See note 1. Introduction We were as surprised as anybody at the furore over Oliver Stone’s movie. When we published the Dean Andrews material and the analysis of the Clay Shaw U.K. contacts in Lobster 20, in November 1990, we did so in the certain knowledge that hardly anybody was still interested in the JFK […]
[…] and third books, MI5: A Matter of Trust and MI6 were both something like in-house histories, given – edited no doubt – to Allason in the great spook rivalries of the 1980s. Is this true? Maybe I used to know and have forgotten. In the introduction to his MI5 book he quotes from the […]
SIS is dead – you read it first in Lobster – but the funeral has not been announced. Established in 1909, it will not make its centenary. SIS once offered a global brand operating in a market that had been previously divided along the lines of accepted cartels (market fixing). Its market-share, however, has been … Read more
‘You don’t investigate people for why they think but for what they do.’ – former Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti (1) Introduction If nothing else, the Iran-Contra scandal temporarily illuminated the extent to which ostensibly private organizations have been helping secretive elements within the American government — in this case the core of the executive branch’s … Read more
[…] of the UK Political Studies Association. SISG produces a little newsletter, edited by Dr. Ken Robertson who subscribed to Lobster until I wrote and pointed out the spook pedigree of some of the people he was mixing with. Oops! End of subscription. Lefty librarians? A number of Lobster subscribers are in the information business, […]
[…] Dorril’s other books, but I can safely say that MI6 will lose no sleep over this one. Lobster readers belong to the cognoscenti in their knowledge of spook filth and, whilst this is a very useful contribution to the literature – particularly for the general reader – there is nothing particularly new that has […]
Tom Bower, Heinemann, London This is the biography of Dick White, the only man to have been head of both MI5 and MI6 (SIS) and it is a massive breach of the new Official Secrets Act. For Bower not only had access to White’s memoir of the period, with White to vouch for him, he … Read more
The unspeakable Martin Kettle of The Guardian is a political journalist who has been pretty close to, and supportive of, New Labour since the 1990s. His article ‘The special relationship that squandered a noble cause’ (27 May 2006) opened with this: ‘The long arc of Tony Blair’s rise and decline has been punctuated by journeys … Read more
[…] information to know yet, but it is our suspicion that both groups were largely run by Catholics. Neil Elles — a barrister, later a member of the spook outfit, INTERDOC, a kind of European-wide Common Cause. INTERDOC is discussed below in the appendix. Christopher Blackett — a Scottish landowner and farmer, and, we presume […]
[…] anti-CIA, naming names etc.. The first issue of the Study Group on Intelligence Newsletter has appeared. This ‘Study Group’ is a group of British academics working in spook country, and how widely they are willing to release their newsletter is unclear. The first issue is rather good, containing a survey of British courses which […]
