Deep Black: the secrets of space espionage (Book Review) & Journals

Lobster Issue 16 (1988)

[…] of MI5, Peter Walker, which I don’t think has appeared elsewhere in the British media: “(he) served in Ireland in the early ’80s as second-in-command to Britain’s spy chief, David Ramsen. He posed as a ‘political officer’ and was a frequent visitor to Dublin, where he became a familiar face at the Horseshoe Bar, […]

Trust no one: the secret world of Sidney Reilly

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Lobster Issue 45 (Summer 2003)

Richard B. Spence Los Angeles: Feral House, 2003 , $29.95, h/b   Boasting over 1800 footnotes and a magnificent bibliography (including texts published in Turkmenistan) this would be awarded A for Application if such a prize existed in academia. The author, Professor of History at the University of Idaho, appears to be something of an … Read more

Philanthropic imperialism

Lobster Issue 53 (Summer 2007)

Democracy building or democracy assistance, is a putative socio-economic policy solution, which, because of the extent of the political and economic forces impacting on it, has become a contemporary socio-economic problem. Democracy building’s institutional formation rests upon a reconfiguration of Cold War positions that retain, what Dr. Michael Pinto-Duschinsky termed ‘such interference,’(1)so as to continue … Read more

KAL 007 and Overhead Surveillance

Lobster Issue 16 (1988)

[…] London, 1984, p131). The most famous of these, of course, was the Gary Powers U-2 on May 1st 1960 and Khrushchev was quick to exploit the ‘ spy’ Powers, forcing Eisenhower to forswear further aerial reconnaissance over the Soviet Union at the Paris summit that year (Klass p50). The use of satellites was only […]

Electronic Privacy and the Encryption Debate

Lobster Issue 37 (Summer 1999)

[…] make interception more difficult; and to provide ever increasing surveillance capabilities for, in the main, the intelligence community. In Secret Power: New Zealand’s role in the International Spy Network, Nicky Hager describes the ECHELON system: ‘Designed and co-ordinated by the NSA, the ECHELON system is used to intercept ordinary e-mail, fax, telex and telephone […]

Vatican Connections

Lobster Issue 1 (1983)

[…] the stories issuing from the Vatican), but also, on pp 236-7 he gives an account of a memo -” a series of notes from the Italian government’s spy in the Secretariat of State (in the Vatican)”. This memo reports that Wojtyla’s candidacy was “pushed especially by the West Germans, the English-speaking North Americans and […]

The Enemy Within; the IRA’s War Against the British

Lobster Issue 30 (December 1995)

[…] between MI5 and MI6…..MI5 used RUC Special Branch to circulate stories about Oldfield going to the town of Comber to pick up young men…(and) that the ageing spy chief was involved in the abuse of young boys from the Kincora boys’ home in East Belfast’. (p. 192) (This story, I seem to remember, was […]

The Open Side of Secrecy: Britain’s Intelligence and Security Committee

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Lobster Issue 52 (Winter 2006/7)

Anthony Glees, Philip J. Davies, and John N. L. Morrison London: The Social Affairs Unit, 2006, £20, h/b   The Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) is a recent addition to the roster of Whitehall bodies; the motives of those who created it, as the authors show, are obscure and its role to some extent remains … Read more

French vendetta: from Rainbow Warrior to the Iranian hostages deal

Lobster Issue 16 (1988)

[…] long to get their revenge. The following month they broke the story that a cipher clerk in the French diplomatic service, Maurice Abrivard, had been a KGB spy for ten years up to his death in 1984, delivering diplomatic codes and important secrets about the installation of US Pershing missiles in Europe to the […]

Churchill and Secret Service

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Lobster Issue 37 (Summer 1999)

[…] the time, Room 40 would have been established. Much more notable was Churchill’s continual interference in its running. Predictably, he was an eager victim of the ‘ spy mania’ that gripped the country on the outbreak of war in 1914, actually leading a raid, pistol in hand, on the home of an unsuspecting Tory […]

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