284 replies to this topic

[danslittlefinger]

http://www.dailymail...randed-spy.html

"The KGB taking me for a spy."

During the Cold War, I travelled to Moscow to arrange the mating of two giant pandas. Unfortunately, the Russians were convinced it was a rather poorly-devised cover for Western espionage.

My hotel room was bugged and I was followed everywhere. They were clearly out to get me and the British Embassy worried I might end up in the infamous Lubyanka prison. I was immensely relieved when they finally managed to get me home.

Many years later, I discovered the real reason for the KGB's special interest in me. The biography of an old friend of mine, the naturalist Maxwell Knight, was published after his death and to my surprise its title was: 'The Man Who Was M.'

It turned out that, unknown to me, Max was a Secret Service spymaster. Indeed, as an in-joke, Ian Fleming had even used his initial, 'M', for the title of James Bond's boss in his novels.

As we were close friends, no wonder the Russians thought my panda mating escapade was a front for something more sinister."

Easy mistake to make I guess.

[The Shark]

As we were close friends, no wonder the Russians thought my panda mating escapade was a front for something more sinister."

In my case it is.

There'll be pandamonium if anyone finds out.

[danslittlefinger]

As we were close friends, no wonder the Russians thought my panda mating escapade was a front for something more sinister."

In my case it is.

There'll be pandamonium if anyone finds out.

I couldn't bear to read that although it's there in black and white.

[Attempting Re-entry]

Fascinating stuff. The full Hamas assassination video is riveting. Thanks.

[danslittlefinger]

http://www.thesun.co...t-revealed.html

THEY are best known for getting badges for embroidery, baking or helping the elderly.

Working as an undercover spy is probably the last thing you would expect of a Girl Guide.

But now The Sun can reveal a top-secret document which proves that 90 teenage Guides became spooks working for security service MI5 in the First World War.

It explains in astonishing detail their working conditions, responsibilities, qualifications and pay scales.

All the girls who worked for MI5 between 1914 and 1918 were aged from 14 to 16. Their main role was as 50p-a-week messengers passing on highly classified information.

The teenagers were so trusted by MI5 bosses that they were allowed to relay some of the messages verbally.

At the start of the war Boy Scouts were also used. But it quickly became clear that Girl Guides were more efficient because they were less boisterous and talkative.



The secret role of the girls was uncovered when Girlguiding UK and MI5 researched their histories as part of their centenary celebrations.

MI5, which was founded in 1909, tracked down a secret document called Duties Of H Branch, which specifically covered the role of the Girl Guides.

They worked at Waterloo House and two other offices in central London, where they were divided up into five or six Guides under a patrol leader. Section H5 in the document states: "Each is allotted to a floor and the patrol leader is responsible for the work, discipline and good behaviour of her patrol.

"The Guides are allotted marks each day by their patrol leaders and at the end of the month the room which has proved most generally satisfactory is awarded the prize picture for the following month."
Cheerful

Section H6 adds: "A messenger should be between the ages of 14 and 16, a Guide of good standing, quick, cheerful and willing.

"Guides are engaged on three months' probation.

"The initial rate of pay is ten shillings a week (50p) with dinner and tea included.

"Guides who do special work, or who have special responsibilities, receive a higher rate of pay.

"Those who help in the kitchen receive four shillings and sixpence (22½p) extra duty pay per month.

"The guides are paid weekly by the Captain on Friday morning.

"The hours of work are from 9am to 6pm and 10am to 7pm on alternate weeks.

"Fifty minutes are allowed them for dinner and 20 minutes for tea.

"Girl Guides are on duty on alternate Sundays and they get one half-day off duty each week.

"A week's holiday is given in the summer and short leave at Christmas and Easter.

"When a Guide falls sick, a doctor's certificate must be sent within 48 hours of the illness. Otherwise, all pay is stopped."

The document also explains the duties of the Guides. It says: "The Guides are responsible for dusting all rooms on their floors between 9am and 10am, cleaning and filling the ink pots and disinfecting the telephones, as well as answering any bells which may ring between those hours.

"After 10am their work consists chiefly of collections for the despatch room, for the posts, and for running messages, sorting cards, collecting files, collecting waste paper and rolling it up ready for burning."

The Girl Guides were formed by Robert Baden-Powell in 1910.

The movement was considered radical at first. In an age when skirts were ankle length and young ladies never ran, the idea of girls camping, hiking and the like did not go down well.

Critics denounced "girl scouting" as a "mischievous new development", a "foolish and pernicious movement" and an "idiotic sport". But, determined to show they could beat the boys at their own game, these fledgling Guides threw themselves into the new movement.

By 1912 badges on offer included air mechanic, cyclist, electrician, sailor, telegraph operator and even tailor.

They were 300,000-strong by the start of the First World War.

Government departments began contacting the Girl Guides and the Boy Scouts, seeking teenagers to work as messengers and backroom staff to assist the war effort.

Girl Guides archivist Karen Stapley said: "At first there were both Scouts and Guides working for MI5. But it soon became clear that the boys were too boisterous and talkative and couldn't adapt to periods of inactivity between their duties.

"It was felt that the girls were more restrained and could be trusted to a greater degree, so the Boy Scouts were phased out. A total of 90 Guides worked for MI5 during the course of the war and their main duties were as messengers, which often involved them going out of the buildings.

"Some of the top-secret messages had to be passed on verbally, which shows how much the girls were trusted."

The Guides had to observe a strict dress code which laid down that their blue skirts must be no more than eight inches off the ground.

They had to wear a belt and their distinctive hats at all times.

Praising the work of the girls, Baden-Powell once said: "One of the big government offices in London has taken on Girl Guides as confidential messengers and orderlies - avowedly because 'they can be trusted, better than boys, not to talk'.

"If the character of the girl is developed, she will discipline herself not to 'blab' and will 'play the game' not for herself and her own glorification - but in the interests of her side, that is of her country or her employer."
Spooks

In a modern link with spooks, Dame Stella Rimington, MI5's first woman director general and the first to be officially identified, was a Girl Guide.

Back in 1937 the future Queen Elizabeth and her sister Margaret enrolled as a Guide and Brownie.

Other famous former guides include supermodel Kate Moss, newsreader Kate Silverton and actress Emma Thompson.

Chief Guide Liz Burnley said: "MI5 spotted qualities in the Girl Guides in 1914 which still hold true today and serve them well in their careers.

"Today's Guides will also be speaking up for themselves, taking action on issues they care about and deciding for themselves how to build their leadership skills through a choice of challenging activities." Last night a senior Whitehall security source said: "The Girl Guides made an important contribution to the work of MI5 during the First World War.

"It has been interesting to learn more about this historical association during the centenary year of both organisations.

"MI5 currently employs around 3,800 people, who come from a wide range of backgrounds and cultures reflecting the diverse society they protect in the UK.

"MI5 welcomes applications from all individuals who are 18 or above, but are particularly interested to hear from women, individuals from ethnic minority groups and disabled people. Further details are available from the website mi5.gov.uk."

http://www.dailymail...ale-50-000.html

Going up in the world? Beat the rush hour with first commercial jetpack for £50,000

It is the perfect way for city high-fliers to miss the morning rush hour. A company is set to produce the first commercial JETPACKS - and one could be yours for just £50,000.

The traffic jam-beating packs will be manufactured after a multi-million pound deal was signed with an international aircraft company this week.

Martin Aircraft Company, in Christchurch, New Zealand, aims to make 500 packs a year allowing first-person propulsion through the skies for commuters.


The world's first factory making space-age JET PACKS is going into production. It can travel at 60MPH for 30 miles.

The 200 horsepower dual-propeller packs can travel at 60mph for up to 30miles on a full tank of fuel. They have been reached heights of 7,800ft in tests.

At 250lbs when empty, the jet pack is not heavy enough to require a pilot's licence, although users will take part in a Martin Jetpack training programme.

However, the gadget is not environmentally friendly burning 10 gallons of fuel per hour - five times as much as the average car.

The 5ft by 5.5ft device is the brainchild of Kiwi inventor Glenn Martin who unveiled his machine for the first time in July last year.

While jetpacks are traditionally powered by jets of escaping gases, the new device uses a gas engine with two ducted fans to provide lift.

Pitch and roll are controlled by one hand, yaw and the throttle by the other.

Martin Aircraft Company chief executive Richard Lauder said the pack could be perfect for the emergency services, private users and even the military.


You won't need a pilot's licence to fly with this jetpack.

Mr Lauder said: 'This could be life-saving stuff. For us this is an excellent commercial step.'

The device has safety features to combat the inherent dangers of flying through the air. It has both an internal roll cage to protect the pilot from side impact and a a ballistic parachute system that works at low altitudes.

Jetpacks first emerged in science fiction in the 1920s and were tested by the U.S military by the 1960s, but have never 'taken-off' commercially.

Astronauts on the International Space Station wear rocket packs during space walks called a 'Safer.' This can be used in emergencies should they become detached from the station.

[danslittlefinger]

http://www.dailymail...uettes-LSD.html

CIA 'caused French village to go mad in the Fifties by spiking baguettes with LSD'

The CIA caused an entire French village to go mad nearly 60 years ago by spiking their baguettes with the mind-bending drug LSD, a new investigation claims.

Hundreds of residents in Pont-Saint-Esprit, southern France, were driven to mass hysteria and hallucinations in the 'cursed bread' incident in August 1951.

Five people died and dozens were sent to mental asylums in strait jackets in one of the most bizarre mysteries in France.


Pont-Saint-Esprit: Villagers here were driven to mass hysteria and hallucinations

One man tried to drown himself, screaming that his belly was being eaten by snakes. An 11-year-old boy tried to strangle his grandmother.

A man shouted 'I am a plane' before jumping out of a second-floor window and breaking his legs.

Another saw his heart escaping through his feet and begged a doctor to put it back.

Baffled villagers had always blamed the incident on a local baker whose bread could have been tainted with mercury or psychedelic mould.

But U.S. journalist H P Albarelli says he has now uncovered CIA documents revealing the agency caused the madness to test the effects of LSD in a secret mind-control experiment.

The incident, which took place at the height of the Cold War, was initially investigated by a Swiss pharmaceutical company Sandoz who have been revealed as the same people who secretly supplied the CIA with LSD.

One note uncovered by Albarelli is a transcript of a conversation between a CIA agent and a Sandoz official who mentions the 'secret of Pont-Saint-Esprit' and explains it was caused by diethylamide the D in LSD.

Mr Albarelli added: ‘The real smoking gun was a White House document sent to members of the Rockefeller Commission formed in 1975 to investigate CIA abuses.

‘It contained the names of a number of French nationals who had been secretly employed by the CIA and made direct reference to the Pont St. Esprit incident.’

Locals in Pont-Saint-Esprit still want to know what caused the mass insanity Villager Charles Granjoh, 71, was one those affected.

He said: ‘At the time people brought up the theory of an experiment aimed at controlling a popular revolt.

‘I almost kicked the bucket and I'd like to know why.’

[MkB]

Great find, DLF!
My, my... This could belong in an X-Files episode...

[danslittlefinger]

Great find, DLF!
My, my... This could belong in an X-Files episode...

Thanks my friend.
Interesting story isn't it?
Now wonder half the French feel the way they do.

[danslittlefinger]

http://www.dailymail...ers-hammer.html

Don't mention the war, girls: For sale, a treasure trove of very un-PC WWII propaganda posters.

As if fighting the Nazis was not enough, British troops faced danger on the home front too... from their gossiping girlfriends.

The hazards of confiding details of military manoeuvres to the fairer sex during the Second World War prompted a poster propaganda campaign depicting women as incapable of keeping sensitive information to themselves, as not to be trusted and sometimes even as spies.

Examples of the famous 'careless talk costs lives' warning are among a newly unearthed and rare, mint condition collection of 200 posters - sized A1 and A3 - produced by the Ministry of Information.


Careless talk: The newly unearthed posters warn of the potentially deadly risks of letting slip secrets about military manoeuvres to friends or girlfriends.

They lay gathering dust in an old printworks for years until a worker took them home.

After his death, a relative took them to an auctioneers to be valued.


Some of the posters would today be comdemned as 'politically incorrect' due to their portrayal of women.

The posters - described by the Imperial War Museum as a 'once in a lifetime find' - are expected to fetch up to £160 per set of four when they go under the hammer.

Today some would be condemned for their 'politically incorrect' portrayal of women, but in a time when television was suspended and before the internet they were an eye-catching and sometimes amusing way of spreading a vital message.

The auction is due to take place at Wallis & Wallis in Lewes, East Sussex, next Tuesday.




Roy Butler, senior partner at the auctioneers, said: 'After the man passed away, a relative brought them into us, asking if they might be worth selling. I said "absolutely".

'They are quite a find, and as minty as can be. I can remember seeing a quite a few of them myself during the war.'

Richard Slocombe, senior curator at the Imperial War Museum in London, said that the find seemed to be a 'unique case'.



He said: 'There are instances of singular posters turning up in peoples' attics, but to have this number turning up in pristine condition is almost a once in a lifetime event.'

They were designed by the Ministry of Information during the Second World War to boost morale at home.

Mr Slocombe added: 'Many of the slogans have entered into the popular consciousness.



'From about 1941 they took a more humorous approach.'

He said wartime propagandists were heavily inspired by commercial advertising. Many of the posters feature attractive women with titles such as Tell Nobody - Not Even Her and Keep Mum - She's Not So Dumb.

http://i.dailymail.c...474_306x464.jpg

http://i.dailymail.c...315_306x464.jpg

Mr Slocombe explained: 'They had a very contradictory approach to women, and lurched from one stereotype to another depending on the needs of the day.

'At the beginning of the war they were shown to be helpless females in need of male protection.

'Then from 1941 when women were called to do war work, the images became much more positive.

'But in the anti-gossip, anti-spying campaigns, women were often portrayed as femme fatales, or as being unreliable, and vaguely untrustworthy.'


'We've all heard about the ubiquity of Keep Calm and Carry On. But ironically that poster was never actually published. Mainly because its two sister posters - Freedom Is In Peril and Your Courage Will Bring Us Victory were seen as being patronising and condescending.
http://i.dailymail.c...365_306x464.jpg

- Love the last one, so typically British!
Carry On and Keep Calm!

[dinovelvet]

Something here seems a little Elliot Carver-esque :

http://www.variety.c...4...&ref=verttv

Hoax show sparks panic in Georgia
News report claimed Russians had invaded
By NICK HOLDSWORTH

MOSCOW A pro-government Georgian television station sparked
widespread panic in the Caucasian country when it ran a spoof
documentary claiming the Russians had invaded again.

The half-hour show which aired Saturday night brought chaos to the
country after it claimed Russian troops were already in the capital
Tbilisi and aired "unconfirmed reports" that pro-Western President
Mikheil Saakashvili had been assassinated.

Mobile telephone networks crashed, cinemas emptied as parents called
their children home and people spilled out on to the street of towns
and cities across the country to seek safety.

But the report on Imedi-TV once Georgia s leading independent
station until Saakashvili took it off air following the death of its
owner, opposition figure Badri Patarkatsishvili in 2008 was nothing
but a hoax, apparently aired by a pro-government station in an attempt
to discredit the opposition before key municipal elections in May.

Georgia Media Production Holdings, which now owns the station, claims
the broadcast was designed to show the "real threat" of how events in
a fresh Russian invasion might unfold.

Screened as a 30-minute news report, the broadcast said Russia
aircraft had bombed Georgian air and seaports and that opposition
leader Nino Burdzhanadze just back from a trip to Moscow had taken
power.

She later denounced the report as "outrageous" government propaganda.

Although a warning stating that the broadcast was a simulation had
been carried when the broadcast begun no warnings were given during
the program.

Many viewers failed to notice the initial statement or tuned in
mid-way through the report.

The result less than two years after Russia and Georgia fought a
five-day war over the disputed rebel territory of South Ossetia,
bringing Russian armored columns within an hour s drive of Tbilisi
was predictable.

"There was panic. I was one of those who started watching after the
broadcast had already began," one Georgian media professional told
Variety.

"I did not see the announcement (about it being a simulation) and I
believed the report was true. I changed channels to see what other
stations were broadcasting they had nothing similar but still I
was taken in. I was scared but did not know what to do. The last news
was that the Russian army was already in Tbilisi. There seemed nothing
to do but wait."

His agony was not long lived as Georgians began to realize it was a
hoax, phone calls and text messages spread the word. A friend sent an
SMS saying it was not true.

"Now I think about it, it was stupid to believe it was true. The
footage they showed was all old from the war in 2008 but on
Saturday night for a while it seemed very real."

Reactions in Georgia following the spoof were ranging from shock to
anger and demands for heads to roll at Imedi, he said.

"It seems to have been a stupid idea of a television producer.
Something will have to happen now top people at the channel will
have to step down."

The report which was picked up by Russian news agency which flashed
reports of the invasion around the world lead to demonstrations
Sunday outside the offices of Imedi TV in Tbilisi and anger from
opposition politicians who denounced it was a dangerous and
irresponsible stunt.

But Giorgi Arveladze, head of Imedi, remains unrepentant. He took
responsibility for the broadcast, but was not considering stepping
down.

In televised remarks, Arveladze, a former government minister and
long-time ally of Saakashvili, said: "The goal of this report was not
to scare the population or to cause panic we understand it was a shock
for viewers and sincerely apologize for that."

He denied the report violated broadcast regulations by not running a
caption during the broadcast making it clear it was a simulation.

The Georgian National Communications Commission said Sunday that it
had launched an investigation into whether Imedi had breached a
requirement "to clearly explain" to viewers that the report was
fictional.

[Sark2.0]

Foreign Policy has an article about the history of the Honey Trap

[danslittlefinger]

Goldfinger would love this.

http://news.yahoo.co...of_invisibility

Cloak of invisibility takes a step forward.

WASHINGTON – From Grimm's fairy tales to Harry Potter, the cloak of invisibility has played a major role in fiction. Now scientists have taken a small but important new step toward making it reality.

Researchers at Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology report they were able to cloak a tiny bump in a layer of gold, preventing its detection at nearly visible infrared frequencies.

Their cloaking device also worked in three dimensions, while previously developed cloaks worked in two dimensions, lead researcher Tolga Ergin said.

The cloak is a structure of crystals with air spaces in between, sort of like a woodpile, that bends light, hiding the bump in the gold later beneath, the researchers reported in Thursday's online edition of the journal Science.

In this case, the bump was tiny, a mere 0.00004 inch high and 0.0005 inch across, so that a magnifying lens was needed to see it.

"In principle, the cloak design is completely scalable; there is no limit to it," Ergin said. But, he added, developing a cloak to hide something takes a long time, "so cloaking larger items with that technology is not really feasible."

"Other fabrication techniques, though, might lead to larger cloaks," he added in an interview via e-mail.

The value of the finding, Ergin said, "is that we learn more about the concepts of transformation optics, and that we have made a first step in producing 3-D structures in that field."

"Invisibility cloaks are a beautiful and fascinating benchmark for the field of transformation optics, and it is very seldom that one can foretell what practical applications might arise out of a field of fundamental research," he added.

In earlier research, a team led by David Schurig at Duke University developed a way to cloak objects in two dimensions from microwaves. Like light and radar waves, microwaves usually bounce off objects, making them visible to instruments and creating a shadow that can be detected.

The new research led by Ergin used infrared waves, which are close to the spectrum of visible light.

In cloaking, special materials deflect radar, light or other waves around an object, like water flowing around a smooth rock in a stream. It differs from stealth technology, which does not make an aircraft invisible but reduces the cross-section available to radar, making it hard to track.

Ergin's research was supported by the German Research Council, the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, the European Commission and the German Ministry for Education and Research.

[danslittlefinger]

http://www.dailymail...d-the-time.html

MI5 guide to tricks of Cold War: 59-page booklet drawn up in 1963 to be published for the the first time.

The yellowing pages and Cold War warning make it seem like a long-lost James Bond adventure. But"Their Trade Is Treachery" – which begins 'Spies are with us all the time' – was not written by Ian Fleming and is not a work of fiction.

The 59-page booklet was drawn up by MI5 in the early 1960s after a wave of highly embarrassing defections and when fear of the Soviet Union's 'great hostile spy machine' was at a peak.

It was issued secretly in 1963, the year of the Profumo Affair, to Britons in sensitive positions at home and abroad to help them avoid falling into the clutches of Soviet spies plotting to turn them into traitors.

Sex, blackmail and bribery were some of the techniques to look out for, the booklet warned the civil servants, military personnel, nuclear scientists and businessmen operating behind the Iron Curtain to whom it was given.

The general public knew nothing about it but now, almost half a century later, it is to be published for the first time.

An original copy obtained by the Daily Mail makes fascinating reading and reveals how seriously the Soviet spy threat was taken at a time when the Profumo scandal was engulfing Harold Macmillan's government.



John Profumo, the Secretary of State for War, resigned in 1963 after he was revealed to have had an affair with call girl Christine Keeler, who was reputedly the mistress of a Russian spy.

The booklet's front page, below the title, quotes Mr Macmillan telling MPs on November 14, 1962: 'I feel it is right to warn the House that hostile intrigue and espionage are being relentlessly maintained on a large scale.'

Chapters are headed How to foil a spy, How to become a spy (in six easy lessons) and How not to become a spy (in six not-so-easy lessons).

One person who did know about the booklet was veteran Fleet Street journalist and author Harry Chapman Pincher. Now 95, he has had a copy since it came out thanks to his contacts at the heart of government.



He said: 'Around 1963 MI5 decided they had to try to warn all the people who might come into contact with Russians what they were up to in the way of trying to recruit them. There was money and sexual blackmail.

'They would set them up in a room with cameras. 'The booklet was deadly serious and was a decision taken as a result of so many disasters.'

Mr Pincher later wrote a book about espionage with the same title as the booklet. When a friend searched for the book online he found that the government's Central Office of Information is to publish the original booklet.

"Their Trade Is Treachery" is expected to go on sale in June at £8.99.

[dinovelvet]

(This is from last year, so I don't know if it's been mentioned).

Shades of Demitrios and Le Chiffre?

http://www.google.co...-bwjUaujkw_dX1Q

Abramovich loses yacht in poker game: report

(AFP) – May 5, 2009

MOSCOW (AFP) — Russian billionaire and Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich lost one of the yachts in his sizeable personal fleet in a game of poker, Russian newspapers reported on Monday, prompting a strong denial from the oligarch.

"The story is absolutely, completely, entirely false," Abramovich spokesman John Mann told AFP after three Russian daily newspapers published versions of the story that originated in the Italian press.

The popular daily Moskovsky Komsomelets said the oligarch lost the 500,000-dollar (333,000-pound ) yacht while playing poker in Barcelona, which he was visiting to watch Chelsea in action.

The newspaper did not provide the name of the yacht or name the source of its information.

Two other mass-cirulation Russian dailies, Izvestia and Trud, also published the story, citing the Italian newspaper La Repubblica as the source of the information.

Mann said Abramovich had not been in Barcelona for the Chelsea match and asserted that the entire story was a fabrication.

"We have instructed our lawyers to examine legal action" over publication of the story, he said.

Abramovich's yacht collection, thought to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, has been dubbed "The Roman Navy" by the British press.

The Russian newspaper said his poker habit had become a sore point between him and girlfriend Daria Zhukova and that the billionaire, who made his fortune in Russia's sell-off of state assets in the 1990s, had instead turned to gambling online.

[Guy Haines]

On the news tonight, a South Korean naval vessel has been sunk, near or amongst some islands off the northern North Korean coast. No explanation, but a torpedo hasn't been ruled out, apparently.

TND meets DAD?

[MkB]

On the news tonight, a South Korean naval vessel has been sunk, near or amongst some islands off the northern North Korean coast. No explanation, but a torpedo hasn't been ruled out, apparently.

TND meets DAD?

My thoughts exactly when I heard the news!

[MkB]

Sadly I haven't a reference for that, but here's something I heard on the radio:

Former French President, the late François Mitterrand, had more in common with Goldfinger than met the eye!

Cdt. Prouteau, who used to be Mitterrand's chief security officer, has recently told during a radio interview how the former French president was a sore loser and used to cheat when he played golf: his security officers, who were of course on the green to protect him, had some golf balls in their pocket, and they were instructed to casually drop one where they *should* have landed, when the President had poorly hit his own ball!

This is exactly what Goldfinger does in the novel!

[danslittlefinger]

http://www.guardian....e-park-obituary


Daphne Park served with the Special Operations Executive during the second world war. Photograph: Rob Judges

The veteran former MI6 executive Daphne Park, Baroness Park of Monmouth, who has died aged 88, looked more like Miss Marple than Mata Hari. She laughed when asked whether, like James Bond, she had a "licence to kill". What she acquired was, as she put it, a "licence to blab" when MI6 needed someone trustworthy to defend it on Panorama and in the Lords. She was tagged "Queen of Spies" after her four decades as one of those tough top British female intelligence agents admired by the KGB and other opponents. "I must have been arrested and condemned to be shot several times," she admitted. "It was a hazard that I got used to."

A Tory peer and member of the Thatcher Foundation from 1992, her hardline anti-communist and anti-IRA attitudes persisted after the fall of the Berlin Wall or the erection of the Good Friday Agreement "because leopards do not change their spots overnight". As a Russian-speaker, she followed developments there with a cynical eye. She tried hard to stop the defence secretary Michael Portillo's sell-off of service housing, fearing it would drive service wives to press their husbands to leave the forces. She was just as critical when threats to British fighting capacity came from domestic contractors such as Airwork Ltd, which repaired Tornadoes bound for Bosnia with "huge quantities of aircraft Polyfilla known as Thiokol" to cover up their own damage.

The area in which she lined up against Tory hardliners was on human problems such as divorce. As a former chairman of the Legal Aid Advisory Board, in 1996 she opposed the anti-divorce views of Lady Young and opted for mediation, as urged by Labour's Lord Irvine of Lairg.

Before she became principal of Somerville College, Oxford (1980-89), and a life peer from 1990, she spent her whole adult life in foreign intelligence, initially in the wartime Special Operations Executive (SOE) 1943-47 and, thereafter, in MI6. She was forced to conceal these in Who's Who, for example, as Fany (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) and the Foreign Office, because those were the terms on which intelligence agents were employed. They risked their pensions if they disclosed anything. Only after the foreign secretary Douglas Hurd permitted her to did she disclose her background for a BBC programme; she did so again speaking on the intelligence and security services bill in March 1996, as a "former member" of the Secret Intelligence Service (the other name of MI6), and on the security service (or MI5) bill in May the same year.

Park was one of the generation of women enabled by the second world war to take posts previously denied them. In 1943, when she finished her degree at Somerville College she volunteered for Fany, having been tipped off that it had developed into more than a nursing corps. She was picked out, probably because of her East African background and interest in coding, assigned to SOE and spent most of the war on North African operations.

After the war, she transferred to MI6, which operated under the control of the Foreign Office's permanent under-secretary. She went from the Allied Commission for Austria to the British delegation to Nato, to Moscow (after a Cambridge course in Russian), to Leopoldville, to Lusaka, to Hanoi, to Ulan Bator. In all these posts she was disguised as a diplomat: in Moscow, for example, as second secretary, and had interim appointments back at home base in the MI6 part of the Foreign Office.

Her posts abroad gave her opportunities to display her fearlessness. In Moscow, in 1956, when an officially organised mob invaded the British Embassy to display "popular resentment" against Britain's Suez invasion, she harangued them in Russian: "Do you want to know what's happening in Hungary?" and translated what the world press was saying about the Soviet invasion there.

She showed this again in Leopoldville in 1959 when the "disgraceful" Belgians were on the point of being ousted from the Congo. Refusing to live among the beleaguered Belgians, guarding themselves with Doberman Pinschers and grenades against the Congolese, she located herself on the airport road, where she had many African visitors daily. As a result, she was struck off the governor general's invitation list, but met Patrice Lumumba, the African leader who was to become the short-lived prime minister of an independent Congo. After Lumumba's successor took power, she was arrested and beaten by his supporters. She managed to brazen her way out and sought local UN intervention, securing the release of Britons and other foreigners, for which she was appointed OBE in 1960.

She served in Zambia for four years, at the time when, next door, white Rhodesians declared their independence. "I also made many friends in both the Zanu and Zapu group in exile, and was several times denounced on [Ian Smith's] Salisbury radio as a friend of terrorists."

She had a frustrating time as "consul general" in Hanoi (1969-70). Britain did not recognise Ho Chi Minh's regime, and she was forbidden to speak to any official except the chief of police or the head of immigration. She was not allowed to learn Vietnamese. She met members of the Viet Minh politburo only at diplomatic receptions such as Polish Military Day. It was symptomatic of her strongly anti-communist attitude and her belief in the domino theory that she resented the Americans giving up their war against the Vietnamese because of domestic protests, which she saw as "a campaign orchestrated by the Russians". She was appointed CMG in 1971 for her Hanoi services.

Her final posting, as chargée d'affaires in Ulan Bator, the capital of Outer Mongolia, was a radical change. Instead of a heavily populated steamy jungle, she was reporting on a vast, communist-run, but semi-independent, country of a million people and 20m sheep. She sympathised with the Hungarians and others from then communist states who were trying to persuade the Mongols to run factories set up for them. In the way the establishment has, it was decided to cap her MI6 career, just before she had to resign at 60, with a final honour: a decade as principal of her old college, Somerville. This was despite its eight-fold expansion in her more than 30 years away from Oxford.

The time she gave herself to catch up on the ethos of her old college was dissipated by the terminal illness of her mother. So she began her reign not knowing Somerville's unwritten procedural codes and taboos – including communicating with a member of the Senior Common Room "by putting a note in her pigeonhole. You do not pick up the phone ..." She was more successful in repairing the damage done to the Oxbridge colleges by the government's cutbacks in subsidies. These hit Somerville particularly hard as a comparatively young college without large wealth in land. In 1983, she launched the Margaret Thatcher Fund for Somerville, hoping to attract funds from the US, where Somerville's most famous graduate was most popular. She also sought to make Somerville more business-orientated. In 1990, Thatcher's final year as prime minister, she elevated Park to a life peerage, as Baroness Park of Monmouth. Two years later, she made her a member of the Thatcher Foundation.

Undoubtedly, the fearless way in which she handled her constant challenges stemmed from her incredible upbringing, disguised by her birth in Surrey. In fact, she was the product of the turn-of-the-century British adventurers in southern Africa. Her father, John Park, had been shipped to South Africa in 1894 to "cure" his tuberculosis. He walked north through Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), settling in Nyasaland (now Malawi) and was wounded as an intelligence officer in the Nyasaland Frontier Force at the outbreak of the first world war. When his wife, Doreen Creswell-George, the daughter of a pen-pal, became pregnant, they left their tobacco farm and came to England. Her parents returned with the young Daphne to Africa where they found the tobacco plantation ruined.

Her parents moved to Tanganyika (now Tanzania) and the family lived in a mud hut until Daphne was three. Because conditions were not salubrious, her mother took Daphne to the highlands to raise coffee, while her father remained behind mining gold, joining his family every three or four months. Her mother taught Daphne to read; the rest of her education was based on a correspondence course.

At 11, Daphne was sent to her maternal grandmother in south London. To get there, she travelled through a cloud of locusts to Dar es Salaam, where "I switched on my first electric light and pulled my first loo chain."

She did well at the challenging Rosa Bassett school in London. But, when university beckoned, there was no family money. She had a £150 state scholarship, and would have been entitled to one from the LCC had her grandmother not moved to Surrey just six weeks before she was due to go to Oxford. Surrey offered £75 if she pledged to become a teacher. She refused to promise because she lacked the vocation and wanted to become a diplomat. Surrey bureaucrats had never heard of a lady diplomat, but gave her a scholarship nevertheless.

"The very month that I went up, the docks were set ablaze and the Battle of Britain took place. One was thinking about something much, much bigger than oneself." She wore secondhand clothes all through Oxford and was always short of money, but the wartime absence of young men gave her extra chances. She became president of the Liberal Club and was only the second woman to speak at the Oxford Union. She never really looked back.



Chris Mullin writes: I first came across Daphne Park as a Foreign Office minister, when she came to lobby me about Zimbabwe. I treated her cautiously at first, suspecting that like many of the Tory old guard in the House of Lords she was primarily interested in the fate of white farmers, but I quickly discovered that her interest was much wider than that and soon came to admire and respect her.

Beneath that Miss Marple exterior was a Rolls-Royce mind and a steely resolve which no doubt served her well in her chosen profession. "I have always looked like a cheerful, fat missionary," she once told an interviewer. "It wouldn't be any use if you went around looking sinister, would it?"

We had occasional lunches at which she regaled me with snapshots of her remarkable life. She once smuggled a man whose life was in danger out of the Congo in the boot of her car. She spent part of the war training agents who were parachuted into France. I asked if she had known Violette Szabo, the young Brixton shop assistant who was executed in the last month of the war. "No," she said, "but I knew Odette."

After the war she was sent to Vienna seeking out German and Austrian scientists before the Russians could kidnap them. In the late 60s, she was one of only a handful of western diplomats based in Hanoi. The Vietnamese, well aware that she was a spy, restricted her movements severely. She described how one morning a senior member of the politburo turned up unannounced at her house, and spent six hours chatting on her veranda. "We have agents in every ministry and every village in the south," he boasted. "In that case," inquired Daphne, "why do you find it necessary to hang village headmen?" "Because we are Leninists and Lenin believed in revolutionary terror," was the chilling reply.

In 1970, she was staying at the British embassy in Beijing, on leave from her lonely posting in Mongolia. She wanted to offer a token of appreciation to the staff who had looked after her, but this was in the days just after the Cultural Revolution, when tipping was absolutely forbidden. She asked the ambassador, John Addis, if he thought they might each be persuaded to accept a gift of a miniature flowering tree that she had seen on sale in the market.

Addis duly summoned the chief steward who did not reject the suggestion out of hand, but said gravely that he would need to take soundings. In due course he reported back that the flowering trees would be acceptable, but on one condition, "that the size of each tree reflects the status of the recipient". She promptly went out and bought 13 trees, ranging in size from the tallest for the major domo and the smallest, less than a foot high, for the lowly garden boy.

Asked if she had ever been discriminated against on the grounds that she was a woman, she replied: "The only time I ever experienced sexism is when an African chief gave me a special gift of a hoe, instead of a spear."

Despite failing health she remained active almost to the end of her life, whizzing round the House of Lords in her electric wheelchair. One of her last acts was to set up a small charity, Phoenix Fund for Zimbabwe, which awards small bursaries to enable Zimbabwean refugees in the UK to study and gain skills that will help them re-establish themselves in their country when the time comes to go home.


• Daphne Margaret Sybil Desirée Park, Baroness Park of Monmouth, diplomat and intelligence executive, born 1 September 1921; died 24 March 2010

[Bryce (003)]

On the news tonight, a South Korean naval vessel has been sunk, near or amongst some islands off the northern North Korean coast. No explanation, but a torpedo hasn't been ruled out, apparently.

TND meets DAD?

I had a lovely chat on the phone with our own 009 - Miss Joyce Carrington - about this. A third party playing both sides against the middle? It doesn't get "Bond like" more than this.

I don't know about a torpedo, but limpet mines and an experienced demolition crew with explosives and knowledge of naval ships.....

Hmmmmm.....



You can bet both CIA and MI6 have been "burning the air" since this went down just to compare notes.

[danslittlefinger]

http://www.officialw...o...513&catid=6

James Bond Spies Fail Social Networking.

Britain's spy agency says it's firing some James Bond-generation agents because they've failed to master social networking and other Internet technology.

Jonathan Evans, the director-general of MI5, said he's concerned the agency is being held back by older agents who don't understand the world of computer technology.

"I think some of the staff perhaps aren't quite the ones that we will want for the future," Evans recently told Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee.

Evans did not say how many are being laid off, The Daily Telegraph reported Monday, noting MI5 is in the middle of an overall expansion plan.

MI5 has about 3,500 agents and plans to have is 4,100 by next year, double the number in 2001. Many of the new agents are in their 20s and 30s.

You would think after the debacle of the chief's wife posting holiday Speedo pictures of him on Facebook and thus letting his ID be known, the SIS would favour the opposite?

[Trident]

Switzerland casino is robbed by armed gang



Masked men have stormed a packed casino near the Swiss border city of Basle, making off with hundreds of thousands of francs, prosecutors say.

About 10 raiders pulled up at the Grand Casino in two cars just after 0400 (0200 GMT) and smashed their way in, brandishing machine-guns and pistols.

The French-speaking gang ordered the 600 guests and employees to the floor while they emptied registers.

The Grand Casino describes itself as the "Swiss Las Vegas" on its website.

Reports say they could not get into the strong room despite firing on the door.

Nobody was seriously injured in the robbery.

The gang escaped in their cars, described as silver Audis with French licence plates, in the direction of France. Basle lies on the Swiss border, with French territory just 200m from the casino.

Sunday's robbery has echoes of a raid on 6 March on a poker tournament at a hotel in central Berlin in which attackers armed with a pistol and a machete made off with 240,000 euros ($320,000) in jackpot money.

German authorities say they have arrested five suspects over that raid.

'Hit and kicked'

The prosecutor's office in Basle said in a statement that, although several shots had been fired by the robbers, no-one was injured by them.

"However, several guests and a member of the security staff were slightly hurt after being hit and kicked by the offenders," it added.

When the gang pulled up at the casino, one smashed the door with a sledgehammer and others ran in carrying machine-guns and pistols.
A view of the Grand Casino Basle after the robbery, 28 March
The raiders are said to have escaped into France

After the robbery, they fled at high speed in their cars across the border along the Flughafenstrasse (airport road), the prosecutors said.

"How the offenders managed to leave Flughafenstrasse, which is in French territory, is a matter of investigations, which are being undertaken together with French authorities," they added.

"The hunt for the perpetrators has so far been unsuccessful."

Police were quoted as saying by the Associated Press news agency that a woman who accidentally drove between the two getaway cars, blocking the casino's exit, was pulled from her vehicle and beaten.

It was possible, they said, that the men fired a shot at another car during their escape.

Located three minutes from the EuroAirport Basle and five minutes from Basel city centre, the casino boasts more than 357 slot machines, 15 gambling tables, four bars and two restaurants.

Managing director Michael Favrod said it was the first robbery at the casino.

"One can practise such a situation but when such a situation comes true it's always different," he said.

"Fortunately, nobody has been hurt."



From 'Casino Royale':

The barrier surrounding the caisse comes as high as your chin, and the caissier, who is generally nothing more than a minor bank clerk, sits on a stool and dips into his piles of notes and plaques. These are ranged on shelves. They are on a level, behind the protecting barrier, with your groin. The caissier has a cosh and a gun to protect him, and to heave over the barrier and steal some notes and then vault back and get out of the Casino through the passages and doors would be impossible. And the caissiers generally work in pairs.


...


As for robbing the caisse, in which Bond himself was not personally concerned, only interested, he reflected that it would take ten good men, that they would certainly have to kill one or two employees, and that anyway you probably couldn't find ten non-squealkillers in France, or in any other country for the matter of that.


I think both Fleming and Bond would be most interested in this incident, if only for the sake of nostalgia. It would seem today you can find the necessary personnel even in Switzerland (or close by). Upside is, nobody has been killed. That's progress for you.

[danslittlefinger]

I saw that story but didn't post it. Don't ask me why.

[Trident]

I saw that story but didn't post it. Don't ask me why.

What made me laugh out loud when reading this was the fact the gang apparently stuck to Fleming's suggestion where manpower was concerned. They stormed the place approximately with 10 armed men, as Fleming predicted. And it would seem they weren't exactly gun-shy either. I wonder if those people have maybe read 'Casino Royale'?

[danslittlefinger]

I saw that story but didn't post it. Don't ask me why.

What made me laugh out loud when reading this was the fact the gang apparently stuck to Fleming's suggestion where manpower was concerned. They stormed the place approximately with 10 armed men, as Fleming predicted. And it would seem they weren't exactly gun-shy either. I wonder if those people have maybe read 'Casino Royale'?

Ya think?

[danslittlefinger]

http://www.thescotti...icle2911301.ece


COPS plan to launch their own SPY PLANES in a hi-tech bid to fight street crime, it was revealed last night.

Scotland's eight forces want to send two stealthy Unmanned Aerial Vehicles - normally used in war zones - into the skies.

A source said: "These planes could help with a host of crimes - like dealing with public disorder, surveillance and finding missing persons.

"They are also cheaper than helicopters and are very discreet."

The Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland and their English counterparts have set up a steering group to urge the Home Office to let them have drones.

A Strathclyde Police report also recommends the force "continue at the forefront of development in this field".

Merseyside cops are already trialling a remote-controlled helicopter fitted with CCTV and infrared.

But the move was last night slammed by civil liberty groups.

Big Brother Watch chief Dylan Sharpe said: "Spy drones that are invisible to the man on the street breach the Data Protection Act."

The Civil Aviation Authority said: "Although no police force currently flies one, we perceive there will be interest in the future."

Love one of the comments made -
"Doubt these would work in Aberdeen.....the seagulls would have these things for breakfast!"

[danslittlefinger]

http://www.dailymail...ng-Il-Duce.html

The deb who shot Mussolini: How aristocrat's daughter came close to killing Il Duce.

Viva Il Duce!' the crowd in Rome's Piazza Campidoglio roared as they jostled to get a better view of prime minister Benito Mussolini, who held much of the Italian nation in his thrall.

But not all. For, in the four years since he seized power in 1922, 3,000 people had been knifed, bludgeoned or shot - and thousands more left to rot in brutal prisons.

The man who ruled with an iron fist wasn't short of enemies, so, when he strode into the piazza on the morning of April 7, 1926, secret agents scoured the crowds for signs that anything was awry.


Dark deed: The Honourable Violet Gibson belived killing Mussolini was her destiny.

One person that they did not see was a tiny, frail-looking woman with straggly grey hair, wearing spectacles and a shabby black dress.

Even if they had spotted her, they would never have suspected that she was the daughter of an Irish peer - nor that in her pocket she was clasping a small revolver.

As Mussolini stretched out his arm in the fascist salute, the lady, now only eight inches away from him, also raised her arm.

But she was not saluting - she was taking aim. Pointing the revolver at Mussolini's face, she squeezed the trigger.

As Mussolini's arm fell to his side he staggered backwards, one hand clutching his nose, blood pouring through his fingers.

For a second, his astonished eyes met those of the Honourable Violet Gibson. And then she pulled the trigger again.

But this time, nothing happened. The revolver had misfired.


Il Duce: Benito Mussolini was wounded by Miss Gibson in Rome on April 7, 1926

For a few seconds everyone froze, before a policeman knocked the pistol out of Violet's hand and the crowd started landing blows of their own.

Violet's spectacles were trampled, her hair was pulled and her clothes torn as the mob swarmed around her, desperate to avenge their hero.

She just lay on the ground, not even attempting to deflect the blows.

Later, she described it as the happiest moment of her life.

'I was transported to another place - my heart was filled with sweetness and a great love. I just shut my eyes and made no resistance.'

The police eventually managed to drag her away before the crowd could rip her limb from limb.

Violet's assassination attempt failed: Mussolini moved his head at the last moment and the bullet only nicked his nostrils - although he wore a large plaster across his nose for several days.

Violet was immediately bundled into a police car and driven to the Mantellate prison on the banks of the Tiber, where her interrogation began.

The police were mystified as to how, and why, this bedraggled, confused Irish woman should have tried to kill Mussolini. And, at first, she seemed equally bewildered. 'Mussolini?' she asked her interrogators. 'Are you sure it was me?'

The mystery of how the Honourable Violet Gibson, the daughter of Ireland's Lord Chancellor, came close to killing the Italian dictator is now the subject of a biography by historian Frances Stonor Saunders.

The sixth of seven children, born in 1876 to Lord Ashbourne and his wife (wealthy Irish Protestants, who lived in splendour in Dublin and London), Violet was a pretty, though fragile, child who was prone to violent tempers.

Shy and intelligent, she found piano playing and needlework restrictive and dull - and her season as a debutante failed to end in an engagement.


Under arrest: Miss Gibson with police after being rescued from a violent mob.

Perhaps struggling to find meaning in her life - and to the horror of her family - she converted to Catholicism aged 26 and retreated from high society.

For a while, she lived among a Bohemian set in Chelsea and took several lovers before finding happiness with a young artist, to whom she became engaged when she was 33.

His sudden death in 1909 left Violet devastated. Her sister-in-law and brother Harry had died only a short while before.

And so, reeling with grief, she embraced her faith, coming under the influence of a radical Jesuit priest who preached that: 'Holiness depends on mortification. Mortification means putting to death.'

Violet soon came close to death herself. After being diagnosed with cancer, she had a breast removed, then underwent a failed operation for acute peritonitis and appendicitis, which left her with terrible scarring and chronic pain.

Then tragedy struck again when Violet's favourite sibling, Victor, died suddenly. This time, she was inconsolable - and suffered a 'nervous crisis', which saw her change from being ' gentle and patient' to depressed and neurotic.

Plagued by ill-health, she became obsessed with theology - and death.


Aristocratic: Miss Gibson was the daughter of the first Lord Ashbourne

One night, Violet was found wandering the streets of London in her nightclothes. In the morning, she tried to go out again. When the housekeeper's daughter followed her, Violet attacked the girl with a knife.

The girl needed stitches, and Violet was taken to a mental sanatorium in Virginia Water.

When a friend visited, Violet said that she thought she was doing something great 'for God and his Church'.

Tellingly, perhaps, a Bible beside her bed lay open at the story of Abraham sacrificing his son Isaac to God.

Despite being diagnosed as both violent and homicidal, she was soon discharged from the sanatorium and returned to her solitary life in London. Filling her time with prayer, she also began to scour the newspapers - following events in Italy with increasing concern.

Violet's attention was particularly drawn to the bloody succession of murders of Mussolini's opponents and critics.

One of the most gruesome was the June 1924 slaughter of the leader of the socıalıst party, Giacomo Matteotti, who was subjected to a beating and sexual assault by a fascist punishment squad, before being stabbed.

Appalled by these crimes - and looking for an opportunity for martyrdom - Violet's thoughts turned to murder. In November 1924, Violet packed a small revolver into her luggage - and set off for Rome.

Though confused in mind, she lived quietly at a convent, spending her days among the city's poor. But after a suicide attempt, her mental state went rapidly downhill. Her obsession with the newspapers increased and she fixated on Mussolini.

'There is no pain except in the hesitancy to accept the cross,' she wrote in March 1926 - and, at last, she was ready.

At 8.30am on the morning of April 7, Violet set out from the convent, her revolver in her pocket.

Despite the failure of her mission, Violet seemed happy in the immediate aftermath. For, in her near-martyrdom at the hands of the mob, she had felt closer to God than ever before.

Mussolini, meanwhile, was enjoying his own apotheosis. Hours after the attempted assassination he gave a speech in which he declared: 'If I advance, follow me. If I retreat, kill me. If I die, avenge me.'

In the absence of hard facts, the rumours soon began flying. The one that gained the most traction was that Violet was part of a communist conspiracy. Foreigners and communists were beaten up, and the offices of the anti-fascist newspapers were attacked.

Mussolini seized the chance to crush his opponents. Under emergency measures a raft of repressive new laws were introduced, socıalısts and communist MPs were expelled from parliament and the jails swelled with political prisoners.

Meanwhile, in Mantellate prison, the police interrogated Violet. Their questions were met with oblique answers - or none at all. Where had she got the revolver? 'A friend.' Who were her accomplices? 'The dead.' Why did she want to kill Il Duce? 'To glorify God.'

The senior policeman was convinced she was part of a conspiracy, but the psychiatrists thought that she had chronic paranoia and could not be held responsible for her crime.

After a year of assessments, the police prevailed, and Violet was due to stand trial.

But, at the eleventh hour, 'compassionate' Mussolini demanded the case be dropped on account of Violet's insanity.

Sensing a chance to make the British indebted to him, Mussolini set Violet free.

But there was to be no happy ending for her. The Gibsons, horrified by the scandal that Violet had caused, swiftly arranged to have her committed to a mental asylum.

And so, shortly after arriving back in Britain in 1927, Violet, aged 51, was locked in a room at St Andrew's Sanatorium in Northamptonshire.

Old age: Miss Gibson pictured towards the end of her 29 years in an asylum.

For 29 years, Violet never left the grounds.

Loneliness and isolation overwhelmed her.

Every so often, around the anniversary of her attempt on Mussolini, she would have a violent outburst and be confined to a padded cell for a few days.

In April 1930 she tried to hang herself, again unsuccessfully.

She wrote to her family, friends and even the Home Secretary, begging them to move her to a Catholic nursing home, but most of her letters never made it beyond the sanatorium's walls.

Evil allies: Mussolini with fellow fascist dictator Adolf Hitler in Munich in 1940.

Violet remained convinced that she was right to shoot Mussolini, but it was not until he began persecuting Jews that the Western world came to sympathise with her view.

But they would have to wait.

It was only in 1945, with the Allied armies pushing their way north through ruined Italy, that Italian partisans captured Mussolini and finished the job that Violet had failed to complete nearly 20 years before.

Violet outlived her nemesis by more than a decade, dying in 1956, with her family insisting - right to the end - that she remained a danger and should not be released.

In keeping with so many others, they were never able to understand how a shy, beautiful debutante, the kind and gentle young woman who had wanted to serve God, had become a murderous assassin.

[danslittlefinger]

http://www.dailymail...AA-jetpack.html

Next time you break down on the motorway don't scan the road for the AA van to arrive. Look up in the sky.

The breakdown rescue service is launching a rapid response patrol that will see 'AA Rocketmen' in lightweight jet-packs flitting over traffic jams to reach stranded motorists.

The AA has chosen today, the first day of the annual Easter getaway, to test the service.



It follows a series of secret trials at Dunsfold Aerodrome near Guildford.

Film of the early trials shows patrolmen taking off and landing with pin-point accuracy.

Today's test will be carried out on the M25 between Surrey and Heathrow Airport between dawn and noon.

The Transport Department and the Civil Aviation Authority will then rule on whether the scheme can be extended across Britain later this year. The AA, or Automobile Association, was founded to help motorists in distress.

But until now, its solutions have been very much on the ground - with a fleet of vans, motorcycles and electric scooters.

This is the first time the AA has tried to go over the traffic rather than through it to reach stranded drivers.



The aim of our AA Rocketman patrols is to give motorists a rapid response,' said Dr Raif Lopol, AA future technologies strategist.

'The idea is not to have AA teams constantly patrolling the skies all the time. Fuel costs alone make that impractical.

'Instead, the AA patrol van parks within a mile of the stricken member and the jetpack pilot launches from the back of the van.'

The jet-packs, which cost £42,000 each, are made of lightweight carbonfibre, have a top speed of 80mph, can reach a maximum height of 8,000ft and have a flying time of ten minutes.

Most importantly they can hover up to 250ft above gridlocked traffic and drop down to a stricken vehicle in areas where a patrol van may not be able to get through.

A parachute is packed for emergencies.

'The initial test flights have gone well,' said AA patrolman and test pilot Hugh Grenoble.

'We're working on an ultralightweight toolkit that should allow us to do most quick fix repairs.

'Obviously, we won't be able to do any towing but the benefits more than outweigh this. It will be nice not worrying about potholes for a start.'

Footage of the AA Rocketman trials in action can be seen on the Daily Mail website at www.dailymail.co.uk/aa.

[danslittlefinger]

http://www.dailymail...lue-plaque.html

Why the White Rabbit deserves a blue plaque


Hair-raising: Yeo-Thomas and rabbit

Wing Commander Forest Yeo-Thomas GC MC was a World War II legend, known to his fellow spies by his codename the White Rabbit and his friends as plain old Tommy.

His exploits in Occupied France were immortalised by Kenneth More on TV in the Sixties. He was certainly the bravest of the brave. Undercover on his first mission into Occupied France, he dined with Klaus Barbie, the notorious Butcher of Lyons.

Later captured and subjected to horrifying torture, he was sustained throughout his many trials by his love for an WAAF beauty.

And now he has become the first secret agent to be commemorated with an English Heritage blue plaque.

It was unveiled yesterday at Queen Court, Guild-ford Street in Camden, North London, where he once lived.

The son of a London coal merchant who moved his family to Dieppe, Tommy grew up speaking French and English, a skill that would serve him well as a spy.

He never shied away from action. After lying about his age, he fought in World War I aged just 16. In 1920, he joined the Poles during the Soviet-Polish war and was captured by the Russians. He managed to escape after killing his guard.

Between the wars, he worked in Paris, where he became manager of the elegant Molyneux couture house.

But in 1939, Tommy, by then 38, returned to Britain to join the RAF - and fell in love with 24-year-old Barbara Dean, a stunningly attractive member of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF).

Tommy pursued Barbara relentlessly, but there was a problem: he was already married to a French accountant named Lillian, with whom he had two daughters.

Though Lillian never agreed to a divorce - in fact, she never forgave him - Tommy finally persuaded Barbara to move in with him in Bloomsbury. And their relationship sustained him through some hair-raising brushes with death.

In 1943, Tommy joined the Special Operations Executive, which was helping the French Resistance, and soon made his first parachute drop into France.

That's when he met Klaus Barbie. Taking the last seat in the dining car of the Lyons to Paris express, he realised he was sitting next to the notorious local chief of the Gestapo.

He was on their most wanted list, but the charismatic Tommy managed to convince Barbie in his fluent French that he was a supporter of the German occupation.

But more perils lay ahead. After dinner, the only seat was in a compartment reserved for German officers. Asked for his identity card, Tommy showed his fake papers - in which he had inserted a picture of a half-naked girl.

The German inspector was so beguiled that he insisted on finding a more comfortable seat for the spy.

The second time the White Rabbit parachuted into France, he escaped capture by swapping identities with a corpse and hiding in a hearse.

But it wasn't third time lucky. In 1944, he was betrayed by the French agent he was due to meet at a Paris Metro station.

When the contact didn't turn up, Tommy broke the first rule of espionage and loitered at the rendezvous.

He was seized by the Gestapo - the start of a gruelling year that he was lucky to survive.

Bundled into the back of a car, he was stripped naked at Gestapo HQ and led into a bathroom, where the Germans, including a number of giggling female officers, repeatedly nearly drowned him.

Later, he was strung up by his arms for eight hours. Tommy admitted he was at the point of telling all when he was moved to the infamous Fresnes prison in southern Paris.

When he tried to escape, he was transported to Buchenwald concentration camp, where more than 300 people starved to death every day.

But Tommy never lost hope. Instead, he became instrumental in raising morale, helping to organise a chess tournament and planning new ways of escape.

He even got permission from the camp authorities to dig a trench, ostensibly as protection from Allied air raids. In fact, he used it to hide the weapons he'd stolen from the guards.

On April 13, 1945, the Germans evacuated the camp in an attempt to hide their atrocities. Tommy and other inmates were loaded onto trains bound for Czechoslovakia.

Two days later, when the trains stopped in a remote clearing to dispose of prisoners who had died en route, Tommy and 20 fellow inmates made their escape in civilian clothes they had made in the camp.

Many were shot, but Tommy, suffering from dysentery, managed to flee into the woods. After several narrow escapes, he was rearrested by the Germans.

Claiming to be French, he was taken to a French PoW camp. He escaped again and this time made it across Allied lines - though his story was so incredible that at first the U.S. officers who interrogated him refused to believe it.

Tommy's swashbuckling story looked as if it would have a happy ending, but his health had been ruined by the torture he'd endured.

Awarded the George Cross, Military Cross and Bar, Croix de Guerre, Polish Cross of Merit and Legion d'honneur, he helped bring several Nazi war criminals to justice - before resuming his fashion job at Molyneux.

But he succumbed to recurring nightmares and illness, and became bedridden. He died in 1964, a broken, but truly unforgettable, hero.

[danslittlefinger]

Posted by Qwerty in Quick News but I think it belongs here.

http://www.telegraph...e-too-tall.html

Move over, James Bond, you're too tall

The ideal spy is a plain-looking person, 5ft 7in or 5ft 8in, who has exceptional hearing and can withstand extreme heat and cold while standing still for several hours, a secret file released by MI5 reveals.

The attributes required of a "watcher" to trail foreign spies during the Second World War were listed in documents recording the work of Section B6, the MI5 branch used to observe suspected threats to national security.

Papers released at the National Archives in Kew, west London, show how MI5 found it difficult to recruit enough suitably nondescript spies to track down German secret agents operating in Britain.

According to the file, the perfect "shadower" would be 5ft 7-8in and be "hardy enough to withstand cold, heat and wet during the long hours of immobility in the street".

They should also look "as unlike a policeman as possible" and be willing to wear "old clothes, cap, muffler" when undercover in the "slum quarters".

In the report, senior spies also emphasised the monotonous nature of the job, following a wave of applications from applicants expecting the sort of exciting role they had seen in films.

In fact, they said, "This is an onerous and exacting profession ... There is little glamour and much monotony in such a calling as 'observation'."

The report also adds: "The writer is against the use of facial disguises. A false moustache or beard is easily detected, especially under the high lights of a restaurant, pub, or in a tube train."

According to The Independent, the unit of watchers reached 40 operatives by the start of the war, and by 1942 was observing 140 cases a day.

In one incident a foreign spy working as a taxi driver was asked to drive to Wormwood Scrubs, and arrested on his arrival at the prison.

Another success highlighted in the files happened when spies trailing the naval attache at the Japanese embassy followed him to a London park where he met a contact in the middle of a clump of bushes.

According to the report, the British spy managed to eavesdrop on their conversation by following them into the bushes undetected.

[Mark_Hazard]

Posted by Qwerty in Quick News but I think it belongs here.

http://www.telegraph...e-too-tall.html

Another success highlighted in the files happened when spies trailing the naval attache at the Japanese embassy followed him to a London park where he met a contact in the middle of a clump of bushes.

According to the report, the British spy managed to eavesdrop on their conversation by following them into the bushes undetected.

Out in the open, I suppose it beats getting arrested in the public loos.