The Big Breach - Index of

The Big Breach; From Top Secret to Maximum SecurityCompliments of http://www.192.comDSS records of individuals mentioned in the file, titbits from GCHQ,contact reports, surveillance photographs. Many papers cross-referenceto other files, so making sense of them means a trog down to thecentral registry to pull the file. One document in the file might beonly peripherally relevant to the case, the next might be cruciallyimportant. It is easy to miss a vital titbit and so lose track of thebig picture if not concentrating hard. It took me a week before I hadploughed through the six volumes of files and felt confident to designa plan.The file opened with the detention at Heathrow airport in the late1980s of Nahoum Manbar, a Nice-based Israeli businessman whom MI6suspected had close but thorny links with Mossad. Customs and Excise,in a routine search of his briefcase, found papers and plans thatappeared to describe a process to produce mustard gas. Manbar washanded over to police custody,. He claimed in his interview that he wasan agricultural engineer and that the formulas related to theproduction of a new insecticide. Although these protestations ofinnocence were scarcely credible, there was not enough evidence ofwrong-doing to charge him with any crime. He was denied entry toBritain, put on the first plane back to Nice and MI6 asked the DST(Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire, the French internalintelligence service) to keep an eye on him.Through telephone intercepts on Manbar's home and information fromother sources, the DST established that in 1988 Manbar obtained theplans for a mustard gas plant which he sold at handsome profit to DrTehrani Fahd, a Vienna-based Iranian diplomat, who was in reality asenior Iranian intelligence officer and the ringmaster entrusted withthe task of building up Iran's chemical weapons programme. These plans,however, were just the start. Fahd now wanted the bits of specialistequipment and chemicals needed actually to build the plant. He taskedManbar to help.Although Manbar was eager for the millions of dollars that completionof the deal would bring, he was initially reluctant to get furtherinvolved as he knew that he was getting into murkier and deeper legalwaters. While he was considering his options, Mossad discoveredManbar's contacts with Fahd and, according to the DST's telephonetranscripts, ordered him to a meeting at the Israeli embassy in Paris.There was no intelligence on what was said at the meeting but theupshot of it was that Manbar embarked on the project with Fahd withmysteriously renewed enthusiasm. He set about finding a cut-out,somebody he could rely upon to carry out unwittingly the possiblyillegal work necessary to acquire the equipment requested by theIranians.Through one of his business contacts Manbar met Mrs Joyce Kiddie, aBritish businesswoman who lived in the village of Girton, just outsideCambridge. Kiddie had worked for most of her life as a secretary at alocal stationery and office supplies company; but when the managingdirector, by coincidence a former MI6 agent, retired, he put the smallcompany up for sale. Kiddie, by then in her 40s, twice married with acouple of daughters, daringly used her life savings and a bank loan tobuy the company. She proved a natural businesswoman and within a fewyears started diversifying the business. Kiddie developed contacts inpage- 127 - To purchase the original limited edition hardback version of this bookplease call 08000 192 192 or go to http://www.192.com