Issue 58 - Mystery Signals - Support

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 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 on line 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.”
By way of explaining the underlying principles involved, the article in the Mail includes a photograph of Ms Keeler at the peak of her career in
a provocative pose clad only in a striped bath towel.
The original article and the image previewed above can be seen at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1259649/MI5-guide-tricks-Cold-War-59-pagebooklet-drawn-1963-published-the-time.html
The name of 007 was again invoked by the Daily Mail on 2-April in a piece by Brad Hunter reporting from Toronto on an auction of espionage
related goodies. “Auction heaven for 007” is the headline, “For sale, all the gadgets a spy could ever need” and says, “There's a camera that
shoots darts, a lipstick tube containing a dagger and fake monkey dung that explodes. All were part of the armoury developed at a top-secret
British spy camp on the bleak shore of a Canadian lake. And if it all sounds a bit James Bond then perhaps that's not surprising. Among the
agents who learned their deadly craft at Camp X near Ontario was Bond's creator, Ian Fleming. The gadgets, which also include a poison gas
pen and hundreds of other artefacts such as photos, fake cash, weapons, radios and uniforms, are part of an intriguing collection left behind after
the wartime spy factory closed. For years they have been housed in a museum, a reminder of the daring of the British special operatives who
were trained at the camp before going behind enemy lines.
But now the museum's owner wants to sell up, angering those with close links to Camp X.
…..The camp was about 30 minutes from Toronto. Its graduates in the arts of espionage included Fleming and Roald Dahl. It was run by Britain's
Special Operations Executive and overseen by Canadian spy master Sir William Stephenson - codename Intrepid and one of the men on whom the
character of Bond was based. Not only did it teach agents how to kill, it also had craftsmen from around the world to ensure items such as
clothes or cash looked authentic. The Czech team that killed SS General Reinhard Heydrich in Prague in 1942 was trained there. It opened on
December 6, 1941 and closed at the war's end but was used by Canadian intelligence until 1969. Canadian Robert Stuart, who died seven years
ago, collected the gadgets and photos over a lifetime and many trusted him with family heirlooms. After his death, his daughter Deirdre took
over the collection, based near the old camp, but sources say pieces began appearing on internet auction site eBay. One said: 'Things have been
sold through a third party for several hundred thousand dollars. I'm sick about this. This is our heritage.” Deirdre Stuart has been accused of
spitting on the graves of heroes. Many say the items were loaned to her father on a handshake. But she said: 'If you didn't put it in writing, you
pretty much gave it to us. How stupid are people?
We've had this museum 33 years. It's ours.' ”
Several photographs accompanied this article; there was the obligatory image of Sean Connery as the first James Bond with that long barrelled
hand gun - I think it was actually a .177 or .22 air pistol - because your average journalist always thinks of James Bond and nothing else
whenever he hears the word “spy” - along with several items from the Camp X museum, including something described as a “detonator”, a
rectangular box shaped contrivance with a sturdy handle which I think is the exploder which is connected to the detonator with a suitable length
of cable, a pen that emits poison gas and a piece of apparatus said to be “a Morse code pad for tapping out messages from behind enemy
lines”, but which I am sure is a training aid for Morse operators, since it comprises a wooden base, brass binding-post terminals, a Morse key
and what looks like a buzzer or sounder of some kind with a solenoid coil wound with enamelled wire.
Another image of Sean Connery –this time holding a telephone hand-set - appeared in the Daily Mail of 12-April, alongside an article headlined,
“No Mr Bond, we expect you to use wi-fi - MI5 pensions off spies who can't use I.T.” Written by Ryan Kisiel it says, “For James Bond, hightech
once meant scrambling his telephone to stop the enemy listening in. But today's real-life spies are expected to be much more savvy to
counter the threat from terrorists. MI5 is making dozens of its older staff redundant as they do not have the computer skills to use social
networking sites such as Facebook and twitter. Intelligence chiefs say the main terrorism threat now comes from Islamic extremists
who use the internet to plan their attacks. The fanatical young terrorists use social networking websites to communicate and officers need to be
able to monitor their posts.
Officials have also highlighted the need to use technology to defend against the threat of cyber attacks from rogue states which could cripple
Britain during high-profile events such as the 2012 Olympic Games in London. The redundancy programme for staff at MI5's Thames House
headquarters in London and second biggest office in Belfast was disclosed to MP s by the service's director general, Jonathan Evans. A recruitment
drive for younger officers who have computer degrees has also replaced the previous “old-boy” network method of discreet chat with candidates
in the junior common rooms of Oxbridge colleges.
Mr Evans told Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee last month there was concern some older secret agents' computer skills were not
up to scratch. He said: 'I think some of the staff perhaps aren't quite the ones we will want for the future.' Mr Evans added that the programme
would include both 'voluntary and compulsory redundancies' believed to affect mainly senior spies. Whitehall officials have said the MI5
redundancy programme was aimed at altering the skills profile of the organisation and increasing the number of staff which can be deployed on
counter-terrorism operations. The number of redundancies is expected to run into dozens and will be made across the organisation and not just
confined to specialist IT staff. Patrick Mercer, chairman of the Parliamentary sub-committee on counter-terrorism, said: 'As terrorism changes,
counter-terrorism officers have to adapt to keep up. Our enemies use every available method to attack including using technology. We have to be
aware of the imminent threats of cyber attacks and the old generation of MI5 have to be completely comfortable using computers and the latest
technology. There is no room now for the old school tie or recruitment from just certain Oxbridge colleges. We need people from all walks of life
who can speak a range of languages and possess certain technical skills.' MI5 has around 3,500 officers and aims to increase that to 4,100 by
next year.
Private enterprise, the making of America:- good to see Uncle Sam's people going into business on their own account. From the Daily Mail of
16-March is a short item headlined, “Defence boss set up his own army of Jason Bourne spies”.....”A Pentagon official set up a spy network of
'Jason Bournes' to help track and kill Islamic militants, it was claimed yesterday. Former air force officer Michael D. Furlong is accused of
diverting money from intelligence gathering to fund his own unit of former CIA agents and special forces soldiers. He is said to have called
them 'my Jason Bournes', a reference to the fictional assassin played by Matt Damon in a series of films. It is alleged that information gathered
by the team was used to kill militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Furlong, a civilian employee was hired for his expertise on intelligence
gathering. He was supposed to be supplying information about Afghanistan's tribal landscape. But instead he used his £16 million budget to fund
private spies to track down militants. 'While no legitimate intelligence operations got screwed up, it's generally a bad idea to have freelancers
running around a war zone,' one U.S. Government official told the New York Times. Pentagon officials have refused to confirm if they knew
about the existence of Furlong's team.”
GCHQ on the radio:- On 30-March BBC Radio 4 broadcast a 40 minute programme with the title, “GCHQ: Cracking the Code” described as,
“Exploring Britain's Government Communication Headquarters, where counter-terror outfits monitor digital chatter”. Interviews with some of the staff
involved in the day-to-day operation of the place, much emphasis on the splendid work they do in foiling terrorist plots. I did wonder, however, if
some of it was an exercise in disinformation. For example, it was emphatically denied that everyone's telephone conversations and e-mail traffic
are being recorded and stored - yeah, right.