Lt Col. Balthazar Blimp
C o n f e s s i o n s
from military intelligence
“… men determined to commit crimes, will organise them on the vastest, most improbable scale. Not only because this renders all punishment provided by the legal system inadequate and absurd; but because the very immensity of the crimes guarantees that the murderers, who proclaim their innocence with all manner of lies, will be more readily believed than the victims who tell the truth.” (Hannah Arendt – The Origins of Totalitarianism)
BY
Lt. Col Balthazar Blimp
Ed: Helen Pender
Copyright – 2011 – The right of Helen Pender to be identified as the author of the Work has been asserted by her, in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous – he simply cannot believe it exists.
J Edgar Hoover
Book one
Chapter I
Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. I am, or rather was, their instrument. Enemies of the establishment, those who wish to reveal dark truths which we do not bring into the light may be so thoroughly hounded that they face no means of support, no means of employment, no means to retain their sanity in a world which is ignorant of their plight. Eventually they have no other option than to commit suicide, so proving their insanity. After that of course we cam blacken their name; no one likes those who commit suicide. Their family will feel hurt and betrayed and there will be none prepared to defend or bear witness to the suffering the gods have inflicted.
Who are these gods? It is a truth not universally acknowledged amongst men of my ilk – that even we, the perpetrators, are not fully aware of the truth. I have finally to acknowledge that I do not know precisely those whom I serve. I have only recently become aware that I did not serve the common good.
My entire working life has been to serve the gods of man’s making, the self-selecting agents of privilege who target those who further the plans and purposes of a self-electing elite. I was a willing and able disciple in my own small way of that mystical body: ‘The British Establishment.’
I am – or rather was – a master of madness, inducing it in others, usurping the minds of the innocent, playing both sides against the middle.
The greatest and most satisfying part of the whole conundrum to me was that ‘those to whom evil is done, do evil in return’. So the more we could make our targets suffer the greater the chances of recruiting those targets to our own peculiar ends. You have seen the actions of Derek Bird castigated as a madman taking gun shots at first a lawyer and then his brother, followed by a troop of taxi drivers. The media will not focus on the wrongs which were done to Derek Bird, will not examine the corner he’d been painted into by being vilified, swindled and deprived of employment. The media collude in this silence, we have the press in our pocket. Derek Bird believed himself to have been deprived of his inheritance. His father, being dead, could not be called upon to corroborate his claims. I do not know precisely what happened in that case, but those who are driven to desperation in a war of attrition, sometimes over many decades, either turn on themselves and commit suicide or turn on others to exact long overdue vengeance. For those who suspect their legacy may be altered on their death I would suggest they give a copy of their will to their inheritors and place a copy online.
Suffering often induces self-destruction or the outwardly focussed destruction of others. It is difficult to predict which individuals will focus in on themselves and which will focus destructively on the world we construct around them.
If any of my victims claimed to be suffering from the many and various forms of persecution – of which I was a supreme craftsman - they would be presenting textbook symptoms of severe and classic paranoia. As the saying goes just because they were paranoid did not make them delusional. They were persecuted and I was often involved in that persecution.
I could rely on the psychiatrists to end the persecution I had begun and force feed mind altering substances to my prey. Members of the judiciary, the medical profession and police, ensconced as they are at the heart of secret societies, men and women who form the fabric of the British Establishment, were ours to do our bidding. There was no body or organisation to which our targets could appeal for justice.
Once in the hands of psychiatrists my victims would be subjected to anti-psychotic drugs, to Electro Convulsive Therapy; a great way to alter their perception and create a tabula rasa of their memories and finally to ensure they were good for nothing and rendered completely mad. The psychiatrist didn’t even have to be a witting conspirator – his training had taught him that those who made accusations of wrong doing against large sections of society, and the Establishment in particular were delusional. It dawned on me as I faced my own mortality, that I had driven many to such depths of despair that they self-destructively took their own lives rather than continue to suffer my ministrations. So completing the work I had begun, by their own hand. If, instead they chose to destroy the world, which they inhabited, then we could usually count on our targets destroying themselves with a criminal record and more often allow trained marksmen to do away with them before any uncomfortable trial managed to examine the evidence.
This is not a new trick it has been in existence for decades if not centuries. Look at Rousseau’s Confessions – a book brought to the world through Voltaire’s anonymous pamphlet listing the half true sins of Jean-Jaques Rousseau and distributed in Geneva under the title: Sentiments of the Citizens in 1761. Through this anonymous pamphlet Voltaire accused Rousseau of being a pox-ridden disturber of the peace, of having killed his mother through unkindness and being a systematic sower of sedition. Well rumour and libel, scandal, vilification, defamation and slander are still used to hound our targets today. But we have the internet which makes it so much easier to vilify our targets. If sufficient mud is thrown it begins to stick, no matter how saintly the target.
Most of the population will believe what they hear if heard sufficiently often from a variety of sources; few trust their own judgment entirely and generally the populace will follow the herd. It is just a short step to suggesting to the victim that their only recourse is to commit suicide. It has always been our preferred final solution.
In 1902 Major-General Sir Hector Macdonald was a thorn in the side of the establishment in Ceylon and so was accused of homosexuality. A charge which may have had some basis in fact in a life lived with courage, discretion and honour in the service of his country. The establishment insisted he face a court martial and proposed to send him back to Ceylon to face trial. He had been encouraged by the Governor of Ceylon to leave that Colonial outpost and return to Britain. Of course in his absence from Ceylon the powers that be had blackened his name sufficiently to ensure that none would rise to Major-General Macdonald’s defence. He was caught. Finally in early 1903 Major-General Sir Hector Archibald Macdonald kept an appointment with His Majesty The King in the relative anonymity of Malborough House to which Sir Hector had been summoned. Clutching at the last straw of hope Sir Hector believed that King Edward VII would suggest another way out of Sir Hector’s dilemma; the King did – he tacitly suggested suicide.
King Edward VII’s own son, Prince Eddy, had been caught up in a similar episode and banished to South Africa, where his picture still hangs on the walls in Boer homes. The King’s equerry, Sir Arthur Somerset had been similarly tainted and exiled himself abroad. However Sir Hector was not a man of means and had no friends and no private income to finance any long-term flit abroad.
Percy Bysshe Shelley complained of the fraud perpetrated on him by British Law Courts. Well lawyers will fleece and misrepresent you today when you are targeted by the establishment. There is nothing new on the face of the earth.
Every man has his price and will bend to our will; principles are soluble in filthy lucre and if the acidic cash doesn’t work its magic, career preferment will, if all else fails it is always possible to hound the target’s family until he or she knows the consequences to their nearest and dearest if they fail to bend to our will. In fact we usually start with hounding the family when we need rapid results.
However those we target have no means of escape, they will live for years knowing that they are trapped. Not many retain any sense or sanity in those circumstances. Our target’s reality is so warped that they cannot confide in anyone with any hope of being believed.
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Chapter 2
Our system of Government has long been called a democracy. Nothing could be further from the truth; democracies need justice to be meted out blindly, democracies need a scintilla of civilisation at their core; democracies are too risky a vessel to be allowed to set sail undirected by the sure hand of the establishment.
Democracy is too fragile a flower to be left to the vagaries of chance and a perfidious electorate.
We in the Establishment realised that true democracy should be viewed in the same light the ancient Greeks regarded this form of Government – with absolute distrust and the utmost disdain.
No. Democracy; this much-vaunted form of Government – could potentially deliver us into the hands of those organised enough to dupe the electorate into an altogether different form of Government. Something had to be done to remove the uncertainties that inevitably accompany democracy. The fail safe against the dangers of democracy is the British Establishment and I was a small and, I like to flatter myself, essential part of keeping the British Establishment effective. It is now possible that that Establishment, like so much else in the world, has gone global. Nevertheless we are still the master race of covert perfidy. We led the way, we were the Sword of civilised life, ready to cut out disease of freedom wherever it existed.
I was not a part of the greater international or global arena, but all countries have an Establishment under a clandestine directional authority. Sir Winston Churchill originally approved these ad hoc bodies, following the aftermath of the Second World War, when the Special Operations Executive metamorphosed into our intelligence services. The threat of Communism threatened. We had a debt to pay to the Russians in defeating Herr Hitler, but the Soviet Union appeared to be a more insidious threat to the Western world at the end of that war. So Kipling’s ‘Great Game’ developed into a more rigid body with a command structure, directed by Sir Winston himself.
We in Britain, using our long established experience of governing our once great Empire, could point the way toward ensuring that every element of the State, the media, the economy and the infrastructure and fabric of Society served our ends. Those ends are unravelling, but the influence we have brought to bear endeavours to ensure that aspects remain hidden. One of Lord Acton’s less famous quotations appears to bear a universal truth: ‘Everything secret degenerates, nothing can be trusted that cannot bear public scrutiny.’
Much of our intelligence infrastructure remains secret. To paraphrase Sir Harold Macmillan – everyone knows that sex takes place within a marriage, but it is tasteless to enquire too deeply into it, just as it is tasteless to enquire too deeply into the actions of the intelligence services.
Making any part of Government, or the State, out of bounds to questions of moral probity inevitably leads to the decline of moral probity. The tentacles of our security services are so far out of control that no one can bring any real cohesion or focus to their myriad spheres of influence. One such out of control group are the Stay Behinds. The Imperial War museum has or had some allusions to this group, however it is a group upon which those in power have absolutely not control.
Under the aegis of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) it was decided that to combat this new threat it was necessary to keep in place a group of men and women in European countries who had formed the backbone of the Resistance. However many who had formed the backbone of Vichy France managed to convince the powers that be that they had truly been working for the Resistance and also managed to blacken the reputations of those who were truly courageous resistance fighters. Not to fight fascism and a Nazi threat but to fight Communism.
Just as the CIA bought up the film rights to George Orwell’s Animal Farm in order to defeat communism, so the CIA funded and organised much of the infrastructure of these secretive Stay Behind paramilitary cells, however Britain played a pivotal role. A secret NATO army, Gladio, was born in Italy, and it is to Gladio that we must turn for most of our information in the public arena. The Italians, fighting against endemic and debilitating corruption within their society have been the most willing to uncover the truth of the ‘Stay-Behind’ resistance groups with secret society, Masonic, Propaganda Due (P2) and Mafia links. Giulio Andreotti Italy’s Prime Minister revealed the existence of Gladio around the time of the first Gulf War on 3 August 1990.
Shortly after that admission in Italy, the ex Greek Prime Minister Papandreou, confirmed to a Greek newspaper (Oct – Ta Nea) that he had discovered a secret Nato army operating in Greece whilst he was Prime Minister in the 1980’s. A German newspaper, TAZ, began to report that a similar organisation existed in Germany. A German television channel then reported that ex Schutzstaffel (SS) personnel had been recruited to this NATO movement and questions were asked in the German Parliament. Over the course of the next few months revelations rolled out over Europe. The Belgians, having linked the existence of a ‘Stay-Behind’ group, who had wreaked mayhem and slaughter on the Belgian people, officially closed down the force a year after a Special Committee published its report into the scandal. The French publicly declared that such a force had been in existence but had also been disbanded after Stalin’s death in 1953. However Prime Minister Andreotti in Italy then revealed that the French had been represented at a meeting of this clandestine NATO Group on 23 October 1990 in Belgium.
A lack of public curiosity of Britain’s role in the debacle both in the media and in Parliament led to an article in the Observer on the 7th of June 1992, going pretty much unremarked. The British Security Services declined to comment and it seems MP’s were too busy taking cash for questions that they neglected to ask questions which should rightly have been uppermost on their agenda.
In Holland it was admitted that such a secret organisation did exist, but the Netherlands Prime Minister, Ruud Lubbers, added the caveat that their own ‘Stay-Behind’ army was not supervised by NATO. There followed admissions or questionable denials in Luxemburg, Portugal, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Turkey The European Parliament discussed the scandal affecting all twelve of its member States on 22nd November 1990.
These ‘Stay-Behind’ secret armies operated under different code names, but all were generally referred to by the Italian name Gladio in the Press. In the absence of a willingness to expand on these admissions by member countries of their own secret armies’ cooperation in the affair, little was done. Eventually it would be revealed that the code names differed – Absalon in Denmark, P26 or Projekt 26 in Switzerland, Sheepskin in Greece, Rocambole (ROC) in Sweden. The CIA and NATO universally referred to these groups as S/B or ‘Stay-Behind’ projects.
Here, lying in my sick bed, chained to this mattress by drips and monitors, I have had time to reflect on my own involvement in these matters. Funny, isn’t it, how religion creeps up on one when one finally faces evidence of one’s own mortality. My last will and testament is a paltry document, which can hardly make amends for the ill done to the innocent, but it is an effort to ensure I do not die unanelled.
I’ve started praying.
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Chapter 3
Men tend to construct God in their own image. Authoritarian believers in a supernatural greater power are almost inevitably drawn to the early teachings of St Paul:
Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity, whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgement of God that they which commit such things are worthy of death …’ (Romans I)
I suppose I have believed, for most of my adult life, that certain citizens are worthy of death too and if I was the instrument, which brought about that death, I was merely doing my patriotic duty as an Englishmen. Incidentally Scotsmen are often far worse.
Those who rise to the senior posts in intelligence are willing to allow authoritarian figures free rein in their reign of terror against sedition and seditious individuals. One man’s sedition is another man’s freedom. If you have less than educated men deciding what sedition is you begin to smother freedom and that, on reflection, is what I did. I smothered freedom; and in doing so I, and many foot soldiers, like me, brought about the end of our civilisation.
Lying here, a prisoner in a hospital bed, I have begun to dwell on my just deserts - and the thorny problem that the ‘wages of sin is death,’ as that adage might apply to me.
Tolerant, charitable broad-minded believers are drawn to the later St Paul: – “and the greatest of these is love.”(1 Corinthians 13). I now wonder where my road to Damascus occurred. There was no blinding flash – St Paul’s blinding flash did not effect an immediate conversion to tolerance, love, understanding and charity. It took him some time to reach the level of humility displayed in Corinthians.
I have been an agent of fire and brimstone all my life, sometimes unwitting, often ignorant, but always utterly excusable in the context of my patriotism.
I think I’ve solved the riddle of God. A new entity which had never entered my life before – not in any meaningful sense. Oh I’ve stood dutifully in church, behaved correctly, bowed, knelt, stood and sat as the Book of Common Prayer demanded. I have attended funerals, weddings, baptisms - acknowledged the Christian calendar at Christmas and Easter. But I’ve never given God more than a fleeting thought as I did so. Like the Victorian slave trader I believed myself to be a God fearing man, implicitly following Christian tenets, whilst simultaneously enslaving minds to the ends I and my superiors prescribed. My one true God was patriotism.
All those atrocities and natural disasters bring forth a spate of living voices, demanding to know how God could let it happen. Well that I can tell you now, though I can’t tell you the names of the human gods I have given such long service to.
This is my last will and testament, my legacy to the world. My expiation if you like. My prayers were answered when Alex, the grandchild of my oldest friends, dropped off a pad of paper and pen at my bedside. I’d prayed so very hard. ‘God tell me what to do.’
Alex represented a more significant part of my past than he was aware. His grandfather, Wolfe, and I had been friends since birth. We had gone to the same school and kept in touch through our lives. It was perhaps not a deep friendship, but a deep understanding of one another’s strengths, faults and weaknesses. We had both been only children, born to professional parents in a small village. Our parents dined together every week, our mothers bathed us together as infants. We were born within days of one another. We were both blessed with very unusual names, which had strengthened our alliance through boarding school. Alex represented a great deal more than he could ever imagine and I was touched by his visit to my hospital bed, bearing grapes, newspapers, pen and paper.
There it was a lined pad, encased in a black lever arch file, with one of those gel pens for easy writing. The ink just flows out, no effort required. It made a difference that it was Alex who proffered this gift. Alex is a young man whose life I have altered at every turn, though he remains unaware my machinations have dogged him. This is my gift to him, and through him, to his mother, Mary, a woman I have deeply wronged; I doubt she will ever be able to forgive me. Through them it is my gift to the world, a world full of innocents playing into the hands of those who seek to subvert them. However, since Alex will be reading this after I have been reduced to my last coma, I would exhort him not to try to get it published through the usual channels. I know he is resourceful and trust he will find a publisher.
Not having had any evidence that there was a God, a single deity, intelligently ordering the world, I had no reason to believe or have any faith. The Security Services ordered my existence. My many successes could not be attributed to an all loving and munificent superior being. I knew differently. I knew that man orders his own world, or rather men working together in highly organised groups, order their world.
Once men have tasted power, like the lotus-eaters, their appetites become insatiable. The will to power is an intoxicating addiction and I was a servant who swelled the ranks, paid obeisance to those in power and proffered my small efforts with laudable humility.
This new God of ‘intelligent design’ is very different to the really intelligent ordering of the universe. It is possible for fossils to exist – it is possible for a long history pre-dating mankind, but only if one accepts a non human-centric view of creation. We consider ourselves superior, we are privileged and privilege, wherever it exists, inevitably leads to a decline in morality. My morality was virtually non-existent until I heard my death sentence passed: odd how morality comes into being when faced with mortality.
It was at that moment that I slowly began to make some sense of any natural order.
A man in the waiting room at the hospital was perhaps my small vision on the road to Damascus. A man whom I had been viewing with open contempt, a shambling old boy of about eighty; he seemed inconsequential as I went into the Consultants office. As I came out, groping my way to a seat to await the leeches of phlebotomy he looked at me with such gentle reassurance that I knew he had guessed the death sentence I had been given. It was as if my soul was bared to the world. He came over and patted my hand, his gnarled fingers carried the caress of love and understanding.
Later, when I asked the nurse in charge of the clinic where that man was, she looked at me quizzically and said I had been the last patient. Perhaps there are angels after all. Certainly at a vital moment, left alone and frightened in an otherwise empty waiting area, I realised that the reassurance of a human hand on mine was a gift of unimaginable power.
I’d had this sentence of death imposed upon me by some pan faced consultant, and realised what my life had been - a complete and utter waste. No one was waiting for me, no one had come to accompany me to the appointment. I was left isolated in a world which had suddenly become dark. Just a simple small unspoken reaching out from one human to another, wrought a blinding realisation that the love a stranger had extended toward me was life changing.
All the thoughtless and cruel wrongs I had committed over the years led me to understand that I had never given anyone the sort of consolation that wizened old man offered me that day.
What had I done? I had brought plagues down on the unsuspecting. Ants, flea and fly infestations in the homes of those who were susceptible to a certain squeamishness. I had arranged for people to be followed to induce fear in them. I had spread malicious rumour to ensure my victims were deprived of work or blocked from promotion. I had bugged phone calls and used the intelligence gained to inculcate a certain feeling in my victims that I, or my masters, were omniscient, all powerful – mind reading impresarios. I had arranged for legal papers to disappear and reappear in an entirely different form, both in their homes and in the courts at which they were lodged. I had wheedled, bribed, blackmailed and hounded others to do my bidding. I had learned the knack of turning men’s minds against themselves – and I had been proud of my prowess. To criminally mix metaphors - I had been the Wizard of Oz of Room 101. If it was necessary to make someone mad, I was your man, an adept in the black art of insanity.
The really odd thing about the old man who sat beside me that fateful day was a book he left on the seat beside me, a tangible material relic of his presence. A book, I notice, with my name inscribed in the front cover – Lt Col Balthazar Blimp. As I opened it a page fell open on a passage:
“… men determined to commit crimes, will organise them on the vastest, most improbable scale. Not only because this renders all punishment provided by the legal system inadequate and absurd; but because the very immensity of the crimes guarantees that the murderers, who proclaim their innocence with all manner of lies, will be more readily believed than the victims who tell the truth.” (Hannah Arendt – The Origins of Totalitarianism)
I realised the writer was talking of a different time and a different people, but the core traits of persecutors the world over is to replicate the model Hannah Arendt succinctly summed up as ‘the banality of evil.’ My life’s work had been neatly caught up in that short paragraph.
The hand that gently covered mine, when I stood on the precipice of a black hole, opened an alternative world to me. I, who had taken so much pride in preparing those precipitous black holes in the lives of my victims, deserved to fall over the precipice of despair. Instead I was invited to bring light to the black holes that I had dug for countless victims of the greater powers I had served all my days.
Briefly, just to put you out of your misery, Religious nonsense is very tiresome but it is the cause of my taking pen to paper to write this confession and so I must sum up who and what God is. I have no evidence, no toe nail clipping I can show you, no tangible substantive proof: just a gut feeling, based on my own life experiences, of how God works: a small insight into His mysterious ways.
Spokesmen for the MoD, Government Ministers, Intelligence Service Chiefs down the ages are heard from time to time to remark that: ‘We do not sanction killing people.’ Most, involved in the intelligence services, fall off their chairs laughing at this preposterous claim. There are some, like the delightfully naïve Stella Rimmington, who may actually believe what they say. But it’s amazing how often the assassination goes dreadfully wrong when pitched against the truly evil. It is usually innocents who are the unexpected fatalities, whilst the target, who is thoroughly evil, continues to live. I can only put that down to the intervention of God.
We all believe that death is the final punishment. Religious doctrine conspires to underscore our belief that death is our punishment. Early Christians believed they would escape death. The second coming would happen in their lifetime. The idea of death being one’s final punishment stems from early Christian teaching: There are some here today who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom – (Matthew16:28). When Jesus walked the earth, those who followed him, believed the end of the world was nigh. Those who believed in him would live through dreadful times and be saved to join a heavenly communion of the meek on earth. Plus ca change.
The evil are, I now believe, allowed to live in order to bring their souls closer to God. The innocent are already fitted to join the heavenly host. God allows the good and the innocent to die, He does not bring the evil and guilty to death before they have had ample opportunity to reform; to become aware of His presence in the world.
However religion has too often been hijacked by those whose seek to exercise their own power rather than promote God’s power. Religion, organised religion, is deeply suspect.
The gospel of Barnabas, excluded from our orthodox Bible, specifically quotes Jesus as saying he is not The only Son of God. According to Barnabas we are all the sons of God. Barnabas said Jesus became quite angry when it was suggested to him that he was the only Son of God. For some that was a heresy and so Barnabas was shunned, sent to an outer hemisphere of Christian sectarianism – a Gnostic gospel. If Jesus really was the Messiah then the end of the world would have been nigh. The fact that the second coming didn’t happen makes orthodox Christian doctrine suspect. Judeo Christians believe that the temple in Jerusalem will be razed to the ground and rebuilt in three days – that certainly hasn’t happened. Men have been conspiring for years to ensure that the Holy Land is returned to its glory under Israel’s control, which it must be prior to the second coming. Oddly, truly – deeply - orthodox Jews are not convinced by our connivances. They know the rebuilding of the holy land will be a holy miracle, not a plot by great powers to manufacture these prophecies.
The Church, like every other power vying for world dominance, has been subjected to doctrines designed not for the uplifting of men in general, but for the uplifting of particular men specifically. Power corrupts and every organisation will organise itself to wield power. Why should the Church be any different?
Magic is the key. We all, like every child attending an annual pantomime, believe in magic – and magic can be manufactured. I know since I have manufactured it often enough. I am a great illusionist.
Am I a spy?
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Chapter 4
Depends on how one defines a spy. Most of us think of spies in our camp protecting us from foreign powers, whereas most of my work has been carried out in England: Albion, Longres, the great and good United Kingdom, to whose monarch I have taken an oath of allegiance.
It is against the subjects of our monarch that my work has been directed. I can’t speak a foreign language, apart from a bit of schoolboy French and the odd smattering of German, which I picked up when seconded to RAF Gatow, a few miles from Spandau prison. I served in the incarceration of Rudolph Hesse for a short time. ‘Ich wolle einen Kaffe mit milch, bitte’ doesn’t really count, not even sure the grammar is correct. A second posting to Bad Tolz, Bavaria, did not give me much chance of interacting with the locals, since the whole project relied on ensuring that locals did not become too aware of precisely what we were up to. Couldn’t explain the difference between a nominative and a dative – gave up Latin at school fairly early on. The Oxbridge types had to do Latin, the rest of us either feigned thickness, or in my case were too thick to continue tormenting the Latin master. It was with a sigh of relief, on both sides, that the Latin master and I parted company.
My efforts have always been directed toward the enemy within. Good enough to swell the ranks here and there – affable and charming in a bluff sort of way. Army careers are fairly short unless one rises to dizzy heights, but you continue in the service through private security companies.
When the Cold war was teetering towards its end, the fashion for privatisation was gearing up in the political world. The world of espionage was over-ripe for the privatised market. If private, utterly deniable organisations, with no discernable link to the British Establishment, could be brought into being in greater numbers than already existed, then it followed that the activities of these organisations did not fall within the orbit of Prime Minister’s Question Time, or any other Minister’s portfolio of responsibilities. A small number of deniable organisations were shouldering too great a part of our deniable clandestine activities to remain utterly secure. If organisations with no other link than the same sort of activities could cover ground, and could have no other discernable connection than a similar line of work, then conspiracies themselves would remain hidden. Covert actions could be carried out without embarrassing questions.
My niche was recruitment, sounding out people who could help. Did that in the Army too. Real spies know how to do things I could only dream of. No idea how to swell the secret fund, how to make the system work to one’s own advantage and the advantage of those one serves. Too much of a loose cannon - never could see the bigger picture. Perhaps that is why I was so useful. I didn’t ask questions, never thought to seek the reason I had been given an order. Mine not to question why, and perhaps that made me more useful and ultimately more dangerous.
Real spies know ways to crack codes; don’t have to have those numbers explained to them.
Gave me a test once: ‘1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 – find the next two numbers?’ Well bugger me – sat there for two hours, didn’t look at the rest of the paper. Question one and I was completely stumped. Wrote my name on the top of the paper, doodled with a few numbers in the margins and handed it back – eventually wrote down 17 and 19 just as the paper was taken away. I’d worked out 2, 3, 5 and 13 were prime numbers. If the interval between 1 and 8 contained three prime numbers then the interval between eight and onward must contain another three prime numbers. Just as I handed the paper back I realised that seven was missing in the original sequence, so they had skipped a prime number and I didn’t know what the hell the answer was. But since I’d not been asked for the number after 19 I reckoned it was about right – didn’t have to skip the next prime number – didn’t ask us for the next even number. Bit of an oversight on their part I realised. At least, I reasoned, I had got one question right. Wasn’t until I read the Da Vinci Code that I realised I’d got this question wrong too. Must have been why I was recruited into recruitment. Unofficial assets, gophers, odd job men - tools to do the bidding of the establishment, I found them, I used them and I also erased them if they became too troublesome.
Real spies can hack into banks and crack through the most specialised security systems. I couldn’t disarm an alarm without a sapper next to me telling me what to do. Most of this activity is directed toward money. Money really does make the world go round – if you haven’t any you fall off the roundabout. Whether it is an individual or a State, depriving the target of financial means, weakens the target so effectively that one may reduce them to the powerless sin of poverty or coerce them into enslavement. This works on a private level just as much as in the International arena. Cuba’s isolationism stems almost entirely from the experience the country has had in methods of undermining its economy. Sugar pricing economic warfare, to tainted fuel products in order to jam and ruin expensive machinery.
The Security Services are no longer in charge of the roundabout; it has warped out of sync and thunders toward a vacuous chaos. Behind the moneymen, the business tycoons, the politicians, those who believe they run this country, the security services used to reign supreme, in a symbiotic relationship with big business. Without their co-operation no one and nothing succeeded.
With the burgeoning of private security companies overall control became tenuous. The wrong people are beginning to be targeted. Take News International and the News of the World as an example. Private investigators began targeting members of the Royal Family, indeed rumour has it the second in line to the throne had his text messages and voicemail intercepted.
We in the privatised sector are the new masters, but central control is impossible.
There are those above us, but their identities are so shrouded in mystery that even those working for the Security Services can’t tell you who they are. However I now wonder whether there is a battle royal being waged amongst the shrouded elite; a battle for power which is bringing chaos in its wake.
If you can work the money systems: know how to launder, siphon and fleece money out of the system, then you can call yourself a real spy. I was at the bottom of the pile, trying to work out who would play with us and who wouldn’t. Occasionally let loose on a target to be a Judas friend, to manipulate, play psychological games and wreak havoc in a life – I was just following orders ...
It is a misconception that all spies are dapper young men with physical and mental pecs which astound us. We actually recruit everyone, from the tramp or gypsy woman who will do whatever we ask for a tenner, to politicians and their secretaries, who are easily bought off with a room in a villa during their summer recess. The best recruits are often extremely stupid, they will not have any inclination to honest introspection, nor do they need much in the way of explanation. It is all too easy to flatter any recruit to join the activities of the intelligence services. Many do so for the cachet it brings to their fragile egos, in the erroneous belief that they are essential to State Security and have a patriotic duty to play ball and join the Great Game.
Our best recruits may have spent their whole lives being overlooked, dismissed as incompetent nobodies. Then someone like me approaches them, flatters their ego, asks them to join what appears to be a select band of hand picked somebodies. These poor inadequate twerps will stand on their heads or whatever else we ask them to do. One just mentions ‘Intelligence Services’ and they somehow believe themselves to be magically and instantaneously supremely intelligent. The secret is to keep the wraps on how many are actually recruited. If any of my recruits suspected that up to a quarter of the population at large had been approached to do some small favour for the intelligence services then the kudos of belonging to the intelligence services, in whatever miniscule way, would lose its draw.
No one we have in our sights parks on a double yellow line without our knowledge. Porters, doormen, taxi drivers, civil servants, librarians, doctors, nurses, teachers are all vital to the gathering of intelligence. It is increasingly difficult to get those sorts of jobs if you are prepared to stay out of the circle of power. Just to be approached to do something for the intelligence services gives the recruit a feeling that they too must be intelligent. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Around the time of the Second World War a British Minister, Duff Cooper, aimed to form a patriotic fifth column within the UK. Recruits were asked to report anything suspicious in their locality. These recruits were dubbed ‘Coopers Snoopers,’ named after the Minister concerned with this recruitment drive, and viewed with suspicion by a British Public who still believed in their inalienable right to freedom. This had been a cack handed experiment, which excited public condemnation. However the experiment would eventually succeed as no other network has ever succeeded before, and succeed on a global scale. The little known and little documented S/B or ‘Stay-Behind’ organisations grew like topsy after the war.
Easiest people to corrupt are those who join societies. Somehow they know they are not up to much on their own, they need a sort of brotherhood around them. Army of course is the biggest brotherhood of all. If a body of men are inclined to support one another, offer a palliative excuse for the excesses and criminal activities of fellow members of their brotherhood, refuse to countenance anything untoward has ever occurred, whatever the evidence – then you have the seeds of corruption, a pervasive and endemic corruption in which we are now in a vice like grip. It helps too that a degree of privilege and financial advantage accompanies membership. If jobs can be found for the boys, the boys are unlikely to stray too far from the trough. With unemployment growing it is becoming more obvious that the incompetent have been promoted well beyond their ability, whilst the competent who retain any principles are relegated to the dole queue.
George Bernard Shaw was right: “He who robs Peter to pay Paul, can always rely on Paul’s support.”
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Chapter 5
Religion is the greatest brotherhood of all – problem is the lack of exclusivity religion has at its core. It has the disadvantage of open membership – anyone may join. Exclusivity and secrecy are the keys to successful societies and cults. Secret signs, words and hand shakes – probably why Christianity was so successful in its early years under the secret sign of the fish.
Wherever a society has a degree of intolerance directed against it, one finds that the society begins to flourish. A smidgeon of suffering drew early Christians together, much as secret societies are drawn together today. Whenever you have a group suffering persecution, a greater fundamentalist belief is the natural result. Christianity is no longer the success story it once was. So many schisms have appeared at the core of religion and there are no longer inquisitions to sustain their exclusivity. Small societies within the greater society mean that the little schismatics thrive at a cost to the larger group. The universal inclusiveness of Christ’s teaching sounds a death knell for secret societies the world over, but they have thrived since Roman times and continue to thrive today, precisely because religion is subjugated to patriotism.
Christianity has survived by having members like me within its core. Members for whom greater gods exist, the regiment, the monarch, the secret society, all of whom draw on religion to bolster their mandate, but for whom religion is of secondary importance. It is not until one experiences a blinding flash of utter clarity that one is able to comprehend the harm these societies thoughtlessly enact.
It is a well worn cliché that religion often serves to make good men evil. A hijacking of natural morality to be supplanted by the warped ethics necessary to ensure absolute loyalty to an unjust cause
Secret societies work relentlessly toward the greater enrichment of their members, whatever their stated altruistic raison d’etre might be said to be. Never heard of Jesus going on holiday to a villa in Italy – never heard of him having much money. Far too difficult to corrupt those sorts of people, far too dangerous to allow them to hold down a job within the system.
I now believe Jesus to be a Mohammed if you will. A prophet or seer to put us on the right track again. Unlike Mohammed he didn’t go into wars in Medina and so on. He preached a doctrine of peace. Now there is a dangerous doctrine if ever I saw one. You can’t manipulate men committed to peace; you can only manipulate men committed to vengeance, mayhem and violence.
Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King - men like that, committed to peace, form the greatest thorn in the side of authority. They just won’t be manipulated into carrying out atrocities with which we can blacken their names. No. Jihad we can deal with. We can manipulate and coerce people into behaving badly for vengeance sake. Then we have control over all the media to ensure that their crimes, rather than their provocations, are widely disseminated.
The war in Lebanon in 2006 proved to be a huge anti-climax reflecting badly on Israel, Britain and the USA. First an Israeli attack killed all but one girl of a Muslim family. The Israeli’s denied their involvement, then apologised, then wriggled free. Quite unconnected to the massacre of an innocent family group, the media would have you believe, an Israeli soldier was abducted. And it is on that provocation that Melanie Phillips and her media companions focused to justify the attack on Lebanon, stridently arguing that a nation has an absolute right to defend itself. We, like rabbits caught in the headlights, forget that a nine-year-old Lebanese girl was orphaned having watched her family die in an entirely unprovoked attack.
The Syrians had been persuaded to leave Lebanon, it was ripe for Israeli re-occupation. However the Lebanese refused to follow the game plan so meticulously laid down. The Lebanese confined their soldiers to barracks. With no army on the ground it was impossible to manufacture Lebanese army atrocities to crank up the ‘war’. United Nations Resolutions calling for peace were effectively blocked by the USA and the UK as Israel continued justifying its operation by pointing to the abduction of two of its soldiers.
Still the Lebanese army did not hit back. Eventually despite some token resistance by Hezbollah – which the Israeli’s milked to its maximum effect, no reaction to the severe provocation was approved by the Lebanese Government, so no occupation of Lebanon could be justified. Slowly the US and the UK retreated, post conflict, into sotto voce expressions of regret, diminished in world respect by their silence during a bloody conflict perpetrated on a largely civilian population. United Nations soldiers also appeared to have been killed by Israel. Lebanon itself was guilty of no atrocity. If Lebanon had followed the game plan and retaliated to the provocation, an entirely different scenario could and would have ensued. In order to ‘protect its nation’ Israel could have moved into Lebanon, the United Nations could have been artfully manipulated by the USA and the UK into accepting the re-occupation of Lebanon.
Sometimes the best laid plans backfire, but with the sort of control we have, it is usually easily rectifiable. You probably won’t remember the 19th of September 2005. I do as if it were yesterday.
Just not feeling great, I retired to bed, not much of a reader, so my TV was on. Woke up for the ten o’clock news. Pictures of two white men dressed in Arab headscarves, faces obscured. Knew immediately that they were Special Forces when I saw those faces. The MoD had been caught on the hop. Couldn’t quite stop the pictures going out – but could order the BBC and ITV to obscure their faces – digitally pixillated, obscured faces usually mean SAS or special forces.
These men had shot at two Iraqi policemen, killing one of them. This all happened in Basra. The SAS men were arrested, taken to an Iraqi jail and photographed. The Iraqi authorities, probably knowing the handle we have on the media, issued the photographs before we knew the soldiers had been arrested. It took a few years for the establishment to re-write that story in an acceptable form, but this is a war of attrition. The truth can always be subverted over time. If you repeat lies often enough they will supplant the truth.
After long years in the Army I know how to work spin. The military have been working spin for millennia. ‘I may have the weak and feeble body of a woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a King, and a King of England too.’ Did Queen Elizabeth I ever actually utter those words when faced with the Spanish Armada? Historians doubt its authenticity, but it builds a certain national pride and steels the nerve. No Englishman on earth can fail to be moved by those words. If they weren’t uttered at Tilbury Docks, to invigorate the hearts of oak of our sailors, they should have been.
Of course we have carried the use of war propaganda to a completely new level now. Heroes are manufactured with ease. Unfortunately some of those heroes appear to be reluctant to embrace their carefully spun niche in the pantheon of spin.
That troublesome blonde American soldier, Private Jessica Lynch, had to go and spill the beans that she was no hero, so proving herself to be an ultimate hero. She might have had the grace and intelligence to live the lie constructed around her, an easier life for all, especially her. Unfortunately there are still men and women who seem to think that truth is fixed and absolute and are not prepared to garnish it with a little ostentation when circumstances demand. Where would England be today if Queen Elizabeth I had taken that stance?
The spin, which the MoD purveyed with superlative ease on the night of 19th September 2005, was breathtaking. Even I, who know what is possible, was impressed. First the army surrounded the prison with troops in tanks. Then, possibly using those we have in our pocket, they made sure the insurgents knew where to go and what had happened, and they got the cameras there in good time. With a few Molotov cocktails aimed at our tanks a brilliant picture was taken of a British soldier in flames, emerging from a tank. That scene would be milked for years. That was the picture which was on the front page of every newspaper the following morning; not the picture of two captured SAS men, caught having shot dead an Iraqi policeman. Captured what’s more in Arab attire. That story went down the pan. If the Iraqi people had been wholly committed to peace and not throwing Molotov cocktails at provocative tanks the story might have been very different. If the Intelligence Services had not been so adept at ensuring the Molotov cocktails were so readily to hand we would have had egg on our faces. It would have been a story about the Army’s security services out of control. The tanks went on to demolish the walls of the prison, allowing 150 prisoners to escape, whilst rescuing two murderous Special Forces men.
Newspapers and TV channels carried the predictable propaganda of a ‘brave’ attempt to ‘rescue our boys.’ So how did we side step the inevitable question as to who gave these SAS men their orders? The only proof I can offer of our overall control is that no newspaper ran the real story in any depth and every news programme headlined the smoke and mirrors stories we so elegantly concocted. Insurgency under a false flag is a necessary tool in the art of spin.
As it was, no questions were asked in Parliament – it was in recess anyway. The argument became one of whether we should stay in Iraq and for how long. A second spin about an out of control cleric, Muqtada al Sadr did not take off – our fail-safe plan had worked. Muqtada al Sadr could wait for another necessary spin scenario. His name had been introduced to the wider public and he was ripe to be portrayed as a bogey man. The story has sunk without trace.
Accountability for out of control assassination squads dressed as Arab insurgents, and those who gave them their orders, was expected. I feel sure the shock was felt by many – but if ever they needed proof positive of our control over every facet of establishment rule – they had it the following day with a virtual news black-out on the real story.
David Shayler and Annie Machon’s attempts to bring amoral and possibly illegal activities by the Security Services (MI5) in an assassination attempt bit the dust. Why should the story alter on this occasion?
Had we not spun and contrived so effectively the outcome in Basra that night could have been very different. If we hadn’t been able to rely on Iraqi insurgents playing into our hands, we might have faced an entirely altered news story. First there would have been pictures of two SAS men dressed as Arab insurgents, having shot dead a member of the civilian law and order forces. Then there would have been a picture of tanks with peaceable Iraqi’s holding placards, in English, for our TV screens, telling that story. Then there would have been a story about the Army knocking down the walls of the prison – letting out 150 real criminals - to snatch back two British soldiers who had been properly arrested. A big no no. No, we could rely on a few Iraqi’s to throw a dozen or so Molotovs at our tanks and set a British soldier alight. That was the story. Brilliant.
We couldn’t have done that with peaceful protestors. Protestors who would refuse to hit back, whatever the provocation, would have ruined our story – although even if protestors resolve to be peaceful it is always possible to provide a phalanx of those under our control to subvert any peaceful protest. Muqtqada al Sadr would have had to be trotted out, but if Muqtada al Sadr was a man of peace that wouldn’t have worked either.
A similar story of Iraqi barbarism had emerged to justify tougher tactics with the martyring of just over half a dozen Military Policemen in an Iraqi police house. No one will face trial for that simply because members of the press, who are not wholly recruited to our cause, will pick holes in some of the evidence. These men were probably sacrificed to justify a more intolerant policy toward the Iraqi peoples. To allow private security companies and their assassins free rein in Iraq. At that time I was sure the sacrifice was justified, it was my story too – I knew without any hesitation which side I was on. The loss of a few men to justify a new policy of brutality is always an effective option.
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Chapter 6
Back to religion – I get so easily diverted. We’ve been wandering around for 2,000 years waiting for the second coming and it hasn’t happened. So something had to be wrong – that’s one of the reasons why I found the idea of God so difficult. The second coming was meant to happen fairly swiftly. The good were to inherit the earth, or at least the meek. Not sure quite what meek means. No dictionary here, but to me the meek are the most easily manipulated. Weak characters the meek. Weak characters are like stickleback fish. Why is it, do you think, that military intelligence refuses to recruit, to their salaried staff, those with a history of mental illness? We’ll use them to further our ends, but they are discouraged from pursuing a career in military intelligence.
Mentally fragile people are like stickleback fish infected by tapeworm. Correctly handled, they will do whatever one wants them to do. These people are recruited, but can easily be denied as having overactive imaginations and a history of mental illness if they break ranks.
If you are not a fisherman let me explain. Stickleback fish infected by a nematode tapeworm hover in shallower waters. Why? Well the tapeworm needs to get into the body of a bird to complete its life cycle.
So the tapeworm alters the brain of the stickleback to swim in shallower waters where it can more easily be caught by passing birds in the air. Survival of the fittest? No, the fish should be fitter than the tapeworm. Somehow the tapeworm deprives the fish of free will – or alters that will to make the fish self-destruct - for the sake of the parasite. Without even being aware that it has been infected the fish behaves in such a way as to make the tapeworm, rather than the fish survive. The fish becomes self destructive in order to ensure the life cycle of the tapeworm becomes its’ primary importance.
New research has shown that humans are subjected to psychological change when infected by parasites too. Taxoplasmagondii infects about 20% of the population in the UK and 65% in France and Germany. This parasite makes men less suspicious and women more suspicious. If one wants to create a more paranoid woman, this little parasite gives us a distinct advantage. What woman is likely to be so cold hearted as to turn away a stray cat begging for a home? Cats are carriers of this parasite. Abracadabra you expose a normally unsuspicious woman to this parasite and you are well on the way to making her paranoid.
Psychological warfare is something, which is used to good effect too.
More up to date research suggests that targets infected with taxoplasmosis may have the effects of the parasite negated through ingestion of some drugs supposedly used to combat schizophrenia, so one has to be careful and choose the target’s psychiatrist advisedly.
Prozac, valium, lithium, and all those other drugs for the mentally fragile, deprive people of free will, without their even knowing it. Once you have brain altering drugs you become easy prey to the will of others. All this was discovered at Porton Down many years ago. That story about a serviceman - Ronnie Maddison - having died of Sarin poisoning fifty odd years ago, is not nearly the whole story. For years it was dismissed as yet another ‘conspiracy theory.’ It was apparently the third biggest conspiracy theory. Yes, we did test chemical weapons there, that much is now known.
The story was that a cure for the common cold was sought; a useful cover story without any hope of an end. We did discover that the common cold is a means of expelling potentially harmful viruses from the body, but the fiction of continuing research, masked research of a nature which would never have attracted recruits. Whilst many may have been infected with cold viruses, many others were subjected to far more sinister experiments. Porton Down had its twin in the CIA experimental biological and chemical weaponry test Operation – MK NAOMI. There was a great deal of cooperation and trading of data across the Atlantic.
What is not known is that hallucinogenic drugs were also tested. The subjects of these experiments were more pliable, but if captured by the enemy they became pliable to them too. Not much use in the event of capture.
At the end of the Korean War, it became obvious that many of our PoW’s had been subjected to mind bending techniques. It was simply our patriotic duty to find out how to emulate these techniques to ensure we were ahead of the game and not caught on the hop again. If that meant the use of the unwitting or gullible in these experiments, then so be it.
We had to move out of Porton Down when the questions became too difficult. The men responsible for choosing Ronnie Maddison as their guinea pig simply didn’t do their homework properly. I have no doubt at all that Maddison was chosen after his family had been vetted. Mother, father – sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents – if you want a guinea pig it always does to do one’s homework. Is anyone in the family likely to make waves, ask the wrong sorts of questions? If so find another guinea pig.
With Maddison someone somewhere didn’t do the essential research – number three on the list of conspiracy theories – you don’t get that without someone in the family being capable of making waves. From there the experiments went to a number of private bodies, including the Monastery – or ex Monastery, which had become a private mental health hospital. The ruse of the common cold was finally dispensed with. In the Monastery research could concentrate on the new shibboleth – psychological research. Another privatised success. The Human Rights Act only applies to State sanctioned and run operations. Those involved in psychological warfare testing in a privatised mental hospital, like the Monastery, have no rights under the Human Rights Act.
The danger of the Monastery being revealed to be the testing ground of psychological experiments is now almost upon us. The Monastery has been bought and sold so often that it is almost certain that some sort of distance is being put up between the Monastery and psy-ops operations. The man who currently owns it was nominated for a peerage and then turned down by the Committee scrutinising peerages, so no doubt the involvement of the Monastery in psychological experimentation is expected, but we’ll be able to pin the blame on out of control psychiatrists, not on a State which sanctioned trick cyclist experiments during a different era.
Deniability again. The Minister in charge of the MoD or the Health Minister could not be asked questions about the treatment of patients in a private mental health clinic. Clever.
That mental health clinic now gets about 70% of its revenue from government contracts. The police, the army, the security services, local health authorities, Special Services, the MoD, provide 70% of the income for that clinic, but it is outside NHS jurisdiction. We should bear that in mind when we look at Cameron’s attempts to overhaul the National Health Service. Any privatised arm of Government escapes censure and the law by virtue of its privatisation to the profit sector and out of Government control.
We know the backgrounds of all those admitted, which of the patients don’t have families or have families that are not inclined to make waves or question medical opinion. Some years ago, after a spate of compromising rumours, the Monastery became quite famous for treating celebrity junkies, who raved about the Monastery. The Monastery’s credibility became quite pukka. It becomes so much easier to pick out individuals with no families to speak of or of no particularly difficult stock, to experiment upon in an institution of impeccable reputation, raved about by the leading celebrities of the day.
Has the cult of celebrity replaced religious belief? A sane belief in religion, and the moral standards that religion demands, has been found to provide targets with some resistance to mind manipulation. Therefore the target’s belief in religion must be undermined. Quite the best way to do that is to find members of their church to betray them.
Organised religion has been commandeered into our service, as much as any other seat of power. Tree huggers and greens would have you believe they present an alternative political choice. We have long term moles in their ranks too. You may remember one of our recruits blabbing about his service to intelligence who had survived and worked for years as an undercover agent in a group of green alternatives. He had gone native, married within the organisation and was viewed with suspicion by our lot.
The case of Mark Kennedy, an undercover police officer, who had given evidence helpful to the defence, hit the news headlines on 18 April 2011, when the Director of Public Prosecutions invited those convicted of offences in Nottinghamshire to appeal their conviction. Nottinghamshire police were blamed for non-disclosure of Mark Kennedy’s evidence. The fact that agents provocateur are placed permanently within wholly legal protest groups was never going to be fully scrutinised. Just occasionally it backfires, as it did on this occasion, however this case is an anomaly. I wouldn’t like to bet on the police officer’s ability to work again.
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Chapter 7
When it became clear that a campaign was being organised to embarrass the Government at the G8 meeting in 2005, the cult of celebrity – allied to Government – turned a negative campaign into a positive affirmation of the morality of our Government. Suddenly those attending the G8 meeting could be heard mouthing the mantra of the protestors: “Make poverty history.” Protestors suspected that the members of the G8 were conspiring to ensure the peasants were permanently mired in poverty. To have their slogan fed back to them, by world leaders, emasculated the protest, depriving their spokesmen of a voice. The art of spin is a black art.
When cheap anti AIDS drugs were available from India and threatening to flood the African market, celebrities organised a concert to buy retroviral drugs: drugs with American patents, not the cheap drugs available from India. The cult of celebrity allied itself to big business, to prevent an effective unpatented drug, combined in one tablet, reaching desperate AIDS sufferers on the continent of Africa. The patented drug companies, from large Western pharmaceuticals hung onto their patents and were no longer in danger of losing their sales to the more effective single pill manufacturers of India. Two different companies, quoted on the stock exchange and supported by Governments, their agencies and the security services, made drugs which worked in tandem, at some greater expense, to counteract the onset of full blown AIDS. Governments are in thrall to big business and the security services are often big companies’ foot soldiers. The cheaper Indian retroviral facsimile, untrammelled by the niceties of patent law, were able to combine both drugs in a highly effective single tablet. The stars of popular culture were willingly drafted in to support the sales of patented drugs and deflect the sales of unpatented retroviral drugs, and to get ordinary citizens with charitable intentions to subsidize the purchase of the less effective drugs.
Yet the peasants supporting these celebrities considered they were assisting the victims of the disease, little realising they were actually supporting the bottom line profits of publicly quoted pharmaceutical companies.
Anti-retroviral drugs were being bought by poor African countries, but they were buying the simpler, more effective and cheaper Indian pirated version. Obviously aid packages to poor African countries were under threat. Aid monies, supplied by countries with a stranglehold on the world’s businesses, could not be given to support business outside the protected inner circle; the laager if you will of stock exchange protection. Aid could not be cut off, but a deal could be done in which the promised aid package could immediately be directed back into the pockets of big corporations and ensure their stranglehold of patents reigned supreme.
Those who supported the pop stars efforts to supply anti-retroviral drugs imagined they were giving money to alleviate the lives of individual AIDS sufferers, hitherto ignored due to their poverty. Whereas in fact they were assisting the large pharmaceutical corporations, who were making strenuous efforts to scupper a more effective drug and refusing to ally their the efforts into producing dugs in a single dosage tablet – all in the interests of profits above even the sanctity of life.
An article in the Lancet magazine, left by a medic in the ward, carries the story of a scandal of ineffective malaria drugs. Chlorocaine, long superseded by more effective anti-malaria pills, was funded and bought by the World Bank. So there you have it – ineffective drugs sent to Africa to supposedly fight malaria, seem instead to be a cynical ploy to assist a drugs company - whose product is well past its sell by date. Yet the scandal barely makes the national press and certainly no one of any real seniority in the World Bank or the World Health Organisation will carry the can for this. Snouts and troughs proliferate.
The electorate are no longer in control of our political processes, they are managed on behalf of those in power and the strings of management have insidious control over every facet of their lives.
‘Make Poverty History’ became a catchphrase, glibly trotted out by politicians and celebrities alike, allied in their success and needing one another to affirm their own importance in the world. Plays were written and broadcast, interviews given. The media conspired to ensure that the original dissenters who had campaigned for so long, against the moral excesses, which further impoverished poverty stricken nations, were ousted from the political arena.
If religion is about free will, why are the meek so easily targeted, when they are the ones that will inherit the earth? Who would want to inherit a world of crass innocents, oblivious to the mayhem which may be unwittingly wrought by them in the world?
The meek are on the side of the forces of evil. It is they who turn a blind eye to corruption and establishment criminality, it is on them we can rely when shaping the educational agenda, or bringing in legislation to enslave people. The meek, the mad and those with skeletons in their closets are all recruited to turn a blind eye to the obvious corruption which has overtaken our world.
Have you ever noticed how MP’s rise and fall? There are those in the know. Michael Mates MP was one, he may have thought himself protected by his own military career, but he was to find out he was not immune. Once he realised that the gift of an inscribed watch – given to him by Asil Nadir of Polly Peck - was the primary dirt we had on him, and that if he didn’t do as he was told he would be thoroughly shamed, perhaps with a plethora of secondary dirt, we had him in the palm of our hand. Mates is on record in Hansard at hinting that the security services were up to some sort of skulduggery – I wasn’t involved but I suspect that he was enlightened that if he continued making illiberal assertions about out of control security services it could be very bad for his health. Asil Nadir eventually agreed to a deal and returned to Britain, no more dirt on Michael Mates could be trawled up, but then Michael Mates MP was a spent force.
You will be hard pressed to find a Member of Parliament now without some dirt we can use as a lever. Those without dirt never even get on the Party Lists.
General Sir John Nichols of the South Wales Borderers was employed by the Conservative Party when the Tories designed the new hurdle for would be Conservative MP’s back in the 1980’s. Why would a man with a military intelligence background be employed to design the Tory Party Selection Board procedure?
If MP’s didn’t have dirt when they arrived in Parliament we could manufacture it pretty instantly – as I suspect happened in the John Profumo, Christine Keeler affair. MP’s are peculiar animals. They are, more often than not, inspired primarily by their yen for celebrity; the need to be publicly acknowledged makes these creatures weak. Public acknowledgement comes in many guises – the attention of a pretty young girl – or boy, seats in the director’s box at football matches or Lords Cricket ground, introduction to the powerful, a shared holiday. And there is always that ill defined understanding that greater powers exist, to which obeisance must be made. All those in any position of power are now aware that they rock the boat at their peril. So with carrot and stick, the means of corrupting those in power are myriad.
To target these people one must recruit affable, charming, ego flattering individuals who are able to make every questionable backhander, gift or favour, appear to be the most natural inconsequential concomitant of the MP’s inflated self regarding due. Stephen Ward was an adept early recruit - one of ours, but I am ahead of myself here.
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Chapter 8
2,000 years we’ve been waiting for the second coming. Waiting and knowing that evil will encompass the earth, brother will betray brother and millions will die. Arrogant evangelicals all over America still believe they will be ‘raptured’ up to Heaven before all hell breaks loose on earth. What basis they have for this belief is beyond me. I can find no writing to substantiate it, no prophecy, no promise. Yet their bumper stickers proclaim this as if it were an incontrovertible fact. It beats me how any supporter of the current American administration can believe they will be excused the suffering to come.
Natural justice demands that those who support a powerful abusive Government of privileged individuals, who have turned the clock back to embrace torture, imprisonment without trial and economic injustice, should be first in line for whatever suffering is meted out.
‘Gladio’ is, it seems, overseen by the CIA and MI6, under the aegis of NATO. And it is an American who is always in charge of Stay Behind / Gladio NATO forces in Europe.
How sadly misled we all are. Wish thinkers and optimists all. Happy to turn a critical face on the corruption or excesses of others, yet prepared to justify our own corruption with extenuating circumstances.
My own belief is somewhat different. God is, I know, embroiled in a battle against evil, a battle to the death. He hasn’t the luxury of killing off the evil to add to the troops opposing Him. He offers everyone a chance to convert to the forces of good. For some that takes a lifetime, for others it is but a few short years before they are called to join His troops to fight evil on a higher plane. Why risk killing off those wedded to promoting evil on earth? They’ll just go on to promote evil for all eternity. However making the good commit suicide reduces the forces for good among the angelic host. Inducing other to commit suicide is something I was up to my neck in – and it is a very effective method of ridding the world of truth tellers whose perceptive analysis of reality must be hidden from the world at large.
I now believe that life is a testing ground, where souls in question are sent to test their fitness for Heaven. Pass the test and you are ready to die, fail and you will continue living until the last possible moment. At this moment my death is imminent and I have been given time to write my Confession and seek atonement. I believe God allows those who perpetrate evil to be given time to recant.
That pad of paper in the black lever arch file, given to me by Alex, represented my last chance of converting to the forces of good.
All my life I have been a stalwart recruit of those men, and a few women, who have ordered evil throughout the earth. This is my last chance to be saved. This little book is all that stands between me and Heaven or hell. Notice that capitalisation? You can already see what I want - my bargaining tool. This little book is just a story of one man’s life, charting years of experience and a final death-bed conversion. Perhaps it is merely a vain hope that the fatted calf will be sacrificed for me as the gates of Heaven open. Have I too finally become the eternal delusional optimist?
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BOOK TWO
Chapter I
My early life was no different from most comfortable middle class children. A good prep school, a public school not too fussy about the intellectual capacity of those it accepted, and then a decision for a career. I had only excelled at rugby and cricket, and then only at house level. Not having much in the upstairs department the Army seemed the natural choice.
My public school was a bit of an eye opener. Lots of foreigners started arriving, since they couldn’t get enough pukka English parents to send their offspring to a seaside port and a school lacking an academic reputation. All those grammar school boys and girls were now able to get into good universities; places formerly reserved for the likes of me. Can’t say I’m sorry to see that public schools are on the up again. University tuition fees and no financial assistance to help students’ living costs and we have finally got back to the status quo as far as University places go. Sandhurst was my University, as good as any Oxbridge College – or so I am told.
At the beginning of the sixties I started at Sandhurst. The newly appointed Minister for War, John Profumo was vaguely one of ours. As a new recruit I was only involved on the periphery of that particular debacle. Two or three years before Profumo’s resignation I had been volunteered to drive one of our movers and shakers up to Cliveden. Very new to the Military Academy at Sandhurst and feeling rather special at having been picked to drive a senior officer to Cliveden, I sat in the car whilst a meeting took place, wandered through the gardens and was offered tea by the housekeeper, when it all took a little longer than expected. I never met Lord Astor and don’t know who I saw accompanying the Colonel as he examined his stopwatch around a little cottage in the grounds near the swimming pool. All I heard was: ‘Timing is all.’
Knowing what I do now, I often wonder if Profumo was being set up to fall, if ever he fell out of line with army thinking. Keeler in her autobiography has it that Lord Denning deliberately overlooked certain facts. She also claims she was never a call girl. I believe her, but it was necessary to sully her name – to make her less than human - so that she should not excite public sympathy. The name Christine Keeler and ‘call girl’ are still synonymous. The black art of spin would taint any testimony she gave for decades.
The timing of Profumo’s first sight of Keeler, alone and naked in a swimming pool, near the cottage she shared that famous week-end with Stephen Ward, was so fortuitous that it could only have been planned. There was to be no formal introduction, which could be blamed on anyone in any position of power. Timing was indeed everything.
Keeler was a very attractive ‘friend’ of Stephen Ward. It doesn’t take much to forge a friendship with a beautiful needy girl down on her luck. Keeler was caught up in the whole sexual liberation thing. Was she just an innocent caught up in events she was manipulated into? A young sorry individual whose life was not worth worrying about? A pretty girl who could be coerced by her Svengali into a couple of relationships with much older men - then thrown on the scrap heap without a second thought? Profumo was 48 and Keeler 19.
Had an interesting conversation with young Alex recently, he came up with a mathematical formula for gauging acceptable variations of age in physical relationships. Alex suggested one takes the age of the older person in the relationship – in this case Profumo at 48 – divide the age by two – yes, 24 – then add seven. By this simple formula Profumo should not have had an affair with any woman under the age of 31. And a 31 year old would not have been quite as naïve as Keeler was to the machinations of Stephen Ward. It was essential to use a trusting teenager unwilling to question authority and sufficiently malleable to have her head turned by powerful men. I am now certain this made Christine Keeler a perfect patsy.
Ivanov was another ‘friend’ of Ward’s. How much did Keeler understand about sexual liberation or political intrigue? She ws too young to be discerning. It is so easy to dupe the uninitiated, the meek, the weak and the easily manipulated.
Never saw much evidence of sexual liberation thing myself, but the army is probably more sexually liberated than most spheres. I have had one relationship which soured my romantic ambitions ever after. Although adultery is a dismissible offence, many soldiers happily lay down their wives for a more senior officer, who might be able to have some sway over their future career when the affair is over. A debt of honour for the discretionary blind eye can lead to preferment.
Women have always been considered chattels in the military sphere, unless of course they are able to carve out their own little power-houses. The Queen Mother was just such a woman. She carved out her own small powerhouse with great aplomb.
I was fit, pliable, easily led, inclined to follow orders, and knew how to ingratiate myself with those in authority, I did exceptionally well. From Sandhurst I distinguished myself in Ireland, but that is covered by the Official Secrets Act. All I can say is that years later I discovered the powers that be at Stormont, were convinced that the Russkies had a hand in fomenting unrest in Northern Ireland; unrest which started far earlier than any of us could imagine. The truth was that our own Security Services were not inactive in fomenting that unrest themselves.
Of course the weaponry carried by members of paramilitary forces led directly back to the USSR. This might have been a bit of a clue; it could also have been a false trail.
I was back in Sandhurst during the week of John Profumo’s resignation, for yet another course. The whole picture was highly political.
The Cuban crisis, Kennedy’s assassination and a whole anti-Commie climate fuelled fears around that time. Communist and Socialist became interchangeable words; no distinction was made between the two philosophies. I really can’t remember dates, always been my failing, but it made us, in the Army, feel frightfully important. We were all that stood between being overrun by Commies and the demise of the monarchy, to whom we had sworn undying allegiance. Republican, left wing and Socialist sentiments were anathema to us.
Hugh Gaitskell’s death also occurred around the same sort of time. A few years later I heard rumours to the effect that a KGB man – Anatoli Golitsin – had defected to the CIA and revealed a plot to kill off a patriotic British leader of a political party and put a KGB stooge in place. Of course all Security Services are practised in the art of fuelling the paranoia of the enemies’ Security Services too. Still, it made one wonder at Gaitskill’s death at around the age of 56, and Wilson’s rise to power. No one in the Army trusted or liked Wilson. The fact that Gaitskill had fallen ill after a trip to Moscow, didn’t do much to scotch these rumours. There you have it, death of the leader of the Labour Party and then some Commie stooge comes in to take over a British political party and the whole country is in peril. The reasoning was flawless, Wilson was a marked man and the Yanks have never tolerated socialists.
Many years later I was to hear of a Commie plot to discredit Mountbattern. Lord Mountbatten had been Chief of the Army’s General Staff, a favourite uncle within the Royal Family and a real mover and shaker in all the most powerful circles.
Lord Louis Mountbatten - the man who conspired to introduce Princess Elizabeth, as she then was, to Prince Philip of Greece – the result is the long and happy marriage of Her Majesty the Queen to the Duke of Edinburgh.
The Mountbattens anglicised the family name when having the German name – Battenburg - became a bit iffy. Mountbatten was the one who, I now know, created the whole problem over Prince Charles. Desperate to see one of his grandchildren or great nieces married off to the heir to the throne, it was he who advised The Prince to sow his wild oats, not settle down for some time. Mountbatten’s intended brides were much too young to marry. He needed time to groom one of his young relatives for the role.
He took the mare to water eventually, but the filly refused to drink. The poor boy didn’t need much persuasion, if he could make his uncle Dickie happy he would. He needed to marry young and well and preferably to a strong woman. Instead he pfaffed around getting himself into the sort of scrapes a good wife would have prevented. Often wonder if the heir to our throne isn’t a bit of a self-destructive infected stickleback fish.
Anyway I divert from the real story. It became well known that a few Commie bastards had inveigled Lord Mountbatten into a meeting in Kinnerton Street, Belgravia. Newspaper types supporting the Labour Party. This was, so I am told, around 1968.
These Commies had heard a rumour that there was some sort of plot for a military coup. They needed proof. Now Mountbatten was not entirely averse to changing Britain for the good, but he smelt a rat. Were these men to be trusted? Most of them worked for a newspaper with known Commie credentials. Were they setting up Lord Louis for a fall? General consensus was that they were. If the house was bugged, entirely probable as it was the home of the Chairman of the Mirror Group, they would have it on record that a member of the Royal Family was supporting a military coup and so be able, at one fell swoop, to abolish the monarchy, life as we know it and deliver the British people lock stock and barrel into the hands of the Republicans and Commies. Isn’t it funny that today we have no such paranoia about the Chinese Communists who really are colonising the world through commerce?
Lord Louis Mountbatten was asked if he would lead a new administration to restore public confidence, after it was outlined that the country was likely to rise up in a bloody revolution, to prevent this a military coup was essential – or so it was argued. The picture of the country requiring a good titular head would have appealed to the old goat’s egoism. Psychologically astute the Russkies, but whatever they were doing we could do too.
Just to make it all kosher and above board one of this little number of Commies staged a little tantrum, or so he says. He was the chief scientific advisor to the Government of the day, so I am told. We have the whole thing on tape – our tape. Doesn’t tally with his account of what actually happened that day but what is in the public domain is that he told Lord Mountbatten: ‘This is rank treachery, all this talk of machine guns at street corners is appalling. I am a public servant and will have nothing to do with it – nor should you Dickie.’ This isn’t an official secret, it was published in the Daily Mail (Geoffrey Levy, DM, 13th March 2006, pages 30 & 31). What the scientific adviser eventually told Harold Wilson, was that Mountbatten actually ordered him out of the room. Who was playing whom? I rather think Mountbatten himself was capable of taking a hand to undermine Socialists in Britain.
The official line is that men with knighthoods and peerages tried to net Lord Mountbatten in some sort of scam to undermine the fabric of our society. I am not saying that such plans were not in place, nor denying that we wanted rid of Harold Wilson and the Labour Government. It is just that Lord Mountbatten knew who the real movers and shakers were and they weren’t these men, men loyal to a Commie Government. The establishment line is that Mountbatten told the newspaper men: ‘it is simply not on.’
In mitigation the chief scientific advisor was later to be heard saying that: ‘the whole thing sounded like James Bond.’
Well there you have it the nub of the problem. James Bond. Bond, James Bond, Ian Flemings recruiting sergeant to the world of the intelligence services.
2,1004
Chapter 2
Fleming was one of ours and has been our greatest recruiting sergeant with his fictional character, James Bond. How else would we recruit scores of civilians to our cause without James Bond? It beggars belief. Everyone wants to be James Bond, men and women alike. If any one is approached to do some small favour for us, we don’t even have to mention Bond. The image of a fictional character is enough to recruit most people to our cause, without question. We don’t have to justify anything; they know the rules – ‘need to know basis only.’
The opening scene in one Bond film shows a photograph of an enemy installation. A site which had escaped British interest. The picture was ostensibly taken by an innocent tourist and passed on to Military Intelligence. Just brushing aside the morality of it all the audience is told that the tourist is no more and that no other photographic evidence of this enemy facility exists in British files. The very people whom he alerted to the possible danger, had expunged the fictional tourist – entirely probable in any real life scenario, can’t trust military intelligence. The implications of that scene are often missed.
No one seriously questions the need for Military Intelligence to kill a patriotic British tourist intent on doing his public duty. There you have it, we are above the law and that is a fact. Those giving evidence in court are told that the normal rules of ‘telling the whole truth’ under oath, do not apply. We seldom allow cases to get into any courtroom. If they do a suicide can usually be arranged if silence cannot be guaranteed. Added to which the judiciary is not immune from our advances.
Jonathan Aitken mentioned, in mitigation during his trial, that he was working for MI6, Six (Secret Intelligence Services) as an arms salesman. He was bright enough not to mention it again and take his punishment like a man.
The great thing about recruiting people to do something for us is that they believe themselves to be part of an elite corps, especially chosen for their hitherto overlooked talents. These people never realise that so many are recruited that there is nothing particularly special about what they do. The veil of secrecy over the process ensures that even we, the recruiters, do not realise how many are manipulated into working for us. Those who are salaried are so few that most politicians can pooh pooh any idea of a vast army of secret operatives. Most will do it for the glory alone. However I’ve gone ahead of myself again.
I remember a time in 1974 – a cold January, on an anti-terrorist exercise, we ringed Heathrow airport with tanks. We did pretty much the same post 9/11. That is the problem you see, we have so manipulated society that we realise how paranoid society should be and become ever more paranoid ourselves, knowing what is possible. That we should have been allowed to do this in ‘74 came as a surprise to many of us. But we had a Tory Party teetering against public apathy and despite Ted Heath’s famous comment that he didn’t trust the security services; he thought we were too paranoid - he wasn’t going to prohibit an anti-terrorist exercise whilst the threat of subversives from Ireland loomed so large in the UK. Labour lurched into power and the Prime Minister was too new and too uneducated in the ways of the Security Services to do much to stop us. The most effective way to cow any nation into submission is the perception of a threat from those outside their borders, or a perceived threat by easily identifiable groups within their borders. Totalitarian regimes the world over have magnified these threats, to enslave their populations into accepting the most draconian laws, which make possible a threat to freedom, which few are even aware exists.
As Orwell said in his novel: 1984 - ‘… the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural unavoidable condition of survival’. (‘1984, Pt2, Chapter 9, The Book, Ch III, War is Peace – George Orwell – aka Eric Blair)
I hear that Wilson was convinced that we were actually preparing for a military coup that January in 1974. No military coup happened, but I have been to a meeting, undercover, where Tony Benn swore that military intelligence were rooting through his rubbish bins at that time. I don’t know where the truth lies, but the overwhelming presence of tanks and armed policemen at Heathrow shortly after 9/11 suddenly seems to make sense. Were we again preparing for a military coup?
A few pleasurable and not so pleasurable postings and I was back in Sandhurst, sitting at the back of a lecture hall, around 1975. By then I knew we had files on all Commie sympathisers, inside and outside Government. In fact we had the dirt on everyone and anyone who mattered and many who seemed not to matter at all. We could disseminate rumour with a smidgeon of truth decorated with a varnish of scandal, ruin careers and promote sympathisers at whim. Those were the days.
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Chapter 3
Now, looking back on it all, I blame Winston Churchill. Long before I had stopped sucking at my mother’s breast Winston Churchill set up various departments within the secret services, none of whom knew of the others existence. SOE (Special Operations Executive) was Churchill’s baby. The only one really in the loop was Winston himself. All well and good whilst Churchill was in charge. It is what came after that has caused the major problem. Winston never prepared for a time when he was no longer in charge. No proper accountability was ever put in place, a problem which persists to this day.
There is a book by Helen Hamilton (a pseudonym) entitled: The Department that doesn’t exist. In it she chronicles her startling recruitment into a post war secret services department, which had absolute deniability – always a good ruse when not wanting to be found out. No Minister can answer questions on a department that doesn’t exist. We’ve brought that up to a new level now. The writer (Jill – aka Helen Hamilton) – who is now dead – had no idea what she was really involved with. In the book she says that on the death of her lover – the man she believed to be head of ‘The Department That Doesn’t Exist’ - the department folded. If only she had known.
The Department went from strength to strength. Of course we pensioned her off, as only we can. She had a little bookshop and we made sure that, despite there being another bookshop in the town of Oakham, most business which we could organise went her way. It has folded now, no need to continue ensuring that business was sent her way after she died.
Winston Churchill’s absolute rule over the Security Services meant that there was some sort of oversight of Security Service activities, while he retained power. No one has any real oversight any longer. Special Branch do things which get in the way of the Squirrels, who do things which get in the way of Five, who do things which get in the way of the MoD police, who do things which get in the way of the Army. Not to mention SIS, Customs and Excise and all those little groups and S/B cells who mess up the whole thing all the time. SIS is a law unto itself. There is no control in the system. Efforts have been made to have some sort of control at least over the domestic sides of these operations which has resulted in SOCA (the Serious and Organised Crime Agency). In March 2007 it was reported that the Home Secretary, John Reid, had failed to wrest overall charge for MI6 from the Foreign Office. A quiet and deadly covert war is being waged between MI5 and MI6 (SIS). SIS will always win out, particularly as the Department for Home Office Security is about to be transferred to Manchester. However in the interim a great many bloody scalps will be collected.
The fact that the very people who messed up our covert activities through interdepartmental internecine battles have been recruited to SOCA (Serious Organised Crime Agency) bodes ill for any seizing back of the reins of power or the dawn of a new era of accountable ethical operations. Set a thief to catch a thief and the result is often a larger band of brigands. Thief takers almost inevitably go native.
We almost got Tony Blair, and whomever his then Home Secretary might have been, on side with some sort of deal to bring back control to the whole thing, but it proved a lot more difficult than we thought. Rumour has it that Blair was a Five asset when he first stood in Beaconsfield. It is actually against the law to have assets of the intelligence services in Parliament. This is more often observed in the breach than the observance.
Once an asset, always an asset. No one wants to give up power. SOCA has been formed to have some sort of overall control within the borders of the UK, but to put an ex head of Five at SOCA’s head beggars belief. Strenuous efforts are being made to give more definite powers, enshrined in law, to more security services to ensure overall power is wrested back to the centre of our select few. I say our, but I’ve really no idea who ‘we’ are. Need to know basis only, you know the drill.
When major changes are suggested in our Security Services one can usually deduce that an effort is being made to clean up our act. These efforts are seldom successful. However if the sins are brushed under the carpet in an attempt to protect our integrity, those sins are not likely to be acknowledged in any but the most rarefied circles, and even there the blinkers will be applied to ensure that the most palliative and anodyne spin is given. Little will change.
Back to October 1974/5. We were living through the last real Labour Government. The Security Services have never been comfortable with Labour in power. At last we had the Government where we wanted it, but still not sufficient social unrest to deploy a coup.
Ted Heath’s three day week, strikes by Commie Trades Unionists up and down the country and then we got a Labour Government back again, after celebrating a Tory victory which was not sustained for longer than one term and a few months into the second term. Ted Heath decided, during the honeymoon of his second term in government, he would have a stand off with the unions. He failed. We were ready to go but the call never came. Pints and sandwiches were consumed by Trades Union leaders at Chequers and in 10 Downing Street instead. A ‘Social Contract’ was being thrashed out.
Then the bloody Tories go and elect a woman to lead them - Margaret Thatcher. We thought the end of the world had come, a bloody woman. How wrong we were. She was a woman with more balls than most men. When she became leader of the Tories we were ready to jump under the proverbial juggernaut. As Prime Minister, we eventually recognised her qualities, we knew we’d got the man we had hoped for. But that was much much later.
The greatest misogynists men can rely on are of the female species. While many women may appear to talk up the sisterhood in a show misandry – haters of men - the truth is that women hate other women more than they hate men. We didn’t have much of a handle on subverting female politicians to our cause when Margaret Thatcher rose to power. Women can be illogically moral and therefore quite troublesome. With Margaret Thatcher at the head of the Tory Party we had time to work on our female strategy for controlling women Members of Parliament. Margaret Thatcher never promoted any woman to any Ministry that mattered – the MoD particularly was still within our aegis of control. Once let in on a few of the secrets of State defence, women are aware how favoured they have become and tend to play by our rules.
Secret Societies have now formed sororities and the female recruits are often easier to subvert than many of their male counterparts in secret fraternities.
But back in 1975, sitting in the mess at Sandhurst I heard rumours of a military coup. By this time I had achieved my majority. Becoming a Major is not too easy with limited grey cells. It helps to know who the movers and shakers are. I also have a certain amount of low native cunning, which has always stood me in good stead. Wouldn’t have been recruited without it.
It is a gift to be born lucky and I was born to that happy estate. However there are those who squander their luck. Which brings me to the subject of Lucky himself.
1,324
Chapter 4
Which diverts me off to Lord Lucan. What a story. Lucky Lucan married badly. Lucky in cards – unlucky in love. He wanted out but, the divorce laws being what they were, he couldn’t have unlimited access to his children unless his wife went doolally; and and in divorce there is always the problem with money.
Aristocracy were still pretty much in charge of the establishment at that time. Ways and means. Lawyers tend to have the means and are the best way to get one out of a scrape – as Alex’s mother knows to her cost. Anyway Lucky Lucan decided to do away with his bride and the mother of his children. The scene was set.
One has to have actual scenarios to train secret soldiers, our own British Secret army is not quite as secret as many would like. The SAS had a nursery in Hereford where they trained ’Stay-Behind’ soldiers, both our own and those of other NATO and non-allied countries, later the ‘nursery’ was transferred to Fort Monkton on the South Coast.
Children out of the house, nanny – Sandra Rivett I believe – was due to go out. Only Lady Lucan was in the house - or so it was thought. Timing may be everything but the cock up theory really came into its own that night. The plan was cocked up good and proper. Lucan had a cast iron alibi – he was at the Claremont Club in the company of people whose reputations were like Caesar’s wife. Everyone knew their place and their time.
Instead the bloody aristo has to go and have a pang of conscience, so ruining his perfect alibi. Then the nanny decides to stay home too.
Lucan knew what was planned and, at the last minute, decided against it. No mobile phones in those days, offices were closed, so he hot foots it around to their home. There he finds the nanny dead and his wife a little the worse for a ruined erasure. She shuffles into a pub, accuses Lucan of trying to murder her, when in fact he had been trying to halt the process of rubbing her out. Poor devil.
Never openly got to see his children again and had to lie low for the rest of his natural. Of course lots of friends in the know, meant that he could get help to flee and leave false trails here there and everywhere. His heir did not lay claim to the peerage until it had been made known that Lord Lucan had died. Police weren’t up to the full force of the British Establishment. They didn’t tend to arrest aristocrats – seemed to go against the grain somewhat. Found guilty in his absence and no one could say that in fact Lucan had tried to halt his wife’s death.
His last minute pang of conscience ruined him. She, of course, had been in the hands of trick cyclists for so long she neither knew nor cared what the reality was. A bundle of money lost to the band of covert operatives too. You can’t function without lucre, small favours like this were our bread and butter. The forced insanity of spouses divorcing powerful men was a useful source of psychological and field experimentation. The men would wittingly deliver their wives into the hands of the psychologists to conduct whatever experimentation they saw fit, under the guise of therapy. It is always easier and financially more lucrative to divorce a mad wife than to divorce a sane one. Since the husband remains the next of kin, until the divorce is finalised, the poor woman has little choice but to submit to her husband’s decisions over her future. If she continues to be a problem there is always the final solution. In the case of Lady Lucan a very bungled and not so final solution.
I was only involved on the periphery of the Lucan affair. We were told to take a couple of 22 Squadron soldiers to search Hampshire and Wiltshire for Lucan. We did as we had been told. We asked the two soldiers under our command to walk across one field in Hampshire and another field in Wiltshire. With boxes now firmly ticked, for Hampshire and Wiltshire, we were able to report back that Special Services personnel had searched for Lucan in both Counties and not found him. I can only presume that other counties were searched in a similarly desultory manner. The British establishment had no intention of opening that particular can of worms. Far better to have one fall guy and find him guilty in absentia than to have silly lines of questioning in open Court, under a not guilty plea. The trial of Lord Lucan could have no possible excuse to cite the Official Secrets Act.
Luckily they had something up front, aristos tried to wrest it back for Lucky Lucan, but they weren’t budging. Fact is they’d probably spent it by then anyway. Departments which don’t exist can’t get financial support, they have to earn it, as you discovered through the whole Oliver North, General Noriega, Iran-contra fiasco.
Arms running by the CIA fuelled by drugs running by an agency of the most powerful country on earth.
How the bloody Iranians kept their M-14’s in the air for so long is written as a mystery. There you have it. American Government decides it is no longer doing business with Iran. The Iranian Airforce were reliant on American cooperation to keep their American M-14’s in the air.
In step the deniable elements of American security services, working through deniable third parties, and ensure that Iran’s ability to fly its American fighter planes is not compromised by what the intelligence community view as irrational ethical political considerations. Particularly when ignoring US Government sanctions proved to be so very lucrative. They had the Iranians at their mercy, no price was too high. Yet another way of playing into the money making hands of the security services. The decision to halt weapons sales to Iran meant that money could be made. The opportunity was seized by the very people who were trusted with the defence of America, trusted so far as to make their actions immune from committees of enquiry.
The half-hearted attempts to stop the drugs trade are also not actually intended to work either. Drugs keep a large number of the electorate sufficiently out of it not to care who governs them, or sufficiently conscious to do anything about democracy. The Security Services, like Plato, have little time for democracy - much better to have a hierarchical society ordered from above.
The best friend of every addict is his or her fix. Bit like Aldous Huxley’s Soma- drugs are a useful tool in getting the brightest, who might be inclined to rock the boat, sufficiently comatose not to care who might be running the ship. Drugs are a useful source of revenue too. At the top of the tree you will usually find some sort of State sanction enabling the most successful drugs barons to flourish. These men may not pay taxes in any overt way, but they do pay their dues covertly. If a serious effort were made to halt drug use we would not use the methods we currently employ to fight our ‘war on drugs.’
Drugs are a double-edged sword. Useful for keeping large portions of the population malleable, useful too as a source of revenue for the sub-contracted intelligence agencies, who cannot go cap in hand to beg for public funding to finance questionable activities. The whole drugs phenomena was introduced by the Security Services. American Security Services – see The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: CIA and Mind Control by John Marks (ISBN 0 393 30794 8 published by W W Norton and Company) - which charts the history of the introduction of LSD through American academia to a wider population.
We discovered that many British and American prisoners of war, returning through the Manchurian area on release from their prison camps in Korea, passed through an area during which, for a period of about three days, their memories were wiped clean of anything that may have happened to them during that interval. That, and the quite obviously false confessions by dissidents within the USSR, thought to have been extracted by psychological means rather than outright brutality, revealed that we believed other countries were way ahead of the West in mechanisms of psychological warfare.
It was a decided that we needed to play catch up – in the interests of National Security of course. A number of academics, specialising in psychological research, from highly respected Universities and Clinics were approached in the United States and probably in the UK too. Although we are always much more adept at keeping our secrets than the Yanks ever could be. We don’t have a troublesome Constitution.
Those who had the fewest moral scruples rose to the top of this experimental hierarchy, supposedly overseen by the CIA. In reality very little moral or ethical oversight was exerted. Almost anything was permitted, so long as discovery did not endanger the CIA’s MK Ultra experiment (see John Marks above). Eventually experiments were perpetrated which tested the longevity of subjects under highly stressful conditions. The subsequent deaths were never a problem, as the backgrounds of those chosen as subjects for experimentation were always well researched to avoid any real trouble. Added to which the subjects were often volunteers, perhaps not fully informed volunteers, but they did volunteer nevertheless.
However a problem arose when LSD was slipped into a post dinner evening liqueur of a member of staff involved on the periphery of the MK Ultra experiment, Frank Olsen. He committed suicide and the subsequent fall out, twenty years later eventually led to evidence coming to light of the MK Ultra Operation and the formal closing of it by the American Government. Except of course such valuable data and possible progress could not be wrested entirely from the hands of the American Secret Services.
The experiments continued, under the far less stringent rules of oversight within the UK. Porton Down had problems, the death of Ronnie Maddison, whilst testing the biological warfare chemical Sarin, rumbled on for about fifty years. Any further experimentation had to be conducted outside the aegis of Government facilities. Deniability and facilities not covered by Ministerial responsibility were necessary. Hence the Monastery, a private clinic, admittedly gaining 70% of its revenue from the MoD, Police and other Government bodies, yet outside the orbit of questions in Parliament, boards of enquiry or with any obvious link to State sanctioned experiments.
During the early years of MK Ultra LSD became quite freely available amongst senior academics and permeated swiftly to the lower levels within Universities, after Eli Lilly, an American pharmaceutical company, succeeded in manufacturing a chemical substance, which did not rely on Ergot for the manufacture of LSD. The effects of the drug could be studied on willing lab rats within a University setting, who were also quite unaware that these closed societies provided excellent covert observation of those taking LSD. According to John Marks LSD was initially only manufactured at one Swiss pharmaceutical company, Sandoz, and the CIA had managed to get an undertaking from the pharmaceutical company that it would inform the CIA of the destination of all and any LSD stock it sold anywhere in the world. In effect the distribution of LSD was monopolised by the CIA, who believed that this drug might provide the open sesame to accurate interrogation of would be defectors, prisoners of war or those who might pose a danger to the State. Miraculous hopes for the efficacy of the drug in counter intelligence operations eventually faded.
The fall out proved to be quite startling. I am told that a ‘good trip’ opens ones mind to the interconnectedness of mankind, a general feeling of love for humanity, untrammelled by country, interest groups or other allegiances, started to take hold of those who had taken LSD. The era of ‘peace and flower power’ threatened the fabric of patriotic administrations. Those involved in the Security Services often showed signs of having had a ‘bad trip’ and suicidal tendencies became apparent. The difference between the paranoid personalities of the security service lab rats, and those more innocent individuals was interesting.
Fortunately the majority of people on whom these experiments were perpetrated were in effect innocents, who would have been unwilling to believe that their democracy might be capable of such sinister tactics, and perhaps felt themselves protected by the American Constitution. Eventually the American Constitution did trigger some protection for US citizens resident in the United States, only for the CIA to export these sorts of experiments abroad. The UK, in particular, had no such troublesome Constitution.
Initially the impetus for further research into psychological warfare led from ARTICHOKE, a largely British initiative, to the eventual founding of MK Ultra, a highly secret CIA initiative to conduct psychological research. Volunteers were first approached, this proved to produce faulty scientific data. The unwitting needed to be experimented upon. Only then could the data recovered be said to have any real relevance or significance.
However the use of members of staff involved in the MK Ultra experiments did not cease entirely. With charitable foundations, set up as fronts to fund these experiments, in a climate of academic research at Universities, the links back to the CIA and SIS became tenuous. But the temptation to test the drug on those who were aware of the MK Ultra Operation at a dinner in New York, proved too tempting to resist. The man who committed suicide, Frank Olsen, had no history of mental illness; the British Government denied any liability to pay his pension and the American Government claimed they too were not liable to take any responsibility for his death. The man’s future son in law, Patrick King, an up and coming lawyer of influence, who would become a Member of the UK Parliament, pursued the case on behalf of his mother-in-law and got a glimpse of the truth. This is the trouble which could have been avoided by using only those whose families would be unlikely to raise any difficulties.
The British man’s suicide did not trigger the end of MK Ultra, the eventual admission, some 22 years later, of the circumstances of Frank Olsen’s suicide in a similar cock up, who had also been slipped a Mickey Finn of LSD led to a Committee of enquiry and the formal disbanding of the MK Ultra experiments. Except of course MK Ultra did not go away, it was merely exported to the UK and more efficiently swept under the carpet.
The American postal anthrax attack was I believe an attempt by the United States Security Services at false flag terrorism. It rather blew up in their faces and someone had to be scapegoated. Mindbending drugs are often very good at ensuring that a scapegoat fesses up.
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It is always useful to be able to conduct methods of psychological warfare abroad. Funding this sort of research is another perennial problem. The CIA were adept at creating charitable foundations whose only real purpose was to provide an acceptable charitable and altruistic front for psy-ops experiments.
The cash strapped British had to be more creative. Training other security services works a treat in drumming up cash. Had quite a lucrative contract with the SADF (South African Defence Force) until some idiot decided to abolish apartheid and let loose Nelson Mandela. However we are back on track with that one now, selling arms and skills to the South Africans again, and making a pretty penny out of it too. More recently we off loaded most of our redundant fleet on them. Now there was a case of consummate MoD salesmanship, the South Africans have no real enemies upon whom they can focus their fleet. Whole deal coincided quite nicely with a very useful aid package.
One little counter intelligence move I was on the periphery of, involved the entirely peaceful use of ‘paper bombs’ by those at odds with the apartheid regime in South Africa. Peaceful means of demonstrating were becoming increasingly difficult to control. The difficulties which arose post Sharpeville can be traced back to a reporter’s photographs which undermined the story, told by the South African Security Services, of what actually happened at the scene.
Sharpeville was intended to be portrayed as a violent mob turning on the South African police, who then had to defend themselves. Pour encourager les autres – a well known tactic. Peddle an incorrect story as irrefutable fact, to justify Security Service actions, and ensure that those who survive realise that their case is hopeless, they will never get justice, so they might as well give up - a form of psychological warfare if you like. One young photographer did not leave the area when all the international media had been ordered to do so. Unbeknownst to the Security Services he survived and went on to receive awards for the photographs he snapped that day. So giving the lie to a carefully constructed and well-planned scenario. This had set the South African Government back severely. The best way to undermine subversion is to ensure that the public lose sympathy for the subversives – difficult when the subversives are committed to peaceful means of making their protest, spiced with a little humour.
Many had taken their inspiration from the anti-apartheid movement of Martin Luther King in the USA. As I have said, these sorts of protestors become increasingly difficult to manipulate – they soon wise up to agents provocateur in their midst and often ignore the incitement to violence, which is essential to any State justifying its heavy handed putting down of demonstrations.
Anti-apartheid protestors had developed a means of leaving a very small incendiary device at the bottom of a tin bucket filled with paper confetti. When the device exploded, passers-by would be covered by a shower of paper and, no one would suffer any ill effects. It became a joke at the expense of the South African Defence Forces. A Force which took itself very very seriously and found the situation difficult to tolerate. However the SADF were not a force much given to any subtlety in its procedures. Too many political prisoners had apparently committed suicide by jumping from their cell windows, whilst being interrogated. The Hereford nursery was prevailed upon to train a few SADF people. The nursery would later thrive from Fort Monkton on the South coast, but at the time Hereford served well to swell the coffers of the clandestine and secret departments which do not exist. Portsmouth and Poole were seaside resorts reserved for tourist ‘Stay-Behind’ foreign operatives and Hereford began to be reserved for the professionals once again.
The South African tables had to be turned on these peaceful protestors. The principal difficulty arose from the fact that no one was injured and the general public could not and would not condemn the paper bombers. They were a joke, a joke which had to be turned into the sickest of jests.
In order to ensure that this form of protest cease, the South Africans, in conjunction with us, their covert advisers, needed a tragedy, preferably a death, to ensure that public sympathy vanished into a red mist.
When intelligence reached the South African security forces that a series of these bombs were to be planted it was decided that they would act. It is not very difficult to persuade the innocent into errands and a patsy had been found: a man with a history of mild cardio vascular disease. An ambulance, under the direction of those loyal to the South African security services, but genuine paramedics, was directed to the general area. The patsy persuaded to be in the area and the ambulance poised to be the first on the scene. Just to make doubly certain a South African operative, a qualified medical doctor working at a private hospital carried his medical bag with him. This was the only person at the scene in the know. The paramedics were unlikely to ask difficult questions, believing that their sympathies lay on the side of justice. Unwitting sympathisers at the scene will never question or believe the depths to which their own security forces will plumb. They simply will not consider that a conspiracy, of such patently brutal intent, could ever be perpetrated by those with whom they sympathise. Everyone wants to be on the side of the righteous.
When the paper bomb exploded the old man had a sudden shock; something from which he would have recovered, without medical intervention, in the normal course of events. However our medic was first on the scene and despatched bystanders to call an ambulance as he surreptitiously administered insulin. The new gizmo he used was untried. A sort of gun device, which was capable of delivering 20cc’s of insulin from a distance of two metres away. Once the ambulance arrived the old man was able to walk into it. Twenty minutes later he suffered a fatal heart attack.
The paper bombers were now responsible for a death. We learned a great deal about counter insurgency during the era of Apartheid South Africa, much of it still unrecognised.
The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission tended to focus on individual traumas, rather than look for any patterns which emerged of planned and sustained strategies. The Commission went some way toward assuaging the anger of the injustices perpetrated, but the lessons learned about psychological warfare stood those in the know in very good stead.
Those who suffer injustices are often frustrated by the bodies who are meant to oversee ethical standards are in place. These committees of public standards often cite the fact that they are unable to consider individual cases, or only able to consider individual cases. With this sort of disjointed approach it becomes impossible to extrapolate from individual cases to a wider general application.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission satisfied itself almost entirely with individual cases, and the strings of experimentation wielded outside the borders of South Africa were never understood. Precisely because it is a useful means of frustrating justice if committees of enquiry either look only at individual cases or else refuse to do so and commit only to overseeing the broader picture. Real scientists will tell you that the results of observed individual cases may often lead to the detection of a pattern, which gives greater insight into the overall experiment or area of study. Insight which may then be said to reveal the final truth.
Since the final truth is something that all Security Services wish to avoid, it is far better that the partition between examining individual cases and the risk of extrapolating that evidence to reveal the ultimate truth, in a pattern of behaviour, is always avoided.
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Tin pot politicians all over the world seem to feel paranoid enough to spend vast sums of money to hang onto power, no matter what their original ideals might have been. The Hereford and Fort Monkton nurseries and the American Green Berets at Fort Bragg, were responsible for training soldiers of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. There is little we will not do, although in that case it was often with bad grace.
Back in the 70’s with the Labour Party becoming a real political force once again within the UK, it became fairly obvious that the Labour Party might be a real threat to the State, or so we were led to believe.
Back in 74’ / 75’ we, in the army, were on a steep learning curve. Listening to Stirling in the mess or giving lectures, you knew with absolute certainty you were in the right. David Stirling was famous as head of the SAS, he should have been more famous for his powers of persuasion. We were disgusted by what the commies were doing to our country. Stirling was the right man, in the right place, at the right time. He and General Walter Walker were saying things we, in the Army, couldn’t – except privately of course. The BBC were suspect, the Trades Unions wreaking havoc, inflation was running at an all time high. Something had to be done, and I became a willing and able recruit. I also realised that I had been a part of the whole process for some time. Mine not to question why and all that, but a few of the jigsaw pieces fell into place.
Our military and civil service are somewhat top heavy. When one has too many chiefs it is likely that they will dream up schemes to help themselves to more power than is constitutionally acceptable.
I was part of a select few invited to listen to speakers like Col. David Stirling, Brian Crozier, General Sir Walter Walker. Some of these meetings were listed, and held at Sandhurst, others were not. Brian Crozier was, in our eyes, the acceptable face of the intelligentsia. He was an expert – a well known security expert – and had studied the roots of Communism in the UK. Crozier is on record as having said: ‘I took it upon myself to make them understand the problems of Communism and that they might, at some time, have to intervene to destroy this danger. There was absolute silence as I explained how the trades unions were very heavily penetrated by communists and their sympathisers and were exerting a dangerous influence on the Labour Party, which largely depended on them. They wanted to hear every word I said.’ (see Geoffrey Levy’s report in the Daily Mail)
We certainly did. What I wasn’t aware of at the time was that we in the audience were being targeted by the Operation which is generally referred to as ‘Gladio’. A NATO ‘Stay-Behind’ body which arose after the Second World War to counter a Warsaw Pact invasion of Western Europe. Since then it has grown like topsy. The stated aim, by the time I was being recruited, was to defeat Communism. This was of necessity a covert operation. Even we, the recruits listening to the lectures, were not privy to the whole picture.
Enquiries which implicated the NATO ‘Gladio’ ‘Stay-Behind’ (S/B) operations and drew together the Masonic Group P2, the Italian judiciary, Italian Intelligence Services, the Mafia, business and media tycoons and a plethora of political and economic movers and shakers. Silvio Berlusconi, who has used David Mills, the former Labour Minister,Tessa Jowell’s husband as a business and legal advisor, has been, like any Teflon man, indicted and never convicted of any, but the most trivial of wrong doing. Berlusconi has admitted that he was a recruit to P2, although he claims he never paid his membership dues. That’s a bit like Tony Blair admitting he was a member of the Mafia, but never became a made man.
However at the time I was sitting in Sandhurst mess halls, we were in an era of military coups. Salvador Allende in Chile had been deposed in a right wing military coup sponsored by the Americans. They have been doing this sort of thing ever since – admittedly less successfully in recent years - against Chavez in Venezuela for instance. Yet no one questioned the motivation of right wing armed activists, far easier to focus on the danger from the extreme left – Communism. In reality there is little to choose between a right wing dictator and a dictator of the left. The common factor to both is that they are authoritarian dictators. It hardly matters to the common man whether they are inclined to lean left or right. We tend to favour right wing dictators simply because they favour our business interests.
Choosing to ally oneself with extreme left or right wing regimes is tantamount to choosing between Hitler and Stalin; no palpable difference is evident, both are abhorrent. However as Herr Hitler was defeated at the end of the Second World War and Stalin was not, it was not comprehended how near we were to adopting Herr Hitler’s philosophies, in our right wing backlash against Communism. With the current economic recession it is almost inevitable that we will get a swing to the authoritarian right. Right wing parties generally do far better in a recession.
On reflection the political divide along ideals of right and left is an over worn fiction. The Labour Party under Tony Blair as Prime Minister, was still believed by many to be left wing, Tony Blair has never done more than give lip service to left wing ideologies. He would not have been allowed to wrest the strings of power had he been thought to have been a left wing ideologue. Those admitted to the sacred circle of power are no longer allowed to have even vaguely liberal tendencies. The Americans won’t allow it. I don’t mean the puppet President of America won’t allow it, I mean the far more powerful American establishment won’t allow it. Look at the trouble they’ve given their current President. Obama tried, quite humanely, to introduce a health service in America. Over half the U S population cannot afford adequate health care. Tuberculosis rates are staggeringly high in the U S. Yet Americans prefer to allow their population to go untreated and infect others rather than grasp the fact that the ill cannot generate an economic revival.
To us, sitting in these lectures, it became clear that we needed to smash the Unions - whilst it took some planning and some patience the fact that we did so, without much blood letting was for us, in the Army, something we felt inordinately proud of. Much of the kudos should go to Military Intelligence. Army Military Intelligence is often referred to by those outside its magic circle as ‘green slime’ – but like many I too was flattered at the invitation to participate in this select club, and believed that just by joining I would have intelligence conferred upon me by association.
Once corruption takes a hold on society that society inevitably declines. Inefficiencies creep in, favouritism conspires to create ailing industries, political safety nets are brushed away as unnecessary scruples. Take the ideology shared by both Conservatives and New Labour that the Human Rights Act represents an unnecessary political safety net in the greater fight against crime and the ‘war on terrorism,’ or that MP’s tried twice during 2007 to ensure that they were exempt from Freedom of Information legislation as regards their expense claims.
One suspects that the hand of the Security Services lies deep within the heart of all political parties whatever their professed ideologies may be.
The link between British political policy and the Security Services is highlighted by Denis Bradley a Catholic priest within ‘the link’ responsible for the start of the peace process, in Northern Ireland. He is quoted in a press interview by Norma Percy - (Endgame in Ireland by Eamonn Mallie and David McKittrick (ISBN 0 340 82169 8 published by Coronet Books, Hodder and Stoughton):
“I had had a situation before when I was told: ‘Denis, when you see us – meaning MI6 – re-engage in this situation seriously, you will know that the British are beginning the process of re-engagement again. Anything else that happens between now and then is only play-acting.’ That left a deep psychological impression on me, because I had come to the conclusion that the intelligence people move within the British establishment before the politicians move.”
If there is any truth in this observation it inescapably makes a monkey out of democracy. If ordinary men and women have been persuaded or coerced into working for the security services, might they not expect a quid pro quo in the form of favours which may be translated into several quid or preferment in careers for which they show no aptitude? Security Service personnel are skilled at deceiving, lying, cheating, and do so in the secure knowledge that they are protected from judgement in the usual legal court rooms, since the judicial channels themselves have in their midst those who are beholden to the Security Services.
The favours done by our Security Services are clandestine and myriad. Consider John Major whilst Prime Minister. A newspaper alleged that John Major was conducting an affair with a catering manager at 10 Downing Street. This was utterly untrue. The newspaper settled out of court and no other newspaper dared publish any other allegation of an extra-marital affair. However, years later, Edwina Curry told us that she became involved in an amorous dalliance with John Major at some point in his political career. Her justification for going public, with this disclosure, according to the author who spoke to John Major in order to write his autobiography, was the pique she felt at being written out of Major’s autobiography. The author claims that Major did mention Edwina Currie, but that the editing process meant that Edwina Currie was blue-pencilled out. On such small slights greater truths may be revealed. Smoke and mirrors and the black art of spin conspired to ensure that Major’s dalliance with Curry was smothered. Who cared that the name of a caterer was blackened in the process?
Smoke and mirrors men often serve to manipulate circumstances, which might make politicians eternally grateful.
Our Security Services are not above the planting of misleading evidence to encourage our media not to disseminate allegations with any real substance.
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Chapter 7
Piers Morgan, one time editor of The Mirror newspaper is a case in point. As editor of The Mirror he received some photographs of British soldiers abusing Iraqi citizens. There is no longer any doubt that such abuses did occur. In order to ward off this damaging allegation, might it not be possible to hand the editor of the Mirror - a newspaper which had got so severely up the noses of the establishment for its anti-war stance - a series of phoney photos?
Piers Morgan sent the photographs to the MoD and heard nothing. Piers Morgan interpreted this silence as a nod of corroboration; he duly published the pictures in the Daily Mirror. Once published the pictures were thoroughly rubbished by the MoD. Piers Morgan was sacked and an apocryphal tale served pour encourager les autres in the media to desist from these sorts of allegations, no matter what the evidence. Of course the dirt on Piers Morgan’s share activities, hitherto ignored whilst he played by the rules, could be trotted out to thoroughly blacken his name further. Despite the overwhelming evidence, our media have dragged their heels over disseminating evidence of abuse ever since. Whilst we concentrated on bringing the mighty Piers Morgan down, and journalists began salivating in print over his ignominy, no one dared ask who handed the photographs to the editor of the Mirror or why they had done so. It is my belief that these photographs were deliberately concocted as to be provably false in order to ward off real photographs of abuse reaching our national press.
War makes monsters of us all and it is likely that soldiers of the Coalition were abusing civilians in Iraq, but lily-livered liberals could never be expected to understand that the very virtues which make a soldier effective, also contribute to atrocities against the civilian population.
The electorate in their wisdom, recognising that something must be done to overcome the endemic corruption they find in their midst, turn instead to ever greater authoritarian political representatives, so playing into the hands of those within our Security Services who have savoured the taste of unaccountable power.
The drive toward convincing the electorate of the need for something drastic to be done has at its core a colluding press to herd the electorate into polling stations to deliver an authoritarian regime. If that fails the postal vote may be used to ensure that those with an agenda ensure that it is possible, to borrow an Irish phrase, to ‘vote early, vote often’. Our press, among whom many have been recruited into the Security Services, are willing to play the media game by the rules which the Intelligence Services dictate.
Hence the steady rise of the British National Party and the English Defence League within our political infrastructure. No political party is immune from intrigue by agents of our State. Eventually ever more authoritarian political ideologies will lead us inevitably to another facsimile of a Third Reich. Only when the excesses have reached fever pitch might it then be possible to overturn our march toward authoritarian governance. But by then it is not possible for our society to change itself: that change must be imposed from beyond the society’s borders, usually by utter defeat in a destructive battle or war – war where the good will have been slaughtered almost to extinction. The inevitable outcome is not a more liberal and libertarian society, but a more draconian and authoritarian society.
New Labour’s growing volte-face in response to the Human Rights Act was a barometer of its slide toward authoritarian rule. The European Convention on Human Rights was a direct response to atrocities carried out in Germany prior to and during the Second World War. Attlee’s Labour Government ratified the European Convention on Human Rights in 1951 and Sir Winston Churchill signed Britain’s name to the First Protocol in 1953, the year of Stalin’s death. With atrocities in Europe fresh in living memory, all right thinking people believed that a climate should be created where it became impossible for such atrocities to recur.
It was therefore essential, indeed it was the only patriotic and right thinking solution, to set up a clandestine organisation to defeat such atrocities recurring. The following extract from Wikipedia purports to show the how the genesis of Gladio began at the same time as we were signing the European Convention on Human Rights:
Gladio was first coordinated by the Clandestine Committee of the Western Union (CCWU), founded in 1948. After the creation of NATO in 1949, CCWU was integrated into the Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC), founded in 1951 and overseen by SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe), transferred to Belgium after dissolution of the French stay-behind paramilitary movements. According to historian Daniele Ganser, one of the major researchers on the field, ‘Next to the CPC, a second secret army command centre, labelled the Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC) was set up in 1957 on the orders of NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR). This miliatry structure provided for significant US leverage over the stay-behind networks in Western Europe as the SACEUR, throughout NATO’s history, had traditionally been a US General who reports to the Pentagon in Washington and is based in NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) in Mons, Belgium. The ACC’s duties included elaborating on the directives of the network, developing its clandestine capability, and organising bases in Britain and the United States. In wartime, it was to plan stay-behind operations in conjunction with SHAPE. According to CIA director William Colby, it was ‘a major programme.’
The role of the CIA in sponsoring GLADIO and the extent of its activities during the cold war era, and its relationship to false flag attacks perpetrated in Italy during the years of lead and other similar clandestine operations is the subject of ongoing debate and investigation. Italy, Switzerland and Belgium have had parliamentary enquiries into the matter. WIKIPEDIA February 2007.
The badly translated book ‘NATO’s SECRET ARMIES – Operation Galdio and Terrorism in Western Europe,’ by the Swiss researcher, Daniele Ganser, (published in translation by Frank Cass in Oxford ISBN 9 780714 685007) chronicles the story of S/B operations in Europe in depth.
Ironic that the British Prime Minister who signed the First Protocol should also be responsible for the current covert unaccountable Security Service burgeoning into effective organised State anarchy, often targeting the very institutions it was designed to protect.
We have now reached a plateau of indifference to liberty and all three political parties seek to offer the most palliative and anodyne explanation for the erosion of Magna Carta, Habeas Corpus and the inhumane policy of extraordinary rendition. Extraordinary rendition, a euphemism of the kidnap of enemies of the States which are waging a ‘war on terrorism,’ suggests that airforce bases within the United Kingdom have been used in the process, with or without the collusion of the British Government. Amnesty and other human rights bodies have brought the matter to the attention of the European Commission and enquiries have been made. However the extraordinary story of ‘extraordinary rendition’ invites apologists within the establishment to offer the most palliative and anodyne explanation and justify these measures, citing ‘freedom,’ ‘safety’ and ‘democracy,’ in doing so. The truth is that none of us can be free, safe or live in an accountable democracy if these sorts of activities are covertly run.
I sat in on a debate in the House of Commons on yet another process of the Anti-Terrorism legislation in 2003. Some Members of Parliament rose to object, including Tam Dalyell and Simon Hughes, yet none voted against the legislation being passed. What possible leverage do we have on our MPs? Did those Ministers and MPs, who assured the House of Commons that the legislation would only apply to a handful of aliens, reassure the doubters? Surely the law must apply equally to all. Eventually the law did apply equally to all and scores of people have been arrested under the Anti-Terrorism Act whilst engaged on hitherto legal protests, including most famously Walter Wolfgang, who heckled Jack Straw at a Labour Party Conference and was arrested under the Anti-Terrorism Act. What better illustration is needed that laws, once passed, may be misused and abused to silence peaceful and justified criticism?
Eventually the law did apply equally to all and scores of people have been arrested under the Anti-Terrorism Act whilst engaged on hitherto legal protests.
It appears that we are now being asked to believe that turning a blind eye to civil liberties is a necessary adjunct of survival. Turning a blind eye to civil liberties is all that many can claim to have done in Nazi Germany. The process of de-nazification was not something that touched the British people, despite the rise of Moseley and his fascists at the same time as the Nazi Party rose to power. We have no real understanding as to how individuals and groups may be targeted to achieve a sense of national unity and because we escaped that process we have no understanding how far we have travelled down the road toward political enslavement to an unaccountable power.
It is a truth not readily understood, that those with any power would prefer to keep their blinkers on and turn the proverbial blind eye to corruptions of power, than to risk losing their status by acknowledging that something may be rotten in the State.
The litmus test of how far down the road of authoritarianism we have travelled is perhaps best examined in the death of Dr David Kelly and the subsequent enquiry into that death. Lord Hutton, a man of previously unimpeachable integrity, was chosen by the MoD to conduct the enquiry. His name was announced as Tony Blair was on a plane to the Bahamas as Dr David Kelly’s death was announced. Was Tony Blair even contacted during that flight? Blair was so far in the pocket of military intelligence that it is probable he was not.
The principal problem was that it was essential Dr Kelly’s death should be seen and believed as a suicide. Anything else and the whole Iraq war and the intelligence peddled over that war would be subjected to very uncomfortable scrutiny. Prior to his death efforts had been made to undermine Dr Kelly’s importance and then to undermine his sanity, always a good indication that an individual has fallen foul of the powers that be. However a full inquest would not do. It might have brought out the fact that Dr Kelly’s ‘overdose’ of Co-proxamol consisted of less than one tablet being detected in his stomach contents. Paramedics at the scene would have given evidence that there was insufficient blood loss from the slashed wrists of Dr Kelly to indicate a successful suicide.
Forgoing a Coroner’s enquiry, and in the absence of Lady Butler Sloss or some other pair of ‘safe hands’ being put into position to ensure the smooth running of such an inquest, it was essential that Dr Kelly’s death should be deemed a suicide, which Lord Hutton obligingly did; riding in the most cavalier fashion over the lack of real evidence to support his claim. Lord Hutton placed the main focus of his enquiry on the BBC and Andrew Gilligan. Without explanation or even any real evidence he merely announced that Dr Kelly had committed suicide. When media heads rolled, as they did at the BBC, the news media were sufficiently excited by events at the BBC that Dr Kelly’s apparent suicide died as a story. In an authoritarian State judges no longer believe they need exercise integrity to ensure their personal reputations remain intact, they almost inevitably become willing pawns of the State in a climate of fear.
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Chapter 8
Authoritarian regimes will always seek to control the media. Headlines demanding that action be taken to curtail liberties enshrined in law and custom are swept away, in a seemingly knee jerk response to a particular criminal or crime. Law is being made on the hoof in our sweep toward a more authoritarian government, all in the name of safety, and at the cost of liberty. We have become a risk averse society and paradoxically have exposed ourselves to the risk of a decline in formerly venerated freedoms. If liberty is abolished safety is no longer possible for any individual. Was that Rousseau or Voltaire?
The Human Rights Act, one of the first laws brought in by New Labour when it was elected to power in 1997, it is now believed by Conservatives in this coalition Government to be an unnecessary limitation of its powers. This is the route to which every despotic regime eventually succumbs. What is more worrying still is the belief, by Her Majesty’s opposition, that our drift toward curtailing the liberties of every citizen enshrined in the Human Rights Act, is right. The Conservative Party has long relinquished its belief in liberty or freedom. Michael Howard, as Home Secretary, started the rot with his proposed abolition of jury trials for specific individuals in certain cases. When one can’t drive a cigarette paper between parties vying for power it is time to question the party system and consider more seriously the value of maverick independents as political representatives.
The inevitable outcome of ever more draconian legislation is not a more liberal and libertarian society, but a society enslaved to a State, controlled by the unelected. There is little difference to discern when faced with a choice between extreme left wing or extreme right wing dictators. Both seek at best to manage and finally to abolish democracy. Both of the two American elections, which returned George W Bush, had severe question marks over their validity. Postal votes in the UK have been found to have been fraudulently used. Democracy is a diseased body overtaken by the quick sands of conspiracy, barely clinging to life.
The real political divide is between the authoritarian despot and the liberal believer in freedom – not between right or left wing ideologies. The unaccountable will to power, which exists within our Security Services, skews the balance in favour of authoritarian rule. Yet wars and conflicts are always perceived to be fought along the left / right ideology, neither of which is healthy for the general population in any political climate. Armed forces naturally gravitate toward authoritarian regimes whatever the political ideology. It is the nature of the animal. In the late 60’s and early 70‘s we, at Sandhurst, were no different.
I am told that Cecil Harmsworth King, Chairman of the Mirror Group of papers also came down to speak at Sandhurst. I never heard him and couldn’t imagine what the Commie Mirror newspaper’s Chairman was doing talking to a Sandhurst audience. We didn’t take the red tops – reading matter fit for OR’s (Other Ranks) only. In my book the man was probably a Commie infiltrator.
I did hear General Walker though. He said much the same as Crozier, in a more direct and slightly less persuasive way – he remembers saying: ‘The Russians have people specially trained in sabotage and subversion, stirring up industrial unrest.’ Truth was both sides were stirring up political dissent in the other’s back yards. He said much else besides, but I can’t find another published source to corroborate my memory of that talk.
Now – with the benefit of hindsight, I realise how easy it is to direct animosity toward a non-threatening entity in order to allow the real threat to continue unabated. The Russians were struggling financially. World domination was beyond their economic grasp. We were told that the Russkies were pouring money into the Trades Unions in order to undermine the British way of life. After years spent recruiting people to undertake tasks for the Security Services I can personally assure you that the Russians would have had a harder time recruiting the general trades union members to become less than patriotic Englishmen. In fact it might have been better to influence the Commies into pouring ever greater amounts of cash into the institutions we feared – trades unions, Socialist Workers Party et al – as their limited resources squandered in far off lands would probably have ensured the demise of Communism in the Soviet Union a great deal earlier.
Arguably the ordinary Russian people are now considerably worse off than they were under Communism. Those with KGB (a.k.a. SVB or Chekist) links have made piles of money since the Russkies have embraced capitalism, but the general population is worse off and getting restive. Abramovich – a figure reportedly close to Putin, has bought his way into the fabric of British Society through Manchester United. Multi-billionaires are not subject to the same tax laws as the ordinary people of the United Kingdom. Consequently the UK has become a tax haven to rival all other tax havens. Special deals with the Inland Revenue, often make Gordon Brown’s now abolished 10p rate of income tax look like State theft to these multi-billionaires.
Infiltration from the bottom up in Russia may not have reaped much in the way of rewards. Perhaps a top down approach might be more successful? Both Russia and the West have embraced capitalism – but the climate in which it is fostered in both Russia and the West obviates any need for honesty or integrity. We have now been overtaken by the unacceptable and amoral face of capitalism, which will eventually discredit the entirely ethical ideology of capitalism. Capitalism alone ensures the ultimate public good, but it does need an infrastructure in place to ensure some ethical and moral rectitude remains. Those ideals have been swept away.
Big banks and legal firms hotfooted into the old iron curtain countries, recruited Mafiosi and KGB types to help them carry out their business and, although their tactics are less subtle than ours, it is pretty much the same the whole world over. As Shelley commented on the general lot of British peasants after the Peterloo massacre ‘Tis to work and have such pay as just keeps life from day to day.’ Those who do not possess the will to power will always be exploited by those who do. The moneymen rule and the peasants are kept peaceful with just enough money to make life sustainable.
Problem is Russian politicos don’t seem to realise that a level of comfort is necessary to ensure that the masses don’t revolt. Their lack of insight threatens political stability. That lack of insight also appears to be encroaching on many of our societies in the West. Wages have gone down in real terms and the poorest are no longer to afford to heat their homes or eat a healthy diet. Global warming has resulted in cold winters and the winters will get colder and more severe year on year. The peasant population of the UK will begin to die from starvation and hypothermia and there is no political will to prevent this.
The Russians have had a bit of trouble with their old Babushka’s and more is likely to follow, yet they will try to keep the lid on any unrest with ever more draconian strictures. Oil and gas are their current levers of choice and it seems that we in the West are not averse to using the same weaponry. Mark my words there will be trouble in that direction before too long. Trouble which, I suspect, will be brutally suppressed whilst we in the West turn yet another blind eye. Blinkered by our own oil wars and keen to prevent sedition at home.
We have seen how the Russians deal with those who make a fuss. Remember the sight of a woman who was exercised about the fate of those in the Kursk submarine? There she was crying and shouting – then someone sticks a needle into her and she slumps to the floor.
Litvenenko’s death with Polonium 210 was clearly a case of out of control Sercurity Service personnel, with or without the highest sanction, dealing with a threat to Putin’s reputation. “Who will rid me of this insolent dissident,” need hardly be uttered. Putin is ex KGB, George H Bush senior is ex CIA. The gift of the position of President of America is, it seems, within the scope of their intelligence services, as is the gift of political preferment the world over. We are in charge, and accountable to no one. Nothing in the world happens without secret services involvement.
I can’t argue with Crozier’s impression of our reception of him at Sandhurst. He is quoted as saying: ‘They were standing to act if necessary. There were no “buts” about it. If things had gone on as they were they would have moved.’
So whilst we were all wound up about Communist infiltration the extreme right wing were galvanising us into action in support of organised anarchy by the establishment. Action, which had the blessing of the Security Services: action, which was far more likely to destroy our way of life than any real Communist threat. Wasn’t until I took pen to paper that I even realised the magnitude of this problem as it exists in Britain today.
1,563
Chapter 9
In the light of my own road to Damascus, I can’t help but make comparisons with today’s ‘war on terrorism.’ In order to cow the people into submission it is useful to have a common enemy behind whom the populace can be united. The common enemy of ‘terrorism’ is a moving target, capable of being applied to any individual, group or country. To dissent from backing the ‘war on terrorism’ is tantamount to becoming a terrorist oneself. As George W Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld reiterated time and again: ‘You are either with us or against us.’ This amounts to back us or be obliterated.
How very different their warmongering approach appears beside President John F Kennedy’s exhortation to his fellow American’s ‘Ask not what your country can do for you?’ In that address JFK took time to praise the Russian effort in defeating the Nazis. More often honey works better than a stick. However the honey pot is now overrun by power hungry individuals, both in Russia and the West, who seek to dominate their peasants with ever more draconian laws, united as they both are in the ‘War on Terrorism’. Prior to the highly questionable ‘rescue’ of children in a school in Beslan – children apparently targeted by Chechen rebels, we had heard in our press on almost a weekly basis of the atrocities perpetrated against the ‘poor Chechens’.
False flag atrocities or incitement to atrocities, with the Security Services ensuring that a peaceful denouement is avoided are a useful strategy in justifying our own atrocities. Almost as one, the media ignored the plight of the Chechen people.
If only the Chechen people had been able to publish the atrocities they were subjected to on an almost daily basis and refrained from violent reaction the Russians could not and would not have been able to justify their policy toward the Chechen people. The suppression of a free press is an invitation to ever more violent methods of expressing dissent. The result is a downward spiral of mayhem and violence. Lack of a media as an amplifier in voicing dissent inevitably leads to a ‘terrorist’ backlash. The backlash is then forcefully and often brutally suppressed by the establishment, which in turn leads to further ‘terrorist’ atrocities. If, in the midst of this, the so called ‘terrorists’ hang fire and do not retaliate, or rise to provocation, a false flag bombing or similar atrocity can then be arranged to incite a demand in the media for retaliatory measures to be meted out against the whole community perceived to be guilty of the atrocity.
Conflict inevitably leads to further conflict. However it is becoming increasingly apparent that the spiritually intelligent are increasingly distrustful of the establishment, and that many of these tactics are failing abysmally. Whether people are turning to God or to a humanist approach a new spiritual astuteness is growing, amongst those who are not part of any privileged group, to confound the well-worn tactics of population manipulation.
Old-fashioned intransigent resistance is proving to be self-defeating, but some nations draw in upon themselves to exclude the sinister influences they see being perpetrated in the rest of the world. The problem with many of the regimes in these isolationist nations is that totalitarianism is also prevalent.
Of course the North Koreans had the right strategy. Sotto voce they developed a nuclear deterrent. North Korea is now unlikely to be attacked by the USA. A great many countries have developed this deterrent since the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty. We turned a blind eye to Mordechai Vanunu’s accusations over two decades ago when he provided proof positive in the Times newspaper that Israel had developed a nuclear capability. We’ve also turned a blind eye to India. In the UK we are replacing Trident and our fuel needs are to be met by nuclear fuel stations. So how we can pontificate on Iran’s sashay into the field is beyond me, unless one understands the ‘Stay-Behind’ mentality of our rulers.
The Security Services on both sides of the Atlantic believe themselves to provide a steadying hand to the vagaries of the political ebb and flow. The CIA would have you believe that they have carried battle honours off the field to protect American interests. One such battle honour was the levering of Saddam Hussein into power in Iraq when faced with the threat of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Others include Vietnam and Korea.
Our own duplicitous dealings over Suez were thwarted by the Americans, in a fit of self-righteousness until, persuaded by Israel, they saw the light. If our Security Services failed to create real destablisation in Communist Europe, they nod, wink, and rub their noses at the fall of the Berlin Wall and Glasnost. The peaceful transition of Eastern Europe owed more to the intelligent sensibilities of the people within Eastern Europe than it did to any conspiracy emanating from the West. It could be argued that, since Russia, America and Britain are all singing from the same hymn sheet, real freedom has declined, no one has the political will to point an accusatory finger any longer, lest another finger be pointed back at them. We operate in a conspiracy of the guilty. The burgeoning of widespread bullyboy tactics within the business communities of Eastern Europe may however owe something to the usual strong-arm tactics, which accompany Security Service involvement.
The stupidity of the Bay of Pigs seems to be rearing its ugly head once more and there is no Kennedy at the helm to prevent all out nuclear war. There are reported rumblings of a nuclear attack on Iran by the USA. Under George W Bush the politico boys with their hands on the button appeared to have itchy thumbs. Then time it was a few Army Chiefs in the USA who made attempts to still those itchy thumbs.
Whilst we were being recruited in the Armed Services in the early 70’s, captains of industry were being dragooned into service too. This area is a little opaque to me, so I’ll rely on Levy’s excellent reporting. ‘Sir Val Duncan, the Chairman of Rio Tinto Zinc, promised: “When anarchy comes, we are going to provide a lot of essential generators to keep electricity going … then the Army will play its proper role.”’ However the intent was to cause anarchy so that a military coup could be justified. False flag right wing anarchy was to be embraced to prevent left wing anarchy.
An anarchic State was the real problem. Most people understand the need to live in a well-ordered and lawful society, yet powerful individuals the world over, given the opportunity, will always veer toward turning their society to serving their own powerful ends. The will to power knows no limitations.
The Italian experiences of L’Onda – an arm of their counter terrorism paramilitary allied to their Intelligence Service SISMI and based loosely on our own SAS, is thought to have been responsible for 102 civilian deaths under false flag insurgency plots to ensure that a right wing military coup could be justified. Yet in the UK we shake our heads and adamantly expostulate that such a thing would not be possible here.
An ex-Army stockbroker – John Gouriet formed the Freedom Association in 1975 – a group whom Margaret Thatcher acknowledged a great debt to on her election, in a private note of thanks written to John Gouriet. Sir Keith Joseph formed the Centre for Policy Studies – and a current Tory MP, Oliver Letwin was one of Joseph’s early disciples.
Gouriet and the Commie hating McWhirters conspired to circumvent the stranglehold of the Unions at Grunwick, with Operation Pony Express. The post was hijacked. Since the company was a mail order firm, their post was covertly sent to a warehouse deep in the heart of Shropshire, stamps were licked in their thousands and vans departed all over the country to post the Grunwick mail. This sort of organised conspiracy was a morale boosting operation to the establishment at large. Since then of course post office workers have been carefully selected to ensure Grunwick, or a similarly debilitating strike, is unlikely to occur again.
At one point it was mooted that a deliberate provocation of the Trades Unions should be made – like driving a bus into a gaggle of high ranking trades unionists; an event which would be investigated and ruled to be a tragic accident - in order to provoke a violent retaliation and so undermine trade union credibility further. Thatcher’s victory in 1979 was in part attributable to the establishment organising itself more effectively. In some spheres it is thought that her election and Government prevented a right wing coup. Ted Heath was far too left of centre for our sensibilities.
The army has within living memory been called upon to drive buses during strikes, man essential services. The General strike in the early years of the 20th century had seen the army move in. During the Fire strike in 2003 the green goddesses were utilised, manned by army personnel.
Levy goes on in his chronicling of events of 74/75: ‘A senior executive of Cunard was approached by Army and secret service people who wanted to borrow the Cruise ship, the QE2, as a floating prison for the Cabinet.’
If I had been told that in 1974 I think I may have started the coup myself. Odd isn’t it how time and circumstances alter one’s perspective.
1,568
BOOK THREE
Chapter I
Money they say is the root of all evil. I’d qualify that a little, but generally money seems to make its way most effectively into the hands of the evil. ‘Never trust a man with two cars and a big house.’ I’d heard from one of the people we were up against. Surveillance tapes are bloody boring to listen to generally – even cliché’s become interesting when faced with some of the drivel we have to sit through.
Which brings me to ECHELON. It is hardly a national secret any longer. Echelon is a gadget provided by the USA to GCHQ via Menwith Hill. A digital listening device which automatically downloads every phone call in the world – apart from some odd small islands like Kiribati. At one point those at Menwith Hill, in answering questions as to how many personnel were operating within its environs, estimated the number to be a couple of dozen.
A local resident, realising that 1,200 loaves of bread were delivered to the Menwith base every day, questioned the veracity of this answer. His conclusion was that either appetite testing on the small number of operatives at the base must be taking place at an inhumane level, or that the number of personnel had been seriously under estimated.
Unfortunately when the privileged usurp power they appear not to be too careful, a certain arrogance sets in. When the facts can be altered and evidence replaced what need is there to apply real intelligence or spy craft to anarchic escapades? Echelon digitally downloads every single phone call and email in the world. Most are never listened to or read by a human being. Certain key words and phrases are pre-set into the system. If these words flag up a particular phone call, email or fax it may be listened to or read. Then there is also voice recognition. If a particular individual avoids making phone calls from their home phone, his or her voice can be detected anywhere at all on any other phone, almost anywhere in the world. With Echelon no would be political activist is safe. BUT and this is the big but, this system is in the hands of military intelligence, the same people who are conspiring to turn government and society to the extreme right, in the interests of military intelligence and their paymasters. Right wing anarchists will always be protected.
As Daniele Ganser has said in his painstakingly researched book: ‘NATO’s SECRET ARMIES,’ whilst documenting right wing infiltration of the S/B Group in Germany; Adenauer was asked to sign a memorandum of agreement with NATO and through them the CIA, to grant immunity from prosecution to right wing S/B agitators active in Germany. Many of these agitators had direct links back to the old SS in the era of a Hitlerian Nazi Germany: Klaus Barbie and General Gehler amongst them.
Members of the public will never be allowed access to these digital recordings. Those members of the public who have come to believe that they are fighting against the erosion of our civil liberties are increasingly classified as left leaning Communists, whatever their actual alliances may be. It is an awfully long time since the human rights protocols, which were developed in the aftermath of the Nuremburg trials, have had any real relevance in the world today. Today, Geroge W Bush, Dick Cheney, Tony Blair and Donald Rumsfeld have increasingly attempted to jusifty extraordinary rendition, Guantanamo Bay or Camp Xray and Abu Ghraib Prisons, on the basis that we can no longer afford to grant human rights to those who oppose us. All those proponents of the steady erosion of human rights and civil liberties are the first to raise their voices in dissent when it happens to one of their own. Surely human rights are non-negotiable, no matter which side one is on?
British Telecom engineers and post office workers sign the Official Secrets Act, no one questions their need to do so. The signing of the Official Secrets Act is almost worn as a badge of honour – an official recognition that one may be trusted with the secrets of the State. Few will betray that trust even if they are asked to target the innocent.
As we have seen from the prosecutions and imprisonment of David Keogh and Leo O’Connor, when leaking the contents of a right wing anarchic phone call between Tony Blair and George W Bush, in which it is rumoured George W Bush proposed that the offices of the last free media TV Station, Al-Jazeera, should be bombed. The catch all Official Secrets Act will protect right wing plotters, no matter how heinous the crime. Both Keogh and O’Connor were imprisoned in May 2007, despite the evidence that what they leaked was in the public interest. It was after all merely a phone call between two elected leaders of two democratic countries, leaders accountable to the public for their actions.
Peter McKay wrote in his column in The Daily Mail on Monday 14th May 2007, of the imprisoning of these two, under the headline:
‘GO TO JAIL FOR TELLING THE TRUTH – Civil Servant David Keogh is jailed for six months for trying to leak the transcript of a conversation between President George W Bush and Tony Blair.
This disclosed, inter alia, that Bush was all for bombing the TV station Al-Jazeera because its coverage of the Iraq war was considered unhelpful and unsympathetic.
The judge involved said Keogh’s actions ‘put lives at risk’. I am not clear how he came to this conclusion, but surely a larger principal was at stake. We’d all like to know what Bush and Blair said to each other about Iraq. We have a right to know, I’d have thought.
They took us there on the basis of bloody lies. Any document that sheds light on their thinking is surely in the public interest.
Poor Keogh’s life is destroyed, so is that of his collaborator, political researcher Leo O’Connor, who got three months.
How will the Government reward the MP, Anthony Clarke, who turned them in rather than use the information they offered? A peerage perhaps?
Had Keogh been a US civil servant who’d given the document to a newspaper, it’s unlikely he would have gone to jail. He would have been deemed a hero ‘whistleblower’ and the paper concerned might have won a Pulitzer Prize.’
We’re the greatest country in the world, says Tony Blair. Great for him and his ilk, certainly.
McKay is no ultra left wing journalist and The Daily Mail is about as right wing as the mainstream British media gets. What McKay does not say is that Blair probably could not and would not talk to Bush on even a high security telephone in any real depth. Blair might have said that we had moles burrowing their way into Al-Jazeera as they spoke.
Shortly after this alleged conversation it was announced that Sir David Frost, a pillar of the British establishment, had taken on the role of a presenter for the English speaking arm of Al-Jazeera. So proving that we are far more subtle and effective than the Yanks at undermining the opposition.
Such a high profile bombing in US and UK friendly Qatar would have unleashed an almighty backlash and slaughtered some highly prized assets in the process. This conversation, perhaps more than any other, finally proved to me the stupidity Blair was handicapped with when talking to the most powerful leader of the Western world, whose intellect failed to rise above a retarded pre-teen schoolboy, denied his iPod in class. Nevertheless George W was in the club, despite his crippling stupidity, and ways had to be found for diverting him from this course of action. Which it seems Blair did manage to accomplish. Why two elected leaders, accountable to the public at the ballot box and through their elected Governments, were able to cite the Official Secrets Act to protect amoral strategic planning, should raise questions about the independence of our judiciary. Yet even the Hutton enquiry failed to do that.
As with any club, if the members feel they are part of a chosen few, plucked from obscurity to keep obscure secrets, loyalty to the club will take precedence over any other allegiance. Failure to play by the rules of the club will result in financial ruin, a washed up career and possibly imprisonment, as Keogh and O’Connor will no doubt discover in the fullness of time. The cold winds of exclusion from the club, will serve as a reminder to those tempted into any moral or ethical impetus to betray a diseased State.
You may have wondered why the Government in the UK is so reluctant to allow evidence of phone taps in court. This has nothing to do with civil liberties. The civil liberties question does not arise. No one is immune from having the last ten years of their telephone conversations trawled through. But, if it became generally known that this sort of evidence could be made available, it would not be possible to close Pandora’s box against those fighting to reinstate democratic power. If leading politicians and movers and shakers, who belong to these right wing conspiracies, had their telephone calls open to public scrutiny, there would be no end to the fall out in political terms.
The dawn of ECHELON was heralded in the 1980’s with the addition of 01 to almost every British telephone exchange – London eventually changing to 0207 or 0208. The addition of the 01 number prefix was touted as a need to create more telephone numbers, the truth is the 01 addition created very few more numbers than we already had. Any statistician worth his salt would have rumbled this pathetic subterfuge.
Voice recognition factored into the archives of Echelon will automatically pull up anybody’s telephone history. The reason this evidence is protected from court scrutiny is that civil liberties groups may then also try to claim access to this evidence too. If some freedom of information Houdini, managed to get phone tap evidence allowed as admissible evidence, it would probably sink the status quo of any power in any country in the world, including our own.
Echelon was ‘given’ to the UK by the USA because, under the American Constitution, it was illegal to tap the phones of American citizens in the USA. However Menwith Hill and Mildenhall are both American territory. Although sited on British soil these bases are technically outside British control. The useful purpose these bases serve is to be subject to no scrutiny by any public body in either the UK or the USA or anywhere else.
To tap citizen’s phones under the aegis of a foreign power, albeit a foreign power with very close ties to America, is not within the remit of the American Constitution. Echelon is technically ours, though in reality the strings to the system are still firmly within the grasp of the American military outside the national borders of America. I wonder if agents of the State of America are actually immune to strictures of the American Constitution when operating outside the borders of the USA? I have my doubts, though I am sure that Britain would do its utmost to protect those American interests and take full responsibility for Echelon if push came to shove.
Unquestioning friendship is actually the root of all evil. The alliance between the Americans and the British, enables both countries to benefit from a ruse to control not only their own citizens, but citizens throughout the world. At this stage I will exclude Mossad, an organisation which has taught both countries’ secret services more about spy craft and the manipulation of power, than any other body.
Friendship derived from enforcing the rules of secret societies has conspired to create a world of men and women who will favour one another over the more able, more honest or more competent. Friendship smothers a meritocracy. British industry is a very good example of favouritism winning out over merit. British management is lamentably incompetent. Since the demise of Union power abolished the innate incompetencies tolerated in that system and new form of incestuous incompetence has arisen, this time it has a fascist hue.
The influence of secret societies pervades the whole of the British industry and preserves the class system within the various echelons of each secret society. Forget Union power, although the Unions themselves operate within these clandestine organisations, the problem is far more pervasive than simple overt Unionisation. Unions have largely lost their power. The common peasant class, working for a barely living wage have had open season declared on them. Their remuneration is largely dictated by big business and subsidised by tax credits. A system too complicated for even professional accountants to fully understand, and so all too easily manipulated to divide the sheep from the militants.
A Buffalo will never be allowed access to the same privileges as a member of a livery company. However certain industrial organisations will favour members of one secret society over another. Blue-collar workers may eventually rise to be white-collar workers through their membership of the Buffaloes. White-collar workers may rise to management levels through membership of the lower orders of Freemasonry, Lions or Rotary Clubs. Freemasons may rise to membership of Grand Lodge or the Royal Arch. Actual ability is secondary in importance to membership of the right club, more important is the ability to keep the secrets of the society and prove oneself a loyal member of the club. If industry is ordered in this way it is likely that the business of industry will decline in direct proportion to the influence of the secret society.
Just after the Second World War, when Britain was faced with financial bankruptcy and large debts to America, the Security forces moved into industry in a big way. Hundreds of SOE operatives, on the post war scrap heap, were determined to keep their hand in with the Security Services as they pursued careers in commerce. These men were all too anxious to be of use to SOE once again. We had ex operatives queuing up and we used them.
Even members of these societies have little idea of how they fit into the larger picture. Need to know basis only – again.
2,368
Chapter 2
A 1946 memo by Colonel Boas in Whitehall, London suggested that Volkswagen should be taken over by the British automotive industry. In its wisdom, the Board of Trade in London, decided that the Volkswagen Beetle had little future and would be unlikely to be an economic success. However other industries were recruited and taken over, particularly if they could be construed as being economically important – a case could be made in the interests of ‘national security’.
The Security Services would have you believe that their numbers are few and terribly elite. From my own experience, recruiting vast armies of people to do some small favour for our Security Services, I can vouchsafe that those approached by Military Intelligence or the Security Services are an army so large that it virtually amounts to a fifth of our professional population who travel abroad, plus a myriad militia of others – some at far lower levels than anyone would expect, most of them members of some secret or organised society.
Secret Society members form the backbone of our recruitment pool. When men and women organise themselves into groups, sororities or fraternities, corruption soon follows. Whilst the moral and ethical considerations of these groups may declare themselves to be wholly altruistic the truth is that the idea of: ‘scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours,’ has undermined British business management for decades. Of course each member is tested as to how far their moral rectitude, or lack of it, will allow them to stray. Those who will not stray remain oblivious of the true nature of the organisation they have signed up to. But it is a small and insignificant malfeasance to favour a fellow member of the same society over an unknown man or woman. This may lead to allegations of ‘institutionalised racism’ or ‘jobs for the boys’.
This insidious favouritism mitigates against efficiency and goes on to wreak havoc in every sphere of the known world. (Nigeria – endemic corruption stems back to Masonic influence.) First it may be merely a means to an end. ‘Such and such a good cause needs help, let’s bend the rules a little to ensure that they get it.’ From little acorns …
The fact is that all secret societies or fraternities evolve into some sort of brotherhood, or sisterhood, whose individual members begin to believe themselves superior to those outside their number. If one believes oneself to be superior the seeds of corruption are easily sown. Enshrined in the American Constitution is a belief that ‘all men are created equal’ – today that belief is honoured more in the breach than the observance.
If you are a lesser human being than I am, being inferior to me, I will have a claim to better justice, better rewards, a more comfortable life, better education for my children, better healthcare and a higher standing in the eyes of the law. If the members of my society can make these things happen then it is merely self-protection to become a part of that secret society or join that group and participate in an enforced friendship, which has at its core a duty to perform favours of mutual benefit and excuse or cast a palliative light on any infringements of the law or moral code.
My childhood friend, Wolfe, Alex’s grandfather, was a member of just such a society – let’s call them the Liberty Builders. Who sits on what committee overseeing standards or examining candidates for promotion is rarely questioned. When Wolfe discovered this he was initially outraged. Eventually he realised, having missed the ladder for London appointments, as a consultant in the medical profession, he would have to join the Liberty Builders or give up his ambition to become a consultant.
There is an apocryphal tale of two young men who joined the Navy as midshipmen. They became close friends, having entered the service together. Both realised that friendship was a useful tool in the preferment stakes. Before their initial training was complete, they agreed that if ever the other’s name was mentioned they would interject to praise one another. Both became admirals.
That is the essence of secret societies. An agreement to favour one another, even complete strangers, over lesser beings excluded from the fraternity. There are so many of these societies that it shouldn’t make a difference so long as everyone is a member of one or other of these groups. But there are individuals who are not joiners, people who believe that a level playing field should exist and a meritocracy gain ascendance. These poor misguided duffers have no idea what handicap they suffer.
Lord Acton said: ‘Everything secret degenerates: nothing can be trusted that cannot bear public scrutiny.’
There is much in that – secrets are destructive; they particularly destroy those who keep them. Unfortunately the secret influence of all these societies and clandestine alliances, and I include Military Intelligence in this, has wholly undermined the society in which we live. But there is a psychological ploy which ensures that plots, such as these, are dismissed.
J Edgar Hoover out lined this ploy: The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous – he simply cannot believe it exists.
Most of these societies have some sort of occult or magic at their core – a secret to which only the initiated are privy. These secrets are in themselves tests of an initiate’s discretion. If small secrets can be kept, greater secrets will be revealed to them, but one must pass the test at each level, failure to do so results in atrophy of one’s career before one has access to any secrets of real importance. Secret signs, which mean nothing to the uninitiated and everything to those within the brotherhood, serve to cement these bonds of loyalty.
The Liberty Builders, having Royal patronage, are one of the largest and most influential societies in the world. Efforts to ensure that people of colour and women, to use the current politically correct term, are more equally represented in the top echelons of the law, medical and business professions, came up against the barrier to the men only rule, which Liberty Builders had at their core. Although the French had men and women in some of their oldest Liberty Builder societies, the British had resisted women. In the truly pragmatic style of these sorts of things, when it became clear that women could no longer be prevented from reaching positions of power, it was decided to set up exclusive societies of Liberty Builders for the fairer sex. God forbid that the uninitiated should be allowed to rise to positions of influence.
The wives and daughters of existing members were sounded out and it worked. Problem with women is that they are not generally joiners and will tend to dismiss the magic, secrets and initiation rites as unimportant or laughable. The initiation rites of many of these societies are designed to reveal character weaknesses, skeletons in cupboards and uncover a means of manipulation which can most effectively be used to make a new member most valuable, for the ‘greater good.’ Which makes these sorts of societies the ultimate utilitarian tool, provided one understands that it is no longer acceptable to espouse even liberal political views any longer.
Women tend to operate in much smaller cliques; cliques of known individuals – they will not generally adhere to a wider loyalty, which includes strangers. Women are however most easily manipulated by men – so it is usual to recruit the wives of men we can trust, men whose membership of the club has ensured their allegiance to the establishment. Women’s groups have become extremely successful operating, as they do, on a far more intimate level than equivalent male societies of this sort. Don’t know much about how it all works – not being a woman myself. Women are less susceptible to man made magic, though luckily they are more prone to superstition.
Above the Liberty Builders are members of an even more elite set – Royal Arch, Livery companies, and for Roman Catholics that ultimate right wing religious group – Opus Dei. Even Rotarians, British Lions, Buffaloes and other sundry groups exercise a small degree of power. The Bilderberg Group, mainly a corps of men within industry and politics – originally drawn from these secret societies – meet in secret mountain top retreats from time to time to settle differences and manipulate circumstances to their own advantage. Within Britain the Committee of Twenty is perhaps the most exclusive of these societies.
World Leaders are often invited to join a party at the Bohemian Grove in California. In an autobiography of his Washington years, Sir Nicholas Henderson, British Ambassador to Washington, records a telephone call from Al Haig to Ronald Reagan in 1982. The Bohemian Grove was an elite boy scout camp, from which women were excluded. Small dormitories are shared and the freedom to urinate amongst the trees becomes a treat for men of influence who tended to grasp this freedom with both hands. Al Haig reporting in to Reagan during the camp in 1982 said that his dormitory comprised: Henry Kissinger. Schultz, Helmut Schmidt; Isaac Stern and Lee Kuan Yew.
Then there is the ‘Committee of Twenty’ – the most seriously influential group I have stumbled across. When Middle Eastern petrodollars were being moved around the world in the 70’s it created huge international monetary crises. The Committee of Twenty was prevailed upon to negotiate with Middle Eastern sources of this cash, and the moving of monies on a whim from country to country and account to account began to steady. See Sir Nicholas Henderson’s diary of his last years in Washington.
These are only groups which have had some dissemination of their existence through the press, there are others which are not even known of. What is clear is that those who truly wield power have access to draw together the efforts of all members of these secret societies for their own ends. Much has been written of the Illuminati or enlightened. What has hitherto been suggested merely scrapes the surface of reality. Martin Short and Stephen Knight’s books, charting the excesses of the Masonic Brotherhood created a hoo haa, but the Parliamentary Committee investigating the undue influence of the Illuminati found little evidence of wrong doing. The enquiry received written evidence from scores of people, however the only person critical of the Freemasons they interviewed was Martin Short. That surely says more about the covert influence of the Illuminati than it does about their moral probity.
Some of these societies are woven into the fabric of all our traditions. Within the City of London a group of such importance rules over this little enclave, centred around Mansion House. Nothing sinister surely? The livery companies, Honourable Artillery Company and various City groups know how much power these men have. Through the ranks of these small societies the next generation of power is groomed and one cannot escape a degree of nepotism. Everyone accepts the status quo. Anyone who would dare to question it might be thought a rabid left leaning republican and deeply suspect, or at the very least a dangerous anti-traditionalist. Tradition is the sacred cow by which our status quo flourishes. The Queen herself is expected to ritually and traditionally seek permission to enter the precincts of the City of London, escorted by the Lord Mayor. So symbolising her lack of absolute sovereignty in a part of her Kingdom. New anti-terrorism laws make it an offence to wear satirical T-shirts in designated areas – The City of London is one such ‘designated area.’
Her Majesty is reported to have told Paul Burrell: “There are powers at work in this country about which we have no knowledge.” The original quote, reported shortly after Burrell’s trial collapsed read: “There are dark and sinister powers at work in this country about which you have no knowledge.”
How marvellously Orwellian our rewriting of history has become
All these groups, without exception, have been infiltrated by the Security Services. We can count on almost any member of any society to do our bidding. We have the dirt on every man’s life. Many initiation ceremonies allow insights into an individual’s weaknesses: weaknesses we may have been entirely ignorant of, without the initiate’s cooperation. Knowledge is power and since Echelon our knowledge has increased exponentially. We can examine the minutiae of any mans life, and things are getting far easier in this respect. National I D cards, centrally held health service records and vehicle microchips are being processed through Parliament to ensure that at the touch of a button any information can be accessed without undue effort. This should not be difficult to reconcile if one trusts the State absolutely. Since the debacle of the lying, cheating, killing deception over the Iraq war, can we really trust our State with any amount of centrally held data?
Knowledge, it is said, is power. If vast amounts of centralised data are kept on all members of society, that society has to trust the Government with that data. Since exemptions for the powerful are also being put in place, can the data be believed to be wholly protected from the prying eyes of dark and sinister forces about which the general public know so very little?
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Chapter 3
So there you have it the reins of power all lead back to Rome. This may go some way to explaining the influence a small country, like post colonial Britain, has over the world. Britons are society joiners by and large. The excesses of the Italian Security Services, the role of their equivalent to the SAS – L’Onda (the Italian equivalent of our SAS) perpetrated false flag terrorist activities in Italy, purporting to be left wing terrorist attacks in order to ensure a right wing backlash. These activities have been uncovered by the Italian judiciary and are well documented in Daniele Ganser’s book. The reins of power that lead back to Military Intelligence Stay Behind (MIS/B) ensconced in America and Britain have largely been ignored. The truth in its entirety cannot be unravelled until we trace the strings of power back to the mother puppeteers.
The magic of the initiation ceremonies within secret societies was found, almost by stumbling in ignorance upon it, the secret of utter loyalty to the cause. If one illustrates what it means to be cast out of the society, to be shunned – subjected to the cool and icy blasts of existence outside that society; then new initiates will remain faithful for the rest of their days. It is a form of Stockholm Syndrome.
If an initiation ceremony demands that the new recruit be blind folded, ritually has a noose tied around his neck with the threat of having his tongue ripped from its root if ever he divulges the secrets of the society or its members, a form of Stockholm Syndrome is systematically put in place. A fear of exciting the condemnation of fellow members keeps the recruit passive, malleable and ready to follow orders without question.
You remember Patty Hearst – the millionaire publisher’s daughter who joined the group which initially kidnapped her. If someone is abused and scared and then finds that their modified behaviour is rewarded by those they have come to fear; they will continue behaving in the way their captors require of them. So it is with the initiation rites of secret societies.
Grown men are often reduced to tears and shaking fear during their trials of entry into these societies. A story in an American newspaper leaked out into our press of a man subjected to a mock execution during his initiation into the Liberty Builders. Unfortunately the gun used for the mock execution was loaded and the man killed instantly. Accidents will happen.
When finally the recruit is drawn into the warmth of the bosom of the society – they will never leave or betray that society. Love for the warmth they bask in, as a member of their society – and fear of the cold ignominy they will suffer if they leave; keep them on the true path.
What no one can imagine is that these societies are all somehow interconnected. At the top of every tree every leader of these societies talks to every other, but most of all they talk to us. A coup has been achieved without a single shot being fired in anger.
We do kill and will always kill a few people on the way, but most of those deaths appear to be tragic accidents. Not for us the stupid and foolhardy use of Polonium, as used in Litvenenko’s murder in London by the Russians or whomever was actually responsible for Litvenenko’s death, although, frankly I do wonder at the sloppiness of Dr David Kelly’s death and the subsequent shoddy enquiry. Where justice can be ignored and individuals realise that they are immune from the rule of law, a certain carelessness tends to become apparent.
When questioned in Parliament, Ministers will reply, often with innocent candour, that we do not kill people. At this point one must imagine scores of ex special services soldiers falling about in hysterical laughter on sofas up and down the country.
Where questions are asked about incidents where a death might appear to be suspicious one can always find a willing recruit of some secret society or another to exonerate the culprits.
Daniele Ganser’s admirable research reveals that the car bomb which killed three policeman in Peteano, Italy in 1972, led to the round up of over 200 Communists and a left wing witch hunt. Not until 1984, when Judge Casson reopened the case, was it discovered that the initial forensic report into the case, was produced by an ultra right wing member of the Italian ‘Ordine Nuovo,’ Marco Morin. Morin’s evidence that the explosive used had been one favoured by the Red Brigade was a fiction. In fact the explosive used had been C4 – an explosive used almost exclusively by NATO. This evidence led back to Military Intelligence / Gladio / S/B, false flag atrocities carried out in order to undermine Communist organisations. The United States Government still publish on its website that evidence of this nature is nothing less than a Communist black propaganda campaign. Judge Casson, had no Communist allegiances at the time. However the temptation to join left wing organisations, when one uncovers truths of this sort, is for some almost too great to resist.
When two London policemen, with Irish connections killed a man, who was wrongly suspected of being an IRA activist, in a London police cell, it was necessary to act quickly to allay suspicion. The intention was to rough the man up, however the roughing up had an unforeseen finality. Luckily a drunk – Malcolm Kennedy, lifted from the street – had been placed in the same cell and the death, rather than the roughing up, could laid at the drunk’s door. This death was an accident, an over zealous thumping, which should have been laid at a drunk’s door has led to questions being asked by the failed would be contender for the Labour Party Leadership, John McDonnell, in Parliament. Problem is that people who have suffered these sorts of injustices, of being stitched up for crimes they did not commit, are very often a thorn in the side of the establishment for the rest of their days. Takes a lot of co-ordination, but secret societies can be relied upon to ensure that the wrongly convicted man is deprived of the means to work effectively on his release and denied access to justice or reparation. The policemen involved became mentally ill, yet more patients for the ministration of the Monastery.
It is an undeniable fact that torture affects those who are tortured, but what is often lost is that the torturers themselves alter so considerably that they lose a part of their soul to their work. This loss of soul too often results in mental illness. The Monastery is a master not at retrieving lost souls, but at normalising the torturer’s or murderer’s acceptance of that loss. Justifying one’s sins is a common trait of humanity, and one which I know to be essential, in targeting enemies of the State. If one can convince the persecutor that what they do is essential to the common good, then it is an easy step to convince the army of persecutors to blindly continue in their cooperation in the excesses of the State.
The suicides of a number of operatives first alerted us to the need for psychological research and palliative care in the normalising of souls in those who carried out our work. The Americans first alerted us to the problem, and, through our special relationship, we began to address the issue, an issue to which we turned to the Monastery to for redress.
Unwitting assets, those subjected to hypnosis or double hypnosis, a personality change followed by a deeper level of hypnosis to yet another alter ego, enables some of our assets to carry out work of which they themselves are unaware. These assets do not require counselling to assuage any guilt, since they are unaware of their actions once relieved of the hypnotic effects. No, it is their handlers, those who are witting participants who often become so dejected that they are driven to take their own lives.
Allen Dulles, head of the CIA was sorely exercised on this point after Frank Wisner, one of the leading CIA Stay-Behind puppeteer operatives in Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa, found that the nature of the job had made Wisner ineffective through a tortured psychology. Wisner’s role as Deputy Director of Plans for covert action, under Dulles meant that Allen Dulles saw at first hand the psychological mayhem which could be wrought in his less psychopathic personnel. Although Dulles replaced Wisner as the covert action department head in 1958, and tried to ameliorate the psychological angst which beset Wisner, Dulles was knocked back when Frank Wisner shot himself in 1965.
Dulles eventually rose to be head of the CIA, he was sacked by Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961. Kennedy’s vow to ‘smash the CIA into a thousand pieces’ after the Bay of Pigs, has long fuelled conjecture that the CIA might have been involved, not just in covering up aspects of the assassination of Kennedy, but in the assassination itself. However Dulles is linked both to MK Ultra and to the S/B (Stay-Behind) projects Dulles is mentioned in John Marks Book – The CIA and Mind Control and Daniele Ganser’s book 0– NATO’s Secret Armies. Both MK Ultra and the ‘Stay-Behind’ Operations are highly secret clandestine affairs; it would make sense if both still came under the same aegis of control. All roads lead to Rome, or to the new Holy Republican Empire of Neo-Conservative America and their side-kicks in British Military Intelligence and S/B.
Funny isn’t it how those who will quite happily arrange for death and destruction on a large scale on unknown others, are touched when the effects of their efforts touch those they know. After this tragedy huge efforts were made to ensure that a haven was carved out for angst ridden operatives to revive their trauma riven souls. In this the Monastery still plays an essential role.
Diverting goodness - philanthropy, patriotism and respect for authority enables the State to create monsters of us all.
It is only too easy to trace the whereabouts of an innocent who can then be stitched up on spurious charges of committing the crime. Take Barry George – a man convicted of the murder of Jill Dando. Ms Dando’s murder was quite clearly a cold, ruthless and efficient execution. A shot to the head, executed with cold precision and without any distress on the part of the perpetrator, who vanished without trace from the scene, led all of us who saw the media reports to surmise that a contract killing was the only explanation. The fact that Dando was a confidante of the Princess of Wales, who had promised to reveal some startling news to the world and then promptly and rather usefully died in a tragic car accident may not be entirely coincidental. When you need to protect an executioner you discover the man or woman least able to protect themselves from false allegations, to be the most useful patsy. This is becoming a bit of a problem as even Barry George’s prison guards allege that the man is incapable of violence, let alone carrying out such an efficient and precise murder and disappearing into thin air.
With Echelon and a plethora of CCTV cameras it is easy enough to place an innocent suspect in the area and make the evidence fit. Once one has a conviction all questions tend to fade into oblivion. A need for self-justification makes co-conspirators of all those who work in shadier areas of uncertainty. Heroes are created from people who refuse to play this game to the nth degree.
Those of us involved in this work felt scruples to be both morbid and unhealthy whilst we worked in the pocket of the ultimate corrupt society. I now realise that these smothered scruples were the only moments of sanity I enjoyed. My road to Damascus has led me to understand that common decency passes for heroic virtue and utter corruption for excusable imperfection.
The Monastery is relied upon to experiment and create new psychological tactics. The Monastery is also the method which shores up a society of individuals against recognising their moral scruples as a sane revolt against the utter corruption to which they have given their lives.
The Monastery serves as pardoner and those two policemen’s reaction to their crime demanded a pardon, which no sane society could justifiably bestow without confession and punishment. Confession, this confession for instance, is the goal to which we all eventually return. That individual goal must be smothered and the Monastery is our ultimate tool for smothering confessions.
If the worth of society is greater than the worth of any individual within that society, then the liberties and freedoms of any one individual are of little importance. So all members of secret societies strive to climb the ladder of success within these groups, to ensure greater safety. Better not to be the unconnected innocent, stitched up on a heinous charge, which members of alliances have actually committed. Far better to be a member of that fraternal organisation and conspire in convicting the innocent.
Morality begins to look exceedingly dangerous in today’s world. In such a climate of fear, no man can afford the luxury of ethics any longer.
Of course we have to cope with the human frailties of the great and the good too.
I wasn’t involved in any of the Royal shindigs, but heard that the Queen Mother was instrumental in setting up the marriage of Lady Diana Spencer and HRH Prince Charles. Certainly the Prince also sought Camilla’s approval for his intended bride. Following Mountbatten’s advice to the letter, the Prince had been putting it about for years, seemed unable to settle down. He’d just lost his Uncle Dickie and the only other real source of advice he could rely on was his maternal grandmother. There seemed to be a problem with his love life in so far as he was drawn to married women.
Problem now seemed to be that history might repeat itself with the last Prince of Wales debacle still resonating in the minds of the great and the good. Couldn’t have another Duke of Windsor with the last one not yet dead. That awful American, Wallis Simpson had done the decent thing and had no children, so no possible threat to the throne existed. Don’t know whether Wallis was barren or what the arrangement was, but these things can be arranged.
Lady Tryon, or Kanga as he used to call her, Camilla whom we now all know and love and a score of others flitted over the horizon and were kept well below the radar of the paparazzi. Kept us on our toes keeping it all quiet. I will say this for Camilla, she was very forgiving, very co-operative too, and somewhat of an insider. A modern day Mata Hari – she missed her calling, could have carved out quite a niche in the intelligence services if she was minded to.
Our beloved Queen has never quite forgiven Camilla or Charles. The seeds of that little fall out happened at a polo match I attended. Diana – Her True Story, by Andrew Morton had just broken the news of a marriage in deep trouble. In it Morton claimed that Camilla was the source of Diana’s troubles. Poor girl if only she had known.
Following the publication of Morton’s tell all book the press were stalking Camilla and Andrew Parker Bowles. They’d lived separate lives for years. Andrew was known, in all the best circles, to have a permanent squeeze in London. Girl of good stock, we’ll call her Emma - related to old Winston Churchill himself, not likely to indulge in below stairs kiss and tell, so no problem there; no problem in laying down his wife for his future King either. If truth be told it was quite a feather in his cap; cosy little arrangement, which the upper echelons of our society have always enjoyed with absolute discretion, good taste, and mature judgement. However the days of Royal wives putting up with this sort of thing were over.
There you have it the ultimate mismatch. A girl who believed in true love, fidelity and loyalty marries a man who believes he can never give up a series of mistresses – he had been quoted as saying he would not countenance being the first Prince of Wales without a mistress.
It is often said that when a man marries his mistress he creates a vacancy, I wonder …?
Problem was unlike other Princes of Wales he failed to protect his wife from the ignominy of having his mistresses flaunted in front of her.
The Morton book was vengeance writ large. How the hell she achieved it is a story in itself. No member of the Royal Family can sneeze without someone knowing about it. Yet she managed to get out the whole sorry saga without any of us being alerted, quite a feat. Morton wasn’t even on our radar.
Everyone who was anyone knew this affair was in full flood, including the Queen Mother. Andrew Parker Bowles was a particular favourite of hers and it was so much easier to turn a blind eye to a much-loved young courtier, than to ask awkward questions. Everyone knew, everyone but the Queen herself. Assured by her eldest son that there was absolutely no truth whatsoever in this scurrilous rumour of an adulterous alliance with Camilla, the Queen invited Andrew and Camilla into her marquee at a polo match. Ensuring that her reception of the couple was in full view of the hovering press she warmly kissed them both as she greeted them. No more needed to be said – they were off the hook. Pictures of the Queen embracing Camilla and Andrew were in every paper the following day. The general reading public can be counted upon for their patriotism and loyalty to the monarch if nothing else. No one could or would believe the Queen’s reception of the Parker Bowles’ might be so warm if there was any truth in Morton’s troublesome book. Problem was that Charlie boy then confessed on national television that he had indeed had a long-term dalliance with Mrs Parker Bowles.
Diana lied too – she told Sir Robert Fellowes that she had nothing to do with Morton’s book and he believed her. Useful that. Fellowes carried a grudge against his sister-in-law after that. Bit of a sap Fellowes, now Chairman of the Prison Reform Trust and Chairman of a big High Street Bank. Tall, sandy blonde man who appears uninspiring and quite humble, but don’t be fooled by the humility. Don’t know what his qualifications for either of these posts is, except of course nearly twenty years loyal Royal service, born to the right station in life and brother-in-law to the late Princess of Wales. He has admitted that as a young man he was once locked in cells overnight for disturbing the peace, but that is hardly a qualification. Like me, Fellowes too didn’t go to University.
Must say Diana’s family have been very helpful in scotching rumours that her death in ’97 was not just a tragic accident – preferring to attribute her death to over enthusiastic paparazzi. So much easier to see the bright red herring than contemplate that there might be a bigger and better camouflaged shark hovering in the dark and sinister recesses of a pond.
Much later, when on national television, the Prince admitted his adultery stemmed many years prior to the polo match, it came as a deep and traumatic shock to the Queen that she had been so ill used and her judgement so clouded as to be seen to conspire in an adulterous relationship. To Her Majesty’s mind she might be thought to have given her sanction to an affair of which she had been kept deliberately ignorant. Her Majesty was beside herself with suppressed fury and resentment at the way in which she had been trapped into sanctioning an adulterous relationship she believed had never existed; a figment of her daughter-in-laws delusional imagination. The Queen Mother was not quite such an innocent and her advice to her daughter may have spurred Her Majesty’s generosity of the Parker-Bowles’ reception at that polo match. Since the Royal Family are not given to expressing themselves very openly, I am not sure even Charles and Camilla understand the level of betrayal Her Majesty must still feel. I believe she remains distraught that anyone might believe she had countenanced adultery. Her own faith and beliefs are so strong, that she would never knowingly have colluded in the duping of the British public.
All those rumours over Lord Porchester as Prince Andrew’s father are an utter calumny. The Queen would never ever have strayed outside her marriage vows, any more than she would stray outside her coronation vows.
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Chapter 4
When Stella Rimmington was promoted to the top job, at MI5, ahead of the favoured man, Julian Faux, it came as somewhat of a shock to all of us in the know. Rimmington’s view that Five had been dominated by ex military and ex Colonial Service personnel is perhaps true, but going outside the long established routes to preferment, does mean that any leader of an organisation who has not climbed the same ladder understands little of the networking advantages that these former careers gave to senior men within Five.
Rimmington has however admitted that she was a part of a new networking order and said of her time as a woman languishing in the male dominated world of Five: ‘We mounted a quiet and effective female revolution, there was no bra burning and no drama, but we began networking.’ The old club ties were being given a new and innovative slant it seems. Julian Faux, ex Colonial Service and D Branch man was tossed aside to usher in the first female head of MI5.
Rimmington by contrast to the ex military and colonial types, had begun her career as an archivist with Worcester County Council. When she received a tap on her shoulder she was married to a man in the Diplomatic Service, serving at the British High Commission in India. Our man in India, a little overwhelmed by the amount of clerical work he was expected to process, thought this woman might be discreet enough not to blab and stupid enough not to understand very much. So she was recruited to Five in India. One can see the colonial importance still retained within the Security Services in that Five were working in India as if it were still a colony. Our man in the High Commission was so overwhelmed by work that he chose someone he considered to be a relatively discreet non-entity to assist him in his clerical duties.
Chaos theory really came to life when I thought about this, how the dice roll to elevate or subjugate individuals is rarely a matter of ability, it is more often a matter of chance.
Rimmington was a woman of limited capacity, never really understood what we were about – pretty, charming, flirtatious and utterly … – well I won’t lay this open to a libel action. Suffice it to say that she feels her ’sense of fun’ has served her career well. Her slightly round shouldered stance, her diminutive stature – she barely rises to five foot four in heels; together with an absolute commitment to not making waves within the establishment, made her eminently suited to being a candidate to illustrate that the glass ceiling had been broken.
However she should not be underestimated in her ability to make things happen. Like everyone perceived to be stupid, our ability to resort to the most deceitful and underhand ploys is never expected or understood … until it is too late.
Stella Rimmington was of the opinion that her rise within Five could partly be attributed to the fact that Five was still reeling from the Cambridge three / five - Philby, Burgess and McLean, Blunt and who knows. On his return as a Colonial administrator, working quietly in D Branch, from Swaziland, Julian Faux was asked to base his residence in Cambridge to root out any others whom Five believed might still be at large.
The outing of Blunt much later in 79/80 was a direct result of Faux’s insistence that the security of Five continued to be compromised by the keeping of Blunt’s name secret. Years earlier when Lord Denning was asked to conduct an enquiry – Keeler again, which included questioning Blunt, he was specifically told not to question certain activities Blunt carried out on behalf of the British Government at the end of the Second World War. The outing of Blunt, handled badly could have resulted in an almighty mess. In the event a tame author was tipped off and managed, with the covert assistance of Five and Faux, to publish a scoop.
The problem with two defecting spies was where Faux finally made his mark. Which of the two were Russian plants? How much could we believe of what either told us? Faux’s handling of that debacle gave him enormous kudos within Five. So much so that his leadership of Five was considered to be a foregone conclusion. Rimmington’s rise to the top job gave many of us a practical illustration of what Kipling’s adage - beware the female of the species – really meant.
Rimmington herself has described the experience of being a woman within the Security Services as ‘not so much a glass ceiling – more of a glass box’. Once one has identified individuals who, with careful handling, might be perceived to be credible leaders, ready to overlook and seldom question activities, which might be less than ethical, then you have what Hannah Arendt describes as ‘the banality of evil’.
Then again, I suppose if you have the head of Five reporting to Ministers and completely unaware of what Five are actually up to, and without much curiosity to question anodyne reports of those unethical activities, it is quite useful if she believes the misinformation she is imparting to the politicians. Double blind briefings are almost as useful to Ministerial briefings as double blind medical experimentation. The Security Services have never been comfortable allowing politicians too much information.
When reporting, as Head of Five, to John Major, as Prime Minister Rimmington recalled: ‘I was reporting to John Major at the time and remember one meeting I had with him. I had to report that we knew a large bomb was being brought over on a lorry (from Ireland), we didn’t know the timing, we didn’t know the port and we didn’t know the target. The Prime Minister’s reply to me was “Oh well Stella do your best,” which was the right response.’
Politicians who try to get too involved in the activities of the Security Services will find themselves, like Profumo, out of office.
Rimmington said that she felt that ex Army and ex Colonial administrators were not sufficiently thrusting risk takers.
My own indirect experience of Rimmington’s field ability came through a chum. Posted as an undercover Forest Ranger in Ireland, he was charged with showing Rimmington around and explaining our activities in the area. Stella Rimmington was extremely grateful and insisted that she take him to out to tea. He selected a small discrete and discreet teashop and was treated to a slap up dish of scones with cream and jam. At the end Rimmington handed a large note to the waitress and, rather too loudly, called across the room at the waitress’ departing back: ‘Oh can you give me the change in English coins, I’m going back today and I don’t want to have Irish money I can’t use.’ We had to extricate our agent, pretty promptly after that faux pas. I believe Julian Faux was involved with the repercussions, which he handled so adroitly that not even Rimmington was aware of the furore that ensued. This unnecessary risk taking did not blight Rimmington’s career in any way.
Rimmington’s unwillingness to discuss the death of Patrick Finucan was illustrated at a meeting she attended as guest speaker at a Cambridge College in 2006.
Having told the meeting of her lecture to the KGB at the Lubyanka as Deputy Director General in 1991, immediately before the announcement was made that she would head up Five – the title of her speech to the KGB was: ‘The role of The Security Service in a democracy;’ and Dame Stella added: ‘When I became a public figure it stimulated sensible debate on the role of the Security Services in a democracy - this raised the morale of the service and attracted a huge quantity of quality recruits;’ At the end of her speech a questioner asked:
‘Are you at all alarmed by the implications of Sir John Stevens’ interim report into the role our the security services played in Northern Ireland, in a democracy?’
Playing for time Dame Stella replied: ‘I don’t know what you mean could you explain what you mean.’
To which the questioner said: ‘I mean for instance the murder of Patrick Finucan which appears to have been carried out by loyalist gunmen with the collusion of the Security Services who knew Finucan was on a list of those vulnerable to assassination – yet did nothing to halt his murder. Sir John Stevens’ interim report seems to implicate the Security Services in some questionable collusion with loyalist gunmen. If true is this collusion, by the Security Services, not alarming in a democracy?’
Stella Rimmington’s reply illustrates her disarming lack of interest in uncovering any excesses perpetrated by the Security Services: ‘I can’t comment on that I am afraid.’
It is only necessary to apply the blinkers, one does not need to pull any triggers oneself.
She was visibly shaken that, at a meeting full of pandering women, there to pay obeisance to her leadership skills as a woman, she should be asked such an awkward and unnecessary question. Ex Indian diplomat, and President of the College, Lady Veronica’s scowl of irritation toward the questioner was designed to ensure that she felt a social faux pas of extraordinary insensitivity had occurred.
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BOOK FOUR
Chapter I
My career led me into crevices of an establishment that one could never suspect existed. Political party lists began to be adopted by all three major parties. Although the involvement of military intelligence in these procedures will always be denied, these denials are hardly credible.
Checking names to activities in candidates’ histories was something I was good at – vetting procedures were my forte. Not a very onerous task, but one at which I excelled. The best example I can give is of a potential candidate whom I shall call Christopher. I knew Christopher’s father and so I was deeply involved in clearing this party list candidate. There was also a suspicion that I might have been less than absolutely discreet in my post whisky ramblings in the presence of Christopher and his wife, Mary. I came under scrutiny as much as this young couple.
Christopher’s name came up for vetting. There being the deep, dark, closeted skeleton of mental illness in his past, he was well qualified to pass muster to enter the fray of political selection, a useful tool of manipulation in his closet. Mental fragility also indicates a weakness of character; at least it did to the electorate in the 1980’s. Should Christopher step out of line he would be rapidly recruited to the cause by a threat of revealing his mental ncapacity. Oh these people may blow and harrumph quite brutally, but underneath it all lies a backbone of pure jelly. A proffered friendship, at the right moment, and you have these people blowing fire in the right corners against those we wished to subjugate. In order to succeed in almost any profession it helps to have some sort of malleability in the form of mental fragility. What we didn’t want was those who feared nothing and questioned everything being recruited to the party machinery.
Christopher was deemed sensible enough not to bring shame on the party, malleable enough to be manipulated, and shamed enough, by his mental illness, to have a lever to pressurise him should it become necessary. Should any more dirt be required we had a few early indiscretions too. His wife, Mary, also came to our attention at the time; just a conversation overheard on an office telephone.
Mary had secured a position on the periphery of one of the major parties. A small office servicing young, ambitious, would be Members of Parliament, whose purpose was to produce discussion papers for putative policies in the future – a self appointed think tank if you will. This small organisation served as a crèche for would be politicians of the future, a place where they could cut their teeth in formulating policy papers.
Christopher was ambitious, politically ambitious, and travelled on his wife’s coat tails to become Treasurer of this young group of would be politicians. However – according to family folklore, whenever Christopher got into deep water, in the cut and thrust of the political fray, he lapsed into mental illness. This was enough of a handicap to ensure he was not favoured in the selection process. His name was not on the lips of the movers and shakers of the party – prominent men desperate to promote their particular favourites did not figure on Christopher’s radar. Pretty boys were also often favoured at that time in the hothouse kitchens of the Conservative Party. Christopher had neither the looks nor the grace to be considered a pretty boy either. Party lists are the first step to gaining a seat; patronage by the influential, is a hurdle that many are too dense to be aware, is also fairly essential when seeking promotion within the party hierarchy.
A decent young man, William, a member of the group for which Mary worked, applied to be accepted on the party candidates’ list. Having absolutely no skeletons in his cupboard and no means of leverage through potential family skeletons either, he was rejected. The phones of the group were tapped and one of the recordings was brought to me – since it was known that I was a close friend of the family, albeit merely a vicarious godfather cum uncle–in-law by marriage, to Mary. The conversation between William and Mary showed a degree of perspicacity in Mary, which it was thought might be dangerous. Was there anything I could do? The unasked question was; had I done anything to alert Mary as to how the establishment actually worked?
The telephone recording was between a young would be Member of Parliament, William, who rang the office after being turned down fir the Candidate’s List, and Mary spoke to him. A desperate dejection had overcome the boy – he had just heard he had not passed the selection procedure to gain a place on the party list and he was sorely perplexed. Mary listened – he was a member of the group. A few words of sympathy – but the boy continued questioning the reasons for his rejection. There seemed to be no reasonable explanation.
William was obviously someone Mary had some time for – nothing romantic but a certain amount of respect. Finally, as if taking a huge risk, Mary asked him: ‘William what dirt do they have on you?’
‘Nothing,’ came back the reply. ‘I haven’t done anything wrong at all.’
Her reply is what brought the tape to my desk. ‘Precisely, William, no dirt at all – no means of controlling you. Think about it William.’
The boy’s: ‘Aaah,’ said it all. His abject misery was replaced by a suspicion that deeper waters flowed in the stakes of political preferment.
No, there was nothing I could do. The unasked question; whether I had in some way tipped Mary off did raise a small cloud on my horizon at the time. However I was able to dispel any possible doubt by pointing out that I’d had no contact whatsoever with Christopher or Mary for a quite some time, my close friendship with Christopher’s father did not make me a sufficiently close friend, to risk loose talk. The last time I had seen the young couple was at their wedding.
At this time we were desperately trying to manipulate circumstances for what was eventually to become the mighty conglomerate of BAE. Hawker Siddeley, Vickers and Royal Ordnance together with a host of other organisations from Government and private enterprise which were set to become the monopoly company of British Aerospace. The MoD and British arms manufacturers were undergoing a rapid and potentially disastrous change. ‘Privatisation’ was the key ideology of the time.
If the State owned anything it was about to sell it off. As Macmillan commented in the Lords we were ‘selling off the family silver.’ The whole debacle of the SA 80 rifle extended back to this era. A hopeless and less than reliable piece of weaponry wished upon the British soldier by a corps of pen pushers, desperate not to lose face in the wake of the privatisation of Royal Ordnance. Bits of plastic broke off, the gun would fail to fire unless a forward assist locked the cartridge home. This method of manual assistance, to enable the gun to fire, probably made it less efficient than the Lee Enfield and many other rifles used during the second or even first world wars. Still we persisted in wishing these dud weapons on our soldiers. Far better, after all, for the ordinary soldier to have to cope with an added roll of tape and match box in his kit bag, to perform battlefield surgery on his weapon when it began to fall apart; better to lock each cartridge in by hand; better to put up with a faulty safety catch and better to eventually send our soldiers into the first Gulf War with weapons little better improved than those used in the First Great War, than for anyone at the MoD or BAE to lose face over a piece of junk, which has since been modified at a cost of five times the price which buying a similar functional weapon might have cost from either the Russians or the Americans. (See: Lions, Donkey and Dinosaurs by Lewis Page)
The only other army to buy the original SA 80 rifle was Mozambique and they got it as part of a British aid package. Beggars can’t be choosers. MP’s who ask awkward questions are easily disposed of.
How we are able to annihilate those who ask awkward questions is best illustrated by the case of an MP, Keith Best. disgraced – removed from office, prosecuted and eventually imprisoned for making numerous applications for shares. A chance meeting at a drinks party, as Best was being investigated for profiteering from the share sales of public utilities companies, had Best admitting that he had indeed made several applications for shares. His defence was that he had first been alerted to this ruse by a number of other MP’s who had similarly made several share applications. He had no idea it was properly illegal and that he could be imprisoned. What Best could not fathom was why he had been singled out for prosecution. He knew of several others who had managed to get away with it, but being a loyal party animal he was unlikely to blow the whistle on others. Best should have known better than to ask too many awkward questions.
Keith Best MP had begun to suspect that the establishment wanted rid of him as an MP. He was probably right, but there was little he could have done about it.
By this time I had reassessed my trip, as a raw recruit, to Cliveden. Stephen Ward had encouraged Keeler’s affairs with both Profumo and Ivanov (a Russian diplomat) – then happily for all involved, Ward had apparently committed suicide before any real enquiries could lead back to the plotters. Ward was the fall guy. The establishment are not above sacrificing their own when needs must. If Ward did commit suicide he was driven to do so, however I suspect that his suicide was not kosher.
I had begun to realise that the vagaries of chance detection for contravening laws, of which we are often unaware, were not merely chance entrapments. These things could and would be stored in a little black book somewhere; ready to trot out when the boat was rocked unnecessarily.
Did we manufacture dirt on the powerful – keeping it in reserve for a crisis of conscience to be overcome when all other manipulation failed? I often wonder if those who manipulate the strings of power lose a little of their soul in the process
Most people deliberately avoid these thoughts, knowing as they do, that such insight might lead to madness.
Sexual indiscretions unfortunately do not carry the same sort of leverage they once did. But, when occasion demands, they can be built into something with which to discredit a recalcitrant politician, who refuses to play by the establishment’s rules.
We had a death sometime in that era in which I was not involved and of which I have no real knowledge. However an MP had been found, tied up in bondage gear, having apparently inadvertently committed suicide by self-strangulation with an orange in his mouth. The shame surrounding that death meant that searching questions into the bizarre circumstance of his death were thought too tasteless to ask. The man had little history to link him to this sort of act, but the story was swallowed hook, line and sinker. In the interests of good taste no one was prepared to question the circumstances or the evidence in any real depth.
Potential recruits are unwittingly subjected to tests of their willingness to work for Military Intelligence long before they even realise they have been thought of as potential candidates, many don’t realise that their response is in effect an initiate test, many have no idea that they are even being considered.
1,976
Chapter 2
Internationally over the course of this time Glasnost came, Hesse died, and the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. There were rumours to scotch that Hesse’s death was not quite natural. It all happened on the American watch at Spandau, so technically it was their problem. Spandau was demolished the following day and a NAAFI, or American equivalent eventually built over the site. A little too pat perhaps – who knows? More to the point – who cared? Spandau provided a much-needed foothold for a stand off, between all those involved in the region, to have some sort of presence there. Hesse was surplus to requirements – more to the point – the Russians could be ejected from this theatre of influence after Hesse’s timely death.
In Britain, privatisation of gas, water, electricity, telephones provided a profitable bonanza for a new shareholding public. Council houses were bought to ensure the middle class, property owning, Conservative voting public had a secure toehold on the ladder. The upside was that, with a much greater number of the electorate having a real stake in the goodies of capitalism, it became unlikely that a Socialist Government would ever return to power.
If the will to power is sufficiently strong then moral considerations will be easily brushed aside by the ambitious, who seek power at whatever cost.
New Labour is the most effective illustration I can offer. Socialist principles of equality, justice and their foreign policy, much vaunted by Robin Cooke, of not supporting regimes who transgressed human rights – their so called ‘ethical foreign policy’ – were ditched when in power.
Cross the Security Services at your peril, you will not remain in power for long, nor will one succeed until some sort of rapprochement or tipping of the hat to the Security Services is reached. Arms manufacturers are an intrinsic part of the British establishment, seeking to limit their sales is seldom tolerated.
The Security Services have never been comfortable with Socialist Governments – too much equality is always slightly suspect. Through this period of boom, new taxes could be eased under the wire. Of course we had the anti-poll tax marchers – but dirty young people, at the margins of society could hold no real sway over the political juggernaut. A solid middle class, with an economic toehold in the goodies of society, spurred a neo capitalist revolution and allowed new laws to be passed and the gradual erosion of jury trials to be mooted by Conservatives. Many of the poll tax demonstrators would remove their names from electoral list and so avoid paying the poll tax, consequently voluntarily removing themselves from the franchise or the right to vote – a happy outcome for all. The property qualification for voting had been reintroduced on a voluntary basis. The very people who might bring a Socialist Government into power were driven, by economic considerations, to exclude themselves from the democratic process. Few prosecutions were conducted against those who did not submit their names to their electoral rolls.
The egality of society began to be eroded. A dangerous idea imported from France anyway – far too revolutionary for the military to have had much truck with. Through this period of boom it was unlikely that many would be overly worried if their dentist told them they were not working with the NHS any longer. It became a cachet to have a private dentist or even doctor in the higher echelons of society. Healthcare plans were offered by companies to their employees – the slow and steady privatisation of services began to gather apace.
The Security Services were not immune. What had once been the sole responsibility of the State, with a select few privatised arms for the really dirty work, became yet one more service to be farmed out to private enterprise. From Ferry Street in Edinburgh to the South Coast ex Special Services personnel were recruited to a vast privatised and utterly deniable new form of dirty tactics at arms length. The SAS of course had had a high profile in thoroughly kosher activities, like the storming of the Iranian Embassy. It came to be accepted that becoming a member of the SAS was a lucrative career move when one had to embrace Civvy Street.
I found my useful life in the Armed Services had come to an end. Having been promoted from Major to Lt Colonel in my last post, my pension was considerably enhanced. However I continued doing pretty much the same sort of work for a private security company. You’ll see many of their uniformed personnel in department stores up and down the high street. What is not obvious to the uninformed outsider is that many of these companies have specialised arms too. I was to recruit ex SBS (Special Boat Services – drawn from the Marines primarily), ex SAS (Special Air Services or 22 Squadron – often ex paras), ex military intelligence personnel – all now surplus to requirements in our post cold war society. We had other people who knew what they were doing when recruiting civilians from the Police, Customs and Excise, the Inland Revenue, the Squirrels etc. Our relationship, in the private sector, with the intelligence and security services is close, yet untraceable and unfathomable.
We have, after all, drawn most of our operative recruits from the Armed Services. Through our ability to access the information required, and our deniability in certain questionable enterprises, which the State would rather have no knowledge of; we became an essential political tool of the intelligence services. If there is no seeming control over a private security company by members of the establishment, then it is far more difficult to answer questions of their activities. Of course questions would be asked about Sandline International, but being a private company, Ministers could not be expected to give any satisfactory answers. However the Sandline debacle made the establishment realise how very exposed they were to accusations of working with one particular privatised company.
Sandline International and Simon Mann have risen to prominence again through the farcical attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea, but no obvious link to any part of the establishment can now be proven. Simon Mann would just have to rot in Chikurubi jail as a private mercenary a man and an organisation which the Government denied all knowledge. Zimbabwe has found a grateful Equatorial Guinea happy to sell oil to Zimbabwe in return for their worthless currency. Mark Thatcher pleaded guilty to lesser charges in South Africa and escaped the searching questions a not guilty plea might have generated.
Poor deluded Simon Mann was finally released from a prison in Equatorial Guinea and threatened to write his memoir. Fat chance, no publisher will touch it without some judicious editing.
The British Establishment works by virtue of its blinkers. If something is too difficult, or might prove too embarrassing to uncover, the idea that anything untoward might have occurred is all too easily dismissed as the ravings of conspiracy theorists. J Edgar Hoover’s wise words echo again: The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he simply cannot believe it exists.
However tenuous its links to the failed coup in Equatorial Guinea, the British Establishment’s connection with the fiasco will never wittingly be uncovered at any level. Well placed mercenaries, who had received an easy ride in a past scandal, decided to buy arms from Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe appears to have been a well-known stopping off point for mercenaries in need of weaponry. Cash poor, high inflation rates and funds in overseas bank accounts meant that high-ranking Zimbabwean Officials or Ministers were able to line their pockets on a fairly regular basis. Everyone was happy, but Mann’s threat to publish the names of the movers and shakers in that debacle is pie in the sky.
The natural arrogance of the establishment led to this coup’s nemesis. Believing that they were dealing with simple African savages, the coup plotters did not factor in a much more sophisticated political dynamic, than our simple plotters were able to believe might be possible in any African country. British mercenaries are after all merely gung ho ex-soldiers, who are generally not suited to allowing for complex civilian thought processes outside the magic circle of military intelligence.
Whilst one or two Ministers or Officials within the Zimbabwean establishment might have stood to have profited, personally, by selling arms to this crew, Zimbabwe itself was languishing under the strains of a concerted covert international attempt to deprive the country of oil.
What simpler method for the Zimbabwean Government to ensure an assured and plentiful supply of oil, than to tip off Equatorial Guinea that a coup was underway? The plotters themselves barely covered their tracks. So many were aware of what was about to happen that any element of surprise was severely compromised.
Zimbabwe’s worthless currency (three noughts were to be knocked off the Zimbabwean dollar a matter of months later) now mattered not a jot to Equatorial Guinea.
A debt of gratitude is seldom discharged. Zimbabwe parcelled up Simon Mann and delivered him to Equatorial Guinea as soon as they released him from Chikurubi jail.
Equatorial Guinea could rely on Zimbabwe’s support, and the continued incarceration of Simon Mann for years to come, and his extradition to the notorious Black Beach prison in Equatorial Guinea at the end of his sentence.
Much of the evidence published in South African newspapers never made it into the British media.
The Media itself became concentrated in a very few exceedingly powerful hands. Hands which could kill or generate any story at whim, our whim.
Big business was now running the show. I’d seen some evidence of this in the Ministry of Defence. BOTB (British Overseas Trade Board – under the aegis of the Department of Trade and Industry) trade missions were sponsored over the world. Tax payers’ money given in subsidies to British companies attending conferences on ‘Star Wars’ (Strategic Defence Initiative – SDI) and ‘Robotics’ where the acquisitions personnel of foreign governments would also congregate. There we could sell off redundant naval and military supplies and convince the buyers to acquire new military supplies too. Like moths drawn to the flame of power such purchases carried a cachet in so far as they drew the foreign movers and shakers closer to the centre of gravity where power holds international sway.
The fact that British Government aid to alleviate poverty, boost healthcare, inculcate literacy in third world countries coincided with these arms conferences was purely a happy happenstance. No questions would be asked if monies intended for the poor were diverted to sustain our military infrastructure. Research and Development costs for new weaponry would never get the sort of government subsidy it required – everyone was happy.
Who knows whether small kickbacks were offered, as has been alleged in the Al Yamamah / BAE / Saudi contract fiasco? Small favours like these will be protected from unwarranted scrutiny. The intelligence that many of the political elite in these impoverished countries gave their wives regular shopping trips to Europe and appeared in Switzerland and other known financial centres of utter discretion, was not high on the list of journalistic investigative reporting – unless we wanted it to be of course.
Government Departments came and went. The British Overseas Trade Board’s (BOTB) responsibility for ensuring that arms sales to third world countries was buoyant, has now been passed to the Defence Export Sales Organisation (DESO) a Government Department almost exclusively servicing the export of British weaponry manufactured by BAE. The privatisation of Royal Ordnance created a profitable milch cow for everyone but the British taxpayer.
Much is made of the success story of British arms manufacturing. It is claimed that thousands are employed in this profit making business. This is true, thousands are employed, but the British taxpayer almost invariably picks up the tab. The cost of civil servants salaries is never factored in. Civil servants who squirrel away at ensuring the profitability of our privatised and largely incompetent arms manufacturers are paid from British taxes. Any work they do, designed to help privatised arms manufacturers increase their profitability, is seldom factored into the financial equation. The Euro-fighter farce is merely one instalment of a long saga of Government support for the arms industry at unnecessary expense to the taxpayer, and the taxpayer always foots the bill. A great many of these planes had already been earmarked for mothballing, prior to delivery to our armed forces. Who cared if the cost of cancelling an arms contract or mothballing materiel became more expensive than taking the contract to its conclusion?
BAE has become a sacred cow, which the establishment protects at almost all costs. Formerly British Aerospace plc, or Bae, the company was formed by privatisation of nationalised Aerospace industry in 1980’s. BAE has now taken over almost the entire British military-industrial sector, including remnants of civil aerospace and shipbuilding, such as it is. BAE Systems is just an offshore holding company focused on US interests/defence market. Lewis Page comments of BAE that: ‘It has an unhealthy amount of power over UK Government.’ Michael Portillo – ex Tory Defence Minister became a Director of BAE. This cosy fraternity is rarely made to answer for botches, botches paid for by the taxpayer, when over budget, and is virtually immune to the usual accounting regimes under which most businesses have to strive.
The pulling of the enquiry into BAE activities in Saudi Arabia by the Serious Fraud Office, or the Lord Chancellor’s department or Tony Blair, depending on which source one believes, is testament to the domination which vested interests exert in every sphere of the British establishment.
An article (by David Leigh and Rob Evans) about the Al Yamamah issue in The Guardian newspaper of 7 June 2007, states:
‘The attorney general’s office would not discuss claims about Lord Goldsmith’s concerns of “government complicity” in the payments. (To Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia) A spokesman said the SFO enquiry had been halted because of the “real and serious threat to national security.” “There were major legal difficulties – given BAE’s claim that the payments were made in accordance with agreed contractual arrangements.” The spokesman added: “ None of this is altered by the Guardian story.” …… “The MoD is unable to respond to the points made …. Since to do so would involve disclosing confidential information about Al-Yamamah, and that would cause the damage that ending the investigation was designed to prevent,” a spokesman said.’
I wonder why evidence of alleged corruption poses a ‘real and serious threat to national security’ if the establishment and the MoD are not up to their necks in it? Is our establishment so corrupt that they cannot withstand any Serious Fraud Office enquiry and pass with flying colours?
Or is this media fall out yet another example of the clandestine feud which MI5 and SIS wage covertly to try to wrest power from one another?
2,481
Chapter 3
We all, it seems, have something to hide, as we pursue our battles in secret. And one of the deepest secrets are the names of our friends, those whom we help up the preferment or profiteering ladder of the establishment.
On a national scale buying friendship has become de rigueur. A million or so thrown at a political party may buy legislative influence to help the profitability of a company. So generating hundreds of millions in profits. The odd bung of a million or so to politicians and Party funds would become a relatively cheap business donation.
Donations can oil the wheels and ensure that no insurmountable hurdles are put in the way of any profitable enterprise. After the Bernie Ecclestone debacle, where a donation of a million pounds to the Labour Party delayed tobacco advertising being banished from formula one racing circuits, led to an awareness that the price of any bung becomes a necessity of doing business in the UK. Parliament is dragging its feet over anti bribery legislation. We all know that in the current economic climate bribery is a quid pro quo of securing any contract.
What public demand led to the initiative of large casinos up and down the country?
Take for instance alcohol manufacturers. No one wanted extended opening hours for pubs. The police realised the added cost they would have to bear in manning city centres into the wee small hours; pub landlords realised they would have to foot the overheads which extended hours imposed upon them, they were also expected to pay a much larger bill for gaining their licence. Late night kebab houses would also be brought into the licensing legislation. Which companies profited most from extended opening hours?
Hundreds of pounds of new revenue, garnered from businesses, which had hitherto never sold alcohol and were unlikely to sell it in the future, created yet another stealth tax from which there was no escape. If a million or so, thrown at a political party, creates a climate where profitability increases by a billion, every one is a winner – everyone but the taxpayer who foots the bill for extra policing and the knock on social costs arising out of extended opening hours. Make no mistake; extended opening hours were designed to increase the sales of alcohol, whatever politicians may have argued. So whilst much posturing was done on the political stage about arresting the culture of binge drinking, our legislators conspired to serve the interests of increased alcohol consumption.
We will happily bully on behalf of our friends too. Bullying is the same the world over, whether on a micro or macro scale. The bully aims to provoke their victim into losing their temper, then claims to be the victim themselves when the provocation succeeds.
When cracks had begun to appear in the famous marriage of the Wales’ I attended a small christening party. One of the guests and a godfather to the infant was close to the Prince of Wales, playing a role in the Princes Trust. Over lunch the conversation turned to the Royal family and rumours that all was not well with the marriage of the Wales’. The first time I suspected that this fairytale marriage was in deep trouble was when the godfather turned to one fan of the Princess of Wales, who had just called her ‘Princess Di’ and interjected – ‘Ah … Disco Di.’ Morton’s book had yet to be published.
If those close to the Prince of Wales could be so scathing about his wife, rumours of their marriage difficulties could not be too wide of the mark.
I suddenly became aware how insecure the Prince of Wales felt. The godfather then told me that efforts were being made by Republican press barons to undermine the monarchy. It became clear that these sentiments were shared by the Prince of Wales. His indiscretion in referring to the Princess of Wales as ‘Disco Di,’ betrayed the forces which the Princess of Wales must be facing.
‘Who will rid me of this insolent priest’ had been the throw away remark which led to Thomas a Becket’s martyrdom. However Thomas a Becket’s martyrdom had more to do with those around the King and their will to power than with the King’s apparent throwaway remark.
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BOOK FIVE
Chapter I
The comparatively rich and powerful are subject to more vicious internecine battles for their favours. Rumours of spats between the Prince of Wales and his father were rife at the time. The Royal family’s natural jealousy toward one another is a perennial problem. Royal servants vie with each another for positions of power and influence. If reaching those positions of power and influence requires a certain amount of doing down of other royals, then so be it.
The Duke of Edinburgh could not hide his disappointment with his eldest son. The Duke had been marginalized from affairs of State throughout his adult life, but in compensation his dominance over family matters was seldom questioned. Wanting a tough and hardy son is a natural ambition for any father. The Duke of Edinburgh may have failed to appreciate that tough and hardy children are not produced by tough parenting, they are produced by a loving environment which reinforces the child’s self worth. The toughest of all the Royal children of that generation is unquestionably the Princess Royal, a child who was not subjected to the same rigours of upbringing as her brothers. Mother’s are often blamed for molly coddling their sons, preventing the child from reaching adult maturity. The selfless love of a parent never prevented any child from reaching their potential.
In all families a problem exists between father and son, no matter how well ordered the family. Freud would have one believe that this is a direct result of the Oedipus complex. Freud himself failed to understand that the fault almost invariably lies within the orbit of the Father’s attitude toward his son, not the son’s toward his father. I have often wondered whether the gender of an only or eldest child dictates the likelihood of divorce.
The resentment, which fathers hold against their sons, begins at birth. The mewling, puling infant clings to his mother’s breast, a territory reserved, until that time, exclusively for the father alone. An infant daughter is more naturally viewed as a vulnerable being deserving of protection. Her first smile at her father is never perceived as a threat of later dominance. Do first-born sons threaten a marriage more than first-born daughters?
It is natural for a son to challenge his father’s dominance when he reaches puberty. Challenges to the pecking order occur in all social animal environments. The silver back gorilla has to dominate his family group to ensure he remains leader of the pack. Young gorillas will test the silverback playfully until they reach an age and strength when they may be able to usurp his power. Battles between the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Edinburgh were often conducted by third parties, desperate to curry favour in their masters’ eyes.
At the centre of the problem lay the popularity of the Princess of Wales. Wherever the Royal couple went cries of ‘Diana – over here’ could be heard ringing out. The Prince felt himself relegated to the role of a bit part player and deeply resented it. He had graduated to the title of ‘Prince of Wales’ and had come into his own, largely able to avoid his father for long periods of time. Desperate for public recognition to compensate for the paternal disapproval he had so often encountered, he had come to be dubbed ‘The Prince of Wails’.
His need to be the centre of adulation was translated into friendships from which the Princess of Wales was excluded. It is widely known that the cufflinks of intertwined C’s, which the Prince of Wales took on his honeymoon, caused the first early rift in the Wales’ marriage. It also served as a warning shot over the Princess’ bows that she was likely to be challenged by another woman. The knowledge that another woman’s baubles had found a place on their honeymoon was perhaps the first a mortal blow to the chances of their marriage surviving, perhaps even before the birth of their first-born son.
The Princess of Wales had also been subjected to seeing her husband’s amorous advances pursued on the dance floor when they attended parties together.
The Duke of Edinburgh had little sympathy for his son’s injured ego at playing second fiddle to his wife; he had after all, to perform that role all his adult life. To be fair to the Duke he has never tried to outshine his wife or humiliate Her Majesty in any way. Rumours of the Duke of Edinburgh’s infidelities remained just that – unsubstantiated rumours. Almost every up market hairdresser in London had a story of at least one client who had caught the Duke of Edinburgh’s eye. Whatever the truth about their marriage, and it would be naïve to suggest that the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh never encountered any rough patches, their battles have remained a private matter. This was not possible in the marriage of the Prince of Wales to Lady Diana Spencer. Each developed their own staff and, since the Prince was known to be jealous of his wife’s popularity, his court made every effort to redress the balance.
Gossip surrounding royal intrigue is never silent for long. Traditionally British newspapers don’t publish this sort of rubbish – as was seen at the time of the abdication crisis. Foreign newspapers carried the story of Wallis Simpson well before the general public became aware that a problem existed. A privileged political hierarchy and a colluding press protected the British public. Less foreign travel and the absence of the internet meant that stories travelled less easily too.
Battles within royal circles have conspired to undermine the privacy of individual members of the Royal Family. The Way Ahead group was correctly formed to identify the problem and sought to stop these off the record briefings. At the time however if a courtier could plant a leak, detrimental to a member of the Royal Family his own master was unhappy with, it might score a point and lead to preferment. The hierarchy of royal servants might be the subject of a substantial book. A petulant word dropped by a Prince to a member of his staff might result in a press onslaught of such viciousness that a retaliatory leak becomes inevitable.
Whilst the Royal Family all castigated the press, they appeared oblivious to the fact that much of the predicament, in which they find themselves, is of their own making. A failure to curb the excesses of royal staff whispering in the ears of journalists served at the time to undermine the monarchy more than any other single issue. Each member of the Royal Family has a court of his or her own, and each of those courts vied with one another for promotion of the master, or mistress, they serve. The Queen herself is off limits, she does not sanction leaks or whispering, she keeps her own counsel, but her reluctance to become involved in family matters can be unsettling. One wonders how long the monarchy will survive without her.
At the height of the Wales’ marriage crisis the Queen did get involved. The Queen and her private secretary, had a meeting with the Princess of Wales, no one else was present. News of the content of that meeting leaked into the national press within hours. Naturally, as Her Majesty had been with her private secretary the entire morning, he was above suspicion. She was forced to conclude that only the Princess of Wales could have talked to the press.
The way the Prince of Wales felt about his wife was evident to all, from the lowliest staff member up. Many of these members of staff serve two masters: their royal employer and the security services. They do so in the belief that there is no conflict of interest. The Queen, after all, is the only person to whom the Security Services are technically accountable.
The Dutch have removed their Queen’s oversight of the Netherlands’ security services following a request she made to look into the background of a potential fiancé of a member of the Dutch Royal Family. The ensuing political fall out removed their security services from her arena of responsibility and new levels of accountability were instituted.
It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that those within the Security Services, and those serving the Prince of Wales, thought it expedient to disseminate information gleaned from their eavesdropping devices, so prevalent in all royal palaces and homes. Eavesdropping on the Royal Family may, on the face of it, appear treasonous. Nothing could be further from the truth.
It is unlikely that a would-be royal assassin will announce himself at the door and allow sufficient time for his efforts to be frustrated. Far more likely that a trusted and regular visitor will be turned to pose a threat, a threat which is unlikely to appear on even the most sensitive radar screen and to which none are alert. Until the security scare caused by Michael Fagan’s break-in to Her Majesty’s bedchamber the bedrooms of the royals were exempt from such bugging. It is for her own safety that we bug the Queen’s every move.
However it is also quite possible that having heard the Prince of Wales’ frequent exasperated ejaculations of: ‘Who will rid me of this insolent Princess?’ – he may have been taken a little too seriously. Lines became blurred and, being the heir to the throne, it is likely that a leak, of what was discussed between the Queen and her daughter-in-law, may have been translated into a patriotic duty. What is clear is that the Princess of Wales’ movements after her meeting with the Queen were also known. The Princess of Wales could not have leaked her conversation with Her Majesty, but someone other than the Queen, her private secretary and the Princess did leak the content of that private meeting.
The Princess herself was sufficiently astute to realise that if such a leak were made it would ensure that her access to Her Majesty would become even more problematic and that she would be considered the source of the leak.
Whilst many wrongly assert that that Diana, Princess of Wales, was stupid, she clearly wasn’t all that stupid. Unfortunately she was perceived to be that stupid and responsibility for the leak was laid firmly at her door, so effectively souring the relationship she had with her mother-in-law.
Which is precisely what the Queen believed. Poor Diana, though innocent, came under suspicion again. This is the stuff that we are so good at – sullying the names of the innocent for our own nefarious purposes. Purposes we usually justify as our patriotic duty and to advance our own interests within the confines of the club.
Around the time John Major announced the breakdown of the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales I got a small Christmas card from Christopher and Mary, enclosing a note saying that they too were separating.
We’d had a recording between James Gilbey and the Princess of Wales endlessly played on our air waves – a lover’s phone call, recorded in perfect clarity and supposedly picked up by a radio ham or two and sent to the national press.
Problem was the same recording was picked up on different days by different radio hams, so evidently this was not just a lucky strike by one radio ham, chancing upon the use of one insecure mobile phone user. It is clear that this phone call between the Princess and Gilbey was intended for public consumption by an agency of the State. The phone call was relayed several times, picked up by different radio hams on entirely different nights. Someone somewhere wanted that phone call to be splashed across the press. That is the nature of the organisation I worked for.
At the time my moral scruples had been so smothered that I could and would justify almost anything I was asked to do in the service of my country. How many of us have voiced the sentiment: ‘I ask you to accept one thing, I did what I thought was right.’ Those were Tony Blair’s words on 10th May 2007, and they echo the words of self-justification which could be uttered by any operative in the sphere of any one of the Security Services asked to carry out a questionable activity in the service of their country.
Patriotism is indeed the last bastion of the utter scoundrel.
I suspect The Princess of Wales held a deep dark secret which the Royals were worried might see the light of day.
2,093
Chapter 2
Mental instability – or the interpretation of it in individuals – always serves to undermine those who become problematic.
Imbibing or inhaling intoxicating substances often leads to a heightened awareness and perception. But, like the Delphic Oracles, this heightened perception leads to odd behaviour, which, in today’s society is interpreted as mental illness. Individuals who discover the underlying sinister corruption, which has overtaken the British establishment, are fortunately often unhinged by that discovery. They present textbook symptoms of paranoia. Something at which we, the adepts at keeping State secrets, exacerbate to ensure that our covert operations remain classified and undiscovered.
The Prince of Wales is a great advocate of the Monastery – he has sent members of staff to the clinic, at his own expense, to resolve any issues they may have.
George Smith, a royal valet, made allegations of rape against another royal servant – a favourite admitted to the most personal service of his master. Once mental instability was diagnosed the allegations George Smith made became deeply suspect.
Diana was to make herself an enemy of a deeply powerful establishment in campaigning against land mines and supporting anti-establishment causes. I often wonder if she was perhaps inveigled into supporting this cause by the very people who seek to cover up the psy-ops experiments at the Monastery. It must be very difficult to keep the lid on an operation, upon which even the highest in the land are not fully informed. Psy-ops experiments would not get the same degree of establishment collusion if all the facts were known. Might it serve a useful purpose to ensure that the target one is trying to shut up is targeted for other reasons too? Was Diana persuaded into supporting the anti land mine initiative by the men in black at psy-ops, who could then ensure that the full weight of the MoD and the political establishment could be brought to bear on their secret target?
Conservative MP’s had voiced their concerns at her political naivety. She was unlikely to be protected in her personal battles, when she chose to highlight the issue of the damage land mines cause to civilian populations long after hostilities had subsided. Through her patronage of this campaign she was threatening the British Arms Industry, a powerful and largely clandestine lobby, capable of a great deal of covert counter subversion. But all that came much later.
The Wales’ marriage was virtually at an end, and her husband’s paramours flaunted in polite society, undermined The Princess’ position completely. Soon she came to be painted as ‘unhinged’ – ‘a loose cannon.’ Reports were widely disseminated in the national press that she had developed a habit of going out to public phone boxes to ensure her conversations remained private. If so, she was wise to do so, but instead this habit served only to undermine her perceived sanity further. Heavy hints were dropped, particularly in the Daily Mail, a newspaper the Princess read avidly.
From Mrs T S Elliot and Lady Lucan to Lady Tryon, divorcing women have always had to battle against their perceived insanity when faced with a dirty divorce. It also follows, almost as night follows day, that the spouses of the powerful will face the most appalling means of psychological warfare to undermine their balance. This will inevitably bring into question the women’s suitability as a mother and her ability to bring up her children at all. It will also negate any financial acumen she may have, ensuring that post divorce finances do not remain entirely within her discretion, so guaranteeing she is kept, like any troublesome dog, on a very short leash.
There is always the news worthy story of women, very well publicised and very rare stories, like Beverley Charman, who manage to get a half share of their husbands fortune, to counteract accusations of misogyny so prevalent at secret hearings in divorce courts. Her M£48 settlement is without parallel, but this story has made the national press for over a year (2005 – 2007), despite Mrs Charman’s admirable and necessary lack of comment. If one actually did a study of women and men’s available income post retirement, after divorce one would see that the Beverley Charman’s of this world are very rare indeed. In her case her husband may have alienated the establishment during the Lloyds fiasco. He and his syndicate appeared to suffer no overall or substantial losses at a time when many new names had been dragooned in to become ‘names at Lloyds’ on the offer of easy money. Instead many of these people suffered almost immediate bankruptcy. Is Beverley Charman’s divorce settlement merely an establishment comeuppance for her now ex-spouse? The ways of the establishment are often not entirely fathomable. The Charman story can also be usefully trotted out if anyone chooses to point to the fact that women usually get very unfair settlements in the secret hearings of our divorce courts.
The Princess of Wales, after reading one of these underhand hints pointing toward her insanity in the Daily Mail yet again, suddenly saw Nigel Dempster in his open top car at traffic lights outside the Kensington Gardens Hotel. Seizing the opportunity, and watching with amusement as Dempster cowered in shame, she leant over him, at her flirtatious best and charmed his socks off. The Princess was up against the whole Palace menagerie of so called PR experts and appeared time and again to fight her corner with consummate grace and disarming charm.
Then, at a very public charity event, the Princess admitted her Bulimia, an eating disorder with overtones of mental fragility at their core. What – everyone asked – could have prompted her to make this admission, and so publicly too? The Princess of Wales was no fool, she knew that the rumours over her stability and her mental fragility were likely to limit her access to her children, and even perhaps her own freedom in the community at large. Far better to make the admission than have to deal with a leak which would undermine her further. To admit to having once suffered from a disorder and dealt with it would establish her sanity. She bit the bullet herself, rather than wait to be cornered and forced into denying her insanity.
Stories in the press were gathering at a snide and rapid pace, Diana did what any half decent public relations advisor would have recommended. Far better to publicly take responsibility for a story, than allow it to leak out in dribs and drabs, with the nuances that ones enemy chose to put upon the story.
It is no secret that ‘the black dog’ of depression is a genetic fault, which recurs in the royal lineage through generations. The Queen’s Father, King George, suffered from it – although admission of this was only publicly acknowledged long after his death.
By trying to smear Diana with the brush of insanity Prince Charles’ camp was playing with a Promethean arsenal.
The danger then appeared to be that if Diana was prepared to be as frank and honest over her own difficulties, might she also be prepared to be frank and honest over the difficulties she had faced in living with the shadow of depression in her marriage?
The Monastery had become the chosen playground of the well connected – it had a celebrity cachet. So, when she visited George Smith in the Monastery Clinic, Diana took along a small cassette recorder. The staff, overwhelmed at the importance of their Royal visitor, failed to check with George Smith’s psychiatrist that he was to be permitted this visitor, and because Mr Smith was undergoing a hypnotic course of irregular treatment, he was perhaps far less reticent than he could have been persuaded to be.
What was on that tape few people really know. The Princess of Wales is dead; Jill Dando, in whom the Princess might have confided, is dead; George Smith has now apparently committed suicide. Rumours were rife in the press that an apparent burglary at Diana’s mother’s home on the Isle of Seil, had more to do with trying to find the tape than with any material benefit from the jewellery taken. Paul Burrell was questioned at length by Special Branch as to the whereabouts of the tape, and eventually prosecuted on what can only be viewed as trumped up charges. Prince Charles’ divorce solicitor, Fiona Shackleton, is said to have remarked in an interview with one of Diana’s sisters after her death – whilst engaged in persuading members of Diana’s family to collude in the prosecution of Paul Burrell – ‘Ah the tape.’
That tape was apparently the key to Diana finally getting a fair divorce settlement. It is also perhaps the key to Diana’s death.
Whilst holidaying with Mohammed Al Fayed Diana took a speed boat out to plead with the press to stop pursuing her whilst she holidayed with her sons – their last holiday together. In the press interview she promised that she would soon have news to ‘rock the world.’
What this news was has become an unsolved mystery. It is wrongly conjectured that it would be news that she would shortly marry Dodi Fayed – a man she had scarcely met, who was at that time holidaying on a separate yacht with his fiancé, Kelly someone or other. Whilst Al Fayed pater might have harboured ambitions to become a step grandfather to a future King, it is ridiculous to speculate that the news Diana talked of that day was that she would marry a man who was holidaying with his fiancé on another yacht – a man she was not to know in any real sense until much later that Summer.
Al Fayed himself had enemies of some power within the establishment. He alleged that he had, through a PR company, arranged to have questions asked in Parliament in return for used notes in brown envelopes. Two Members of Parliament admitted the charges. One, David Tredinnick, remains as the MP for Bosworth and Hinckley in Leicestershire. Another MP, Neil Hamilton, fought the charges. The personal shame brought down upon the MP’s in question was overshadowed by the public shame these allegations brought down upon a Conservative Government.
A litany of grubby little deals and questionable moral ethics hung over the Conservative Party. Al Fayed could, with some justice, be accused of ensuring that the Conservative Government would not be re-elected in 1997.
Whilst one might condemn an MP for failing to resign from office after such a damning disclosure, perhaps it reflects even more badly on the electorate that the MP has been re-elected on several occasions since this debacle. Or does it indicate that greater powers are at work than democracy?
However it is far better that Al Fayed’s spurious allegations of Diana’s intended marriage with his son, Dodi, triggered her demise; than it would to have a more truthful and troublesome allegation, of the tape, should be given any credence or enquired into too deeply.
All the enquiries into the death of the Princess of Wales have studiously ignored, or mentioned in dismissive terms the troublesome tape. Experimental Psy-ops operatives, when desperate, have access to the highest echelons of assistance in the Security Services. The danger of any leak of these experiments into the public domain overrides almost all other security issues. This is the hottest political potato in the Security Service brief and few, but the most trusted, are even aware of its existence.
The allegations, by Mercedes, that the speedometer of the car involved in the crash in tha Alma Tunnel was stuck at 120mph (why mph not kph in France?) have been proved to be false, through the British courts. Now Mercedes is unwilling to disclose the agreed statement on the grounds that it may compromise Sir John Stevens’ enquiry (email April 2007). The lack of CCTV cameras in the Alma Tunnel appears a trifle too useful or coincidental, and is possibly false, given that pictures of a speeding car, just prior to the accident, were given in evidence of an offence by a motorist entering the tunnel, just prior to the ‘accident’. The Princess was said by eyewitnesses to have walked out of the crashed car and been placed back into it.
How Sir John Stevens’ report manages to avoid the serious questions these facts raise is a mystery to me. Nevertheless it seems that, despite these worrying anomalies, the death of the Princess of Wales is now deemed to be a tragic ‘accident’. Not for nothing is the admirable Lord Stevens dubbed ‘safe hands Stevens’.
A dreadful media hoo haa about a Channel 4 programme around the events of her death in August 1997, received wide coverage in May 2007. The Princes were persuaded to comment. I doubt this programme would have engendered so much controversy had it not carried a message that it was all just a dreadful accident.
Original tests on the chauffeur, Henri-Paul’s blood had so much carbon monoxide that it was thought he may have had a post mortem blood transfusion. The chauffeur was seen, on CCTV cameras in the Ritz, bending down to do up his shoe laces without a tremor, yet he is said to have been so utterly disabled by both drugs and alcohol that no reasonable man could have remained upright. Richard Tomlinson (ex SIS) has said that the circumstances around this accident mirror a typical SIS assassination. They do. However the British establishment never let facts get in the way of well-applied blinkers.
The tape is a story that raises its head from time to time and is always killed.
The story that Prince Philip colluded in Diana’s death, to prevent Diana marrying into a Muslim family, has been given much wider dissemination. When one has a conspiracy theory it is always useful to ensure that any so called conspiracy is ludicrous. The marriage and pregnancy theory is patently ludicrous, but a very useful little red herring for all that. Even if Diana were pregnant, she herself would not have known this, since she was, according to a close friend, toward the end of a cycle at the time of her death.
It is a trick of any covert organisation to puff a ludicrous story at the expense of a true story, if a cover up is necessary. It would seem that the story of the tape is one which is always stamped upon, whereas the story of a possible marriage into the Fayed family plays to a much more romantic public perception and can more easily be dismissed as an unhinged conspiracy theory than the story of the tape, and its possible dissemination into the public domain. The tape has clearly been a source of some quite powerful angst and huge efforts have been made to find it.
The death of Dodi Fayed may also have been seen as a justified punishment for Al Fayed, since his loud mouth had brought down the Government, a hue of Government always favoured by the British establishment. However much had been done to bring the Socialists into line and prepare them for Government as ‘New Labour’ that a change of Government was not likely to cause any real upheaval to the status quo.
Faced with a real conspiracy it is always useful to throw a few red herrings into the fish pond to mask the, better camouflaged, real conspiracy. As in the case of the death of Dr David Kelly, strenuous efforts were made to shed light on the role of the BBC and Andrew Gilligan on the whole debacle, and so avoid enquiring into the circumstances around Dr Kelly’s death. We are very adept at persuading others to ignore the real story and chase red herrings instead.
Dr Kelly had, according to an open letter in The Evening Standard, less than one co-proxamol tablet in his stomach contents. Despite the fact that his wrists were slashed, paramedics called to the scene, and three Consultants writing an open letter in The Evening Standard, have testified that there could not have been sufficient blood loss to cause Dr Kelly’s death. But the facts seldom get in the way of a really good cover up. Problem was if a cover up did occur, it was careless, sloppy and shoddy in this case.
Following MK Ultra and the export of the psy-ops research outside the USA, might Diana have stumbled upon a State sanctioned, but privatised, continuation of that project in her taped interview with George Smith?
In a world where red herrings abound, is this the story which might have rocked the world?
Nobody has questioned the experimental psy-ops angle on her death and it seems no one will. If relevant that is what one calls a good cover up. No wonder Al Fayed has not been firmly shut up – this could have been done in any number of ways. We didn’t have to take the worldwide ignominy of his spurious allegations against members of the Royal Family, unless a deeper secret was being protected.
2,830
Chapter 3
The efforts made to undermine the sanity of the Princess of Wales, merely became for me, the simple replaying of a long game in any divorce.
This is a game plan which has recently received some very negative publicity. That ex-Beatle rock star and his second wife appear to be going at it hammer and tongs. She has not been afraid to suggest that some very underhand tactics have been employed.
Reporting on page 9 of the Daily Mail, of Friday the 4th of May 2007, on the Mellon divorce, excerpts from the article read:
“Mellon, who is heir to a £6.6 billion US oil and banking dynasty, is on trial accused of hiring a firm of private investigators – including serving Metropolitan Police offers – to spy on his ex-wife’s emails to get details of her finances during their divorce wrangles.”… “Mellon 43, is alleged to have hired London-based Active Intelligence Services to hack into his wife’s computer between July 2004 and February 2005.” … “The jury heard that emails sent by a hacker in the U.S. hired by AIS were armed with a bugging device.”
One would not like to decide on the basis of this report who is wrong and who right, however these sorts of agencies abound in the UK. Is it any surprise that tactics of this sort are so prevalent? If that is all Mrs Mellon suffered she might perhaps count herself very lucky indeed.
Psychiatry is an inexact art. I have often considered it to be in the realm of witch doctoring. Freud’s sexual aetiology has been used to try to entrap spies, diplomats and those in power. My own view is that the urge to indulge in sex entraps a smaller number than we, in the security services, would have liked. Psychiatry appears to be hijacked by medics whose own sanity is often questionable and who have shown little aptitude for real medicine or surgery.
Certainly those who rose to the uppermost echelons in the experiments of MK Ultra, proved to be those with the fewest moral or ethical scruples. There is no reason to suspect that this moral decline should not continue once the experiments were exported from the USA, particularly if scrutiny and accountability is made impossible by secrecy.
It is only now, some fifteen years later that I realise that the Great Game, which perhaps divorcing women were subjected to, had perhaps a greater and more sinister secret to protect than the simple protection of their husbands’ black dogs.
MK Ultra had started in a small way using those on the margins of society who would have little protection from their social contacts.
Initially members of the Mafia had been subjected to experiments using marijuana and alcohol, but it began to be obvious that one does not mess with the Mafia without some sort of fall out. So prostitutes, tramps and social outcasts were used, after some rough patches coming up against the Mafia. Anyway the Mafia could be made use of, in a more cooperative spirit, than using their personnel as unwitting lab rats. Those without powerful family ties in the military were also used; people like Ronnie Maddison at Porton Down, in our biological warfare experiments. Ronnie Maddison may have been a volunteer, but he was clearly not fully informed. These experiments dovetailed with the chemical and biological American experiments of MK NAOMI. However the results of such experiments could not be extrapolated into any relevant data on the ordinary population without unwitting subjects.
Porton Down was a high security military base, and so top secrecy could be guaranteed. Nissan huts marked the more obvious residences of the ‘cold cure’ experimental areas. However several floors down – the fifth floor to be precise - army personnel patrolled the more sensitive areas. The army guards did not penetrate floors six to eight and no one could emerge from those floors without passing strict security procedures. A phone call up to the sub basement fifth floor would be made – and the correct procedures followed to gain access to the upper levels. No one at all could escape from floors six to eight, deep beneath Porton Down’s rickety external façade, which belied a dark and sinister British psy-ops experimental sister to MK NAOMI and MK ULTRA.
It is now such a well-worn path in the intelligence community that nothing need be said about those with mental ill health. They are almost always easily suggestible and manipulated and so become assets in ways that they themselves are unaware. Those who have suffered mentally debilitating illnesses are often without the confidence to define their own moral boundaries. They rely on others to do so – following like any sheep in a well shepherded flock.
What had happened to women that they refuse to submit to this well-worn path?
802
Chapter 4
How does one warp the mind of any individual?
First it is necessary to deprive them of a secure home. If the subject believes the security of their home is compromised, that nothing in it cannot be moved, hidden or replaced. The Nazis pursued this tactic against enemies of their State, the practice is alive and well today.
The downward spiral of depriving those who rock the boat of a means to work and a place to live is all too well worn. A shoddy piece of work – say replacement windows, may be the means to ensuring a householder is deprived of his home. The company carrying out the work puts in their bill. The householder refuses to pay. Too many court appearances and expensive visits to their solicitor may threaten their job, or even deprive them of one altogether as secret society or S/B operatives within the firm in which they work set out to sully their name. The window company, in cahoots with the powers that be, is found by their chosen Court - since they have filed the claim, to have a rightful claim for the unpaid bill, this despite the fact that the windows might be leaking, the damp course compromised or the roof weakened, is upheld in court and an order for restitution made. The legal costs are added to the bill, and have to be paid first. Lawyers acting for the defendant have not advised him or her to have the legal bill taxed, so the defendant is left trying to find the wherewithal to pay a blank cheque. By the time the householder, in his naïve innocence, has been disabused of his faith in ‘British Justice’ he is faced with a huge bill from the lawyers on both sides, interest on the original bill together with interest on the legal fees; the householder is left bankrupt and has to sell the whole property. This scenario has become possible over an unpaid bill of just a few hundred pounds.
It is regularly used, apparently quite legally, to deprive enemies of the State of their primary security. Look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Secure shelter is a basic human need and deprivation of secure shelter is one ploy that will effectively unsettle a subject most usefully. Moving house is fairly high on the stress charts, moving house with nowhere to go whilst bankrupt makes it perhaps one of the highest stresses one can impose on any individual.
The legal process and a deluge of paperwork adds to the stress we subject our targets to. It is necessary to choose one’s Court. Certain courts have more susceptibility to playing the Great Game. The intransigent unwillingness of the legal system to allow every case to be taped, as in police questioning of suspects, allows the small number of tapes made to be doctored, if a litigant requests the proceedings are recorded. Any tape of Court proceedings is only allowed to be transcribed by a Court approved transcribing company or individual. The litigant is never allowed access to the tape. The judge may, at his discretion, amend the transcription before the typed transcript is handed to the litigant. Tapes may be doctored before they even get to the Court transcribing service. One litigant found that it took seventeen days for a tape made in the High Court to be sent to the transcribing company she had selected from the Court list of approved transcribers.
It helps if the lawyer is on side. Financially targets may be put under a great deal of pressure, then a sum of money is ‘mistakenly’ deposited into their depleted personal savings account. The hope that the target will then spend this money and be found guilty of misappropriation of funds looms.
Insecurity over where the target might live and feel secure coupled with housing infestation of ants, flea and lice; finance and general security in the homes she inhabits, and you have an almost flawless means of undermining a person’s sanity. When that doesn’t work, as it should have, we can add more ingredients to the mix. Gypsies bearing white heather may arrive at the door foretelling doom and gloom or hope if the path we would like the victim to follow is chosen. Tailed at every turn, the victim is now convinced that either they or the world has gone mad.
If one allows the divorcing wife to spot those following her, she is likely to lose it completely at some point. Hysteria is often confused with long-term mental ill health. One of our targets spotted a car following her from Cambridge, down the M11, onto the M25, onto the A21, through the woods to Pembury and up to her front door, she knew she was meant to rush out of the car screaming. The target knew that a good tail would not want to be spotted, so she reasoned she was meant to show signs of hysteria. Instead she parked behind the car, where she watched and waited, enjoying the spectacle of their tail’s covert looks in his rear view mirror. He eventually placed a blank sheet of paper in an unaddressed brown envelope and posted it through the door of a neighbour. Our target followed him as he left. He stopped at a local pub in Pembury. She stopped too. Winding down her car window she enquired: ‘Are you lost?’ Our boys were a little unsettled at her ability to lose experienced personnel too.
When victims face this sort of pressure and anxiety they often do something stupid or even illegal. Illegal or criminal acts are a golden opportunity to throw the book at a victim.
If they don’t they may be fed drugs to warp their personalities further and ensure atypical behaviour really does ensue.
It sometimes became necessary for us to play another card. Phone calls from people whom the target knows may be made; we had good voice experts at our disposal. When the target mentions these phone calls later the real people will deny ever having made the call. The target will then appear to be completely mad. Curiouser and curiouser, the rabbit hole would seem to our target to get bigger and bigger.
We could turn the tables in the opposite direction too. The Princess of Wales had been accused of making a number of nuisance phone calls to Oliver Hoare; a married man with whom it was alleged she had pursued some sort of dalliance. However due to the Princess’s high public profile a police enquiry ensued, at the insistence of the Princess of Wales. Checking the times of the supposed nuisance phone calls, it could be established that many occurred during events at which the Princess was attending highly public events and her diary – and the Times Court Reports – gave the lie to at least some of the alleged phone calls and so called into doubt the entire story. However if one repeats a lie often enough, albeit in direct contravention of the facts, the lie will gain some currency. Although the Princess of Wales was assured that she had been cleared of this supposed offence, she was nevertheless irritated when the rumour persisted. After her death, being unable to correct the facts, the rumours have gained widespread dissemination as evidence of the long wished for evidence of the Princess’ fragile mentality.
The great advantage of the Family Courts is that cases are always subject to reporting restrictions. So many similarities in underhand tactics have been experienced in the divorce courts, usually by women, but they seldom get any publicity at all. This allows the same modus operandi to be repeated time and again without fear of discovery. The problem with high profile cases, like Lady Lucan, Lady Tryon, The Princess of Wales, Heather Mills, is that some publicity is inevitable. Much much better to keep these machinations to cases that will not attract unwarranted publicity, yet some avaricious lawyers will just not be persuaded of this truth.
People are so easily manipulated, make someone a black sheep and the unwitting within a flock will follow to make that persons life insupportable.
1,359
Chapter 5
Subtlety and real spy craft appears to be a lost art, certainly in the intelligence community at large. If intelligence efforts are directed at protecting the guilty at the expense of the innocent then inefficiencies in believable intelligence are inevitable. However it seems that in today’s world, where the intelligence community service big business and secret societies serve to keep the wraps on questionable activities amongst their lesser profiteering brethren, our intelligence community is now more interested in protecting itself from criminal prosecution than in protecting innocent civilians from attack.
There appears to be a general failure to understand that S/B operatives intent on fleecing companies who receive help at the very highest levels often mean that the establishment is at war with itself.
The reasons for entering into a war with Iraq have been thoroughly trounced. Of course we knew that Saddam did have, at one time, weapons of mass destruction. We knew because we, in the West had supplied these weapons to him when we wanted to make life uncomfortable for the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran.
Those weapons had, we thought, been found at the end of the first Gulf War. A warehouse at Komashia stuffed full of WMD’s, with some very embarrassing labels was ordered to be bombed in sortie after sortie. Many of the RAF personnel involved, most of whom were servicing these bombers dressed only in shorts, were to claim that they suffered Gulf War Syndrome. Germ, chemical and biological warfare, which used to be classified under the American code name MK Naomi had not died, despite any treaties that had been signed, and we at Porton Down were able to assist any American initiative with our lesser controls being our major asset in our very ‘special relationship’.
It was ordered that an inventory should not be taken at Komashia; too many red faces would result if such a document were released to the politicians or press. So we did not know with absolute certainty that all the WMD’s supplied to Saddam Hussein had been found at the end of the first Gulf War in the desert at Komashia. But we did know that the majority of his Weapons of Mass Destruction, had been found, however we suspected that some small vials may have been stashed elsewhere. This intelligence could not be admitted anywhere in our justification for going into the second Gulf War.
Instead John Scarlett, who was later to be referred to by Ian Duncan Smith as ‘a lying little shit’ (see Daily Mail) gave compelling evidence of Saddam’s ability to strike Western Europe within forty-five minutes. A lie repeated by the Prime Minister in public. What may you ask was John Scarlett’s punishment for this disingenuous briefing of ministers of all parties? Elevation to the most senior position within SIS.
First Doctor David Kelly had to be painted as unhinged, when he began spilling the beans. His subsequent death did not prevent the truth, or at least some of the truth, being aired.
Then one had the ‘Yellow cake’ fraud. The much discredited, by virtue of the unresolved Gladio (S/B) enquiries of State Security collusion in false flag right wing acts of terrorism to discredit Italian Communists, Italian Security Services (SISMI) passed a report that Saddam Hussein had been trying to buy Uranium from Niger. The CIA prevented George W Bush airing this allegation in an address - but I will merely copy what is in the public domain – copied from Wikipedia, a thoroughly establishment source in February 2007:
Yellowcake forgery
Main article: Yellowcake forgery
In 2005, SISMI was implicated in the Yellowcake forgery scandal. The forged documents purporting to detail an Iraqi purchase of yellowcake uranium from Niger were given to a "cutout" named Rocco Martino by a Colonel in SISMI, Antonio Nucera. [1] The head of SISMI, after claiming his agency received the documents from external sources, met with then-Deputy National Security Advisor, Stephen Hadley, on September 9, 2002.
Reportedly, the Sismi director vouched for the documents' authenticity at the meeting;[citation needed] as a result, the White House attempted to insert a reference to uranium from Africa in President Bush's upcoming address to the United Nations, scheduled for September 12, 2002. The CIA removed the reference 24 hours before the address was given. In bypassing the CIA, Pollari ignored the established protocol for contacts between Italian and American intelligence agencies. [2].
President Bush later used the same discredited information when delivering his January, 2003 State of the Union address.
[edit
Our politicians, on both sides of the Atlantic and within NATO were thoroughly duped. However if any of them tried to rock the boat we could trot out any damaging information on them.
A much discredited and rather old PhD thesis was recycled into intelligence to convince the public of the necessity for going to war. Conspiracy theorists would have one believe that this war on Iraq, purportedly to assuage and avenge the American peoples for the 9/11 atrocity on the twin towers in New York, was all about oil. Frankly there are some conspiracy theories that seem to stack up.
No intelligence group of any real standing would be able to link Saddam to Al Qaeda. In fact Saddam Hussein was at odds with Osama bin Laden, but then bin Laden himself had been initially trained as an American Security Asset. Once an asset – always an asset, no matter that the individual may wish it otherwise. There are now very credible reports that Osama bin Laden is in fact dead, however a new bogeyman needs to be manufactured before we accept the loss of our principal bogeyman. One must always focus the electorate outwards, rather than have them picking at the difficulties within our own Security Services.
In order to dissuade a back-bench rebellion Tony Blair seized on the hunting ban to keep his more recalcitrant members otherwise occupied. The whole country was mobilised on one side or another to oppose or support the hunting ban. Now that was a red herring if ever there was one, a ploy of utter deceit. Not much changed, but emotions ran high on both sides of the debate, taking the heat off the Security Services failings over Iraq. The Security Services now feel it incumbent upon them to pull strings in the political arena, if only to protect themselves.
Perhaps Saddam signed his own death warrant when he chose to sell Iraqi oil to the Russians instead of the Americans, who knows? What can be certain is that we are in a very silent and sinister oil war pitted against Russian domination over European and American oil supplies. These oil wars compete in their lack of morality with the opium wars centuries ago.
Much conspiracy is masked adroitly as mere ‘incompetence’. The fact that meters failed to be fitted to departing oil stock in Iraq has been listed as a time critical possible incompetence.
The holding up of one’s hands to an ‘error’ often masks a greater conspiratorial cover up.
The first Gulf War took up media space which might otherwise have been given to the uncovering of an extensive ‘Stay-Behind’ network controlled ultimately by America, through NATO and via SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe); the ACC (Allied Clandestine Committee); CPC (Clandestine Planning Committee); see Daniele Ganser’s well researched book – Nato’s Secret Armies – Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe ISBN9 780714 685007 published in a lamentable translation into English by Frank Cass, London and New York.
The ‘Stay Behind’ network was originally conceived to ensure that a Communist take over of any European country would be made if not impossible, then too difficult to sustain in the long term. With the demise of the threat of Communist colonialism, the network was first kept alive in the political arena and then in servicing individual members will to power and of course wealth. This permeated down through the intelligence community to the smallest cell of any secret society.
If the bomb in Peteano in Italy in 1972 was eventually discovered to be planted by S/B ‘Gladio’ operatives, might such atrocities be possible in the UK. When one examines CCTV pictures of the members of 9/11 one sees faces hard frozen in absolute concentration at the enormity of the event they are about to perpetrate. Examining the pictures of the London 7/7 bombers in 2006 one sees pictures of men behaving like naughty schoolboys with a funny secret to keep.
The Daily Telegraph and Channel 4 news have reported (June 2007), that 2 million of the population feel that the 7/7 London bombing is deeply suspect and that Security Service collusion might have been possible.
Might the alleged 7/7 bombers have thought they had been recruited to the Security Services and were they embarking on what they believed to be a mere intelligence exercise? The psychology of the CCTV camera images would appear to suggest this as a possible scenario.
No one asks the question any more – qui bono? Who benefited most from the 7/7 London bombings? Certainly not the Asian community who, like Communists in Italy after the Peteano bombing in 1972, have faced round up and persecution under our draconian ‘anti-terrorism’ laws.
The fact that the G8 were meeting in Scotland at the time has never been brought into the equation. Was something needed to steel nerves within the G8 to support the British and American ‘war on terrorism’?
I don’t know. But I do know that when the establishment refuses to look seriously at something one can surmise that something might be afoot. Resistance to any enquiry, having had their fingers burnt by the derision in which the Hutton Report was received, is enough evidence of a possible cover up to examine all the forensic evidence in detail once more. After all if Echelon has indeed downloaded all phone conversations might it be possible to retrieve and examine all the phone conversations of these alleged bombers. Or has the evidence been destroyed? In which case there will be a trace of destroyed records.
I can say that it is absolutely necessary to look at S/B operatives, illegal activities of the American Security Services in this country, who ultimately control our S/B operatives and any other possible Security Service link to the 7/7 bombing. A full enquiry must be brought to bear. The Peteano bombing in Italy found that C4 had been used, yet the forensic expert falsified documents to show that the explosive was one favoured by the Red Brigade, not C4. C4 was at the time an explosive favoured by NATO.
A candidate found, when standing as an independent candidate in the General Election of 2005, a group of Buffaloes, meeting in the Roman Catholic Church Hall were conducting an impromptu clandestine property auction of 2 Princes Street, Oakham amongst other properties. She stumbled in on the meeting by accident and waited for a man to emerge from the lavatory to enquire where she could apply to rent the Church Hall for a husting meeting. At another venue she was ushered out when she explained that she was standing on the principle of anti-corruption. The manager of that meeting hall said that he believed in a little corruption. Perhaps the concentration of S/B operatives around the area of Whissendine and Burton Lazars may be uncovered when farms and forests are thoroughly searched for weapons and explosives. Will the plethora of lodges and secret societies have their immunity from prosecution removed? I doubt it.
However the security services always vet those who are asked to scrutinise their activities. It is hardly likely that anyone who is selected and passes the vetting procedure would willingly countenance the pricking of this self-serving balloon.
The Security Services have long practised the art of marginalizing their detractors. One cannot assume that any level of oversight is effective if the Security Services themselves choose those who oversee their activities. Men will always strive to be free and those with a will to power will always strive to enslave them. The balance of power has to be restored to this unequal equation of our out of control Security Services.
For many years we have had the Security Services controlling our elected politicians, rather than being controlled by them. Home Secretaries come and go, the Establishment only remains. No political party of any hue has the ability to control these over mighty spooks. It is necessary for the population at large to wake up and elect wholly independent candidates, untrammelled by political affiliations in order to wrest back the freedoms they are in such grave danger of losing.
We have American politicians justifying their waiving of the Geneva Convention, whilst Britain stands by in largely mute support. Col Mendonca has not been convicted of the death of an innocent Iraqi, Baha Mousa, in custody. Mendonca and his wife were given acres of media columns to castigate the military, however he was not prepared, in all those column inches, to name the man from military intelligence who advised him that the treatment and ultimate death of Baha Moussa was entirely legal. The club ties are impossible to sever.
Journalists who write articles scrutinising and criticising the activities of the intelligence services find their careers quickly in tatters. Security Service pundits appearing in the media always give the most palliative and anodyne explanation of any Security Service activities. If allegations of wrong doing are made by whistle blowers they are quickly deemed to be ‘mentally unstable’ and face life long persecution thereafter.
The problem is greater than merely the Security Services. Banks do not raise to their Boards those who are not ‘team players’. SAFE – (Struggle Against Financial Exploitation) an organisation with Parliamentary sponsorship began to uncover the scandal of equity mortgages, for which only the elderly qualified. A meeting of SAFE in the Great Committee room at the Houses of Parliament heard that a bank had taken equity mortgages, quickly doubling and redoubling the debt of the mortgage over seven years, then transferring the mortgages into bonds – one or two of which were traced to offshore bank accounts for the Directors pension funds of the Bank concerned. A supposedly sympathetic lawyer was introduced to the group and nothing reached the press.
Instead Lord Ahmed was offered a seat in the Directors box at Lords Cricket ground to coincide with the SAFE meeting.
The legal profession do not raise lawyers to the bench who are not prepared to ‘play the game’. Every facet of our society needs examining, but we would do well perhaps to start at the top and work our way down.
The Police have been castigated in Martin Short’s book Inside the Brotherhood, yet continue to favour secret societies, predominantly of the Masonic hue. Operation Ore’s dilatory pursuing of those who download child pornography leads one to assume that child abuse is tolerated at a certain level. I have heard unproven reports that those in power are given access to children in State run facilities – both to keep those with these proclivities from straying too far from the trough, and as a form of leverage. Not having been involved in this area of the establishment, all I do know is that children in homes in North Wales have been ill served by the Committee of Enquiry supposedly set up to examine the abuses they suffered (see Radio 4 – On the Ropes).
Private Eye (2005) reported that a Conservative Leader of a Lincolnshire Council had been found guilty of buying land he knew to be the subject of a later compulsory purchase order. He was eventually found guilty and sentenced to a term of imprisonment. Emerging from prison, with a tag on his leg, he resumed his seat in the Council Chamber. When membership of the ‘club’ leads to such flagrant toleration of criminal activities then perhaps it is time to ask how many chiselling little corrupt officials feel entitled to help themselves to goodies? How much gravy is there left to go aaround?
If those who victimise targets of the establishment do not know why they do so it is erroneously supposed that they cannot be guilty of a conspiracy. However a network exists to ensure that the establishment targets its victims with ruthless consistency and utter secrecy.
The Security Services now target innocents who trip over unpalatable truths about the establishment and they, rather than the truly corrupt, are deemed to be a threat to National Security. Our secrecy laws are being used to imprison whistlebowers, not members of the establishment who perpetrate monstrosities so huge that it is difficult to accept they are possible.
When the uninitiated trip over was a network of individuals at the highest and lowest echelons of society who can and do subvert any law, enquiry, or group expressing dissent with the corruption endemic in British society, they are under the misapprehension that someone cares. Emails may be delayed and altered, pressure groups infiltrated and subverted, phone calls made to sound quite genuine and yet be fraudulent. There is no winning this battle.
The part I have played in making innocent lives difficult is not something of which I am now proud. I bequeath my last will and testament, this confession to those targets and through them to countless other innocents and a plea that our intelligence community is made more accountable and not rewarded by elevation to ever higher echelons of power without proper political accountability and public scrutiny. It is surely time we removed our blinkers and realised just how far the establishment extends and just how corrupt the establishment has become?
It seems clear that we cannot rely on the Establishment to police itself. I pray public opinion will be mobilised to ensure that we no longer tolerate establishment corruption, as much as we no longer tolerate smoking in the theatre or cinema.
I pray that this, my confession, enables the world to improve itself; that I may appeal to the open minded and spiritually intelligent; that we may remove our blinkers and take Lord Acton’s words to heart:
Everything secret degenerates, nothing can be trusted that cannot bear public scrutiny.’
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Copyright – 2011 – The right of Helen Pender to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her, in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Lt Col, Balthazar, Blimp, Oakham, fiction, military intelligence, Rutland, Helen Pender,
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