Shaphan

Frank’s Wild Years

(or:  My Frank Gardner Obsession - a Confession)  [LONG]

For some years I have been suffering from a strange obsession with the BBC’s security correspondent, Frank Gardner.  Despite efforts to overcome it, it’s not getting any better.  I’m hoping that, by writing some of it down, here on this blog, its infernal grip upon me might be loosened and I might begin the process of healing.  Of course, the words that I write are but products of a fevered mind and probably bear no relation to any person, place or thing, living or deceased.

It wasn’t until after Frank was shot and severely wounded in Saudi Arabia, when profiles of him started appearing in the press and, as he recovered, interviews with him too, that I twigged that he and I had attended Marlborough College together in the 1970s.  I had been a year ahead of him and have no conscious recollection of him as a teenager.  But I have wondered whether our former proximity mightn't have been an explanation for why, especially post-9/11, I had had such a strong reaction, mostly negative, to his journalism.  I decided that, whilst it may have added subconsciously to my response to him, it didn’t affect the basic problem, which was that I believed that Frank Gardner was a spook (I use the term loosely) pretending to be a journalist and it bothered me.

So when, in June 2004, Frank and his cameraman, Simon Cumbers, were ambushed and shot while filming in a sensitive area of Riyadh, I wasn’t at all surprised.  (Cumbers was killed – he plays no further part in this narrative and I suspect him of nothing except being in the wrong place with the wrong man.)  But I was surprised when al-Qaeda or its sympathizers were blamed.  Because, I reasoned, if I had been a Saudi security officer, I wouldn’t have been at all happy having a spooky Brit poking about and asking questions under the guise of journalism, and I might well have engineered his shooting, to discourage any others.

I had wanted to share my obsession before now but felt inhibited by Gardner’s terrible injuries.  Until, that is, several months ago, when my local charity-bookshop carried a secondhand, hardback copy of his autobiography, Blood and Sand.  Thinking it might cure my condition, I bought it.  Unfortunately, it has only made things worse.  I suspect Frank had hoped people wouldn’t read his text too closely, but I couldn’t help myself.  ‘Secrets, lies and videotape’ could have been its sub-title.

Here follow some extracts from his memoir, where necessary supplemented by information from other sources, that I think help decipher the riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, that is enveloped in the persona of Frank ‘I’m not a spook’ Gardner.

Family and Schooling

Frank is the only child of career diplomats.  Both were skilled linguists and wanted their son to follow them into the Foreign Office.  Frank doesn’t specify what rank they achieved at the FCO.

At prep school he was,

(S)omething of a goodie-two-shoes;  head prefect, scholar, captain of shooting, victor ludorum in athletics, winner of obscure prizes like Chess and Reading. [Blood and Sand:  22]

He received an Exhibition (a minor scholarship) to Marlborough,

(B)ut then my academic prowess took a nose-dive. Suddenly there seemed to be so many distractions, especially drama which I threw myself into.  Since I seemed to be good at shooting and running, the school contacted the British biathlon Olympic ski team and over two winters I trained hard with the Army in the Austrian Alps (..)

Almost my sole achievement [at Marlborough] was to become captain of shooting (again) and win a place on the British cadet rifle team to Canada, which included a summer canoe trip in the woods and lakes of upstate Quebec with the Canadian army. [ibid.]

So whilst I, one year ahead of him, was spending my time on normal stuff like onanism, drugs and rock n’ roll, young Frank was active in the drama society, excelling at shooting, skiing and distance running, and he was being trained in the holidays by British and Canadian soldiers.  No wonder I don’t remember him.  (Then again, I don’t remember much.)

In my second year at Marlborough, 1974-5, which was Frank’s first, our head boy was one Rupert Wise, whom we shall meet later in this tale.

Wilfred Thesiger

The story goes that the 16-year-old Frank and his mum were on a London bus and bumped into the explorer and writer Wilfred Thesiger, an old friend of hers.  ("They had known each other briefly in the 1950s; in fact my mother even suspected his mother of trying to pair them off at one stage, but Thesiger was not the marrying kind" [BS:17]).  They went to have tea with him, and the young man was entranced and resolved to become an Arabist.  Thesiger was, though, more than just a writer/explorer.  In the war he had fought with Orde Wingate in East Africa and had won a DSO, as had Wingate; worked for the Special Operations Executive in the Middle East; fought with David Stirling’s newly formed SAS regiment; and, after the war, continued to carry out the occasional special operation for the British in the region up to the 1960s.  I’d suggest that it was that adventurer-warrior, as much as the writer-explorer, side of Thesiger that stirred young Frank’s imagination.  Frank maintained the mentored relationship with Thesiger until the old man’s death.

Exeter/Cairo

Frank left Marlborough with sub-par A-level results – mine were even worse – but he was offered a place at Exeter to read Arabic and Islamic Studies on a four-year course, which included staying the third year in an Arabic country.  He and a few mates decided to spend their third year in Cairo, where they attended lectures.  He writes:

Not long after our arrival in Cairo, Peregrine and I joined a group of diplomats from the British Embassy for a gallop over the sands.(..)  We entered a narrow track beside a cemetery and I rounded a bend to see a riderless horse galloping straight at us.  There was just time to swerve abruptly and I was thrown clear, landing with a bump on the sand.  As I was picking myself up and dusting off the sand, I was introduced to one of the better horsemen in our party, a young first secretary (a middle rank in the Foreign Office) who was said to be going places fast.  He was Sherard Cowper-Coles, the man who was to save my life twenty-two years later in Riyadh with his swift and decisive action there as ambassador in June 2004. [BS: 55-6]

Firstly, Frank doesn’t explain how and why he joined the group of British diplomats for the gallop, yet it's surely unusual for a student to receive such an invitation.  Secondly, Frank hadn’t before mentioned in his tale that, in addition to his other skills, he was an accomplished horseman.  Thirdly, Sherard Cowper-Coles’s name is on a disputed list of alleged MI6 officers. (More on Cowper-Coles below.)  Now, consider this later anecdote from Blood and Sand:

Rather to our surprise, we all achieved our degrees – in my case an unremarkable 2.2, known as a ‘Bishop Desmond’ (as in a Tutu).  Now that we were graduates in Arabic and Islamic Studies, our lecturers brightly informed us that the world was our oyster. (...)  I took a rather casual approach to job hunting, in fact I even omitted to draw up a CV.  I did go to one interview before I graduated, though, which was for MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS).  In the small community of Western expatriates living in Cairo I had come across a British diplomat who turned out to be an SIS officer there.  I had no idea of this when I took him on a tour of my favourite backstreets, nor that he was assessing me for possible recruitment, but some time later he asked if I would be interested in being put in touch with ‘the right people’ in London.  Why not?  I thought this could be fun.  But once I had signed a copy of the Official Secrets Act, the initial interview turned into something of a disappointment and it successfully put me off a career in the espionage business.  ‘I should warn you now,’ said the man in the grey suit behind the desk, ‘that if you choose this career you will never be able to tell your friends about it, you will have to lie continually about what you do and,’ here he leaned closer towards me as if letting me into a great secret, ‘you will be unlikely ever to get any public recognition for your achievements.’  Well, that rules me out, I thought, I’m much too vain for this outfit.  If I achieved something I wanted to see it recognized, so a career of tight-lipped modesty in the world of spooks simply did not appeal, either then or since. [BS: 85-6]

Note the possible ambiguities raised by his use of the words ‘initial’ and ‘simply’ above.  In any case, it’s quite likely that Sherard Cowper-Coles was the SIS officer who tried to recruit Frank.  Consider this recent anecdote by Robert Fisk:

Indeed, I remember way back in the late 1970s - when I was Middle East correspondent for The Times - how a British diplomat in Cairo tried to persuade me to fire my local "stringer", an Egyptian Coptic woman who also worked as a correspondent for the Associated Press and who provided a competent coverage of the country when I was in Beirut.  "She isn't much good," he said, and suggested I hire a young Englishwoman whom he knew and who - so I later heard - had close contacts in the Foreign Office.

I refused this spooky proposal.  Indeed, I told The Times that I thought it was outrageous that a British diplomat should have tried to engineer the sacking of our part-timer in Cairo.  The Times's foreign editor agreed.

But it just shows what diplomats can get up to.

And the name of that young British diplomat in Cairo back in the late 1970s?  Why, Sherard Cowper-Coles, of course.

However, ex-SIS officer Richard Tomlinson has stated somwhere that SIS officers may not become ambassadors, whereas Cowper-Coles later became our ambassador to Israel, then to Saudi Arabia and now has been sent to Kabul, Afghanistan.  My guess is that either some sensitive postings are exempt from the ban, or that Cowper-Coles formally resigned from SIS when first appointed to the top job in Tel Aviv, or that the ban has been lifted.

Other tidbits about Cowper-Coles (pron. 'Cooper', I believe):

*  Also according to Robert Fisk [ibid.], Cowper-Coles was instrumental in the abandonment of the Serious Fraud Office investigation into the allegedly corrupt al-Yamamah arms-deal scandal involving BAE Systems, princes Turki and Bandar, Wafik Said, kickbacks, prostitutes and so on.  Not only in the memoir is Frank tight-lipped about his friend – when addressing BBC audiences about the BAE Systems affair, I don’t remember hearing him disclose that an old friend of his, who'd recently helped him survive the shooting, had been a key actor in persuading the SFO to drop the case.

*  This anonymous writer at Democratic Underground says he’s known Cowper-Coles for 25 years, calls him an "MI6 spook" and alleges his activity in covering up various FCO screw-ups.

*  Sherard Cowper-Coles served as a political counsellor at the Paris embassy from 1997-99.  Diana, Princess of Wales, died in Paris in August 1997.   According to the alleged MI6 list, only three SIS officers were posted to Paris in 1997 – ‘Sherard Louis Cowper-Coles’, ‘Colin Roberts’ and ‘Richard David Spearman’.

Frank the Banker

After a few years, vaguely narrated, of doing odd jobs and travelling, Frank got hired as a banker.

A friend of a friend passed my CV to Sir James Craig, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia and now head of the Middle East Association.  His Arabic was so flawless that he could hardly have been impressed by mine, but the following week I was summoned for an interview in the City at Saudi International Bank (SIB), a joint venture between the Saudi government and a handful of Western banks.  I tried to make it clear that I had no grounding in finance or economics, but the interviewer droned on about interest rates, leverage and product placement.  I had no idea what he was talking about and was about to write off the interview as an afternoon wasted when they offered me a job on double my present salary. [BS: 89]

He worked at SIB for several years, learning the trade.  Then, circa 1989,

Back in London, two summers later, I was introduced at a drinks party to Rupert Wise, who was also an Arabist and a banker.  ‘You’ll have so much in common,’ said our mutual friend, leaving us to circle each other like wary sharks.  It reminded me of when I was about five years old and was being nudged by my parents to ‘Go and make friends with those children over there’.  Rupert was short, fit and tanned, with a boxer’s build and a steely glint in his eyes (he turned out to have been a boxing blue at Cambridge).  He now launched into a stream of flawless Gulf Arabic; I replied in backstreet Egyptian.  At the time I thought it was a pointless pissing contest to see who could speak the best Arabic, but in fact he was checking me out as his possible successor to run the Bahrain office of Flemings, a small but successful Scottish investment bank named after its founder, Robert Fleming.

A few weeks later I was summoned for an interview at the bank’s elegant head office in the City, which was decorated with the world’s finest collection of Scottish paintings.  I was quite happy where I was at Saudi International Bank, and Flemings were not even offering much of a pay rise, but Rupert took me aside and told me this was an opportunity of a lifetime and I would be a fool not to take it.  He proved to be right [sic]. [BS:113]

Note that Frank mentions Rupert Wise’s university career but not that he and Rupert were contemporaneous Marlburians.  More on the dashing Rupert later.

Flemings

About Flemings the bank, Wikipedia says:.

Robert Fleming & Co was a London-based asset manager and merchant bank founded in 1873 and sold to Chase Manhattan Bank for over $7 billion in 2000.  It was a 50% partner in the highly successful Asian investment bank Jardine Fleming.  At its height in 1997, Robert Fleming Holdings reported over 8,000 employees and operations in 44 countries.

The bank was proud of its Scottish heritage.  When it was extant, it was reported that:

As with any firm with a 100+ year old history, Flemings has an entrenched culture.  The firm is said to revel in its Scottish roots, and Institutional Investor reported that the receptionist at the company's London headquarters greets visitors every Tuesday and Thursday with traditional Scottish bagpipe music.

According to Moneyweek,

For the best part of a century, Robert Fleming & Co remained in the investment trust business, says the FT.  Although it later moved into merchant banking, "it differed radically from other merchant banks", where banking was the core business.  Privately held throughout its existence, Flemings was always "something of an enigma".  The group published little information about itself and questions about strategy "met with the quizzical look of the classic British amateur".  But although it remained old-school in style, it was the "boldest and most far-sighted of any institution in the Square Mile".  Connections helped: the 1970 Jardine Fleming Hong Kong venture, which established the group in the Far East long before competitors got there, was prompted by the long-standing family links between the Flemings and the Keswicks, who run Jardine Matheson.

Ian Fleming, of James Bond fame, was a grandson of Robert Fleming.  Frank doesn’t mention that noteworthy connection.  (Ian never worked for the family firm – he and his brother Peter were rather more interested in cloaks and daggers than in bulls and bears.)

Frank at Flemings

When I turned up for my first day of work at Flemings I was put under the wing of my new mentor, Mark Bullough, who immediately took me out for a champagne lunch. [BS:114]

Although Mark Bullough turns up several times in Frank’s story, the reader is left unaware by the author that Bullough went on from Flemings to co-found the private security company AEGIS Defence Services with the controversial Lt Col Tim Spicer and two others, one of whom, Dominic Armstrong, was Bullough’s deputy at Jardine Flemings.  Bullough and Tim Spicer had been comrades in the Scots Guards and had fought together in the Falklands. 

"I can recall Mark and me liberating a bottle of champagne and drinking it by the sea wall and then getting into a slight confrontation with a staff officer," Spicer wrote in his autobiography, recalling the day after the British routed the Argentine army in the Falklands in 1982. [CorpWatch]

In 2004 AEGIS won the contract from the US government to run and co-ordinate private security operations in Iraq.  So Frank’s former Flemings mentor is now Tim Spicer’s sidekick in AEGIS.  And Tim Spicer used to be the sidekick of General Sir Peter de la Billiere (see below), during the years when De la Billiere was a member of the Flemings board. 

Bahrain/Beirut

Frank took over Flemings' Bahrain office from Rupert Wise circa 1990.  Whilst in Bahrain, Frank meets up with an old pal from Marlborough, ‘Disco’ Ron Matheson.  Disco suggests they go skiing in Lebanon.  Mark Bullough joins them.  On the way back down from the piste,

Driving back past Beirut’s Green Line I stuck the video out of the window to film the shattered buildings.  But as we passed the St Georges Yacht Club there was a coarse shout from the side of the road.  ‘Wagaf!’  It was a Syrian soldier ordering us to stop the car.  I glanced at Ali, our Lebanese driver, who looked absolutely terrified and brought the car to an abrupt halt.  Had I known that I had inadvertently filmed Syria’s Military Intelligence HQ in Beirut I would have shared Ali’s concern, but, as it was, when the Syrian conscript thrust out his hand to demand the tape I shook it warmly, gave him a huge smile and a traditional Arabic greeting.  This took him aback at first, but he soon recovered his scowl and demanded the tape again.  Unwilling to hand over all the footage we had shot up on the ski slopes, I reached into the car and handed him Dire Straits’ Greatest Hits.  I was sorry to see that go (‘Brothers in Arms’ hit the spot for Beirut) but it did the trick. [BS:130-1]

Frank does not reveal what happened to the videotape of the Syrian Military Intelligence HQ, leaving us only to speculate.

Rupert Wise

‘You’ll have so much in common’.  Indeed, though Frank withholds parts of that commonality from his memoir and from his BBC audiences.  Rupert Wise was at Marlborough College from 1970-75 (B3 house) and, in his final year, was the senior prefect, i.e. head boy.  I was there between ’73 and '78 (Preshute); and Frank from ’74-79 (Littlefield).  Whilst I’ve repressed all memories of Frank, I vaguely recall Rupert as a somewhat glamorous figure with military interests.  It’s unlikely that Frank and Rupert met each other at Marlborough but it's possible.

A few years ago Rupert got into a bit of a dramatic scrape. This Telegraph report is worth quoting at length.

The banker with a CV out of a spy novel

(By Ben Fenton 12/11/2005)

Rupert Wise, the British businessman detained with his wife, Linda, for 13 days by the Iranian authorities for trespassing on a secret island, must be glad today that his captors had not read his CV.

Because on the face of it, it looks like the biography of a British intelligence agent from the realms of popular fiction.

Mr Wise, 48, was head boy at Marlborough College, one of Britain's leading public schools, and a leader of its Combined Cadet Force.

He read classical Arabic at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and, according to a friend, went through the university on an Army-assisted scheme.  Having studied martial arts at school, he won a Blue for boxing at university.

Mr Wise served in the Army for six years after leaving Cambridge, although none of the former schoolfriends contacted yesterday knew which regiment he belonged to.  A rumour that he had been an officer in the SAS was discounted by sources with knowledge of the regiment's recent history.

Around 1984, he joined the investment bank Robert Fleming.  Mr Wise became managing director of its Middle East division.

In 1995, Mr Wise met and married Linda Davies, an Oxford graduate who had given up her own investment banking career to write thrillers.  The couple went to Peru, where Mr Wise was to lead Robert Fleming's efforts to establish a new arm.

Mrs Wise, 42, has written of an incident in Lima when gunmen started a firefight around their high-security compound.  In her description, she said that Mr Wise, on hearing the gunfire, "grabbed a pistol and ventured outside" with the couple's bodyguard.

Mrs Wise later wrote a novel about Peru in which Helen Jenks, a banker, becomes involved in a high-level conspiracy and falls in love with Evan Connor, "apparently a tour guide but in reality a former SAS soldier working for British intelligence".(…)

It was the Wises' passion for sailing that got them into trouble.  On Oct. 28, they set off from Dubai in their new £300,000 catamaran Sinbad for the island of Abu Musa, 60 miles north of the coast of the United Arab Emirates.  It was an odd choice for a maiden voyage because the island has been the subject of dispute between the UAE and Iran.

Apart from asking local experts, the Wises, accompanied by Paul Scholten, the Australian yacht broker who had sold them the boat, had also looked at up-to-date Admiralty charts and checked information on the GPS navigation system to assure themselves that they would be safe to visit Abu Musa, and apparently they were unprepared for the hostility of their reception.

No public statement about the detention of the Wises and Mr Scholten was made in Britain or the UAE while the British embassy in Teheran successfully negotiated their release.

The embassy had negotiated a release last Monday, but the three were re-arrested at the airport by Iranian justice department officials and taken to Teheran.

Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said yesterday: "I am very glad that they have been released safely and without any charge.  It took a good deal of work behind the scenes."

The island of Abu Musa is one of the most politically charged hot-spots on Earth [see, for example, here, here and here].  Trust one of Frank’s friends to get as close to it as any living Briton has, get caught and cause a diplomatic incident.

After their release, the BBC interviewed the Wises in Dubai, and Frank did a piece about the story from London.  Whereas a real journalist might have recused himself from this story, or have disclosed his relationship to Rupert, Frank didn’t do so, even though he had had 13 days to think about it.  Whereas the Telegraph journalist above pointed out the obvious spookiness of Rupert’s CV, Frank instead delivered an anti-Iran propaganda piece, portraying the Wises as innocent victims.  Frank’s ability as an actor meant that the uninformed viewer would never have guessed that he and Rupes were good friends with much in common.

General de la Billiere

General Sir Peter de la Billiere is a lurking presence throughout Frank’s memoir.  He makes his first appearance when Frank happens to witness the early stages of the Iranian embassy siege in 1980.

It was a warm day in May and walking through Hyde Park I stopped to investigate what was going on in Prince’s Gate.  The whole street appeared to be have been closed off to traffic and there were police and cordons everywhere.(…)  While the police opened negotiations, the Army’s Special Air Service (SAS) Counter-Terrorist Unit was preparing for the possibility that its soldiers might have to retake the embassy by storm.  The SAS team leader on the spot was Major Peter de la Billiere.  Descendant of a French Huguenot family and known as ‘DLB’, he was already a veteran of counter-insurgency operations in Malaya, Oman and Aden.  I was eighteen at the time and had no idea that twelve years later we would both be investment bankers, attending meetings together with Gulf rulers. [BS:23-4]

Parenthetically, the leader of the units that actually entered the embassy (reportedly) was Major Jeremy Phipps, who now works with Frank’s friend(s) Mark Bullough and Tim Spicer in AEGIS Defence Services as its head of security.  Phipps, whose mother was a cousin of SAS founder David Stirling, is the stepson of Sir Fitzroy MacLean, upon whom Ian Fleming partly based the character of James Bond.  No, Frank doesn’t tell us any of that – his book could have been so much more interesting if he wasn’t so tight-lipped about his associates and associations.

In the 1990s, De la Billiere worked closely with Tim Spicer and with Simon Mann, a mercenary now in jail for organizing a coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea.  The following background information on De la Billiere is from a Sri Lankan Sunday Times article on Spicer and the mercenary business :

In 1978, Peter de la Billiere, then a brigadier, became director of the U.K. Special Forces.  De la Billiere was responsible for overseeing the SAS's most famous operations of the decade, among them the recovery of hostages from the Iranian Embassy siege in 1980, and for commanding Special Forces operations in the 1982 war with Argentina to recover the Falkland Islands.  In 1990-1991, as general, he commanded British forces in the Gulf War against Iraq.

In April 1992, de la Billiere returned to London and retired from his military career.  He immediately took up a new post as the British government's "Middle East adviser."  The job involved selling military services to and obtaining or retaining British bridgeheads in the Gulf.  Spicer, who had spent the Gulf War as a lecturer at the British Army's staff college, heard that de la Billiere would need a military assistant.

He applied for and got the job, and finally entered the secret world of the Special Forces.  De la Billiere's office was in the Duke of York's headquarters off Sloane Square in London, where the offices of the directorate of Special Forces were also located.  Soon after joining de la Billiere, Spicer contacted fellow ex Scots Guards officer Simon Mann and "co-opted" him into the operation, according to Spicer's autobiography.  Mann, an anti-terrorism and computer specialist, who had left the SAS in 1985, later went on to found Executive Outcomes in the United Kingdom in 1993.

According to Spicer, de la Billiere and Mann were employed "as liaison with the rulers of the Gulf States."  According to a business associate of Mann's at the time, who spoke on condition of anonymity, this story was "absurd."  British ambassadors were hired to do that job, and given the staff and resources to do so.  Mann's "real job," according to the associate, was "to help Peter de la Billiere market the training services of 22 SAS" and thus gain new clients for Britain's official mercenaries.  Meanwhile, according to his autobiography, Spicer moved "down the corridor" to work directly for the Director of Special Forces on "highly classified" projects.

The government's motive in employing de la Billiere and Mann was not necessarily or even primarily to earn money.  By placing British appointees in key security or defence posts, Britain could gain information; win influence, influence policy, recruit informants and even agents. 

De la Billiere joined Flemings as a non-executive director in 1992, the year he was tasked with his Middle East mission by the British government.  Not long after, Frank was moved back to London from the Bahrain office by Flemings, even though he had done well there.  And by May 1995, reportedly because of his performance, he left Flemings, and banking, for journalism.

General Sir Peter de la Billiere showed a paternal concern for what was to become of me.  The man who had commanded 45,000 British troops in the Desert Storm campaign of 1991 seemed genuinely worried that my departure from Flemings was going to lead to a tailspin of unemployment and self-doubt.  He took me to lunch at his club, the Special Forces Club in Knightsbridge, where portraits hung of various SAS characters included [sic] one of Wilfred Thesiger.  Thesiger had joined David Stirling’s band of marauders in the Second World War to go raiding airfields deep in the Western Desert, and his weathered features now stared down at me as if willing me to take a chance.  I told Sir Peter that my mind was made up – I was determined to get into the news business. [BS:140]

Or, as I now believe possible, it was DLB who suggested to Frank that he become the BBC's Middle East correspondent.

The Scots Guards and SAS

These two regiments are other discernible presences behind Frank’s tale.  The founder of the SAS, David Stirling, was a Scots Guard, and Wilfred Thesiger and Fitzroy Maclean fought with the SAS in the war.  Tim Spicer and Mark Bullough were Scots Guards, serving together in the Falklands – Spicer went on to join the SAS.  Simon Mann too was a Scots Guardsman before joining the SAS.  De la Billiere led the SAS.  Rupert Wise was rumoured to be in the SAS (although the manner of his capture points to the SBS).

Frank mentions the Scots Guards only once (I think – it’s not indexed; the SAS is, but only once, for the Iranian embassy siege, even though it appears elsewhere in the text).  In late 1990, Frank was sent by Mark Bullough to run Flemings' Bahrain office in the months after Saddam had invaded Kuwait and before Operation Desert Storm was launched.  In preparation,

I was told to report to the Scots Guards barracks in Hounslow, where a favour had been called in by one of the regiment’s former officers who was now working in the bank.  A gruff Scots quartermaster handed me a cardboard box packed with respirators, NBC (Nuclear, Biological and Chemical warfare) suits, rubber overboots and several decontamination kits, enough to protect me and the staff of the Bahrain office from Saddam’s chemically tipped Scuds. [BS:116-7]

Now, there may have been other former Scots Guardsmen, apart than Mark Bullough, working at Flemings, but it seems reasonable to assume that it was Bullough who arranged for Frank to be kitted out.  It would seem to be another example of Frank’s determination to keep the reader unaware that his bank-mentor Bullough was now Lt Col Tim Spicer’s colleague in AEGIS.

Territorial Army

(I only gathered this fact recently, and not from his book, and it fills in a significant blank.)  Reading Frank’s book had led me to wonder why he hadn’t joined the Army.  In particular, he seemed like a perfect candidate for the SAS.  The only reference to such an idea was this, re. his career prospects:

The trouble was that, like most twenty-two-year-olds, I hadn’t a clue what I wanted to do.  Because of my love of running and keeping fit I had made some enquiries about taking a short service commission in the Parachute Regiment, but my parents sensibly persuaded me this would be a waste of four years of Arabic studies. [BS:86]

When Simon Cumbers was killed and Frank shot in Riyadh, many people posted messages of sympathy to the BBC website.  One began:

Frank is an ex-colleague of mine from his Territorial Army days and my best wishes go to him and his family for his full and speedy recovery.

The message appears to me genuine.  No, Frank’s memoir does not mention his joining the TA.  But if he did sign up with the TA, and I assume it is true, then it raises all sorts of questions.  Why the secrecy about it?  When did he join, what rank did he attain, and when, if at all, did he leave?  Was he ever deployed and, if so, to where?  Could it be a secret, I feverishly speculate, because he served as a reservist in a special forces regiment, such as with the 21 or 23 SAS, for example? 

Parenthesis: The Army, Freemasonry and the Duke of York’s HQ

I add this with reluctance but it seems to belong to this narrative.  Researching this, I came across several references to the Craft.  For example, the Colonel of the Scots Guards is the Duke of Kent, who is the Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England.  [See also.]  In Inside the Brotherhood, Martin Short’s book about freemasonry, written in the late ‘80s, he writes,

No British institution, not even the police, is more steeped in Freemasonry than the army. [502]

He backs that up with convincing examples and mentions,

[T]he use by Freemasons of one publicly owned military building in central London: the Duke of York’s Headquarters in King’s Road, Chelsea.  Here twenty-eight lodges meet, including the Army & Navy, National Artillery and Victoria Rifles.  They contain very few serving officers, but there is greater overlap with the part-time Territorials, whose national HQ is in the Duke of York’s HQ.  It is also home for the TA’s most glamorous regiment: the 21st Special Air Services, which supports the regular 22nd SAS in acts of derring-do and counter-terrorism at home and abroad. [507]

Short goes on to cite a non-Mason in the 21st SAS, who claims that his regiment and much of the TA is dysfunctionally dominated by Masons.

The Duke of York’s HQ was, of course, where De la Billiere’s Middle East operation was based, where he, Tim Spicer and Simon Mann concocted ways to advance British interests in the Gulf region.  It was also the home of the directorate of Britain’s Special Forces.  Add to that the TA, including the SAS(Reserve), and 28 Masonic Lodges meeting there a week. 

The possible relevance to Frank Gardner is this:  I posit that, in the ‘80s and ’90s, Frank would have come across the influence of freemasonry within the TA and in the Army’s elite and special forces regiments.  Within banking, too, perhaps.  Overall, many of his peers and seniors may have been Masons.  Yet the subject is not mentioned once.  Secret cells of al-Qaeda terrorists, yes; of Masons, no.  I’m not suggesting that Frank is a Mason himself but I’m curious as to its absence from his tale.

The Army sold the Duke of York’s HQ to hyper-rich nobility, Cardogan Estates, for commercial development in the late ‘90s.

James Bond, back on parade

One final anecdote from Frank’s book.  For services to journalism, Frank was awarded an OBE in the mid-year honours of 2005.  After receiving it from the Queen at the Palace in October,

That evening I was back on parade for a BBC party in my honour; it was one of the happiest moments in my career.  There in a large room were gathered over one hundred of my closest colleagues, many of whom had known me ten years ago when I was making the difficult transition from banking to journalism.  As I tottered in on my callipers – for most people this was the first time they had seen me standing up since the shooting – the James Bond theme played over the sound system. [BS:368-9]

By that choice of music, were his colleagues referring to the Flemings/Bond connection and/or had they been made aware that there's more to Frank than meets the eye, I ask myself.

Conclusion

There can be no conclusion to my quest because the truth remains out of reach. I decided to write this once I felt I had a story to tell about Frank’s friends – Cowper-Coles, Bullough and Wise, and the more peripheral figures such as De la Billiere, and even Tim Spicer, who nowadays commands the second largest military force in Iraq - and how Frank tries to obscure the connections.  By itself, it was a good enough yarn, which Frank didn’t want told.  But stumbling upon Frank’s Territorial Army career, if true, whilst writing this, has added new intrigue, such as, if he omitted that experience from his book, what else might he have left out?

In the absence of the honest truth from Frank, whose name is surely a cosmic joke, I currently speculate that his TA career drew him into the SAS Reserve, or something similarly elite and hush-hush, and also that it opened the door to his becoming a Gulf banker, a career move otherwise inexplicable.  Because of the trajectory of his TA career, he would not be able to reveal anything about it in his book, even though it would have explained much.  And I would guess that, once you’re inside that world of special forces and spooky operations, the boundaries between the different organs of the secret state – SIS(MI6), MI5, SAS, SBS, SAS(R), et al – would effectively dissolve.  And mightn't it just be the case, and it fits with the timing and with his known associations, that Frank's career trajectory could have continued on into De la Billiere's unit, where his skills would have fitted like a glove?

I could have written even more on this.  On the shooting, for example, as I don’t believe Frank’s account of it and nor, do I believe, does he.  Or about the low-level bombing campaign in Saudi Arabia starting November 2000 with the possible complicity of SIS, which Frank appears to help cover up.  Or about the excellent contacts and access he has.  But any more would be a symptom of my fever worsening.  I must stop now, publish this (hopefully without being damned), and let the healing begin.

[See follow-up: Frank's Army Years]

Iranian president toppled by the Mossad - claim (by me)

I've no idea whether or not the rape allegations against Israeli president Moshe Katsav are true or not.  He alleges a conspiracy against him and few believe him.  But I can't help reflecting that having an Iranian-born president must have grated upon those within Israel and the US who have Iran firmly in their sights. 

President Katsav was born in Yazd, Iran, as Moseh Qassab [Link], his parents emigrated to Israel when he was five years old, whence his name became Hebraicized. 

According to Ha'Aretz:

The four women whom Katsav is accused of sexually assaulting include three past and present employees of the President's Residence and one who worked under Katsav during his tenure as tourism minister, in 1998-1999.  Mazuz also plans to charge the president with giving away items that belonged to the President's Residence at private events, as well as with obstruction of justice and harassing a witness, for trying to pressure one of the President's Residence employees to retract her complaint against him.

Should Katsav be convicted of all the charges in the draft indictment, he is likely to spend many years in jail...

Past and present employees of the President's Residence would have to be government employees with high-level security clearances.  Now, if they were told that the Iranian-born president had become a national security problem, they might well agree to accuse the man of rape, given that their identities would remain secret.  My guess is that this case will never get to a full hearing in court, but the man's reputation has been ruined nevertheless.  For being an Iranian head of state?

* The photograph is of Katsav and former Iranian president Khatami at John Paul II's funeral.  According to search.com, from where I copied the photo:

On April 8, 2005 Katsav sat near Iranian President Mohammad Khatami (also born in Yazd) during the funeral of Pope John Paul II, due to the fact that all world leaders present were arranged in alphabetical order by the name of their state.  President Katsav would later claim that he shook Khatami's hand and spoke to him in Persian.  He also greeted Bashar al-Assad during the funeral service's traditional "exchange of peace".  That was the first political contact between Iran and Israel since 1979.  Khatami, however, denied that such a meeting ever took place.

Paget Report: Methodology (re Khashoggi)

As I see it, there's a fundamental flaw in the methodology of the Paget Report.  Its original terms of reference - decided upon by the then Coroner, Michael Burgess, "and the then Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service, Sir John Stevens, now Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington" - were, rightly so, drawn quite broadly.  Its third term was:

• To identify allegations which would suggest that the deaths of the Princess of Wales and Dodi Al Fayed were caused other than as a result of a tragic road traffic accident and assess whether there is any credible evidence to support such assertions and report the same to the Coroner. [p.4]

But the opening sentence of the Report indicates how narrow its final parameters had become.

This police report documents the findings of the criminal investigation into an allegation made by Mohamed Al Fayed of conspiracy to murder the Princess of Wales and his son Dodi Al Fayed.

The Report does address some other allegations - those by Diana, Tomlinson and Shayler, especially - but these are secondary to the Report's primary focus, which is Mohamed Al Fayed's.  I would submit that MaF is too close to the matter, too unreliable, to justify the attention given to his allegations by Paget.  It's not just that some of his allegations are wild or overstated; it's also that he seems structurally unable to mention that his Dodi also belonged to the Khashoggi clan and that that fact might be significant.  (As mentioned in 'Collision or Collusion', Dodi's late mother was Samira Khashoggi, the sister of Adnan.)  According to the post-crash edition of "Time" magazine,

Adnan Khashoggi told a Saudi newspaper last month, "We welcome Diana into our family." [Time]

I doubt the British establishment would have welcomed such a thing, especially not having the princes so closely linked to such a notorious arms-dealer.  But, because MaF doesn't mention the Khashoggi angle, the possibility that it might have been a motivating factor is not addressed by the Operation Paget detectives. 

The website Namebase has a short review of a biography of Khashoggi, which succinctly if unflatteringly describes the man.

One example of wretched excess in the twentieth century is wheeler-dealer Adnan Khashoggi.  He liked to throw extravagant parties for beautiful people and classy prostitutes at one of his twelve fully-staffed residences, on his $70 million yacht, or on one of his three commercial-size airplanes.  His wealth, estimated at $4 billion in 1986, came from hefty commissions for arranging deals between U.S. defense contractors and the Saudi royal family.  For years our mass media favored him with fawning reports on his lifestyle.  Author Ronald Kessler does some of this, but fortunately this book is redeemed with a significant amount of investigative material.

Kessler wrote this at the peak of Khashoggi's career.  Soon Khashoggi found himself in the middle of the Iran-contra scandal because of his work with Manucher Ghorbanifar in setting up several of the arms-for-hostages deals.  Some of these deals were connected with BCCI, where Khashoggi was a major client.  In 1988 he and Imelda Marcos were indicted in Manhattan for helping her late husband hide assets that belonged to the Philippine people. Khashoggi was arrested in Switzerland and extradited, but he and Imelda were acquitted in 1990.  At last report (March 1992), Khashoggi sold his yacht and creditors impounded his jet.  He lives mostly in Spain, is still fighting his legal battles, and was down to his last $54 million.  [Review of 'Kessler, Ronald.  The Richest Man in the World: The Story of Adnan Khashoggi.']

I'm not suggesting that the possible presence of Adnan Khashoggi in the lives of Diana and her sons would have been a sufficient motive for the British establishment to act against Dodi.  I am suggesting that Operation Paget's focus on investigating Mohamed Al Fayed's allegations meant that the Khashoggi question is not even aired in the Report, because MaF has been unwilling or unable to mention it.

If the Paget team had been serious about identifying and investigating the allegations surrounding Diana and Dodi, it would have gone beyond the subjective testimonies of MaF, Diana, Tomlinson and Shayler, all of whom, coincidentally, had been in serious conflict with the British establishment prior to Diana's death.  If the detectives had bothered, for example, to search the internet, they'd have found the alleged 'CIA document' and might have identified it as pertinent to their inquiry - they could even have gone to CIA and asked, 'Tell us about DCI Case 64376'.  If they had put some energy into uncovering the whereabouts of the missing letters sent by Edinburgh to Diana, they'd at least have given an impression of trying.  But, instead of testing the evidence, they test the credibilities of four known enemies of the Establishment and, to no one's surprise, find them wanting. 

I'm reminded of two things: that the words politics and police both derive from the Gr. polis, and I reckon the Report is more a political document than a scientific one; and that, with delicious irony, on the same day as the Report was published, Downing St overrode the SFO and halted its investigation into corrupt Saudi arms deals with BAe, thus proving that the rule of law is subservient to the national interest.  (Come to think of it, could Khashoggi have been involved with that scandal as well?  See Slate's Timothy Noah's entertaining Six Degrees of Adnan Khashoggi.)

 

Paget Report: DCI Case 64376

Before Christmas I wrote an initial response to the Operation Paget inquiry report [hereafter "the Report"] on the deaths of Diana, Dodi and Henri (titled "Collision or Collusion").  It was a bit jumbled and muddled but covered my main concerns.  Having re-read it, I decided to write more on the subject, this time breaking it down into separate topics.  This entry focuses on the 'CIA telex', which I link in my mind with the request from the Special Branch officers.  I intend writing later on various other problems I have with the Report.

'b' wrote in the comments:

Very interesting that you were asked or told by Special Branch to watch, presumably including on Usenet, as early as October-November 1997, for material suggesting it was murder by the British secret state. Can you possibly say more about this?

I can only delve into my memories again.  When I first saw the 'CIA document', it seemed real, and when I saved it to my hard-disk I think I felt a frisson of fear.  But, then, the more I looked at it, the less I believed it.  As previously stated, I thought that points seven and eight looked to have been typed by a different machine and I, for some reason, therefore suspected forgery.  And everyone was talking about a Fiat Uno having been involved, whereas this document mentioned a Fiat Turbo.  I also wondered whether Mohamed al-Fayed mightn't himself have had it forged...

So, by the time the SB officers called, I was agnostic about the document.  My memory of their request was that they were serious about wanting me to look for something but that they struggled to specify what - I believe I may even have helped them out by filling in the words for them, delicately.  But I was left in no doubt about the general area of their interest - 'unusual' internet allegations about the death of Diana, especially of British-intelligence involvement. 

I saw no good reason to reveal to them my possession of the document.  If the CIA document, whether authentic or fraudulent, had provoked their enquiry, then in all likelihood MI5 already possessed a copy.  If they didn't, I wasn't going to do their job for them.  If it was a forgery, why get involved?  If it was authentic, I definitely didn't want to say anything.

I think that, by the time the Oswald LeWinter matter became public, I'd already had to re-format the hard-disk and had lost the original copy of the document.  Or it may have been later.  Whatever, I meant to find it again but never got round to it - I'd seen that its text had been copied on to various websites, so I assumed the original file would be easily found again.  Now, I don't remember where I found it nor know whether or not it still exists online.

----------

Now, when I look at the 'CIA telex' again, I'm struck again by its verisimilitude.  Sure, there are its implausible bits - the quote by Edinburgh, and the unlikeliness of an internal CIA document becoming public, for example.  But other parts still intrigue me.  Here follows some thoughts on the actual content of the document, with quotations from it in this colour.

----------

The headings look genuine enough.  There is, or rather there was, a 'DOMESTIC COLLECTION DIVISION'.  According to this website, it was once, in JFK's time, called the Domestic Contact Service and is now known as the National Resources Division.  The Domestic Collection Division gets variously mentioned on the web and my impression is that it existed as the DCD in 1997.

SOURCE: CASParis/CASLondon/COSGeneva/CASKingston/UK citizen Ken Etheridge

CAS stands for 'controlled American source', meaning agent or informant (see, e.g., here).  Dunno about COS - it could mean 'consulate' or, and I'm guessing, 'controlled other source', or such like.  (Please, God, let it not be the Church of Scientology!)  Dunno who Mr Etheridge is nor which datum he provided to CIA.

1. Relationship initiated between Diana POW and Dodi aF according to reliable intel sources in November 1996.  Intimacy begins shortly after they meet.  (Report filed)

If the Report is to be believed, Diana and Dodi first met on the 14th July, 1997.  Yet the CIA telex indicates otherwise.  According to the Report:

It was on 14 July 1997 that the Princess of Wales spoke to the press gathered nearby and made her comment quoted in the press as, ‘You’re going to get a big surprise, you’ll see, you’re going to get a big surprise with the next thing I do.’ (Operation Paget Other Document 546)  Subsequent speculation and comment about this remark has suggested that it was a foretelling by the Princess of Wales that she was going to announce her engagement to Dodi Al Fayed.  The comment was made around mid-day, before the Princess of Wales had met Dodi Al Fayed that summer and before he had even arrived in St Tropez.

Mohamed al-Fayed's memory tells a different story.

Diana and Dodi met long before the summer of 1997 and during their romance had more time together than people knew.  When her sons were very young, the Princess went to Turnbull & Asser, the celebrated gentleman’s shirt maker in Jermyn Street, St James’s.  She wished to order pyjamas and a selection of shirts for the Princes William and Harry.  There was a board meeting in progress when she entered T & A, but the Managing Director, Ken Williams, left the meeting to serve the Princess.  “What are you doing upstairs, Ken?” she asked.  “Come and see”, he replied.  Diana joined the meeting.  “Ah”, she said, “so this is how you waste your time”.  The Princess was introduced to the directors, including Dodi.

They got on well and saw each other from time to time at film premieres and fashion shows.  Dodi played polo at Smith’s Lawn, Windsor, and the Princess attended the tournament for the magnificent silver gilt Harrods Trophy.

In this instance, for once, I'm inclined to believe Mr al-Fayed.

3. Request from highest circles to DEA attache UK for 6 on Dodi re: Cocaine.

If MAF had forged the document, it's unlikely he'd have mentioned the cocaine.  Dodi's alleged cocaine use later emerged in the press (see USA Today).  (For UK readers, DEA is the Drug Enforcement Administration.)

4. US liaison to MI6 requested by David Spedding for assistance in providing permanent solution to Dodi problem.  Blessing of Palace secured  (Twiz filed)

The notes 'report filed' and 'copy filed' I understand, but what the hell is a 'twiz'?  Whatever, it reads as a genuine shorthand for something.

5. WHuse (White House -ed) denies Spedding request.  Harrison authorized only to arrange meeting for MI6 representative with K-Team Geneva.  (Twiz on file)

The name of the US liason to MI6 would be a secret, and who knows whether in 1997 he or she was named Harrison, but the casual use of the surname seems to me to have the ring of truth.  Dunno about K-team Geneva, but there's a company in Switzerland called K-Team that deals in 'mobile robotics' (website).

8. COBGeneva reports that on May 28, 1997 heavily weighted Fiat Turbo...  (end of page text)

First, I reckon COBGeneva is a typo (for COSGeneva).  Second, I'm not at all knowledgeable about cars, and when I first read this nine years ago I thought 'the forger' had got the model of car wrong.  But now, with hindsight, I realize that Fiat Unos came in 'Turbo' editions, more powerful than the usual type.

----------

All in all, I'm not convinced that the 'CIA document' is a fake.  Its appearance in the LeWinter affair, for me, added to its credibility (see previous post).  Its non-appearance in the Paget Report does likewise.   

Collision or Collusion?

[Revised: 2007.01.08]

To stage an accident to murder the occupants of the car would, in my opinion, require careful, meticulous and co-ordinated planning.  The [Operation Paget] team carried out a detailed and thorough investigation of the events leading up to the collusion.

- Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, speaking at the press conference to launch the Operation Paget Report, getting his collisions and collusions mixed up. [BBC video player: 15m 05s]

The John Stevens-Operation Paget report [link] on the allegations surrounding the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales, Dodi Fayed and Henri Paul has been published.  I wish I could join the chorus praising its thoroughness but, having read most of it, I cannot.  If its purpose was to portray Diana POW, Mohamed al-Fayed and ex-MI6 officer Richard Tomlinson as unreliable cranks, it's been largely successful.  But there are such gaps in the evidence presented that are unexplained, and other claims that are mentioned but not addressed, that the overall impression I have is of a police inquiry that was either incompetent or worse.  When the crash first happened, on the 31st August, 1997, I, like most people, assumed it was an accident, and it has only been as events have unfolded since that I have reluctantly come to suspect otherwise.  The Paget Report just about seals it for me.

At the time of the incident, I worked for an NGO that had loose links to the Met. Police.  Much of my time away from the office was spent, by choice, online, scouring the internet and Usenet for information that could help me do the day-job better.  Several weeks after the crash (September or early October '97), I came across a document that purported to be sourced to the CIA in Paris, was dated '17 June 1997' and which reported that MI6 was actively planning the demise of Dodi in a car crash, at the behest of the Duke of Edinburgh.  In its original format, of which I've since lost the original, it was an image of a computer-readout that resembled a fax or telex.  [The wording of that document is copied below the fold.]  I remember - and memory is a fallible tool - that points seven and eight appeared to have been written by a different keyboard than points one to six. 

Not long after I'd seen that document and had copied it to my hard-disk, our contacts in Special Branch dropped by to see us/me.  The NGO I worked for was, among other things, a repository of information about its chosen subject, and SB officers occasionally checked with us to see if we had any knowledge or information that could help them.  Normally they were quite friendly and laidback, but this time I sensed that they were under extraordinary pressure from above.  The officers knew that I spent time online and they asked/ordered me to watch out for and report anything unusual written about Diana's death, including any suggestion that British intelligence was responsible.  This was in October or November 1997.  Although it was outside of my own and my work's interests I nevertheless agreed, as one does; however, I did not tell them about the 'CIA telex' I had recently copied to my computer, because if its contents were accurate then I wasn't prepared to help SB help the security service (MI5) cover it up. 

Things took an odd turn in April 1998.  The 'CIA telex' on my hard-disk was among several papers that a former CIA officer Oswald LeWinter was caught trying to pass on to M. Al-Fayed in return for a $20million reward.  He had contacted the House of Fayed in about Feb/March '98, who then reported him to the US authorities.  The FBI, CIA and US Attorney's Office devised a sting, using Fayed's chief of security John McNamara, and LeWinter was arrested in a hotel in Vienna, Austria.  He was tried and sentenced to four years for attempted fraud, and was released after thirty months. LeWinter recalls:

The case about which I can tell you a little was an off-the shelf "company" operation.  At my trial, Al Fayed's security chief testified that my arrest was planned in D.C. by CIA and FBI a month before I was taken into custody in Vienna.  At the time of my arrest, I was shown documents which were found in my hotel room.  I had not seen them until then, since another member of the team in Vienna had given them to me the night before.  (The police found no fingerprints of mine on the papers.)  I had a choice at my arrest to identify the documents as genuine or as fakes.  If I said genuine I would face charges in the U.S. of high treason.  I said they were forgeries and was arrested for fraud, tried and found guilty despite the evidence of entrapment.  The other team members, one a high ranking "suit" in the agency, all escaped. [link] [my emph.]

Thus the 'CIA telex', which I'd had for months prior to LeWinter's arrest, became officially a forgery that the now-convicted swindler LeWinter had tried to sell to Fayed.  LeWinter believes he was set up and I tend to agree with him.  He clearly didn't write it himself or he wouldn't have published it on the web months previously.  He has an interesting enough history to conclude that he didn't simply download it from the web in the hope of conning Fayed out of $20m.  I think he was set up to fail, so that the 'CIA telex' could be written off as a forgery.  But why would CIA do that unless the 'CIA telex' was authentic?

The Paget Report never mentions Oswald LeWinter.  Yet it was the 'CIA telex' in his possession at the time of his arrest that was, as I understand it, the origin of Al-Fayed's belief that Edinburgh had tasked MI6 to solve the Dodi problem.  Stevens mentions Al-Fayed's allegation about Edinburgh, saying it's a very grave one, but he never explains the origin of it.  Diana POW's paranoid suspicions about Edinburgh are aired, but the far stronger evidence of the CIA telex is excluded. 

Apart from the missing 'CIA telex', other things in the Paget Report seemed to me unsatisfactory.  For example:

• Langley message.  In the Summer of 2004 the Daily Mail received "an intriguing note" which it passed on to Scotland Yard.  The nine-line message was written in a blue felt-tip pen on a torn piece of A4.   "If you are brave enough, dig deeper to learn about X and Y," says the note.  "Both MI6.  Both were involved at the highest level in the murder of the Princess."  It is signed off with the words:  "Good Luck."   The address at the top of the piece of paper is simply 'Langley', the headquarters of the CIA, America's intelligence agency, in Virginia, USA.  The Stevens Report makes no mention of it.  (X and Y referred to Messrs. Langman and Spearman.) 
• Adnan Khashoggi.  Not named by Stevens.  But he turns up, I think, in the evidence of Richard Tomlinson [p.827].  In 1992 I was working on an operation to recover high-tech weapons from the former Soviet Union.  This operation was being conducted in collaboration with a very powerful arms dealer whose exact identity I did not know.  When I read the file I discovered that this arms dealer was in very frequent contact with Mr Mohamed Al Fayed.  I saw that the MI6 informant supplying this information had a code beginning with P, followed by several numbers.  As this source was mentioned several times I tried to find out who it was.  It was a Frenchman who was head of security at the Ritz Hotel.  Stevens discounts the part about the P source in the Ritz but doesn't address or dispute the claim about the "very powerful" arms dealer whom Al-Fayed saw 'very frequently'.  Al-Fayed's first wife Samira, the mother of Dodi Fayed, was Adnan Khashoggi's sister.  According to the Paget Report, Dodi had bought a £130k engagement ring for Diana that afternoon and intended proposing imminently.  The Daily Express newspaper [caveat lector] cites an author who alleges that Dodi spoke with his Uncle Adnan (by phone?) on the evening of his death - i.e. they were close.  The possibility that princes William and Harry would be spending their adolescent summers in Adnan Khashoggi's mansion in Monaco would have been motive enough for Edinburgh, Blair and MI6 to act to prevent it, for justifiable reasons of national security.
• Dominic Lawson/Rosa Monckton.  (Background - Husband and wife.  Dominic Lawson has been accused of working for MI6 [Indie].  Rosa Monckton's younger brother, Anthony, is an MI6 officer [Cryptome].  By strange coincidence, the SIS's training HQ is at Fort Monckton, Hants. [FAS])  This duo gets off lightly in Stevens' book, in my book.  Mohamed Al Fayed wrote to Operation Paget and made this claim [p.661]: 3. 'Trevor Rees-Jones' book, 'The Bodyguard's Story' is clear evidence of how he, Kes Wingfield and Ben Murrell were turned against me.  The book, which was not written by him but by the security services, is a tissue of lies and deceit designed to denigrate me and to support the British authorities' account that the deaths of my son and Princess Diana were the result of a simple traffic accident.  4. 'The Bodyguard's Story' was written with the co-operation of such people as Martyn Gregory and Dominic Lawson.  Paget does not explain that Richard Tomlinson has alleged/revealed that Lawson was, and thus is, an MI6 agent.  Later it reports an allegation by MAF that: Dominic Lawson's wife is Rosa Monckton and her brother is a serving senior MI6 agent (a statement which is almost accurate, except that Anthony Monckton is an SIS officer, not an agent) - anyhow, the Paget Report never followed that claim up either, nor considered its ramifications.  Lawson's wife Rosa Monckton met and got close to Diana immediately after the separation from Charles.  She was introduced to her by another friend of Diana, Lucia Flecha de Lima, who would later order Paul Burrell to incinerate Diana's clothes, the ones she had worn the night she died.  MAF believes Monckton was used by MI6 to watch over and try to influence Diana; I do too.  Stevens says there "is no evidence" to support this claim (a phrase that is repeated 87 times in the report.  (BTW, 'no evidence' alone appears 204 times; Khashoggi, never; LeWinter, you kidding?)  After Diana PoW's first visit to the Fayeds' yacht in St. Tropez and before the fateful weekend in Paris, Rosa Monckton took her on a private cruise of the Aegean.  Given her family connections, I presume that Rosa was seeking to prise Diana away from Dodi, apparently without success. 
• Nevertheless, several things seem to have been confirmed or revealed by Operation Paget.  Dodi was about to propose to Diana.  The Mercedes was blocked from taking its normal route and was forced to go by the Alma underpass.  None of its occupants, not even the bodyguard, was wearing a seat-belt.  When Operation Paget inspected the Mercedes, it found that the seat-belt of the right-rear seat, Diana's place, was "jammed in the retracted position" [437] - however, it concluded that it had been damaged by the crash itself.  It doesn't reveal whether the seat-belts were manually or electronically operated - could the Mercedes have been electronically tampered with so as to prevent the seat-belts from being used?  PC Paget doesn't ask that question.

I've written this, my first blog-entry for weeks, because nobody else seems to have critiqued the Paget Report in any detail that I've seen.  If anyone can point me towards such a thing, please do.  Despite what people might have read widely in the press, John Stevens' report, while exhausting to read, is far from exhaustive in its treatment of the evidence, such as there is, that might support the theory that there was an SIS-centred conspiracy to dispose of Dodi Fayed and that, whether deliberately or not, Diana, PoW was killed in its execution.

On Peter Hain

The whole Sean Kelly issue is an invitation to conspiracy theory crackpots, starting with Adams himself and his daft notion that Peter Hain is an MI5 agent.  [Comment on post @ Slugger O'Toole, 2005.06.28]

If it is true that Gerry Adams holds to the daft notion that Peter Hain is an MI5 agent, he's not alone in his daftness.  I came to the same tentative conclusion before finding the above comment on Slugger O'Toole.  According to my crackpot theory, Hain would have become an MI5 stooge around 1975.  Which would entail that the Anti-Nazi League was co-founded and co-led ('77-'82) by an MI5 informant, which, if one thinks about it, makes some sense.  Because of John Prescott's on-going troubles, and with Peter Hain being talked of as a possible replacement, I think it's time to air my suspicions in public. 

When I were still a lad in shorts at prep. school, Peter Hain was Britain's 'public enemy number one' (said the Telegraph).  The Wilson Cabinet considered charging him with 'seditious conspiracy'.  Right-wingnut Gerald Howarth founded the 'Hain Prosecution Fund' to battle him.  All because Hain, who had come to the UK in '66 when his family fled from the South African secret police, was in '69 leading the direct action campaign against South African sports teams touring Britain.  Called the 'Stop The Seventy Tour' (STST), it attracted widespread grassroots support.

"Direct action" took hold as copycat protests followed the Springbok rugby team around the country - Gordon Brown signed on as Hain's Edinburgh organiser - and a secret inner STST group of activists was formed.

The Establishment was shaken by the STST campaign.   It affected relations with South Africa and the Commonwealth, and it threatened law and order at home.  MI5 infiltrated STST, using multiple so-called 'Hairies', and one of them, 'Mike Ferguson', rose to become Peter Hain's number two.  (It would follow from this that MI5 probably opened a file on Gordon Brown around 1970.)

The STST was largely successful, which meant Peter Hain also became South Africa's public enemy number one (PENO).  To be considered PENO in one country, and to have MI5 after you, is quite an achievement; to be considered PENO in two countries, and to have both MI5 and BOSS (SA's fearsome Bureau of State Security) on your case, is to be in deep do-do.

In 1972 someone sent Peter Hain a letter-bomb, which was opened by his sister and which failed to detonate.  Hain believed that it was sent by BOSS.  It may have been BOSS, and it may not, and it may have been intended to scare but not explode, but it may not.  Whatever, when someone like Peter Hain receives a letter-bomb, some plods from Special Branch come calling with advice on security.  It's possible, I think, that thereafter all of Hain's family's mail was first checked for devices by SB, who'd then deliver them to him.  SB officers are the footsoldiers of MI5.  From being PENO in '69, Hain (and his family) may thus have started receiving SB/MI5 protection from '72 onwards.

Then, in 1974/5(?), Peter Hain was falsely accused and charged with bank robbery from a Barclays in Putney. The case went to the Old Bailey, and he was acquitted in 1976.   As with the bomb, Hain believed that BOSS was behind it.  Again, it may have been BOSS, and it may not - if the effect was to push Hain even further towards SB/MI5, then the latter agency may have been involved.  It could even have been an MI5-BOSS co-production.  Whatever - if Hain really believed that BOSS was trying to maim and/or destroy him, his dependence upon the British secrurity services would have grown.  If he was also concerned, say, by the influence of the Trotskyists and Stalinists on the British Left, such as in the anti-apartheid movement in which he was active, it would have been an easy step for him to make, from receiving SB/MI5's on-going protection to passing on information about extremists, quid pro quo.  Hain was also, and still is, a CND member, another group of then interest to MI5.  Considering the likely effect on Hain of receiving the letter-bomb, and then being framed for robbery, and given that the Security Service had had him under surveillance for some time before that, is it entirely too outlandish to raise the possibility that MI5, and not BOSS, was behind both the dud letter-bomb and the Barclays frame-up?   Anyway, I think the bank-robbery experience may have completed his transition from national security threat to potentially valuable asset. 

If that's right, then Hain would have been in MI5's pocket when the Anti-Nazi League was formed in 1977.  To me this is quite plausible.  I think it's even possible that the whole ANL project was started by MI5, for two purposes - it could use surveillance and informants to keep watch of leftist extremists drawn to the ANL, and it could use the ANL and its supporters to quell the growing popularity of the right-wing National Front.  For MI5, the Anti-Nazi League operation could have been counted a great success.

Also in 1977, Hain switched from the Liberals to Labour, and in 1991 he was elected an MP.  By the end of that decade, he was a Foreign Office minister.  Among other posts, he's been Leader of the Commons and Northern Ireland Secretary.   At the FCO, he would have been briefed by MI6 and have read secret reports.  As Commons Leader, he liased closely with the SS on trying to protect parliament from terrorist attacks.  In the occupied six counties, he has political responsibility for the workings of PSNI Special Branch, MI5 and MI6. 

Hain's come a long way, from being a target of MI5, to overseeing that agency, Special Branch and MI6;  from being plotted against by a Labour Cabinet to becoming a Labour Cabinet minister.  Jung called such turnarounds enantiodromias, the going from one extreme to another.   I think Hain's extraordinary transformation from public enemy number one to intelligence insider is best explained by the terrorist campaign conducted against him and his family, by unknown intelligence agencies, between 1972 and '75.

So, that's my 'crackpot conspiracy theory', which Gerry Adams maybe also shares.  Lots of ifs and buts and maybes but no hard and fast evidence.  It's supposition based solely on the events, and the unusual trajectory, of Peter Hain's career.  But, given that he's now going for Labour's deputy leadership, his record of mixing it with various spooks, domestic and foreign, is a valid topic for comment, I believe.   

[See also: Is Tony Blair an MI5 agent?]

A good crisis for John Reid

Sometimes, the timings of terrorist plots and contemporaneous political events appear to be more than just coincidental, even when they might not be.  For example, when 9/11 happened, one of my first thoughts, like many other people,  was, "F--k, this gives Cheney and Rumsfeld (et al.) everything that they wanted", and that thought became, rightly or wrongly, a reason to question the version of events presented by the US government, because the attacks coincided with the aims of the recently elected US government.  London's July 7 bombings became in my mind 'the G8 bombings', for they appeared to be timed to coincide with the start of the UK-hosted G8 summit at Gleneagles in Scotland.

And now there's this alleged Bojinka-type plot to blow up multiple airliners over the Atlantic.  It's a good crisis for John Reid (who seems to have again dropped the 'Dr').  This blogger has been suggesting for a while that John Reid was the one whom Tony Blair and the security and intel services wanted to be the next prime minister.  The events of the past couple of days have not modified that opinion.  But that would be to suggest that the timing of this high-profile, counter-terrorist operation was, to some extent, manoeuvred by MI5, in part to promote John Reid as a capable leader in troubled times, which might be symptomatic of paranoid conspiracitis. 

The newspapers have given Reidy glowing reviews for his performance.  The Times, for example, wrote:

Mr Reid has evinced a presidential air in his public appearances.  Although Gordon Brown is the overwhelming candidate to succeed Mr Blair, Mr Reid is the only other real contender, and his performance this week has strengthened his position.  While few believe that he would defeat Mr Brown, he may well have made it harder for the Chancellor, when he takes over, to dispense with Mr Reid’s services.

Personally, I think Brown hasn't a hope in hell of succeeding Blair, and he should look for a job outside of politics.   Air crashes happen to US, not British, politicians but I wouldn't want to share a flight to Scotland with the chancellor for a while.  When powerful elements within the permanent government strongly favour one candidate, and oppose another, for the leadership of a political party in parliament and, from there, of the elected government, only the naive, the brave or the foolish would stand in their way. 

PS  According to the US's Cox News Service,

WASHINGTON - When Vice President Cheney went out of his way Wednesday to blast Democrats as weak on terrorism, he knew something that few Americans knew: Another stark reminder of the dangers of terrorism was about to hit the headlines.  The White House confirmed Thursday that senior administration officials have been aware since at least last weekend that British authorities were moving toward arrests in an alleged terrorism plot. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer]

'Since at least last weekend'.  What a coincidence - TB jets off to Barbados, and John Reid gets the platform to appear prime-ministerly, with at least several days notice to prepare. 

I reckon it's quite possible that, if TB hadn't delayed his holiday to work on the UN resolution on Lebanon, Thursday's operation would have happened earlier in the week or last weekend.  Which means that, by Thursday, the plot would have been slightly more advanced than they had anticipated.

UPDATE [2006.08.15]:  Recent reports have suggested that the British authorities wanted to wait longer until the plot was more advanced before moving, that it was the Americans who dictated the timing.  Whatever the truth of it is, it occurs to me that John Reid would be the Bush administration's choice to succeed Tony Blair.  The wee one has powerful friends indeed.

Remembering Robin Cook

Robin Cook lost his life a year ago today.  Anniversaries of people's deaths aren't newsworthy per se, although often the media will use them to, for example, look back at that person's life.  But considering the current state of the world, and of the Labour government, I did expect a bit more coverage than there's been.

Yesterday in the Guardian, Cook's former adviser David Clark wrote a political appreciation, and today Margaret Cook, his first wife, has written a warm tribute to the fallible-but-brilliant man that he was, for readers in Scotland.

Elsewhere, a lane has been named after him in his old constituency, and a commemorative bench opened at the Southside Community Centre, Edinburgh. 

And, tomorrow, the day after  the anniversary, the second Mrs Cook...

... will return with Mr Cook's two sons on the first anniversary [sic] of his death to lay a plaque in his memory near the spot on August 7.

A friend said:  "Gaynor will go to Ben Stack to a lay a plaque in Robin's memory.  She has found it all very difficult and is only now beginning to come to terms with her loss.

"The first anniversary will be a very emotional day for Gaynor and all of Robin's family."

Since Mr Cook's death, aged 49, Gaynor has been living in England with friends as she deals with her loss.  [Sunday Mail, last week]

And that's it.  Long-suffering readers of this blog know that I harbour serious suspicions about Robin Cook's death [here].  I've nothing to add to, or subtract from, what I've written previously.  I intended not to write about it again.   But I can't help thinking that, if Cook had lived, his reputation among his backbench colleagues would now be soaring,  Would Cook still be angling for a job under Gordon Brown, or might the anti-Blair, anti-war shift in the party have re-opened the possiblility of him seeking the top job for himself?

Time to stop and think of other things

I think there may be people visiting this blog hoping for more on Robin Cook's death, whereas I don't intend, apart from this short entry, to write about it again.  It's not that there weren't other questions that occurred to me, or other observations I could have made.  But I think it would have been to labour the point. 

I didn't expect to write so much.  And the longer I looked into it and kept coming up with questions or inconsistencies or whatever, the more nervous, and haunted by it all, I became.  Nervous, spooked, because if there was any truth in what I was implying, then maybe some people wouldn't appreciate my writing about it.  Haunted, because I found that I was thinking about it too much; I was taking myself to Ben Stack, not literally, but in my imagination and with the help of photos, maps and Google Earth; and I even watched the funeral again.  It was time to stop and think of other things. 

Serving the Crown

I'm not obsessed by Tracey Temple, really, but the news today that she is returning to her job does fit with my thesis that she was serving the Crown acting under orders when she turned on John Prescott (pun intended).  According to the Mirror:

TRACEY Temple will keep her job at Westminster after her affair with John Prescott but will move to another department.

Tracey, who was the Deputy Prime Minister's diary secretary, will be back in work next Thursday.  Her PR agent Max Clifford said yesterday:  "She has still got her job.  Obviously not in the same place, but the same job, same level, same position, same pay and they are keen for her to. [sic]

"I think which department is one of the things she is going to be discussing over the next couple of days."(...)

Mr Clifford said Tracey had rejected numerous media offers which would have turned her into a millionaire.

He added:  "She's going to get back to her job, which she loves, and what is done is done."  But she wants nothing to do with ex-fiance Barrie Williams who revealed she talked of Prezza in her sleep.

Am I the only person who had trouble believing the story about her lorry-driver lover, Barrie, hearing her sleep-talking about her rumpy-pumpy with the DPM, then him reading her diaries and text messages?  No truck driver I know (not that I know any) would say things like, "I just can't believe that my darling Tracey has been sleeping with John Prescott behind my back", or "She had access to all of Prescott's offices and even recently visited his country retreat in Dorneywood, Bucks.", or "But you could have knocked me down with a feather when I realised Tracey and Prescott had become lovers".  Barrie didn't realise it in 2003, 2004 or 2005 but, in 2006, just before Blair's last major reshuffle, Tracey lets slip the big secret, and Barrie heads off to the Mirror?  No, I find that even more unbelievable than my original hypothesis that she worked for Security Service.  (And I wouldn't be at all surprised if 'Barrie' wasn't his real name, he's not a lorry driver, and that he's actually in a similar line of work as she.)

The presence of Max Clifford in the story only adds to the intrigue.  Last December I wrote a highly speculative piece, Rebekah Wade, MI5 and the G8 bombings - an hypothesis, about how the travails of Wade and her husband had distracted public attention from the Mirror's main story that day that all four July 7th bombers had been under MI5 surveillance one year before the bombing.  I ended it with:

And I also wonder at the role of Max Clifford, his part in Blunkett's, and others', downfall, and his role on November 3rd, 2005 - might there be more to Max Clifford than meets the eye?

He's now smoothing Temple's return back into the bowels of Whitehall.  I hope, and expect, he's being well paid for his services.