The Big Breach - Index of

More documents

Recommendations

Info

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
The Big Breach; From Top Secret to Maximum SecurityCompliments of http://www.192.comChina, initially in the stationery business, but then in chemicals andpharmaceuticals.Manbar was impressed by her versatility and diligence, and set aboutcultivating her to become his cut-out. The DST picked up Manbar'sincreasingly frequent telephone conversations with Kiddie and tippedoff MI6. PTCP obtained a FLORIDA warrant to intercept her telephone andan ACANTHA warrant to intercept her mail, and the Cambridgeshire SBwere asked to keep an eye on her. Manbar started trusting her withincreasingly bizarre jobs. Once he asked her to find and buy a suitableAmerican-Jewish NBA basketball player who would be prepared to emigrateto Israel to bolster the Israeli national team. She passed this andother tests with flying colours. By the middle of 1993 Manbar wasconfident that she was reliable and trustworthy and was the rightperson to introduce to Fahd.Kiddie was delighted with the introduction to a new and lucrativetrading partner and flew to meet Fahd in Austria. In the Vienna Hilton,Fahd asked her to buy a couple of tonnes of thionyl chloride, a`building-block' chemical used in the manufacture of many legitimateproducts but also an essential basic ingredient for the manufacture ofmustard gas and nerve agents such as sarin. There was nothing illegalabout the purchase - as long as it did not end up in the wrong hands itwas not breaking any international laws.After six months of research, phone calls and two trips to remote partsof China, Kiddie completed the thionyl chloride shipment to Iran. Fahdwas delighted and decided to trust her with a bit more responsibility.Now that he had the plans and a proven source of the main ingredients,he asked her to procure some of the equipment for the plant. This,however, was not as easy as the relatively straightforward acquisitionof the chemicals.Chemical weapons plants are not complicated and need not beparticularly large. A nerve gas plant can be built into a space thesize of a living-room, or even into the back of a truck. A mustard gasplant requires a bit more space, but a facility the size of a smallhouse could provide a militarily significant production capability. Theliquid chemicals used in the recipe are very corrosive and must becontained entirely in glass-lined apparatus - similar to largerversions of the equipment used in school chemistry lessons. Just likein school chemistry apparatus, the glass components - stopcocks, tubesand flasks - clip together, then are physically supported by a scaffoldframework. Because of the danger of leaks, the building in which theapparatus is contained must be sealed and force-ventilated with highvolumeextractor fans. The extracted air is driven up scrubbers -basically polypropylene chimneys filled with glass marbles down whichsodium hydroxide trickles. The gases are absorbed by the sodiumhydroxide on the surface of the marbles and form a harmless liquid thatcan be disposed of safely. The sale of all equipment of this sort issubject to international controls and it is difficult for certaincountries, especially Iran, Iraq and Libya, to openly purchase any ofit, even if destined for entirely innocent purposes. Fahd gave Kiddiethe blueprints for some of the simpler pieces of equipment and askedher to see what she could do.page- 128 - To purchase the original limited edition hardback version of this bookplease call 08000 192 192 or go to http://www.192.com
Page 2:
The Big Breach; From Top Secret to
Page 5 and 6:
Page 8 and 9:
Page 10 and 11:
Page 12 and 13:
Page 14 and 15:
Page 17 and 18:
Page 19 and 20:
Page 21 and 22:
Page 23 and 24:
Page 25 and 26:
Page 27 and 28:
Page 29:
Page 32 and 33:
Page 34 and 35:
Page 36 and 37:
Page 38 and 39:
Page 40 and 41:
Page 42 and 43:
Page 44 and 45:
Page 46 and 47:
Page 48 and 49:
Page 50 and 51:
Page 52 and 53:
Page 54 and 55:
Page 56 and 57:
Page 58 and 59:
Page 60 and 61:
Page 62 and 63:
Page 65 and 66:
Page 67 and 68:
Page 70:
Page 73 and 74:
Page 75 and 76:
Page 77 and 78: The Big Breach; From Top Secret to
Page 127: The Big Breach; From Top Secret to
Page 179 and 180:
Page 181 and 182:
Page 183 and 184:
Page 185 and 186:
Page 187 and 188:
Page 189 and 190:
Page 191 and 192:
Page 193 and 194:
Page 195 and 196:
Page 197 and 198:
Page 199 and 200:
Page 201 and 202:
Page 203 and 204:
Page 205 and 206:
Page 207 and 208:
Page 209 and 210:
Page 211 and 212:
Page 213 and 214:
Page 215 and 216:
Page 217 and 218:
Page 219 and 220:
Page 221 and 222:
Page 223 and 224:
Page 225 and 226:
Page 227 and 228:
Page 229 and 230:
Page 231 and 232:
Page 233 and 234:
Page 235 and 236:
Page 237 and 238:
Page 239 and 240:
Page 241 and 242:
Page 243:
show all

The Big Breach - Index of

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?