scholars, were powerfully supported by the testimony of one Michael M. Goleniewski, who hailed from Poland yet claimed to … Read more

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