The CIA: A history of torture

Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8) £££

On 8 March 1985 an attempt was made to assassinate one of the founders of Hizbullah, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, by car bomb in Beirut. The attack failed in its objective, but there was some ‘collateral damage’. While Fadlallah was untouched, some eighty bystanders, men, women and children, were killed and over two hundred injured. … 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

The Assassination of John Kennedy: An Alternative Hypothesis

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

Willy Brandt: the “Good German”

Lobster Issue 22 (1991) £££

One neglected aspect of the plotting against Harold Wilson and the Labour Governments of the 1970s was the fact that it took place while the social democrat governments of Australia, New Zealand and West Germany — and possibly Canada — were also being subjected to destabilisation campaigns, with the some of the same characters playing … Read more

Secrecy and Power in the British State: A History of the Official Secrets Act

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Lobster Issue 34 (Winter 1997) £££

Ann Rogers Pluto Press, 1997 £35.00 h.b. £10.99 p.b   On page 2 the author announces that she is going to use a ‘Foucauldian approach’. To wit: ‘It focuses on the effects of power rather than its mechanism; that is, it attempts to analyse visible manifestations of power as outputs rather than intentions. Foucault argues … Read more

Five at Eye

Lobster Issue 17 (1988) £££

Last year the Guardian newspaper revealed that Private Eye ‘may have been used to smear Wilson’. The former editor, Richard Ingrams, told reporters: “Looking back on it, it’s obvious that the Eye could have been used by MI5, but it’s hard to be concrete.” Its hard to be concrete because nobody bothered to look at … Read more

Secret Intelligence and the Holocaust, and, US Intelligence and the Nazis

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Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8) £££

Secret Intelligence and the Holocaust Ed. David Bankier New York: Enigma Books, 2006. p/b, $23 US Intelligence and the Nazis Richard Breitman et al New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005, p/b, £16.99   On 11 January 1943, the British intercepted ‘one of the most extraordinary messages’ of the war at Bletchley Park: it referred ‘to … Read more

Hilda Murrell: a death in the private sector

Lobster Issue 16 (1988) £££

This is the first anonymous article we have ever printed. However, we know the identity of the author and have absolute confidence in the person who provided us with the document. In places we have removed small sections, indicated by the use of brackets (—–), which provided personal details which would have made identifying the … Read more

Morningside Mata Haris: How MI6 deceived Scotland’s great and good

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Lobster Issue 49 (Summer 2005) £££

Douglas Macleod Edinburgh: Birlinn; £9.99, p/b <www.birlinn.co.uk>   Twenty years ago, before the current torrent of information about ‘the secret world of intelligence’, we were scratching about looking for clues to our secret history. One was given in the John Loftus book The Belarus Secret (Penguin 1983) which contained a single reference to the Scottish … Read more

Systemic Corruption, Systemic Solutions

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

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