The History of Espionage

Book cover
Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8) £££

The clandestine world of surveillance, spying and intelligence from ancient times to the post 9/11 world Ernest Volkman London: Carlton, 2007, h/b, £20   This is a lavishly and creatively illustrated, large format, (i.e. slightly bigger than A4) glossy paper, coffee-table book on the history of espionage. A former journalist with Newsday, and author of … Read more

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The murder of Hilda Murrell: ten years on

Lobster Issue 27 (1994) £££

[…] this really is extraordinary, for he was one of the journalists who did the work which showed that the nuclear state had hired private security firms to spy on Sizewell objectors against whom there was nothing at all; in other words, to spy on Sizewell objectors per se. In any case, before her death […]

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First supplement to ‘A Who’s Who of the British Secret State’

Lobster Issue 19 (1990) £££

[…] appeared in the original edition. This is additional information. A further list of corrections will appear in a future issue. (WIA) Material taken from the documentary ‘The Spy Who Never Was’ about Peter Wright on World in Action ITV 16 July 1984. Not all the names supplied by Wright were mentioned or published. I […]

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Spooks

Lobster Issue 41 (Summer 2001) £££

[…] concealing the identity of their agents is the reason they won’t open their files, why did they reveal Nicholson’s identity? Twitchers or traitors? In ‘Did twitchy MI5 spy on bird lovers?’ (Sunday Times 11 March 2001) Nick Fielding reported what appeared to be evidence from within MI5 of an MI5 investigation of the Royal […]

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Behind right-wing conspiracy theories

Lobster Issue 8 (1985) £££

[…] the subject of beliefs that he was really thousands of years old. At one time he was a friend of Casanova and was arrested as a Jacobite spy in London during the 1745 uprising. Barruel (see above, just after (8) in the text) names him as one of the Masonic super-conspirators behind the French […]

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Truth Twisting: notes on disinformation

Lobster Issue 19 (1990) £££

[…] Cold War spies’, in Guardian 9 December ’89. The late Joseph Josten. And so on. Deacon usefully reminds his reader of British State sponsorship of disinformation in spy fiction, a notable example of which is the 1981 ‘novel’, The KGB Directive, by Richard Cox. Born in 1931, Cox is a former First Secretary in […]

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Hacks, pols and PR

Book cover
Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8) £££

The Triumph of the Political Class Peter Oborne London: Simon & Schuster, 2007, £18.99 Thinker, Faker, Spinner, Spy: Corporate PR and the Assault on Democracy Edited by William Dinan and David Miller London: Pluto, 2007, £15.99 End Times: The Death of the Fourth Estate Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair CounterPunch and AK Press, […]

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Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico: new leads

Lobster Issue 6 (1984) £££

[…] paranoid fight against the CPUSA, and later, Martin Luther King. (13) It sounds impressive, but as with all Soviet contacts one can’t get away from the ‘ spy’ and ‘mole’ debate, however much one wants to. The Bureau had become worried when another Soviet source ‘Fedora’ notified the FBI that Jack Childs was about […]

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The state in politics: Wallace, Holroyd and Lobster

Lobster Issue 32 (December 1996) £££

[…] the Soviet Embassy on request. Betty Boothroyd told her boss; her boss called in MI5. But the MI5 officer misread her, and tried to recruit her to spy on some Labour MPs. She refused. MI5 did what they do so well: they bad-mouthed her at the Foreign Office and she was banned from working […]

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Western Goals: LA Police Settle For $1.8 million

Lobster Issue 4 (1984) £££

Leonard Doyle, Guardian 24th February 1984. Sued by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for illegal surveillance of private citizens, Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) settled out of court. LAPD’s Public Disorder and Intelligence Division were accused of ‘organising a massive spying operation providing right-wing organisations with a sophisticated computer and handing on extensive files … Read more

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