Saturday 30 January 2016

Julian Huxley - MemeSmith Creator of the Tin-foil Hat Mythos



Julian Huxley, brother of "Brave New World" author Aldous Huxley, coined the concept in his 1927 work "The Tissue-Culture King":

"Well, we had discovered that metal was relatively impervious to the telepathic effect, and had prepared for ourselves a sort of tin pulpit, behind which we could stand while conducting experiments. 

This, combined with caps of metal foil, enormously reduced the effects on ourselves."

“The lowest strata are reproducing too fast.

Therefore… they must not have too easy access to relief or hospital treatment lest the removal of the last check on natural selection should make it too easy for children to be produced or to survive; long unemployment should be a ground for sterilization."

- Julian Huxley



In 1929, Huxley first visited Africa in order to deal with the educational problems and needs of the African people and formulated a series of questions in response. 

I)      How far is the African individual capable of improvement, of profiting by education?
II)     Can we free tropical Africa of malaria, sleeping sickness, plague, relapsing fever, dysentery, and the rest?
III)    Will the black races blindly copy the white, or will they develop a new civilian of their own?
IV)    Is Christianity a good religion for the African?
V)     Who were the prehistoric inhabitants of tropical Africa, and what were the series of event by which the present tribes reached their present status?
VI)    Will game and game reserves continue to exist on the grand scale, or must they dwindle and disappear before modern firearms and the white man’s economic greed?
VII)   What was the intention of the British Government with regard to the African’s right to vote?

The Tissue-Culture King

We had been for three days engaged in crossing a swamp. At last we were out on dry ground, winding up a gentle slope. Near the top the brush grew thicker. The look of a rampart grew as we approached; it had the air of having been delibentely planted by men. We did not wish to have to hack our way through the spiky barricade, so turned to the right along the front of the green wall After three or four hundred yards we came on a clearing which led into the bush, narrowing down to what seemed a regular passage or trackway. This made us a little suspicious. However, I thought we had better make all the progress we could, and so ordered the caravan to turn into the opening, myself taking second place behind the guide.

Suddenly the tracker stopped with a guttural exclamation. I looked, and there was one of the great African toads, hopping with a certain ponderosity across the path. But it had a second head growing upwards from its shoulders! I had never seen anything like this before, and wanted to secure such a remarkable monstrosity for our collections; but as I moved forward, the creature took a couple of hops into the shelter of the prickly scrub.

We pushed on, and I became convinced that the gap we were following was artificial. After a little, a droning sound came to our ears, which we very soon set down as that of a human voice. The party was halted, and I crept forward with the guide. Peeping through the last screen of brush we looked down into a hollow and were immeasurably startled at what we saw there. The voice proceeded from an enormous Negro man at least eight feet high, the biggest man I had ever seen outside a circus. He was squatting, from time to time prostrating the forepart of his body, and reciting some prayer or incantation. The object of his devotion was before him on the ground; it was a small flat piece of glass held on a little carved ebony stand. By his side was a huge spear, together with a painted basket with a lid.

After a minute or so, the giant bowed down in silence, then took up the ebony-and-glass object and placed it in the basket. Then to my utter amazement he drew out a two-headed toad like the first I had seen, but in a cage of woven grass, placed it on the ground, and proceeded to more genuflection and ritual murmurings. As soon as this was over, the toad was replaced, and the squatting giant tranquilly regarded the landscape.

Beyond the hollow or dell lay an undulating country, with clumps of bush. A sound in the middle distante attracted attention; glimpses of color moved through the scrub; and a party of three or four dozen men were seen approaching, most of them as gigantic as our first acquaintance. All marched in order, armed with great spears, and wearing colored loin straps with a sort of sportran, it seemed, in front. They were preceded by an intelligent-looking Negro of ordinary stature armed with a club, and accompanied by two figures more remarkable than the giants. They were undersized, almost dwarfish, with huge heads, and enormously fat and brawny both in face and body. They wore bright yellow cloaks over their black shoulders.

At sight of them, our giant rose and stood stiffly by the side of his basket. The party approached and halted. Some order was given, a giant stepped out from the ranks towards ours, picked up the basket, handed it stiffly to the newcomer, and fell into place in the little company. We were clearly witnessing some regular routine of relieving guard, and I was racking my brains to think what the whole thing might signify--guards, giants, dwarfs, toads--when to my dismay I heard an exclamation at my shoulder.

It was one of those damned porters, a confounded fellow who always liked to show his independence. Bored with waiting, I suppose, he had self-importantly crept up to see what it was all about, and the sudden sight of the company of giants had been too much for his nerves. I made a signal to lie quiet, but it was too late. The exclamation had been heard; the leader gave a quick command, and the giants rushed up and out in two groups to surround us.

Violence and resistance were clearly out of the question. With my heart in my mouth, but with as much dignity as I could muster, I jumped up and threw out my empty hands, at the same time telling the tracker not to shoot. A dozen spears seemed towering over me, but none were launched; the leader ran up the slope and gave a command. Two giants came up and put my hands through their arms. The tracker and the porter were herded in front at the spear point. The other porters now discovered there was something amiss, and began to shout and run away, with half the spearmen after them. We three were gently but firmly marched down and across the hollow.

I understood nothing of the language, and called to my tracker to try his hand. It turned out that there was some dialect of which he had a little understanding, and we could learn nothing save the fact that we were being taken to some superior authority.

For two days we were marched through pleasant park-like country, with villages at intervals. Every now and then some new monstrosity in the shape of a dwarf or an incredibly fat woman or a two-headed animal would be visible, until I thought I had stumbled on the original source of supply of circus freaks.

The country at last began to slope gently down to a pleasant river valley; and presently we neared the capital. It turned out to be a really large town for Africa, its mud walls of strangely impressive architectural form, with their heavy, slabby buttresses, and giants standing guard upon them. Seeing us approach, they shouted, and a crowd poured out of the nearest Gate. My God, what a crowd! I was getting used to giants by this time, but here was a regular Barnum and Bailey show; more semidwarfs; others like them but more so--one could not tell whether the creatures were precociously mature children or horribly stunted adults; others portentously fat, with arms like sooty legs of mutton, and rolls and volutes of fat crisping out of their steatopygous posteriors; still others precociously senile and wizened, others hateful and imbecile in looks. Of course, there were plenty of ordinary Negroes too, but enough of the extraordinary to make one feel pretty queer. Soon after we got inside, I suddenly noted something else which appeared inexplicable--a telephone wire, with perfectly good insulators, running across from tree to tree. A telephone--in an unknown African town. I gave it up.

But another surprise was in store for me. I saw a figure pass across from one large building to another--a figure unmistakably that of a white man. In the first place, it was wearing white ducks and sun helmet; in the second, it had a pale face.

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He turned at the sound of our cavalcade and stood looking a moment; then walked towards us.

"Halloa!" I shouted. "Do you speak English?"

"Yes," he answered, "but keep quiet a moment," and began talking quickly to our leaders, who treated him with the greatest deference. He dropped back to me and spoke rapidly: "You are to be taken into the council hall to be examined; but I will see to it that no harm comes to you. This is a forbidden land to strangers, and you must be prepared to be held up for a time. You will be sent down to see me in the temple buildings as soon as the formalities are over, and I'll explain things. They want a bit of explaining," he added with a dry laugh. "By the way, my name is Hascombe, lately research worker at Middlesex Hospital, now religious adviser to His Majesty King Mgobe." He laughed again and pushed ahead. He was an interesting figure--perhaps fifty years old, spare body, thin face, with a small beard, and rather sunken, hazel eyes. As for his expression, he looked cynical, but also as if he were interested in life.

By this time we were at the entrance to the hall. Our giants formed up outside, with my men behind them, and only I and the leader passed in. The examination was purely formal, and remarkable chiefly for the ritual and solemnity which characterized all the actions of the couple of dozen fine-looking men in long robes who were our examiners. My men were herded off to some compound. I was escorted down to a little hut, furnished with some attempt at European style, where I found Hascombe.

As soon as we were alone I was after him with my questions. "Now you can tell me. Where are we? What is the meaning of all this circus business and this menagerie of monstrosities? And how do you come here?" He cut me short. "It's a long story, so let me save time by telling it my own way."

I am not going to tell it as he told it; but will try to give a more connected account, the result of many later talks with him, and of my own observations.


Hascombe had been a medical student of great promise; and after his degree had launched out into research. He had first started on parasitic protozoa, but had given that up in favor of tissue culture; from these he had gone off to cancer research, and from that to a study of developmental physiology. Later a big Commission on sleeping sickness had been organized, and Hascombe, restless and eager for travel, had pulled wires and got himself appointed as one of the scientific staff sent to Africa. He was much impressed with the view that wild game acted as a reservoir for the Trypanosoma gambiense. When he learned of the extensive migrations of game, he saw here an important possible means of spreading the disease and asked leave to go up country to investigate the whole problem. When the Commission as a whole had finished its work, he was allowed to stay in Africa with one other white man and a company of porters to see what he could discover. His white companion was a laboratory technician, a taciturn noncommissioned officer of science called Aggers.

There is no object in telling of their experiences here. Suffice it that they lost their way and fell into the hands of this same tribe. That was fifteen years ago; and Aggers was now long dead--as the result of a wound inflicted when he was caught, after a couple of years, trying to escape.

On their capture, they too had been examined in the council chamber, and Hascombe (who had interested himself in a dilettante way in anthropology as in most other subjects of scientific inquiry) was much impressed by what he described as the exceedingly religious atmosphere. Everything was done with an elaboration of ceremony; the chief seemed more priest than King, and performed various rites at intervals, and priests were busy at some sort of altar the whole time. Among other things, he noticed that one of their rites was connected with blood. First the chief and then the councillors were in turn requisitioned for a drop of vital fluid pricked from their finger tips, and the mixture, held in a little vessel, was slowly evaporated over a flame.

Some of Hascombe's men spoke a dialect not uplike that of their captors, and one was acting as interpreter. Things did not look too favorable. The country was a "holy place," it seemed, and the tribe a "holy race." Other Africans who trespassed there, if not killed, were enslaved, but for the most part they let well alone, and did not trespass. White men they had heard of, but never seen till now, and the debate was what to do-to kill, let go, or enslave? To let them go was contrary to all their principles: the holy place would be defiled if the news of it were spread abroad. To enslave them--yes; but what were they good for? and the Council seemed to feel an instinctive dislike for these other-colored creatures. Hascombe had an idea. He turned to the interpreter. "Say this: 'You revere the Blood. So do we white men; but we do more--we can render visible the blood's hidden nature and reality, and with permission I will show this great magic.'" He beckoned to the bearer who carried his precious microscope, set it up, drew a drop of blood from the tip of his finger with his knife and mounted it on a slide under a coverslip. The bigwigs were obviously interested. They whispered to each other. At length, "Show us," commanded the chief.

Hascombe demonstrated his preparation with greater interest than he had ever done to first-year medical students in the old days. He explained that the blood was composed of little people of various sorts, each with their own lives, and that to spy upon them thus gave us new powers over them. The elders were more or less impressed. At any rate the sight of these thousands of corpuscles where they could see nothing before made them think, made them realize that the white man had power which might make him a desirable servant.

They would not ask to see their own blood for fear that the sight would put them into the power of those who saw it. But they had blood drawn from a slave. Hascombe asked too for a bird, and was able to create a certain interest by showing how different were the little people of its blood.

"Tell them," he said to the interpreter, "that I have many other powers and magics which I will show them if they will give me time."

The long and short of it was that he and his party were spared--He said he knew then what one felt when the magistrate said: "Remanded for a week."

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He had been attracted by one of the elder statesmen of the tribe--a tall, powerful-looking man of middle-age; and was agreeably surprised when this man came round next day to see him. Hascombe later nicknamed him the Prince-Bishop, for his combination of the qualities of the statesman and the ecclesiastic. His real name was Bugala. He was as anxious to discover more about Hascombe's mysterious powers and resources as Hascombe was to learn what he could of the people into whose hands he had fallen, and they met almost every evening and talked far into the night.

Bugala's inquiries were as little prompted as Hascombe's by a purely academic curiosity. Impressed himself by the microscope, and still more by the effect which it had had on his colleagues, he was anxious to find out whether by utilizing the powers of the white man he could not secure his own advancement. At length, they struck a bargain. Bugala would see to it that no harm befell Hascombe. But Hascombe must put his resources and powers at the disposal of the Council; and Bugala would take good care to arrange matters so that he himself benefited. So far as Hascombe could make out, Bugala imagined a radical change in the national religion, a sort of reformation based on Hascombe's conjuring tricks; and that he would emerge as the High Priest of this changed system.

Hascombe had a sense of humor, and it was tickled. It seemed pretty clear that they could not escape, at least for the present. That being so, why not take the opportunity of doing a little research work at state expense--an opportunity which he and his like were always clamoring for at home? His thoughts began to run away with him. He would find out all he could of the rites and superstitions of the tribe. He would, by the aid of his knowledge and his scientific skill, exalt the details of these rites, the expression of those superstitions, the whole physical side of their religiosity, on to a new level which should to them appear truly miraculous.

It would not be worth my troubling to tell all the negotiations, the false starts, the misunderstandings. In the end he secured what he wanted--a building which could be used as a laboratory; an unlimited supply of slaves for the lower and priests for the higher duties of laboratory assistants, and the promise that when his scientific stores were exhausted they would do their best to secure others from the coast--a promise which was scrupulously kept, so that he never went short for lack of what money could buy.

He next applied himself diligently to a study of their religion and found that it was built round various main motifs. Of these, the central one was the belief in the divinity and tremendous importance of the Priest-King. The second was a form of ancestor-worship. The third was an animal cult, in particular of the more grotesque species of the African fauna. The fourth was sex, con variazioni.Hascombe reflected on these facts. Tissue culture; experimental embryology; endocrine treatment; artificial parthenogenesis. He laughed and said to himself: "Well, at least I can try, and it ought to be amusing."


That was how it all started. Perhaps the best way of giving some idea of how it had developed will be for me to tell my own impressions when Hascombe took me round his laboratories. One whole quarter of the town was devoted entirely to religion--it struck me as excessive, but Hascombe reminded me that Tibet spends one-fifth of its revenues on melted butter to burn before its shrines. Facing the main square was the chief temple, built impressively enough of solid mud. On either side were the apartments where dwelt the servants of the gods and administrators of the sacred rites. Behind were Hascombe's laboratories, some built of mud, others, under his later guidance, of wood. They were guarded night and day by patrols of giants, and were arranged in a series of quadrangles. Within one quadrangle was a pool which served as an aquarium; in another, aviaries and great hen houses; in yet another, cages with various animals; in the fourth a little botanic garden. Behind were stables with dozens of cattle and sheep, and a sort of experimental ward for human beings.

He took me into the nearest of the buildings. "This," he said, "is known to the people as the Factory (it is difficult to give the exact sense of the word, but it literally means producing-place), the Factory of Kingship or Majesty, and the Well-spring of Ancestral Immortality." I looked round, and saw platoons of buxom and shining African women, becomingly but unusually dressed in tight-fitting dresses and caps, and wearing rubber gloves. Microscopes were much in evidence, also various receptacles from which steam was emerging. The back of the room was screened off by a wooden screen in which were a series of glass doors; and these doors opened into partitions, each labeled with a name in that unknown tongue, and each containing a number of objects like the one I had seen taken out of the basket by the giant before we were captured. Pipes surrounded this chamber, and appeared to be distributing heat from a fire in one corner.

"Factory of Majesty!" I exclaimed. "Wellspring of Immortality! What the dickens do you mean?"

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"If you prefer a more prosaic name," said Hascombe, "I should call this the Institute of Religious Tissue Culture." My mind went back to a day in 1918 when I had been taken by a biological friend in New York to see the famous Rockefeller Institute; and at the word tissue culture I saw again before me Dr. Alexis Carrel and troops of white-garbed American girls making cultures, sterilizing, microscopizing, incubating and the rest of it. The Hascombe Institute was, it is true, not so well equipped, but it had an even larger, if differently colored, personnel.

Hascombe began his explanations. "As you probably know, Frazer's 'Golden Bough' introduced us to the idea of a sacred priest-king, and showed how fundamental it was in primitive societies. The welfare of the tribe is regarded as inextricably bound up with that of the King, and extraordinary precautions are taken to preserve him from harm. In this kingdom, in the old days, the King was hardly allowed to set his foot to the ground in case he should lose divinity; his cut hair and nail-parings were entrusted to one of the most important officials of state, whose duty it was to bury them secretly, in case some enemy should compass the King's illness or death by using them in black magic rites. If anyone of base blood trod on the King's shadow, he paid the penalty with his life. Each year a slave was made mock-king for a week, allowed to enjoy all the King's privileges and was decapitated at the close of his brief glory; and by this means it was supposed that the illnesses and misfortunes that might befall the King were vicariously got rid of.

"I first of all rigged up my apparatus, and with the aid of Aggers, succeeded in getting good cultures, first of chick tissues and later, by the aid of embryo-extract, of various and adult mammalian tissues. I then went to Bugala, and told him that I could increase the safety, if not of the King as an individual, at least of the life which was in him, and that I presumed that this would be equally satisfactory from a theological point of view. I pointed out that if he chose to be made guardian of the King's subsidiary lives, he would be in a much more important position than the chamberlain or the burier of the sacred nail-parings, and might make the post the most influential in the realm.

"Eventually I was allowed (under threats of death if anything untoward occurred) to remove small portions of His Majesty's subeutaneous connective tissue under a local anesthetic. In the presence of the assembled nobility I put fragments of this into culture medium, and showed it to them under the microscope. The cultures were then put away in the incubator, under a guard--relieved every eight hours--of half a dozen warriors. After three days, to my joy they had all taken and showed abundant growth. I could see that the Council was impressed, and reeled off a magnificent speech, pointing out that this growth constituted an actual increase in the quantity of the divine principle inherent in royalty; and what was more, that I could increase it indefinitely. With that I cut each of my cultures into eight, and sub-cultured all the pieces. They were again put under guard, and again examined after three days. Not all of them had taken this time, and there were some murmurings and angry looks, on the ground that I had killed some of the King; but I pointed out that the King was still the King, that his little wound had completely healed, and that any successful cultures represented so much extra sacredness and protection to the state. I must say that they were very reasonable, and had good theological acumen, for they at once took the hint.

"I pointed out to Bugala, and he persuaded the rest without much difficulty, that they could now disregard some of the older implications of the doctrines of kingship. The most important new idea which I was able to introduce was mass production. Our aim was to multiply the King's tissues indefinitely, to ensure that some of their protecting power should reside everywhere in the country. Thus by concentrating upon quantity, we could afford to remove some of the restrictions upon the King's mode of life. This was of course agreeable to the King; and also to Bugala, who saw himself wielding undreamt-of power. One might have supposed that such an innovation would have met with great resistance simply on account of its being an innovation; but I must admit that these people compared very favorably with the average business man in their lack of prejudice. 

"Having thus settled the principle, I had many debates with Bugala as to the best methods for enlisting the mass of the population in our scheme. What an opportunity for scientific advertising! But, unfortunately, the population could not read. However, war propaganda worked very well in more or less illiterate countries--why not here?"


Hascombe organized a series of public lectures in the capital, at which he demonstrated his regal tissues to the multitude, who were bidden to the place by royal heralds. An impressive platform group was always supplied from the ranks of the nobles. The lecturer explained how important it was for the community to become possessed of greater and greater stores of the sacred tissues. Unfortunately, the preparation was laborious and expensive, and it behooved them all to lend a hand. It had accordingly been arranged that to everyone subscribing a cow or buffalo, or its equivalent--three goats, pigs or sheep--a portion of the royal anatomy should be given, handsomely mounted in an ebony holder. Sub-culturing would be done at certain hours and days, and it would be obligatory to send the cultures for renewal. If through any negligence the tissue died, no renewal would be made. The subscription entitled the receiver to sub-culturing rights for a year, but was of course renewable. By this means not only would the totality of the King be much increased, to the benefit of all, but each cultureholder would possess an actual part of His Majesty, and would have the infinite joy and privilege of aiding by his own efforts the multiplication of divinity.

Then they could also serve their country by dedicating a daughter to the state. These young women would be housed and fed by the state, and taught the technique of the sacred culture. Candidates would be selected according to general fitness, but would of course, in addition, be required to attain distinction in an examination on the principles of religion. They would be appointed for a probationary period of six months. After this they would receive a permanent status, with the title of Sisters of the Sacred Tissue. From this, with age, experience and merit, they could expect promotion to the rank of mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers, and grand ancestresses of the same. The merit and benefit they would receive from their close contact with the source of all benefits would overflow on to their families.

The scheme worked like wildfire. Pigs, goats, cattle, buffalos and Negro maidens poured in. Next year the scheme was extended to the whole country, a peripatetic laboratory making the rounds weekly.

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By the close of the third year there was hardly a family in the country which did not possess at least one sacred culture. To be without one would have been like being without one's trousers--or at least without one's hat--on Fifth Avenue. Thus did Bugala effect a reformation in the national religion, enthrone himself as the most important personage in the country, and entrench applied science and Hascombe firmly in the organization of the state.

Encouraged by his success, Hascombe soon set out to capture the ancestry-worship branch of the religion as well. A public proclamation was made pointing out how much more satisfactory it would be if worship could be made not merely to the charred bones of one's forbears, but to bits of them still actually living and growing. All who were desirous of profiting by the enterprise of Bugala's Department of State should therefore bring their older relatives to the laboratory at certain specified hours, and fragments would be painlessly extracted for culture.

This, too, proved very attractive to the average citizen. Occasionally, it is true, grandfathers or aged mothers arrived in a state of indignation and protest. However, this did not matter, since, according to the law, once children were twenty-five years of age, they were not only assigned the duty of worshipping their ancestors, alive or dead, but were also given complete control over them, in order that all rites might be duly performed to the greater safety of the commonweal. Further, the ancestors soon found that the operation itself was trifling, and, what was more, that once accomplished, it had the most desirable results. For their descendants preferred to concentrate at once upon the culture which they would continue to worship after the old folks were gone, and so left their parents and grandparents much freer than before from the irksome restrictions which in all ages have beset the officially holy.

Thus, by almost every hearth in the kingdom, instead of the old-fashioned rows of red jars containing the incinerated remains of one or other of the family forbears, the new generation saw growing up a collection of family slides. Each would be taken out and reverently examined at the hour of prayer. "Grandpapa is not growing well this week," you would perhaps hear the young black devotee say; the father of the family would pray over the speck of tissue; and if that failed, it would be taken back to the factory for rejuvenation. On the other hand, what rejoicing when a rhythm of activity stirred in the culture! A spurt on the part of great-grandmother's tissues would bring her wrinkled old smile to mind again; and sometimes it seemed as if one particular generation were all stirred simultaneously by a pulse of growth, as if combining to bless their devout descendants.

To deal with the possibility of cultures dying out, Hascombe started a central storehouse, where dtiplicates of every strain were kept, and it was this repository of the national tissues which had attracted my attention at the back of the laboratory. No such collectidn had ever existed before, he assured me. Not a necropolis, but a histopolis, if I may coin a word: not a cemetery, but a place of eternal growth.

The second building was devoted to endocrine products--an African Armour's--and was called by the people the "Factory of Ministers to the Shrines."

"Here," he said, "you will not find much new. You know the craze for 'glands' that was going on at home years ago, and its results, in the shape of pluriglandular preparations, a new genre of patent medicines, and a popular literature that threatened to outdo the Freudians, and explain human beings entirely on the basis of glandular make-up, without reference to the mind at all.

"I had only to apply my knowledge in a comparatively simple manner. The first thing was to show Bugala how, by repeated injections of pre-pituitary, I could make an ordinary baby grow up into a giant. This pleased him, and he introduced the idea of a sacred bodyguard, all of really gigantic stature, quite overshadowing Frederick's Grenadiers.

"I did, however, extend knowledge in several directions. I took advantage of the fact taat their religion holds in reverence monstrous and imbecile forms of human beings. That is, of course, a common phenomenon in many countries, where half-wits are supposed to be inspired, and dwarfs the object of superstitious awe. So I went to work to create various new types. By employing a particular extract of adrenal cortex, I produced children who would have been a match for the Infant Hercules, and, indeed, looked rather like a cross between him and a brewer's drayman. By injecting the same extract into adolescent girls I was able to provide them with the most copious mustaches, after which they found ready employment as prophetesses.

"Tampering with the post-pituitary gave remarkable cases of obesity. This, together with the passion of the men for fatness in their women, Bugala took advantage of, and I believe made quite a fortune by selling as concubines female slaves treated in this way. Finally, by another pituitary treatment, I at last mastered the secret of true dwarfism, in which perfect proportions are retained.

"Of these productions, the dwarfs are retained as acolytes in the temple; a band of the obese young ladies form a sort of Society of Vestal Virgins, with special religious duties, which, as the embodiment of the national ideal of beauty, they are supposed to discharge with peculiarly propitious effect; and the giants form our Regular Army.

"The Obese Virgins have set me a problem which I confess I have not yet solved. Like all races who set great store by sexual enjoyment, these people have a correspondingly exaggerated reverence for virginity. It therefore occurred to me that if I could apply Jacques Loeb's great discovery of artificial parthenogenesis to man, or, to be precise, to these young ladies, I should be able to grow a race of vestals, self-reproducing yet ever virgin, to whom in concentrated form should attach that reverence of which I have spoken. You see, I must always remember that it is no good proposing any line of work that will not benefit the national religion. I suppose state-aided research would have much the same kinds of difficulties in a really democratic state. Well this, as I say, has so far beaten me. I have taken the matter a step further than Bataillon with his fatherless frogs, and I have induced parthenogenesis in the eggs of reptiles and birds; but so far I have failed with mammals. However, I've not given up yet!"

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Then we passed to the next laboratory, which was full of the most incredible animal monstrosities. "This laboratory is the most amusing," said Hascombe. "Its official title is 'Home of the Living Fetishes.' Here again I have simply taken a prevalent trait of the populace, and used it as a peg on which to hang research. I told you that they always had a fancy for the grotesque in animals, and used the most bizarre forms, in the shape of little clay or ivory statuettes, for fetishes.

"I thought I would see whether art could not improve upon nature, and set myself to recall my experimental embryology. I use only the simplest methods. I utilize the plasticity of the earliest stages to give double-headed and cyclopean monsters. That was, of course, done years ago in newts by Spemann and fish by Stockard; and I have merely applied the mass-production methods of Mr. Ford to their results. But my specialties are three-headed snakes, and toads with an extra heaven-pointing head. The former are a little difficult, but there is a great demand for them, and they fetch a good price. The frogs are easier: I simply apply Harrison's methods to embryo tadpoles."

He then showed me into the last building. Unlike the others, this contained no signs of research in progress, but was empty. It was draped with black hangings, and lit only from the top. In the center were rows of ebony benches, and in front of them a glittering golden ball on a stand.

"Here I am beginning my work on reinforeed telepathy," he told me. "Some day you must come and see what it's all about, for it really is interesting."

You may imagine that I was pretty well flabbergasted by this catalogue of miracles. Every day I got a talk with Hascombe, and gradually the talks became recognized events of our daily routine. One day I asked if he had given up hope of escaping. He showed a queer hesitation in replying. Eventually he said, "To tell you the truth, my dear Jones, I have really hardly thought of it these last few years. It seemed so impossible at first that I deliberately put it out of my head and turned with more and more energy, I might almost say fury, to my work. And now, upon my soul, I am not quite sure whether I want to escape or not."

"Not want to!" I exclaimed, "surely you can't mean that!"

"I am not so sure," he rejoiced. "What I most want is to get ahead with this work of mine. Why, man, you don't realize what a chance I've got! And it is all growing so fast--I can see every kind of possibility ahead"; and he broke off into silence.

However, although I was interested enough in his past achievements; I did not feel willing to sacrifice my future to his perverted intellectual ambitions. But he would not leave his work.


The experiments which most excited his imagination were those he was conducting into mass telepathy. He had received his medical training at a time when abnormal psychology was still very unfashionable in England, but had luckily been thrown in contact with a young doctor who was a keen student of hypnotism, through whom he had been introduced to some of the great pioneers, like Bramwell and Wingfield. As a result, he had become a passable hypnotist himself, with a fair knowledge of the literature.

In the early days of his captivity he became interested in the sacred dances which took place every night of full moon, and were regarded as propitiations of the celestial powers. The dancers all belong to a special sect. After a series of exciting figures, symbolizing various activities of the chase, war and love, the leader conducts his band to a ceremonial bench. He then begins to make passes at them; and what impressed Hascombe was this, that a few seconds sufficed for them to fall back in deep hypnosis against the ebony rail. It recalled, he said, the most startling cases of collective hypnosis recorded by the French scientists. The leader next passed from one end of the bench to the other, whispering a brief sentence into each ear. He then, according to immemorial rite, approached the Priest-King, and, after having exclaimed aloud, "Lord of Majesty, command what thou wilt for thy dancers to perform," the King would thereupon command some action which had previously been kept secret. The command was often to fetch some object and deposit it at the moon-shrine; or to fight the enemies of the state; or (and this was what the company most liked) to be some animal, or bird. Whatever the command, the hypnotized men would obey it, for the leader's whispered words had been an order to hear and carry out only what the King said; and the strangest scenes would be witnessed as they ran, completely oblivious of all in their path, in search of the gourds or sheep they had been called on to procure, or lunged in a symbolic way at invisible enemies, or threw themselves on all fours and roared as lions, or galloped as zebras, or danced as cranes. The command executed, they stood like stocks or stones, until their leader, running from one to the other, touched each with a finger and shouted, "Wake." They woke, and limp, but conscious of having been the vessels of the unknown spirit, danced back to their special hut or clubhouse.

This susceptibility to hypnotic suggestion struck Hascombe, and he obtained permission to test the performers more closely. He soon established that the people were, as a race, extremely prone to dissociation, and could be made to lapse into deep hypnosis with great ease, but a hypnosis in which the subconscious, though completely cut off from the waking self, comprised portions of the personality not retained in the hypnotic selves of Europeans. Like most who have fluttered round the psychological candle, he had been interested in the notion of telepathy; and now, with this supply of hypnotic subjects under his hands, began some real investigation of the problem.

By picking his subjects, he was soon able to demonstrate the existence of telepathy, by making suggestions to one hypnotized man who transferred them without physical intermediation to another at a distance. Later--and this was the culmination of his work--he found that when he made a suggestion to several subjects at once, the telepathic effect was much stronger than if he had done it to one at a time--the hypnotized minds were reinforcing each other. "I'm after the superconsciousness," Hascombe said, "and I've already got the rudiments of it."

I must confess that I got almost as excited as Hascombe over the possibilities thus opened up. It certainly seemed as if he were right in principle. If all the subjects were in practically the same psychological state, extraordinary reinforcing effects were observed. At first the attainment of this similarity of condition was very difficult; gradually, however, we discovered that it was possible to tune hypnotic subjects to the same pitch, if I may use the metaphor, and then the fun really began.

Page 7 of 8

First of all we found that with increasing reinforcement, we could get telepathy conducted to greater and greater distances, until finally we could transmit commands from the capital to the national boundary, nearly a hundred miles. We next found that it was not necessary for the subject to be in hypnosis to receive the telepathic command. Almost everybody, but especially those of equable temperament, could thus be influenced. Most extraordinary of all, however, were what we at first christened "near effects," since their transmission to a distance was not found possible until later. If, after Hascombe had suggested some simple command to a largish group of hypnotized subjects, he or I went right up among them, we would experience the most extraordinary sensation, as of some superhuman personality repeating the command in a menacing and overwhelming way and, whereas with one part of ourselves we felt that we must carry out the command, with another we felt, if I may say so, as if we were only a part of the command, or of something much bigger than ourselves which was commanding. And this, Hascombe claimed, was the first real beginning of the superconsciousness.

Bugala, of course, had to be considered. Hascombe, with the old Tibetan prayer wheel at the back of his mind, suggested that eventually he would be able to induce hypnosis in the whole population, and then transmit a prayer. This would ensure that the daily prayer, for instance, was really said by the whole population, and, what is more, simultaneously, which would undoubtedly much enhance its efficacy. And it would make it possible in times of calamity or battle to keep the whole praying force of the nation at work for long spells together.


Bugala was deeply interested. He saw himself, through this mental machinery, planting such ideas as he wished in the brain cases of his people. He saw himself willing an order; and the whole population rousing itself out of trance to execute it. He dreamt dreams before which those of the proprietor of a newspaper syndicate, even those of a director of propaganda in wartime, would be pale and timid. Naturally, he wished to receive personal instruction in the methods himself; and, equttilly naturally, we could not refuse him, though I must say that I often felt a little uneasy as to what he might choose to do if he ever decided to override Hascombe and to start experimenting on his own. This, combined with my constant longing to get away from the place, led me to cast about again for means of escape. Then it occurred to me that this very method about which I had such gloomy presentiments, might itself be made the key to our prison.

So one day, after getting Hascombe worked up about the loss to humanity it would be to let this great discovery die with him in Africa, I set to in earnest. "My dear Hascombe," I said, "you must get home out of this. What is there to prevent you saying to Bugala that your experiments are nearly crowned with success, but that for certain tests you must have a much greater number of subjects at your disposal? You can then get a battery of two hundred men, and after you have tuned them, the reinforcement will be so great that you will have at your disposal a mental force big enough to affect the whole population. Then, of course, one fine day we should raise the potential of our mind-battery to the highest possible level, and send out through it a general hypnotic influence. The whole country, men, women and children, would sink into stupor. Next we should give our experimental squad the suggestion to broadcast 'sleep for a week.' The telepathic message would be relayed to each of the thousands of minds waiting receptively for it, and would take root in them, until the whole nation became a single superconsciousness, conscious only of the one thought 'sleep' which we had thrown into it."

The reader will perhaps ask how we ourselves expected to escape from the clutches of the superconsciousness we had created. Well, we had discovered that metal was relatively impervious to the telepathic effect, and had prepared for ourselves a sort of tin pulpit, behind which we could stand while conducting experiments. This, combined with caps of metal foil, enormously reduced the effects on ourselves. We had not informed Bugala of this property of metal.

Hascombe was silent. At length he spoke. "I like the idea," he said; "I like to think that if I ever do get back to England and to scientific recognition, my discovery will have given me the means of escape."

From that moment we worked assiduously to perfect our method and our plans. After about five months everything seemed propitious. We had provisions packed away, and compasses. I had been allowed to keep my rifle, on promise that I would never discharge it. We had made friends with some of the men who went trading to the coast, and had got from them all the information we could about the route, without arousing their suspicions.

At last, the night arrived. We assembled our men as if for an ordinary practice, and after hypnosis had been induced, started to tune them. At this moment Bugala came in, unannounced. This was what we had been afraid of; but there had been no means of preventing it. "What shall we do?" I whispered to Hascombe, in English. "Go right ahead and be damned to it," was his answer; "we can put him to sleep with the rest."

So we welcomed him, and gave him a seat as near as possible to the tightly packed ranks of the performers. At length the preparations were finished. Hascombe went into the pulpit and said, "Attention to the words which are to be suggested." There was a slight stiffening of the bodies. "Sleep," said Hascombe. "Sleep is the command: command all in this land to sleep unbrokenly." Bugala leapt up with an exclamation; but the induction had already begun. 

We with our metal coverings were immune. But Bugala was struck by the full force of the mental current. He sank back on his chair, helpless. For a few minutes his extraordinary will resisted the suggestion. Although he could not move, his angry eyes were open. But at length he succumbed, and he too slept.

Page 8 of 8

We lost no time in starting, and made good progress through the silent country. The people were sitting about like wax figures. Women sat asleep by their milk-pails, the cow by this time far away. Fat-bellied naked children slept at their games. The houses were full of sleepers sleeping upright round their food, recalling Wordsworth's famous "party in a parlor."

So we went on, feeling pretty queer and scarcely believing in this morphic state into which we had plunged a nation. Finally the frontier was reached, where with extreme elation, we passed an immobile and gigantic frontier guard. A few miles further we had a good solid meal, and a doze. Our kit was rather heavy, and we decided to jettison some superfluous weight, in the shape of some food, specimens, and our metal headgear, or mind-protectors, which at this distance, and with the hypnosis wearing a little thin, were, we thought, no longer necessary.

About nightfall on the third day, Hascombe suddenly stopped and turned his head.

"What's the matter?" I said. "Have you seen a lion?" His reply was completely unexpected. "No. I was just wondering whether really I ought not to go back again."

"Go back again," I cried. "What in the name of God Almighty do you want to do that for?"

"It suddenly struck me that I ought to," he said, "about five minutes ago. And really, when one comes to think of it, I don't suppose I shall ever get such a chance at research again. What's more, this is a dangerous journey to the coast, and I don't expect we shall get through alive."

I was thoroughly upset and put out, and told him so. And suddenly, for a few moments, I felt I must go back too. It was like that old friend of our boyhood, the voice of conscience.

"Yes, to be sure, we ought to go back," I thought with fervor. But suddenly checking myself as the thought came under the play of reason--"Why should we go back?" All sorts of reasons were proffered, as it were, by unseen hands reaching up out of the hidden parts of me. 


And then I realized what had happened. Bugala had waked up; he had wiped out the suggestion we had given to the superconsciousness, and in its place put in another. I could see him thinking it out, the cunning devil (one must give him credit for brains!), and hear him, after making his passes, whisper to the nation in prescribed form his new suggestion: "Will to return! Return!" For most of the inhabitants the command would have no meaning, for they would have been already at home. Doubtless some young men out on the hills, or truant children, or girls run off in secret to meet their lovers, were even now returning, stiffly and in somnambulistic trance, to their homes. It was only for them that the new command of the superconsciousness had any meaning--and for us.

I am putting it in a long and discursive way; at the moment I simply saw what had happened in a flash. I told Hascombe, I showed him it must be so, that nothing else would account for the sudden change. I begged and implored him to use his reason, to stick to his decision, and to come on. How I regretted that, in our desire to discard all useless weight, we had left behind our metal telepathy-proof head coverings!

But Hascombe would not, or could not, see my point. I suppose he was much more imbued with all the feelings and spirit of the country, and so more susceptible. However that may be, he was immovable. He must go back; he knew it; he saw it clearly; it was his sacred duty; and much other similar rubbish. All this time the suggestion was attacking me too; and finally I felt that if I did not put more distance between me and that unisonic battery of will, I should succumb as well as he.

"Hascombe," I said, "I am going on. For God's sake, come with me." And I shouldered my pack, and set off. He was shaken, I saw, and came a few steps after me. But finally he turned, and, in spite of my frequent pauses and shouts to him to follow, made off in the direction we had come. I can assure you that it was with a gloomy soul that I continued my solitary way. I shall not bore you with my adventures. Suffice it to say that at last I got to a white outpost, weak with fatigue and poor food and fever.

I kept very quiet about my adventures, only giving out that our expedition had lost its way and that my men had run away oy been killed by the local tribes. At last I reached England. But I was a broken man, and a profound gloom had invaded my mind at the thought of Hascombe and the way he had been caught in his own net. I never found out what happened to him, and I do not suppose that I am likely to find out now. You may ask why I did not try to organize a rescue expedition; or why, at least, I did not bring Hascombe's discoveries before the Royal Society or the Metaphysical Institute. I can only repeat that I was a broken man. I did not expect to be believed; I was not at all sure that I could repeat our results, even on the same human material, much less with men of another race; I dreaded ridicule; and finally I was tormented by doubts as to whether the knowledge of mass telepathy would not be a curse rather than a blessing to mankind.

However, I am an oldish man now and, what is more, old for my years. I want to tet the story off my chest. Besides, old men like sermonizing and you must forgive, gentle reader, the sermonical turn which I now feel I must take. The question I want to raise is this: Dr. Hascombe attained to an unsurpassed power in a number of the applications of science--but to what end did all this power serve? It is the merest cant and twaddle to go on asserting, as most of our press and people continue to do, that increase of scientific knowledge and power must in itself be good. I commend to the great public the obvious moral of my story and ask them to think what they propose to do with the power which is gradually being accumulated for them by the labors of those who labor because they like power, or because they want to find the truth about how things work.

Friday 29 January 2016

The Bulgarian Connection : The Markov and Maxwell Murders




"To me, the most chilling document is a secret decree agreed to in 1973 by the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party.  The decree endorsed “harsh agent-operational activities [read: assassination]” of Bulgarian activists abroad.

Another document identified Markov as an “enemy” and detailed his radio career abroad.

And if you closely examine the second list of enemy émigrés, you can read “22.V[5].79 killed in England” next to Markov’s name.  (This was not the date of his death.)"

https://nsarchive.wordpress.com/2010/07/16/document-friday-the-poisonous-umbrella-and-the-assassination-of-georgi-markov/

Document:The Markov and Maxwell Murders - Wikispooks

9 December 2000. Thanks to G.

These are a series of postings by Gordon Logan to the Web site of former MI5 officer David Shayler ("Shaylergate") which is no longer active. David Shayler said at a public meeting on 10 November 2000 that he closed the site after it came under sustained attack.

See Mr. Logan's most recent presentation: http://cryptome.org/markov-file.htm


The Burden of the Past (supercedes previous three versions)

From: Gordon Logan
Date: 03 Nov 1999
Time: 07:29:01

Comments

The Burden of the Past (supercedes previous three versions)

The murder of Robert Maxwell was MI6's most costly blunder (to Cap'n Bob's pensioners at least). A video of the real autopsy (for his life assurance) was made in Israel and was the subject of extensive coverage in Paris Match in January 1992. Maxwell had been beaten up in his state room so as to get him to divulge the numbers of the combination lock of his safe. He was finally stabbed in the abdomen and thrown overboard. Of course, all this was ignored by the British media, and certainly by Tom Bower. Why was it considered necessary to murder Maxwell?

Well, about six weeks prior to his murder he had received a visit from Andrei Loukanov, the former communist Prime Minister of Bulgaria, who was probably Maxwell's closest associate in the Eastern Bloc. Loukanov gave Maxwell a selection of documents, including no doubt tapes, from the Markov file. They related to the famous Bulgarian Umbrella case - the murder of Bulgarian defector Georgi Markov in London in September 1978. MI6 had paid the son of General Nanka Serkedzhieva, the Keeper of the Bulgarian State Security archive, the sum of fifty thousand dollars in Singapore to have the file destroyed.

The trial of Gen. Vlado Todorov for the file's destruction was a charade merely for the form. (A copy of the Markov file existed in Moscow, and was hastily removed from public access at MI6's request after the Moscow coup of August 1991.)

The murder of Markov and the attempt to kill another defector, Vladimir Kostov, in Paris a few weeks earlier both involved the use of iridium pellets laced with rycin. Two defectors, two pellets - therefore made in KGB, obviously. However, the whole truth is not so simple.

The organiser of the killings was none other than a remarkable double agent, Mrs Mercia MacDermott, who must certainly have been betrayed by Aldrich Ames in 1985, when her star in Bulgaria visibly began to decline. After her unmasking she remained in Bulgaria for a few more years as part of the cover-up. Her detection provided the Bulgarian State Security with a trump card that stood it in very good steed in the years after the end of the Cold War.

Mrs MacDermott had distinguished herself by surpassing the efforts of the communist authors in writing readable biographies of the country's national heroes. She was (and is) a household name in Bulgaria and was greatly respected by Politburo Secretary for Ideology Alexander Lilov, who was at that time seeking (with KGB approval) to become Zhivkov's heir apparent.

It was decided to have Markov murdered on Zhivkov's birthday. Markov had been staked out in London prior to his murder by another old English lady, a Mrs Bartlett, who of course had no idea she was really working for MI6. Immediately before the killing, Mrs Bartlett was conveniently flown to Sofia, where she still lives.

Baroness Park (now retired) referred to the murder of Markov in a Panoramainterview a few years ago, when she explained how MI6 liked to get their enemies to do their dirty work for them. That Markov should be got rid of was suggested by one short sentence in Alexander Lilov's ear: "He's not very discrete, is he?" Mrs MacDermott went on to steer matters to their final conclusion on Waterloo Bridge.

How do I know these things? Well firstly, because in April 1991, I paid a visit to British Vice Consul Graham Wicks in his office, and put it to him that Mrs MacDermott was behind the Markov murder. Graham did not react. I then told him that I had been told that Mrs. MacDermott had been a British agent. Graham immediately turned grey, and seemed to age twenty years.

The attacks on Markov and Kostov were a brilliant propaganda coup for MI6, and were intended be the final masterpiece of Sir Maurice Oldfield, prior to his retirement. The problem of course was that the homosexual Oldfield discounted Markov's wife, who had loved her husband very much, and has spent twenty years (and a large amount of money) trying to bring his murderers to book.

We shall pass over the appalling taste underlying the exploitation of Markov's widow for over twenty years for propaganda purposes.

In Bulgaria itself, the Markov skeleton has meant that the Bulgarian State Security has never been properly cleaned up, with devastating consequences for the country throughout the nineties (although things have improved somewhat in the last year or so). Loukanov had been sent to Maxwell by Vladimir Kryuchkov, who was languishing with his associates in prison after the failure of the Moscow Coup of August 1991. Kryuchkov had been hoping to use Maxwell to pressure the British so that they in turn would pressure Yeltsin for leniency for the plotters. As it turns out, the plotters got leniency anyway.

Had Maxwell lived, he would probably have got himself out of debt. At the time, both Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch were investing heavily in satellite TV, which of course has proved to be a gold mine for Murdoch, and no doubt would have been one for Maxwell. Maxwell's family know that he was murdered and no doubt know who was responsible. Hence the remarkable charade of the Maxwell brothers' court case.

Dozens of MI6 officers and diplomats have been faced with the unpleasant task of lying to, and bamboozling Markov's widow, Annabella, and this has caused considerable resentment in the Foreign Office. It is no accident that Sir Richard Stagg, who is now our Ambassador to Sofia, was Cultural Attache there in the late seventies and early eighties and was involved in liaising with Mrs MacDermott, through an intermediary of course. An old hand like Richard was most suitable for what remains a very sticky posting.

Why am I divulging all this? Well, mainly because keeping it to myself has done me no good at all - quite the reverse. This is because MI6 is a lot less focussed than it used to be. To put it bluntly, bitter experience has proved the Service to be too stupid to deal with. Their monstrosity on the Thames will do them no good at all, as they well know. Anyway, it seems to me that the Markov and Maxwell murders need to be finally brought out into the open, before MI6 can have any hope of passing into new and cleaner hands. In intelligence work, vanity, arrogance and hatred are the prerequisites of failure.

Last changed: November 02, 1999

Last changed: February 14, 2000


Last changed: February 14, 2000

Message to David Shayler
From: Gordon Logan
Date: 05 Nov 1999
Time: 09:51:14

Comments

There is a communication dated 24 October entitled "Rumours and Lies" from "The Ear on the Glass on the Wall". Unlike many of your Forum's contributors, the 'Ear' seems to be an insider, since he knows of my conflict with MI6. The author of the piece, which I don't understand very well, suggests that you are "ideally suited" to ferreting out the facts.

As a former insider, it seems to me that the facts that would be most useful to you right now concern the murders of Markov and Maxwell. I know a lot of what there is to know about the British involvement in the Markov murder, which I began investigating when I was in Bulgaria in the 80s. The main missing item in the Maxwell investigation is the motive, which I supply. An investigation of the cover-up would be useful. That also applies to the Markov case. You will be in a better position than I was to investigate the anomalies at the British end.

The beginning of the tragedy lies in the fact that Markov was on bad terms with Peter Uvaliev, a colleague in the Bulgarian Service of the BBC. Uvaliev was a Bulgarian diplomat who defected in the 1947, and was a respected screen writer amongst other things. They both believed that the other was a Bulgarian agent! Unfortunately for Markov, Uvaliev worked for MI6, and his hostility to Markov meant that Maurice Oldfield regarded Markov (and Kostov) as 'expendible' defectors.

The 'Ear' refers to the 'bar tender' and his sojourn in the city. I don't know who the 'bar tender' is, but maybe you do, or can find out. To the shocked bystanders in the Forum, I can only suggest that they bide their time, and watch this page. Yes, MI6 did get up to some strange things during the Cold War. To those who came to this Forum expecting (or hoping) to find nothing, I apologize.

David, you can expect no forgiveness from Lander and Spedding. The only way forward is to beat them. I.e. to drive them into a conflict with the politicians in which the latter are forced to take your side. It can be done.

You can e-mail me at georgimarkov@hotmail.com


More on the Shadow (The murders of Markov and Maxwell)

From: Gordon Logan
Date: 07 Nov 1999
Time: 12:12:30

Comments

Firstly, I would recommend that visitors to David's site should read my piece entitled 'The Shadow of the Past' - it's essential background reading. I might add that I've had quite a lot experience of the 'Great Game' - a life that few outsiders can imagine, or would even want. However, I take my hat off to Mrs MacDermott - a truly astonishing agent. But alas, what a mess she left for others to clear up.

I spent 12 years in Bulgaria, and in 1984 I almost suffered the same fate as Markov at the hands of Mrs. MacDermott, who appears to have tried to persuade the Bulgarians to liquidate me in circumstances that would have resulted in my wife appearing on TV bewailing my murder at the hands of the Bulgarians - just like Mrs Markov. But that is another story. What I state about the British involvement in the Markov case is fact, and most Sofia journalists have been briefed that there is a British involvement though they don't know quite what it is.

Back in 1991, Vladimir Bereanu, a well-known TV journalist, who wrote an important book about the Markov case, tried to get me to tell him the truth, but I'd got involved in the cover-up, so I didn't tell him. His book was to have been published in Britain, but not surprisingly the deal was cancelled. To this day nothing of any substance whatsoever has appeared in Britain about the Markov case. However in Bulgaria, a lot of interesting bits and pieces have appeared over the years.

On 21st April 1991 on Bulgarian Television, the communists leaked the code names of two foreign nationals who had received medals for the Markov assassination. The leak was in fact aimed at embarrassing the Foreign Office, but was used to justify an official secrets clampdown in Bulgaria, whuich suited the communists fine, and continues to this day - because of the MacDermott case. The code names of the two foreigners were 'Hector' and 'Atanas'. It was disclosed that 'Hector' had received the Order of Cyril and Methodius (Second Class) and 'Atanas' had received the Order of the Red Banner of Labour. Now I know that Mrs MacDermott, alias 'Hector', did indeed receive the medal. In fact I know, as do all the other teachers who worked with her at the elite English Language School in Sofia, that the Headmistress of the school, a curmudgeon, refused to give Mrs MacDermott the day off to go to the award ceremony in the Bulgarian parliament! Mrs Bartlett was of course 'Atanas'.

Has there been any official admission of the involvement of British subjects in the Markov case? Indeed there has, and it's on record. In 1985, the Observer (I believe) discovered that there was an army officer working at the BBC for MI5, and that his job was to vet job applicants. This caused a bit of a stir at the time, and the officer concerned was forced to justify his presence at the BBC. He did so by announcing that one of his functions was to protect Eastern bloc defectors working at the BBC from hostile infiltrators - foreign OR British. To justify the vetting of Brits, he let slip that British citizens were known to have been involved in the Markov killing. Now this admission, although providing the officer with an excellent justification for his function, was a blunder. Were the British collaborators named? No. Were they questioned or arrested? Certainly not. I do not have a copy of the Observer article - but I remember that it was a long one. You might try to get a hold of it and read it. Why did MI5 not follow up on their lead? The reason is that those involved had to be protected.

It might interest readers to know that that there was no air gun mounted in the umbrella. The famous umbrella is just a part of the mythology. You may remember that Markov said that he had turned round to see the assailant picking up an umbrella. Of course the assassin hadn't dropped his weapon. In fact, the umbrella was merely a prop that the killer was to drop with his left hand so that he could bend down and pull out an air pistol with his right hand and shoot Markov at point blank range in the thigh. This artifice was made necessary because of the survival of Vladimir Kostov, who had been shot in the back from about twenty yards in a Paris metro station a few weeks before. The State Security chiefs in Sofia decided that the pellet can't have penetrated Kostov's clothes. In fact, it had entered Kostov's back but by a miracle he survived. The failure of the attack on Kostov caused them to order the killer to shoot Markov at point blank range in the thigh, i.e. through only one layer of clothing. Kostov may well have been told about the British connection, but if he has, he's keeping quiet. Of course, the totally fictitious air gun mounted in the umbrella has become a part of Cold War spy mythology. They've even gone so far as to publish diagrams of a specially adapted umbrella that never existed!

In fact, the term 'Bulgarian Umbrella' was used by the Bulgarian State Security mafia to refer to the immunity conferred on them by the Markov case. I remember that a former Bulgarian agent, who had defected and decided to write his memoirs in 1991, thinking it was safe to do so, died in strange circumstances (threats from unknown Bulgarian visitors in white coats as he lay dying) of a strange infection in an Augsburg hospital. His family received threats in the name of the 'Bulgarian Umbrella', although it's quite possible that it was another agency that killed him. The MacDermott case created a security minefield in Bulgaria too - but this is not the place to discuss that... Suffice it to say that all her activities resulted in blanket cover-up that include physical liquidations up to the rank of Army general and State Security general - one of each that I know of.

As the regards the Maxwell case, back in 1991 I had long conversations about Cold War secrets with retired (pro-monarchist) Bulgarian intelligence officers. We knew that Lukanov had copied the Markov file because it was reported in the Bulgarian newspapers not long before Lukanov left Sofia to visit Maxwell. I and my friends assumed that Lukanov gave Maxwell the file, simply because it was the natural thing to do. Who else could he give it to? Maxwell was ideally suited to putting the file to use on behalf of the hardliners.

Another important aspect of the Markov case is that, according to General Kalugin (who incidentally is on record as referring to the fact that there is something about the Markov case that the British want covered up) it was Vladimir Kryuchkov himself, who as Head of the First Directorate, 'sold' (Mrs MacDermott's) idea of the poison pellets to Yuri Andropov. Kryuchkov was furious when he later discovered how the British had tricked him.

When I discovered (from a KGB agent) about Kryuchkov's fury, I got to work on it. The result was that I exposed Lilov's role in the Markov killing (amongst other things) in the Bulgarian press in August 1991. There was a TV debate between CP boss Lilov and opposition leader Philip Dimitrov, who became Prime Minister a few months later and is now Ambassador to Washington. On the Tuesday before the Moscow Coup I visited Dimitrov in his office and told him to get in touch with the President to tell him that behind Lilov was a British agent provocateur, Mrs MacDermott. The same day, President Zhelev fired the two chiefs of the Intelligence Service.

That night in Moscow, Vladimir Kryuchkov decided to launch his coup - instead of the State of Emergency which had been agreed on with Gorbachov and was to have been voted by the Supreme Soviet at the end of August. Thus there was a fundamental psychological split between Kryuchkov and the other plotters, whom he unexpectedly summoned to the KGB at the weekend. None of them would have known about the Bulgarian connection - except probably KGB General Boris Pugo - and we all know what happened to him. In this connection, you may remember that Gen. Varennikov has repeatedly referred to the coup as being a 'Western provocation' and the 'provocation of the century'. Whether it was or not I don't know. I kept in touch with our Head of Chancery, Les Buchanan, and sounded him out over the phone before taking steps, but he certainly didn't give me any orders. Incidentally, a letter that I wrote to Les has disappeared from concealment in my home in Scotland. It was the only thing that I ever committed to writing on Mrs. MacDermott.

By the way, I was also married to Zhivkov's ex-mistress. I ws the subject of a front page article in a Bulgarian newspaper on 9th February 1996. In fact the journalists were pro-Zyuganov communists who were trying to get me to go public on Mrs. MacDermott. The headline in Bulgarian says: 'British agent divorces Tato's (i.e. Zhivkov's) mistress. Of course, I was never a British agent, I just made them an offer they couldn't refuse.


THE MARKOV AND MAXWELL MURDERS COME HOME TO ROOST IN WESTMISTER.

From: Gordon Logan
Date: 14 Feb 2000
Time: 14:27:04

Comments

The publication on the internet of report CX95/53452 on the Ghadafi assassination plot indicates another crack in the secret state. In Westminster, the Markov and Maxwell murders have also broken surface. Two weeks ago, I sent a rather detailed briefing to 39 Members of Parliament on the role of MI6 in instigating the 'Bulgarian' umbrella murder in 1978, and in the murder of Robert Maxwell, which cost the taxpayer 650 million quid (or three times the annual budget of MI6). The replies received so far are mainly from MPs or ministers that have already had run ins with the security services.

The MPs that have been co-opted into the Markov/Maxwell Murders Contact Group are:

Gerry Adams, Martin Bell, Stuart Bell, Tony Benn, Lord Bethell, Tony Blair, Paul Boateng, Gordon Brown, Ann Campbell, Dale Campbell-Savours, Charles Clarke, Iain Coleman, Robin Cook, Jeremy Corbyn, Frank Dobson, Jim Fitzpatrick, George Foulkes, Ian Gibson, William Haig, Peter Hain, Harriet Harman, Edward Heath, Patricia Hewitt, Margaret Hodge, Simon Hughes, Glenda Jackson, Tessa Jowell, Oona King, Gerald Kaufman, Martin Linton, Ken Livingstone, John Prescott, Marjorie Mowlam, Jeff Rooker, Brian Sedgemore, Clare Short, Jack Straw, Dennis Skinner, Teddy Taylor.

The text of the covering letter was:

Dear _____,

The Markov and Maxwell murders, which are in fact directly related, are the crown jewels of MI6 murders, and require revisiting. David Connett of theExpress and two other journalists came to see me to examine the material and have said that they would like to do a story on it. Whether they will be able to get it published is another matter.

The murder of Markov, whom the Bulgarians were tricked into killing by a double agent, aimed at the cynical exploitation of his widow, and displays the sustained evil and vanity of the secret state at its worst. Stalin himself would have been impressed. The obvious murder of Maxwell revealed the British media to be docile and invertebrate. Maxwell had selected a crew of ex-servicemen and ex-policemen thinking that MI6 would not dare to compromise them and itself. He was wrong. An obvious murder that would have been deemed clumsy and botched in most other countries of the world, sailed past the nose of the British public as an accident. No country deserves such sleepy politicians and newspapers - or such bloated and contemptuous security services.

Before he was murdered Markov wrote to a friend expressing doubts about our 'tattered democracy'. If he was wrong, you may like to table the following question to the Prime Minister:

'Baroness Park of MI6 clearly stated a few years ago on Panorama that an MI6 agent had brought about the murder of an un-named individual with the following sentence: "He's not very discreet, is he?" Would MI6 like to state the name of the individual whose murder was brought about in this fashion? If not, would MI6 care to deny that the victim was Georgi Markov, the anti-communist broadcaster who was murdered in London in 1978?'

I would be most grateful if you could ensure a brief acknowledgment of the receipt of this letter.

Yours sincerely,

Gordon Logan

Lastly, visitors to Shaylergate might like to know that Jane Tienne, the Cambridge lady who was, in her won words 'ruined' after trying to publish a book that merely suggested MI6 involvement in the Markov murder, is now incommunicado. I spoke to her twice. The first time she was animated and spoke freely. The second time, she was frightened. I passed her phone number to a few interested parties, so that they could hear the state that the security services had reduced her to. She was telephoned by some journalists wishing to get hold of a copy of the suppressed book, she refused, and her phone is now dead.

I posted an article entitle MI6 and the Markov and Maxwell Murders on 7th Jan. It's under six yards of spam (produced at taxpayers expense, I suspect), if you have the patience to scroll down that far.

Last changed: February 14, 2000


The Markov/Maxwell stain is spreading.

From: Gordon Logan
Date: 25 Feb 2000
Time: 00:16:35

Comments

I flew into Sofia, Bulgaria last Friday, planted a few mines, and left on Saturday night for the Emirates en route for Tashkent, where I am enjoying myself. On the night of my arrival, Russian TV News did a story on the Markov murder, and Robin Cook turned up a few days later in Moscow, to see Vladimir Putin about Chechnya, and also no doubt to see whether Putin would help to get MI6 out of the disastrous mess it has got itself into over the Markov and Maxwell murders.

The previous Thursday, a file of 120 pages arrived in the House of Commons. It has already been described by one MP as 'fascinating and frightening'. The following day, ex-President Bush telephoned ex-President Yeltsin, no doubt to tell him that the clowns of MI6 had fucked up totally and allowed the Moscow coup story to leak all over the place.

The question now is: When will Tony Blair (and the political class in general) decide to tackle the two security services, now that David Shayler and myself have proved that they are run by idiots and scoundrels?

For visitors who haven't read the article on the Markov and Maxwell murders, it was posted on Jan 7th on this Forum, and can be found under the spam.

Last changed: February 25, 2000


JOURNALISTS AND MPs, CLICK HERE!

From: Gordon Logan
Date: 15 Mar 2000
Time: 02:54:44

Comments

You have reached the right place. Some journalists have expressed interest in my articles on the Markov murder and the Moscow Coup. This is a twelve page article that recapitulates everything in the other articles I wrote. There is also additional material on the Moscow Coup. I will be visiting Bulgaria and Britain during the next three weeks. Anybody who wants to get in touch with me can find me at georgimarkov@hotmail.com.

I hear that MI6 Chief David Spedding is in the doghouse. I look forward to getting the rat out and into a less demanding job during the New Year. It seems that MI6 is spamming the site. Well, I've got news for you, guys and gals. You're too late, by a long chalk. What's more, if the spamming doesn't stop, this stuff will go up once a week. So bugger off and have a nice Christmas!

MI6 AND THE MURDERS OF GEORGI MARKOV AND ROBERT MAXWELL

1. The link between the murders of Georgi Markov and Robert Maxwell 

The murder of Robert Maxwell was MI6's most costly blunder (for Cap'n Bob's pensioners at least). A video of the second autopsy (the real one, for his life assurance) was made in Israel and was the subject of extensive coverage in Paris Match in January 1992. Maxwell had been beaten up in his state room so as to get him to divulge the numbers of the combination lock of his safe. He was finally stabbed in the abdomen and thrown overboard. Of course, all this was ignored by the British media, and certainly by Tom Bower.

Why was it considered necessary to murder Maxwell? Well, some weeks prior to his murder he had received a visit from Andrei Lukanov, the former communist Prime Minister of Bulgaria, who was probably Maxwell's closest associate in the Eastern Bloc. Lukanov gave Maxwell a selection of documents, including no doubt audio cassettes, from the Markov file. They documents related to the famous Bulgarian umbrella case - the murder of Bulgarian defector Georgi Markov in London in September 1978.

MI6 had paid the son of General Nanka Serkedzhieva, the keeper of the Bulgarian State Security archives, the sum of fifty thousand dollars in Singapore to have the file destroyed. (Thus, the trial of Gen. Vlado Todorov for the file's destruction was a charade. A copy of the Markov file existed in Moscow, and was hastily removed from public access at MI6's request after the Moscow coup of August 1991.) The murder of Markov on September 7th 1978 and the attempt to kill another defector, Vladimir Kostov, in Paris a few weeks earlier both involved the use of platinum pellets containing the very potent toxin, ricin.

Two Bulgarian defectors, two pellets - the culprits were obvious. The truth however is not so simple. The organiser of the killings was none other than a remarkable double agent, Mrs. Mercia Macdermott, who must certainly have been betrayed by Aldrich Ames in 1985, when her star in Bulgaria visibly began to decline. After her unmasking she remained in Bulgaria for a few more years as part of the cover-up.

Her detection provided the Bulgarian State Security with a trump card that stood it in very good steed in the years after the end of the Cold War. Mrs. Macdermott was (and is) a household name in Bulgaria. During the seventies she had distinguished herself by surpassing the efforts of the communist authors in writing readable biographies of the country's national heroes. She was greatly respected by Politburo Secretary for Ideology Alexander Lilov, who was at that time seeking (with KGB approval) to become the heir of the long-standing Bulgarian dictator, Todor Zhivkov.

It was decided to have Markov murdered on Zhivkov's birthday. Markov had been staked out in London prior to his murder by another elderly English lady, a Mrs. Bartlett, who of course had no idea she was really working for MI6. Immediately before the killing, Mrs. Bartlett was conveniently flown to Sofia, where she still lives.

The MI6 veteran, Baroness Park (now retired), in a remarkably indiscrete tribute to female secret agents, referred to the murder of Markov in a Panoramainterview a few years ago, when she explained how MI6 liked to get their enemies to do their dirty work for them. That Markov should be got rid of was suggested by one short sentence in Alexander Lilov's ear: "He's not very discrete, is he?" Mrs. Macdermott went on to steer matters to their final conclusion on Waterloo Bridge.

How did I come to learn these things? Well firstly, because in April 1991, I paid a visit to British Vice Consul Graham Wicks in his office, and put it to him that Mrs. Macdermott was behind the Markov murder. Graham did not react. I then told him that I had been told that Mrs. Macdermott had been a British agent. His reaction was dramatic. Graham's face literally turned grey, and seemed to age twenty years.

The attacks on Markov and Kostov were a brilliant propaganda coup for MI6, and were intended be the final masterpiece of Sir Maurice Oldfield, prior to his retirement. The problem of course was that the bachelor Oldfield had discounted Markov's wife, who had loved her husband very much, and has spent twenty years (and a large amount of money) trying to bring his murderers to book.

We shall pass over the appalling taste underlying the exploitation of Markov's widow for over twenty years for propaganda purposes.

In Bulgaria itself, the Markov skeleton has meant that the Bulgarian State Security has never been properly cleaned up, with devastating consequences for the country throughout the nineties (although things have improved somewhat in the last year or so).

Andrei Lukanov had been sent to Maxwell by Vladimir Kryuchkov, who was languishing with his associates in prison after the failure of the Moscow Coup of August 1991. Kryuchkov had been hoping to use Maxwell to pressure the British so that they in turn would pressure Yeltsin for leniency for the plotters. As it turns out, the plotters got leniency anyway. Had Maxwell lived, he would probably have got himself out of debt.

At the time, both Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch were investing heavily in satellite TV, which of course has proved to be a gold mine for Murdoch, and no doubt would have been one for Maxwell. Maxwell's family know that he was murdered and no doubt know who was responsible. Hence the remarkable charade of the Maxwell brothers' court case.

Over the last twenty years, dozens of MI6 officers and diplomats have been faced with the unpleasant task of lying to, and bamboozling Markov's widow, Annabel, and this has caused considerable resentment in the Foreign Office. It is no accident that Sir Richard Stagg, who is now our Ambassador to Sofia, was Cultural Attache there in the late seventies and early eighties and was involved in liaising with Mrs. Macdermott, through an intermediary of course. An old hand like Richard was most suitable for what remains a sticky posting.

(2) The murder of Georgi Markov 

I spent 12 years in Bulgaria, and, in the summer of 1984, almost suffered the same fate as Markov at the hands of Mrs. Macdermott, who appears to have tried to persuade the Bulgarians to liquidate me in circumstances that would have resulted in my ex-wife (with whom I had remained on good terms) appearing on the Six O'clock News bewailing my murder at the hands of the Bulgarians - just like Mrs. Markov. But that is another story.

What I state about the British involvement in the Markov case is fact, and most Sofia journalists have been briefed that there is a British involvement though they don't know quite what it is. Back in 1991, Vladimir Bereanu, a well-known TV journalist, who wrote an important book about the Markov case, tried to get me to tell him the truth, but I'd got involved in the cover-up, so I didn't tell him. His book was to have been published in Britain, but not surprisingly the deal was cancelled. To this day nothing of much substance has appeared in Britain about the Markov case. In Bulgaria, however, a lot of interesting bits and pieces have appeared over the years.

On 21st April 1991 on Bulgarian Television, the communists leaked the code names of two foreign nationals who had received medals for the Markov assassination. The leak was in fact aimed at embarrassing the Foreign Office, but was used to justify an official secrets clampdown in Bulgaria, which suited the communists fine, and continues to this day - because of the Macdermott case. The code names of the two foreigners were 'Hector' and 'Atanas'. It was disclosed that 'Hector' had received the Order of Cyril and Methodius (Second Class) and 'Atanas' had received the Order of the Red Banner of Labour. Now I know that Mrs. Macdermott, alias 'Hector', did indeed receive the medal.

In fact I know, as do all the other teachers who worked with her at the elite English Language School in Sofia, that the Headmistress of the school, a curmudgeon, refused to give Mrs. Macdermott the day off to go to the award ceremony in the Bulgarian parliament! Mrs. Bartlett was of course 'Atanas'. Has there been any official admission of the involvement of British subjects in the Markov case? Indeed there has, and it's on record. In 1985, the Observerdiscovered that there was an army officer working at the BBC for MI5, and that his job was to vet job applicants. This caused a bit of a stir at the time, and the officer concerned was forced to justify his presence at the BBC. He did so by announcing that one of his functions was to protect Eastern bloc defectors working at the BBC from hostile infiltrators - foreign OR British. To justify the vetting of Brits, he let slip that British citizens were known to have been involved in the Markov killing. Now this admission, although providing the officer with an excellent justification for his function, was a blunder. Were the British collaborators named? No. Were they questioned or arrested? Certainly not.

Why did MI5 not follow up on their lead? The reason is that those involved had to be protected. It might interest readers to know that that there was no air gun mounted in the umbrella. The famous umbrella is merely a part of the mythology. Before he died in hospital, Markov said that he had turned round to see the assailant picking up an umbrella. Of course the assassin hadn't dropped his weapon. In fact, the umbrella was merely a prop that the killer was to drop with his left hand so that he could bend down and pull out an air pistol with his right hand and shoot Markov at point blank range in the thigh. This artifice had been made necessary because of the survival of Vladimir Kostov, who had been shot in the back from about twenty yards in a Paris metro station a few weeks before. The Bulgarian intelligence chiefs in Sofia decided that the pellet can't have penetrated Kostov's clothes. In fact, it had entered Kostov's back but by a miracle he survived.

The failure of the attack on Kostov caused them to order the killer to shoot Markov at point blank range in the thigh, i.e. through only one layer of clothing. Kostov may well have been told about the British connection, but if he has, he's keeping quiet. Of course, the totally fictitious air gun mounted in the umbrella has become a part of Cold War spy mythology. They've even gone so far as to publish diagrams of a specially adapted umbrella that never existed! In fact, the term 'Bulgarian Umbrella' was used by the Bulgarian State Security mafia to refer to the immunity conferred on them by the Markov case.

I remember that in 1991, a former Bulgarian agent, who had defected and unwisely begun to write his memoirs, died in strange circumstances of an unusual viral infection in an Augsburg hospital. An anonymous Bulgarian visitor in a white coat threatened him as he lay dying, and later his family received threats in the name of the 'Bulgarian Umbrella'. Of course this unusual death received no publicity in the West. The Macdermott case had created a minefield.

As regards the Maxwell case, back in 1991 I had long conversations about Cold War secrets with retired (pro-monarchist) Bulgarian intelligence officers. We knew that Lukanov had copied the Markov file because it was reported in the Bulgarian newspapers not long before Lukanov left Sofia to visit Maxwell. I and my friends assumed that Lukanov gave Maxwell the file, simply because it was the natural thing to do. Maxwell was ideally suited to putting the file to use on behalf of the hardliners. The KGB involvement in the Markov murder was supervised by General Oleg Kalugin. Kalugin is an active reformer and has obligingly helped MI6 in the cover-up, in particular perpetuating the story about the non-existent 'poison' umbrella. (Although, incidentally, even he is on record as referring to the fact that there is something about the Markov case that the British want covered up.) According to Kalugin, it was Vladimir Kryuchkov himself, who as Head of the First Directorate, 'sold' Mrs. Macdermott's idea of the poison pellets to KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov. Kryuchkov was furious when he later discovered how the British had tricked him.

When I discovered (from a KGB agent) about Kryuchkov's fury, I got to work on it. The result was that I exposed Lilov's role in the Markov killing (amongst other things) in the Bulgarian press in early August 1991. There was a TV debate between CP boss Lilov and opposition leader Philip Dimitrov, who became Prime Minister a few months later and is now Ambassador to Washington. On the Tuesday before the Moscow Coup I visited Dimitrov in his office and told him to get in touch with the President to tell him that behind Lilov was a British agent provocateur, Mrs. Macdermott. The same day, President Zhelev fired the two chiefs of the Intelligence Service.

That night in Moscow, Vladimir Kryuchkov decided to launch his coup - instead of the State of Emergency which had been agreed on with Gorbachev and was to have been voted by the Supreme Soviet at the end of August. Thus there was a fundamental psychological split between Kryuchkov and the other plotters. None of them would have known about the Bulgarian connection - except probably KGB General Boris Pugo - and we all know what happened to him.

In this connection, one of the plotters, Gen. Varennikov has repeatedly referred to the coup as being a 'Western provocation' and the 'provocation of the century'. Whether it was or not I don't know. I kept in touch with our Head of Chancery, Les Buchanan, and sounded him out over the phone before taking steps, but he certainly didn't give me any orders.

(3) Peter Uvaliev and the murder of Georgi Markov

What was the reason for the deterioration in the attitude of MI6 chief Maurice Oldfield to Georgi Markov? Few people in Britain know about this, virtually all of them being MI5 or MI6 officers. Mrs. Markov probably knows that her husband was on poor terms with a man called Peter Uvaliev. Uvaliev, who died recently, was a man of many talents. Amongst other things he distinguished himself as a screenwriter. He had been a diplomat at the Bulgarian embassy in London after the war, and defected in 1947, and became well-connected with the British security services. Being well aware of the Great Wall that existed between the rather well-policed British media, and the leaky post-Zhivkov media, and feeling confident that nothing of what he said would be allowed to leak back into the British media, Uvaliev permitted himself some remarkable indiscretions in the Bulgarian newspapers.

As a superior of Markov at the BBC, he describes their poor relationship. He tells, amongst other things, how Markov had difficulty finding inspiration to write in London, and that Markov had not been very happy at the BBC, (not surprisingly with his superior Uvaliev as an enemy) and had been considering moving to Germany permanently, to work for Deutsche Welle and/or Radio Free Europe. Relations between Uvaliev and Markov were indeed so bad that at one point both believed the other to be a Bulgarian agent. (Perhaps Mrs. Markov remembers her husband talking about this).

In the confined hothouse of MI6, Uvaliev's hostility inevitably became Oldfield's hostility, all the more so since the murder of Markov would achieve enormous dividends for what is known in the trade as 'agent enhancement', and of course for the propaganda war, especially after the Bulgarians had failed to kill Markov twice, and Mrs. Macdermott intervened with the brilliant idea of the poison pellets, one for Kostov and one for Markov - obviously Lubyanka technology. The murder of Markov, initiated by Mrs. Macdermott through her puppet, Politburo Secretary for Ideology, (and KGB/MI6 supported candidate for Zhivkov's job) Alexander Lilov, would make them partners for life, as it were.

So true is this, even after her exposure 14 years ago, that Mrs. Macdermott, who to my knowledge has never returned to her beloved Bulgaria since 1989, continues to write Mr Lilov comradely letters of communist solidarity from time to time. These are of course for public show, and get printed in the communist press. Through Mrs. Macdermott, Oldfield was able to establish that Markov was indeed alone, and that he did not have any clandestine contact with the Bulgarian Intelligence. However, the hostility remained, and above all, a sacrifice was needed. As Baroness Park proudly told Panorama viewers, the crucial suggestion was conveyed by the sentence to Lilov, "He's not very discrete, is he?" The infernal machine was put into operation with the results that we all know.

Most people forget that there was a second sudden death in the BBC Bulgarian service in September 1978 that went virtually unnoticed. Vladimir Simeonov, a colleague of Markov's, was found dead in his home soon after the Markov murder. He had been questioned by Scotland Yard in connection with Markov's death for all of two days. Simeonov didn't drink, but there were two washed glasses in the sink with no fingerprints. The mark of a bottle was on the tablecloth, but the bottle was missing. That was how Scotland Yard protected its witnesses in those days. To this day, Scotland Yard has said nothing about those two days of interrogation, and there seems to have been no attempt to identify Simeonov's last visitor. If, as is likely, Simeonov was working for the Bulgarians, wouldn't he have been more useful to Scotland Yard alive?

Before we finish with the salient points of the Markov case, it might be worthwhile quoting the seemingly enigmatic words of communist Interior Minister Semerdzhiev in 1991, who admitted that some of his Ministry's officers 'may have been involved in the Markov case", but categorically denied that they had organized it. Quite right, the murder of Georgi Markov was a straightforward case of sub-contracting. Having paid in 1991 for the destruction of the Markov File, and murdered Robert Maxwell in order to get hold of the copy of the file given to him by former communist Prime Minister Andrei Lukanov, the Security Services have managed to sell the idea that an investigation cannot proceed without the requisite KGB file. This fudge has been raised again in the recent case of Melitta Norwood, the atom spy, and seems to have become a permanent addition to the 'armory'of the security services. No file, no case. In effect, the only acceptable form of evidence has become documents provided the guilty party. The reader can imagine the judicial paralysis that would arise if that absurd principle was applied across the board.

The truth is that the Security Services have too often been mired by court cases, and would much rather use more effective and discrete instruments for dealing with people they don't like, such as troublesome MPs. Targets can be damaged or destroyed by their many friends in the media, for example. Few MPs would relish the enmity of the Security Service, and blackmail is not merely the prerogative of party whips. The age of digitalization and 'techint' provides a remarkable range of new and easy opportunities for discrete and deniable personal surveillance and intervention. Targets simply start being unlucky! Unfortunately these methods proved unsuccessful in dealing with real enemies, such as terrorists, as the repeated bombing of London by the IRA has proved.

(4) The murder of Lyudmila Zhivkova

The prerequisite for the British involvement in the Markov murder was of course the remarkable influence of Mrs. Macdermott over Alexander Lilov, Politburo Secretary for Ideology. Lilov's responsibility for ideology meant that that in the highly centralized system he was directly responsible for control over dissident elements (like Markov), with access to the enormous files of the Sixth Directorate on millions of Bulgarians.

Lilov was also responsible for orthodoxy in the media and the arts, including writers, artists and film-makers. He was above all backed by both the KGB and the British Intelligence Service for the top job - that of General Secretary of the Politburo - Zhivkov's job. Clearly it would have been of considerable benefit to the West, if Mrs. Macdermott's 'puppet' could be both protected and, at a suitable time, promoted.

Unfortunately, at the beginning of the Eighties, a crisis in Lilov's career began to develop. Lilov was very close to Zhivkov's daughter, Lyudmila. In fact, he had been her lover, and had used her to climb the party hierarchy by leaps and bounds. Lyudmila was also a member of the Politburo, and held the position of Minister of Culture.

Now Lyudmila, although very close indeed to Lilov, was in fact his rival in every respect, though she was too naïve to realize it. She regularly used to extricate writers and artists from the clutches of the much feared Sixth Directorate. She promoted oriental philosophy and 'decadent' art forms, travelling around the world and organizing outlandish exhibitions in Sofia on her return. None of these enterprises required direct support from Lilov, in particular since Lyudmila used General Tincho Vodenicharov, who worked in the State Council with Zhivkov, to get support directly from her father if needed. Thus she, as Minister of Culture, and Lilov, as Politburo ideology secretary did not come into direct conflict. Indeed, she regarded Lilov as her closest ally in the Politburo.

In 1981, however, matters reached a crisis. Lyudmila, who was perceived by both the KGB and the Intelligence Service as a serious threat to Lilov's ambitions, asked him to call a meeting of the Politburo at short notice, in her father's absence, and move that the members of the Politburo vote to have Lyudmila replace her father as General Secretary. Of course it was a crackpot scheme, and Lilov betrayed Ludmila, and leaked her naïve proposal to the Russians certainly, though probably not to Zhivkov, for fear of alienating Lyudmila.

However, one way or another, Zhivkov got to know, and had a dreadful row with his daughter. She realized that only Lilov could have betrayed her, and overnight Lyudmila, on whom Lilov had depended so much in the past, became his mortal enemy. The KGB realized that the conflict between father and daughter would soon be healed, but that Lilov's career, dependent on the caprices of the Zhivkovs, was finished.

As a result, the decision was taken to poison Lyudmila. She went into a rapid decline, which is described by her father, and died on 21st July 1991. One source in Sofia claimed that she had been poisoned by means of a French perfume spray, given as a present to her by Lilov personally.

The above story was probably the most terrible secret of Zhivkov's Bulgaria, and Bulgarians now believe that many people were eliminated in order to guard the secret. They include both the above-mentioned General Vodenicharov, and State Security General Kashev. I learnt the story from a retired military counter-intelligence officer, who had been a close personal friend of General Vodenicharov. I didn't publish it until December 1991. After receiving some copies of the newspaper direct from the printers, I walked round to the Parliament and gave them to a Communist MP whom I knew, Elena Poptodorova.

I then went home and turned on the TV. The parliament proceedings were being shown live. Interestingly enough, Alexander Lilov wasn't sitting in his leader's seat on the front bench. He was sitting, visibly slumped, on a back bench. I mentioned above that the Intelligence Service had no interest in seeing Lyudmila supplant Zhivkov, since Lilov was 'their man', owing to his confidence in Mrs. Macdermott, which had been greatly enhanced by the Markov murder - a very effective warning to Bulgarian defectors throughout the world not to step out of line.

The question then arises: did Mrs. Macdermott have anything to do with Lyudmila's murder? Clearly Lyudmila's ambitions had been an accident waiting to happen for Lilov, and therefore for the British Intelligence Service. Did Mrs. Macdermott seek to challenge Lyudmila's cultural policy in any way? Indeed she did, in fact I was told that she used her influence behind the scenes to destroy the career of Bulgaria's most talented film director, Georgi Dyulgherov, who was banished to a provincial theatre, and has remained a nonentity to this day.

But did she play a role in bringing about the murder of Lyudmila? It is possible. I remember a conversation that I had in 1981 with the well-known journalist (and MI6 agent) Nora Beloff, who had visited me at home at the time of Lyudmila's funeral. Nora simply said, "Oh, the Russians murdered her of course!" The confidence with which this was said surprised me, and I challenged her, but she was adamant.

In 1991, as things began to leak out, I remembered the conversation with Nora, and wondered how it was that MI6 had received accurate news so quickly of the Soviet involvement in Lyudmila's murder - this was not the sort of information that Moscow Centre would have passed on even to Oleg Gordievsky, and Nora had got it within a day or two of the death of Lyudmila. How had that been possible?

I also remembered Mrs. Macdermott at parties with Bulgarians. She was a devoted defender of a nationalist communist orthodoxy that she made all her own. Alternately praising the Bulgaria's national heroes (whom she had become the top authority on) and carping on about how they were insufficiently respected by the up and coming cultural whippersnappers (whom Lyudmila was defending). Indeed, the only sort of culture Mercia had any time for was old Bulgarian folk songs about national heroes - the sort of stuff that Lilov had pouring out of every radio in every shop and restaurant.

There were many opportunities for compromising Lyudmila. The fact that she had studied history at Oxford, then the home town of Mrs. Macdermott (and of course other MI6 people) suggested a long-standing MI6 interest in Zhivkov's daughter. Perhaps her decadent cultural interests had been encouraged. It would have been easy for MI6 to facilitate some of the many international invitations she received. Lyudmila was indeed invited everywhere - like no other Eastern bloc politician.

When I began my investigation of Lilov in April 1991, I had no suspicions regarding Intelligence Service involvement in the murder of Lyudmila. Those suspicions were aroused in June 1991 quite by accident, when I telephoned our Head of Chancery, Les Buchanan, and after exchanging a few greetings, I told him, "By the way, it seems that Alexander Lilov is behind the murder of Lyudmila Zhivkova."

Les let out a gasp of shock over the phone - as if it was a British secret, as well as Lilov's. I was very surprised by his reaction. Nora Belov had been so casual and matter of fact when she had told me in July 1981 that the KGB had killed Lyudmila, and now ten years on our Head of Chancery was reacting with shock. Why should a British diplomat give a toss in 1991 about who killed Lyudmila Zhivkova ten years earlier?

Last changed: March 15, 2000


MI6 and the Markov and Maxwell Murders

From: Gordon Logan
Date: 14 Mar 2000
Time: 07:13:19

Comments

This article is a part of a 120-page file which was placed in the documents section of the House of Commons Library a month ago. The first postings on the subject appeared on the Forum in November and were the reason for the avalanche of spam that has hit the Forum since. Vladimir 'Kompromat' Putin made sure that a story on the Markov case appeared on Moscow TV News a few days before the arrival of Robin Cook in Moscow last month, thus ensuring the docility of Cook and Blair on the Chechnya war crimes. Putin holds both copies of the Markov file, the Sofia copy having been taken to Moscow in May 1990, after MI6 paid $50,000 to the the Bulgarians for its concealment.

HOW MI6 TRICKED THE BULGARIANS INTO MURDERING GEORGI MARKOV

Summary: This story is at present being investigated by a national newspaper. The author spent twelve years in Bulgaria from 1980 to 1992. He investigated the ‘Bulgarian umbrella’ murder (of defector Georgi Markov in 1978). An MI6 double agent was responsible for tricking the Bulgarian communists into killing Georgi Markov in London in 1978, in circumstances that would clearly identify the culprits, thus creating a unique propaganda opportunity.

In 1985, MI5 announced that British subjects were involved in the Markov murder. In 1991, the Bulgarian Television announced the code names of two non-Bulgarians that received medals in 1979 for their involvement in the Markov murder. The author identifies the two agents, one of whom was a British double agent who now lives in Britain. Baroness Park referred to the agent, a woman, on Panorama in 1994, when praising the work of female agents in the Cold War, and also described her role in causing a murder, which was in fact the Markov murder. The agent was betrayed by CIA officer Aldrich Ames to the KGB in 1985.

Robert Maxwell was murdered by MI6 in 1991 because, eight weeks prior to his death, he had received transcripts and audio cassettes of the agent’s interrogation that would have incriminated MI6. The widow of Georgi Markov has been manipulated by the British security services for over twenty years, spending a large amount of her own money in futile attempts to bring her husband’s murderers to justice.

1. The link between the murders of Georgi Markov and Robert Maxwell

The murder of Robert Maxwell was MI6's most costly blunder (for Cap'n Bob's pensioners at least). A video of the second autopsy (the real one, for his life assurance) was made in Israel and was the subject of extensive coverage in the French magazine Paris Match in January 1992. Maxwell had been beaten up in his state room so as to get him to divulge the numbers of the combination lock of his safe. He was finally stabbed in the abdomen and thrown overboard. Of course, all this was ignored by the British media, and certainly by Maxwell’s MI6 approved biographer Tom Bower.

Why was it considered necessary to murder Maxwell? Well, eight weeks prior to his murder he had received a visit from Andrei Lukanov, the former communist Prime Minister of Bulgaria, who was probably Maxwell's closest associate in the Eastern Bloc. Lukanov gave Maxwell a selection of documents, including no doubt audio cassettes, from the Markov file.

The documents related to the famous Bulgarian umbrella case - the murder of Bulgarian defector Georgi Markov in London in September 1978. In 1991, MI6 had paid a Bulgarian state security officer the sum of fifty thousand dollars in Singapore to have the file concealed. A copy of the Markov file existed in the central KGB files in Moscow, and was hastily removed from public access at MI6's request after the Moscow coup of August 1991.

In fact, two defectors were attacked in 1978: Markov on September 7th and another defector, Vladimir Kostov, in Paris a few weeks earlier. Both attacks involved the use of platinum pellets containing the very potent toxin, ricin. Two Bulgarian defectors, two pellets - the culprits were obvious. The truth however is not so simple. The organiser of the killings was none other than a remarkable British double agent, Mrs. Mercia Macdermott, who must certainly have been betrayed by Aldrich Ames in 1985, when her star in Bulgaria visibly began to decline. After her unmasking she remained in Bulgaria for a few more years as part of the cover-up. Her detection provided the Bulgarian State Security with a trump card that permitted it to take outrageous liberties with the Markov investigation after the end of the Cold War.

Mrs. Macdermott was and is a well-known name in Bulgaria. During the seventies Mrs. Macdermott distinguished herself by surpassing the efforts of communist hacks in writing readable biographies of the country's national heroes, and became known in the Bulgarian press as ‘Bulgaria’s great friend’. She was greatly respected by Alexander Lilov, Politburo member responsible for ideology (and dissidents), who in 1978 was seeking (with KGB approval) to become the heir of the long-standing Bulgarian dictator, Todor Zhivkov. It was decided to have Markov murdered on Zhivkov's birthday. Markov had been staked out in London prior to his murder by another elderly English lady, a Mrs Bartlett, who of course had no idea she was really working for MI6. Immediately before the killing, Mrs. Bartlett was conveniently flown to Sofia, where she still lives.

The MI6 veteran, Baroness Park (now retired), in a remarkably indiscrete tribute to female secret agents, referred to the murder of Markov in a Panorama interview a few years ago, when she explained how MI6 liked to get their enemies to do their dirty work for them. That Markov should be got rid of was suggested by one short sentence in Alexander Lilov’s ear: "He's not very discrete, is he?" Once the communists had failed twice to kill Markov, Mrs. Macdermott intervened a second time with the cunning suggestion of the tell-tale poison pellets, which resulted in the attacks of Kostov and Markov.

In April 1991, in order to get conclusive confirmation that Mrs. Macdermott was indeed involved in the Markov murder, and was really an MI6 agent, I paid a visit to British Vice Consul Graham Wicks at the British embassy in Sofia. I put it to him that Mrs. Macdermott was behind the Markov murder. Graham reacted very calmly, as if this was old news, and expressed no surprise at all. I then told him that I had heard that Mrs. Macdermott had been a British agent. The change was, to say the least, dramatic. Graham was very shocked, his face literally turning grey. He did not even venture a denial.

The attacks on Markov and Kostov were a brilliant propaganda coup for MI6, and were intended be the final masterpiece of Director-General Sir Maurice Oldfield, prior to his retirement. The problem of course was that the bachelor Oldfield had discounted Markov's wife, who had loved her husband very much, and has spent twenty years (and a large amount of money) trying to bring his murderers to book. We shall pass over the appalling taste underlying the exploitation of Markov's widow for over twenty years for propaganda purposes. In Bulgaria itself, the Markov skeleton has meant that the Bulgarian State Security has never been properly cleaned up, with devastating consequences for the country throughout the nineties (although things have improved somewhat in the last year or so).

Andrei Lukanov had been sent to Maxwell by Vladimir Kryuchkov, who was languishing with his associates in prison after the failure of the Moscow Coup of August 1991. Kryuchkov had been hoping to use Maxwell’s influence as the owner of some of Britains’s leading newspapers to force the Foreign Office to pressure Yeltsin for leniency for the plotters. In fact, Kryuchkov himself risked being murdered like his KGB colleague General Pugo, and was hoping to use Maxwell for ‘life assurance’. As it turns out, the plotters got leniency anyway. Had Maxwell lived, he would probably have got himself out of debt. At the time, both Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch were investing heavily in satellite TV, which of course has proved to be a gold mine for Murdoch, and no doubt would have been one for Maxwell. Maxwell's family know that he was murdered and no doubt know who was responsible. Hence the remarkable charade of the Maxwell brothers' court case, and the panache with which they have trounced the DTI.

Over the last twenty years, dozens of MI6 officers and diplomats have been faced with the unpleasant task of lying to, and bamboozling Markov's widow, Annabel, and this has caused considerable resentment in the Foreign Office.

2. The murder of Georgi Markov

Since the fall of communism, most Bulgarian political journalists have been briefed that there is a British involvement in the Markov murder, though they don't know quite what it is. To this day, nothing of substance has appeared in Britain about the Markov case. In Bulgaria, however, a lot of contradictory and sometimes interesting bits and pieces have appeared over the years.

On 24th April 1991 on Bulgarian Television, the communists leaked the code names of two foreign nationals who had received medals for the Markov assassination. The leak was in fact aimed at embarrassing the Foreign Office, but was used to justify an official secrets clampdown in Bulgaria, which suited the communists fine, and continues to this day - because of the Macdermott case. The code names of the two foreigners were 'Hector' and 'Atanas'. It was disclosed that 'Hector' had received the Order of Cyril and Methodius (Second Class) and 'Atanas' had received the Order of the Red Banner of Labour. Now I know that Mrs. Macdermott, alias 'Hector', did indeed receive the medal. In fact I know, as do all the other teachers who worked with her at the elite English Language School in Sofia, that the Headmistress of the school, a curmudgeon, refused to give Mrs. Macdermott the day off to go to the award ceremony in the Bulgarian parliament! Mrs. Bartlett was of course 'Atanas'.

Has there been any official admission of the involvement of British subjects in the Markov case? Indeed there has, and it's on record. In 1985, the Observerdiscovered that there was an army officer working at the BBC for MI5, and that his job was to vet job applicants. This caused a bit of a stir at the time, and the officer concerned was forced to justify his presence at the BBC. He did so by announcing that one of his functions was to protect Eastern bloc defectors working at the BBC from hostile infiltrators - foreign OR British. To justify the vetting of Brits, he let slip that British citizens were known to have been involved in the Markov killing. Now this admission, although providing the officer with an excellent justification for his function, was a blunder. Were the British collaborators named? No. Were they questioned or arrested? Certainly not. Why did MI5 not follow up on their lead? The reason is that those involved had to be protected.

It might interest readers to know that that there was no air gun mounted in the umbrella. The famous umbrella is merely a part of the mythology. Before he died in hospital, Markov said that he had turned round to see the assailant picking up an umbrella. Of course the assassin hadn't dropped his weapon. In fact, the umbrella was merely a prop that the killer was to drop with his left hand so that he could bend down and pull out an air pistol with his right hand and shoot Markov at point blank range in the thigh.

This artifice had been made necessary because of the survival of Vladimir Kostov, who had been shot in the back from about twenty yards in a Paris metro station a few weeks before. The Bulgarian intelligence chiefs in Sofia decided that the pellet can't have penetrated Kostov's clothes. In fact, it had entered Kostov's back but by a miracle he survived. The failure of the attack on Kostov caused them to order the killer to shoot Markov at point blank range in the thigh, i.e. through only one layer of clothing. Kostov may well have been told about the British connection, but if he has, he's keeping quiet. Of course, the totally fictitious air gun mounted in the umbrella has become a part of Cold War spy mythology. They've even gone so far as to publish diagrams of a specially adapted umbrella that never existed!

In fact, the term 'Bulgarian Umbrella' was used by the Bulgarian State Security mafia to refer to the immunity conferred on them by the Markov case. In early 1992, a former Bulgarian agent, Pencho Spassov, who had defected and unwisely begun to write on the Markov case, died only four weeks later of an incurable and undiagnosed fever in an Augsburg hospital. An anonymous visitor in a white coat approached Spassov as he lay dying and told him he would not survive more that five days. Later his family received threats in the name of the 'Bulgarian Umbrella'. Of course this unusual death received no publicity in the West. Mrs. Macdermott had created a minefield in which anyone who strayed was liable to be murdered.

3. Peter Uvaliev and the murder of Georgi Markov

What was the reason for the deterioration in the attitude of MI6 chief Maurice Oldfield to Georgi Markov? Mrs. Markov knows that her husband was on poor terms with a man called Peter Uvaliev. Uvaliev, who died recently, was a scholar, essayist, scriptwriter, who also broadcast, like Markov, on the Bulgarian Service of the BBC. He had been a diplomat at the Bulgarian embassy in London after the war, and defected in 1947, and became well-connected with the British security services.

In 1969, Uvaliev lured Markov out of Bulgaria with promises that he would help him to become a screen writer for the Italian cinema. After the fall of communism, being well aware of the wall that existed between the rather well-policed British media, and the leaky post-Zhivkov media, and feeling confident that nothing of what he said would be allowed to leak back into the British media, Uvaliev permitted himself some remarkable indiscretions in the Bulgarian newspapers, in a series of interviews in which he did nothing the conceal his hatred of Markov.

Five years after the fall of communism, referring to Markov’s broadcasts, he said, "I am against anybody that writes against Bulgaria. Such authors have to know that they are spitting in the wind, and that they will get it back in the face". At one point, he even suggests to his audience of unreconstructed communists that Markov might not have been murdered at all, and goes to far as to suggest that "Markov’s heirs" were out to make "easy money".

Uvaliev also tells, amongst other things, how Markov had difficulty finding inspiration to write in London, and that he had been unhappy at the BBC, (not surprisingly with the influential Uvaliev as an enemy). Relations between Uvaliev and Markov were indeed so bad that at one point both believed the other to be a Bulgarian agent

In the confined hothouse of MI6, Uvaliev's hostility inevitably became Oldfield's hostility, all the more so since the murder of Markov would improve Mrs. Macdermott’s standing with the communist State Security, and of course provide excellent material for the propaganda war, especially after the communists had failed to kill Markov twice, and Mrs. Macdermott intervened with the cunning idea of the poison pellets, one for Kostov and one for Markov - obviously KGB technology.

The murder of Markov, initiated by Mrs. Macdermott through her puppet, Alexander Lilov, a leading Politburo member, (and KGB/MI6 supported candidate for Dictator Zhivkov's job), would make them partners for life, as it were. So true is this, even after her exposure 15 years ago, that Mrs. Macdermott, who to my knowledge has never returned to her beloved Bulgaria since 1989, has written Lilov several comradely letters of communist solidarity. These are of course for public show, and get printed in the communist press.

Through Mrs. Macdermott, Oldfield was able to establish that Markov was indeed alone, and was not passing information to Bulgarian Intelligence. Not only that, he discovered that the Bulgarian defector, well known for his broadcasts criticizing the communist satraps, had been homesick, and in a fit of depression had sent a secret letter to Sofia, asking how many years he would have to serve in prison if he went back home. Markov was not the sort of defector they like in MI6.

Markov had nothing going for him amongst MI6’s cold warriors, after hundreds of anti-communist broadcasts he was a squeezed lemon that could be thrown away. Morover, a sacrifice was needed - good for Fleet Street, good for the Free World. As Baroness Park proudly told Panorama viewers, the crucial suggestion was conveyed by the sentence to Lilov, "He's not very discrete, is he?" She was dead right, Georgi Markov hadn’t been at all discrete. Tricking the communists into killing him can’t have been very difficult..

Most people forget that there was a second sudden death in the BBC Bulgarian service in September 1978 that went virtually unnoticed. Vladimir Simeonov, a young colleague of Markov’s, was found dead in his home soon after the Markov murder. He had been questioned by Scotland Yard in connection with Markov’s death for all of two days. Simeonov didn’t drink, but there were two washed glasses in the sink with no fingerprints. The mark of a bottle was on the tablecloth, but the bottle was missing. Somebody (from the BBC?) had paid Simeonov a visit, no doubt to get him to drink ‘to the memory of poor Georgi’.

That was how Scotland Yard protected its witnesses in those days. To this day, Scotland Yard has said nothing about those two days of interrogation, and there seems to have been no attempt to identify Simeonov’s last visitor. If, as is likely, Simeonov was working for the Bulgarians, wouldn’t he have been more useful to Scotland Yard alive?

Before we finish with the salient points of the Markov case, it might be worthwhile quoting the seemingly enigmatic words of communist Interior Minister Semerdzhiev in 1991, who admitted that some of his Ministry’s officers ‘may have been involved in the Markov case", but categorically denied that they had organized it. Quite right, the murder of Georgi Markov was a straightforward case of sub-contracting.

4. Conclusion

Having paid in 1991 for the disappearance of the Markov File, and murdered Robert Maxwell in order to get hold of the material from the file given to him by former communist Prime Minister Andrei Lukanov, the Security Services have managed to sell the idea that an investigation cannot proceed without the requisite KGB file. This fudge has been raised again in the recent case of Melitta Norwood, the atom spy, and seems to have become a permanent addition to the ‘armory’ of the security services. No file, no case. In effect, the only acceptable form of evidence has become documents provided by the guilty party. The reader can imagine the judicial paralysis that would arise if that absurd principle was applied across the board.

The truth is that the Security Services have too often been mired by court cases, and would much rather use more effective and discrete instruments for dealing with people they don’t like, such as troublesome MPs. Targets can be damaged or destroyed by their many friends in the media, for example. Few MPs would relish the enmity of the Security Services, and blackmail is not merely the prerogative of party whips. The age of digitalization and ‘techint’ provides a remarkable range of new and easy opportunities for discrete and deniable personal surveillance and intervention. Unfortunately these methods have proved unsuccessful in dealing with real enemies, such as terrorists, as the repeated bombing of London by the IRA has proved. The total inability of the massive secret state to deal with the epidemic of illegal drug importation and manufacture is common knowledge. Its control of the mass media is however impeccable.

Markov’s murder was not only a monstrous crime, but a blunder on the part of MI6, because Maurice Oldfield hadn’t asked himself what the consequences would be if Mrs. Macdermott were to be discovered. The identification of Mrs. Macdermott as a British agent gave the KGB a very strong card, entirely because of her involvement in the murder of Georgi Markov. Her other operations were not ones that the KGB had any desire to disclose. The Markov murder was very different however. A leak there would partially exonerate the KGB and the Bulgarian communists, while at the same time exposing MI6 to a tide of public criticism in Britain, with Markov’s aggrieved widow playing the key role. This is the sort of thing that tabloids would still find irresistable - if we in fact have a free press…

Gordon Logan - January 2000

e-mail: gordonehil@hotmail.com

Postscript MI6, through their agent Mrs. Macdermott, tried to trick the Bulgarians into murdering the author in similar circumstances to Markov’s in the summer of 1984. Television viewers would have seen the author’s wife on the Six O’Clock News bewailing his death at the hands of the ‘Bulgarians’. The Markov case is directly involved with the conspiracy that led to the foiling of the August 1991 coup in Moscow.

Last changed: March 14, 2000


AND HERE

From: Gordon Logan
Date: 15 Mar 2000
Time: 03:02:42

Comments

5. The campaign to forcibly change the names of Bulgarian Turks.

After examining the possible role of MI6 in the murders of Robert Maxwell, Georgi Markov and Lyudmila Zhivkova, I would like to look at another likely MI6 operation, made possible by the influence of British agent, Mercia Macdermott over Bulgarian Politburo Secretary for Ideology, Alexander Lilov.

This operation, although not directly involving murders, did have very serious consequences for the Bulgarian Turkish population, and was a tragedy for several dozen families who lost loved ones during the disorders. In terms of the trouble it caused, it surpassed by far the murders of Georgi Markov and Lyudmila Zhivkova.

After the murder of Lyudmila Zhivkova, which MI6 knew all about as soon as it happened, although Moscow Centre would not have briefed KGB officers like Oleg Gordievsky, Alexander Lilov survived in the Politburo until 1983, when he was put into cold storage by the KGB, which was going to need a "Mr Clean" in preparation for the change of guard after Zhivkov's removal. When he was dropped by Zhivkov in 1983, Lilov retained all his privileges and was put in charge of a specially created Central Committee social policy think tank. To call it a think tank is to exaggerate - the lack of new ideas on anything social (or economic) was obvious throughout the the Eastern bloc.

It was in this environment of total intellectual stagnation that, strangely enough, a new 'social' idea actually did manage to surface about 1983. The idea was, with hindsight, idiotic and outrageous, but the Bulgarian Communist Party and the Ministry of the Interior went for it with a will. The idea related to a very sensitive area of language policy, and involved requiring the Muslim Turkish population to change their names to Bulgarian ones - an absurd idea since the Bulgarian Turks had constituted a docile, hardworking and relatively prosperous part of the provincial population of Bulgaria since the communist takeover in 1944. In short, the changing of names campaign addressed a problem that didn't exist, and created a very serious problem for the hundreds of thousand of Turkish Bulgarians required to change their Muslim names, as well as for the Ministry of the Interior and the country's economy.

Such a ludicrous policy had never been applied in the Eastern Bloc before. Even Lenin and Stalin had been very careful not to encroach on the religious sensibilities of Muslims, while cheerfully blowing up churches and shooting priests. The significance of the changing of names campaign has been overlooked, which is surprising, since in fact it marked the return of ethnic cleansing to the Balkans after an absence of several generations.

In the nineties Slobodan Milosovic took a road that had been already signposted by the Bulgarian communists. The process proper began in 1984 and as a result there were many demonstrations, a few shootings and finally a mass exodus of offended Muslims to Turkey that continued in sporadic waves up until a final large wave in 1989.

According to Bulgarians I spoke to, who had been in the Turkish-speaking areas, there were in fact two forces at play - that of the Bulgarian Ministry of the Interior, and also that of the Turkish Intelligence Service, which had contacted the elders of the Turkish villages and persuaded many of them to order their populations to sell everything and move to a supposedly better life in Turkey.

The Muslims were thus being subjected to a push-pull process. This seeming cooperation between Communist Bulgaria and Nato Turkey was curious, as was the whole name changing process. Consequently, during 1991 in Sofia, the question was often asked: "But whose idea was this changing of names?" Nobody had an answer, even though amongst the communists and even the general population, many people approved of it.

In fact, there was a small radical movement (OKZNI) rooted in the old State Security mafia, the main platform of which was support for the name-changing. There was a persistent rumour that the idea had not been a Bulgarian one, and some even suggested that it might be Russian. However, as I mentioned above, the Russians had never tried to do anything so stupid.

There was also a rumour that Alexander Lilov was responsible. Now that made sense, simply because Lilov had been the top man in charge of ideological (and social) issues in the early Eighties, and had continued to play a leading role behind the scenes at the head of his social policy think tank. In fact, Lilov's was the only name that cropped up as a possible instigator of the name-changing policy.

As I gathered information about him in 1991, it became clear that, as in the case of the murders of Georgi Markov and Lyudmila Zhivkova, he was a real Teflon don. He was obviously the first person who should have been asked about his role in the changing of names, but he never was. Indeed my conversations with newspaper editors and the intelligence community revealed that behind the scenes he was by far the most feared politician in Bulgaria, even in 1991. The most fearless of editors, former spy Alexander Alexandrov, said to me, "I don't dare touch him."

Back in early 1985, I had been thrown out of Bulgaria, in spite of my (second) marriage to a Bulgarian. Without going into all the details, I had noticed a curious synergy between the Bulgarian authorities and the British embassy in belabouring me with difficulties. When I returned to Britain, I wrote to the British Council on the matter, since they had sent me to Bulgaria in the first place. Surprisingly, I received no answer from them.

At the end of 1985, in November, I managed to return to Bulgaria, thanks to intercession of Zhivkov himself, who had turned out to be my wife's former lover! It had become clear to me, that I could only address my problems with the British diplomats in Sofia by dealing with them face to face. I went up to London, and before leaving for Sofia, I dropped in at the British Council in Tottenham Court Road and asked to see whoever was in charge of Bulgaria. I was shown into the office of the man 'in charge of Bulgaria'. His name was Anthony Lewis.

We got talking and I mentioned some of my problems without really pushing things very hard, because Lewis was proving to be very talkative. I gave him his head, and found that, for a specialist in English teaching, Anthony was very political indeed, and passionate with it. He asked me whether I had heard that the Bulgarians were 'exterminating' the Turks. I said I had heard something about name changing, but nothing about extermination. Anthony went on at length about shootings and extermination.

However, what was surprising in the way he spoke was that he did not express any distress at all. On the contrary, his eyes not only had a definite mischievous look, I had the clear impression that he was gloating! Anyway, after half an hour, I bade him farewell and left for Sofia, and forgot all about it.

(Strangely enough, Anthony was to reappear in Saudi Arabia as British Council Director in 1995, some time after my arrival there and was to stay there until recently, leaving just a month or two before I was thrown out of my job as Supervisor of the Royal Saudi Navy's English Language Training Program in Dammam at the personal order of the Chief of Saudi Intelligence, who had been maliciously (and incorrectly) told by our Embassy that I was a Russian spy. But that is another story.)

So the question remains. Whose idea was the changing of names? Nobody has taken 'credit' for it, although Zhivkov accepted 'responsibility' before he died. He was quite unrepentant, since his platform is that of a sort of 'national communism', a fairly common right wing tendency in the former Eastern bloc. My own conviction , as the reader will have guessed, is that Mrs. Macdermott fed the name-changing idea to Alexander Lilov in 1983.

The idea is totally in line with her professed Bulgarian nationalism - she was a foe of anything to do with the Ottoman Empire, and had spent much of her life writing against all things Turkish. Then of course, there was the persistent rumour throughout Sofia to the effect that the idea had never been a Bulgarian one - perhaps Russian but not Bulgarian. And lastly there was the mischievous, gloating Anthony Lewis, in charge of Bulgaria two thousand miles away in London at the British Council - a specialist body providing governments of developing countries with help, amongst other things, on language policy.

6. The links between events in Sofia and the Moscow Coup of August 1991

(1) The fact that Mrs. Macdermott's main function for MI6 was as an agent provocateur suggests that the value of the information that she was able to obtain was relatively limited. Agents in place that obtain high grade information are not usually used as agent provocateurs. Mrs. Macdermott's limitations were very much a result of the limitations of Alexander Lilov's responsibilities.

Lilov was not involved in the military decision-making of the Warsaw Pact, and had no access to secrets of military technology. The identification of Mrs. Macdermott as a British agent gave the KGB a very strong card, entirely because of her involvement in the murder of Georgi Markov. Her other operations were not ones that the KGB had any desire to disclose. The Markov murder was very different however. A leak there would partially exonerate the KGB and the Bulgarian communists, while at the same time exposing MI6 to a tide of public criticism in Britain, with Markov's aggrieved widow playing the key role.

This is the sort of thing that tabloids would still find irresistable. Markov's murder was a blunder on the part of MI6, because Maurice Oldfield hadn't asked himself what the consequences would be if Mrs. Macdermott were to be discovered. The consequences were in fact totally negative until I intervened in the summer of 1991, and made our Head of Chancery, Les Buchanan, an offer he couldn't refuse: that of exposing Lilov and covering up Mrs. Macdermott, which I did in a series of newspaper articles.

At the summit meeting in Malta in December 1989 between President Bush and General Secretary Gorbachev, it was secretly agreed that Bulgaria would remain in the Soviet field of influence. All of the rest of the Eastern bloc was up for grabs. Bulgaria was in effect to become a sixteenth state of the Soviet Union, with a 'reform' programme made in hell by Bulgarian Prime Minister Andrei Lukanov, and approved by the KGB.

The centre-piece of the reform programme was Decree 56, a cunning document designed to help the officers of the Bulgarian Intelligence Service (The First Directorate) to become rich overnight. The selling out of Bulgaria to the Soviets at Malta was a direct consequence of the Macdermott case.

How could the West allow the opposition to take full control in Bulgaria, when one of the first imperatives of any new government would be to investigate the murder of Georgi Markov?

The Markov case remains an awkward one for the Bulgarian President (and the Foreign Office) to this day. On 10th November 1989, prior to the Malta agreement, the KGB tricked Zhivkov into resigning, by offering him an acceptable candidate for the General Secretary's job, Foreign Minister Peter Mladenov. A few months later, Alexander Lilov, the murderer of Zhivkov's daughter, replaced Mladenov as General Secretary. Who would be better than Lilov himself to ensure that nothing leaked out?

However, the KGB had made one mistake. After consultation with Andrei Lukanov, they had agreed to the idea that, if the largely puppet opposition were to be given the Presidency, then the new President should be Zhelyu Zhelev, a former communist professor of politics, who had been repressed under Zhivkov. Lukanov assured Gorbachev personally that Zhelev would be a docile president. However, there are puppets and puppets, and Zhelev was not to prove as docile as they had thought.

The other mistake that the communists made was that they gave the President the power of hiring and firing the Chiefs of the Security Services. This power in fact meant nothing, since Zhelev was systematically kept out of the loop. When he asked the Bulgarian Intelligence Service chiefs about the Markov case, they simply told him that 'the West' didn't want them to disclose any information to him, which was in fact true.

On Tuesday, August 14th 1991, after publicly exposing the role of Alexander Lilov in the murders of Georgi Markov and Lyudmilla Zhivkova, I paid a visit to Philip Dimitrov in the opposition headquarters at 134 Rakovski Street and told him that although I had been conducting a public campaign to expose Lilov (which had reached the national press and TV), in fact there was another person behind Lilov, the well known 'great friend' of Bulgaria', and MI6 agent provocateur Mercia Macdermott.

Dimitrov, who went on to become Prime Minister and is now Ambassador to Washington, got in touch with Zhelev, who confronted the two chiefs of his intelligence service and fired them. That evening in Moscow, a KGB source told a French journalist that KGB Chief Kryuchkov had decided to launch a coup, with no preparation as it turned out, instead of waiting until the end of August to have a state of emergency voted by the Supreme Soviet, as agreed to with Mikhail Gorbachev.

That is why Gorbachev turned away the plotters that arrived in Foros. It is also why Kryuchkov had difficulty persuading the other plotters to sign up. His real motivation was not a secret one, and he couldn't tell them where he was 'coming from' although KGB General Pugo must certainly have known, which is why he and his wife were murdered. Incidentally, nobody in Moscow believes that Pugo and his wife committed suicide.

That events in Sofia triggered the events in Moscow on 18th August 1991 has not been challenged by the British or Russian diplomats that I've spoken to. Various aspects of the underlying facts can be corroborated by documents and by at least dozens, and probably hundreds, of concordant references in the Bulgarian press, the Russian press, and by quotations from Yeltsin, Gorbachev, and the coup leaders themselves, including the arrested plotter, General Varennikov who, after his acquittal in early August 1994, accused the West of having engineered the 'provocation of the century'.

7. The links between events in Sofia and the Moscow Coup of August 1991

(2) In April 1991, a KGB agent in Sofia tried to set me up. I had been investigating the Markov murder and had identified Mrs. Macdermott as one of the culprits. Although I wasn't sure she was a British agent, that danger had always been in the back of my mind. Anyway, I'd been a bit of a troublemaker in Bulgaria, and I had enemies, so the KGB ordered their agent to reveal to me that Mrs. Macdermott was in fact a British agent. Simultaneously, there were a series of leaks in the media.

The Russians were using the Markov case to mark out their territory. As a part of the operation, the KGB were planning to kill me using lyophilized snake poison. I got the agent drunk and actually got a verbal confession out of her. I was tricked into receiving a medical certificate stating that I was suffering from terminal cardio-vascular disease (snake poison mimics terminal cardio-vascular disease.) I telephoned a retired diplomat friend in England and he offered to pay for a flight back to Britain, but I did not take up his offer till the following year, by which time I (and Yeltsin) had blown the Soviet Union apart.

What the KGB didn't know at the time, was that I was also on the track of Mrs. Macdermott's puppet, Alexander Lilov. After the failed attempt to kill me, I had a unique window of opportunity that gave me the freedom that I needed. A second attempt, would have been too high profile, although I was told that they would have dearly loved to try it.

In June, I wrote a long letter, ostensibly to our Head of Chancery, accusing Lilov of being behind the murders of Markov and Lyudmila Zhivkova. I faxed a copy of the letter to my cousin in Scotland. The following day, I noticed that some of my 'friends' were in a state of shock. They must have been called in for questioning in order to establish who had leaked Lilov's involvement to me. Of course, nobody had. The fax had the desired effect of making the KGB think that our Embassy, who knew that the Russians had leaked Mrs. Macdermott's real allegiance to me, had told me about Lilov as a tit for tat measure.

That fax is the reason why Vladimir Kryuchkov hit the roof in his speech to the Supreme Soviet around 21st June, when Pavlov tried to get additional powers, in the so-called constitutional coup. That was also when the Americans warned Gavril Popov and Alexander Bessmertnykh of the danger of a coup. The result was that an alliance was forged between the arch-enemies Gorbachev and Yeltsin, who was able to touch base with the military in July, and ensure the loyalty of key figures like Shaposhnikov, in the event of the KGB undertaking anything.

In early August 1991, I went public on Lilov, with several front page stories appearing and a confrontation between Lilov and opposition leader Dimitrov on Bulgarian Television. Then, on Tuesday 13th August, I visited Dimitrov in his office, and told him that Mrs. Macdermott had been behind Lilov, and that this information could be used to nail the State Security bosses.

The final decision to launch a coup in Gorbachev's absence, (as opposed to a state of emergency voted by the Supreme Soviet, which is the variant that Gorbachev would have been prepared to accept, according to his and other people's memoirs) was taken by Kryuchkov that night, according to a French journalist.

Note the typically Gorbachevian fudge - a union treaty (Yanayev called it a cloud in trousers) giving substantial republican autonomy, together with a Centre that could declare a state of emergency anywhere it liked - in accordance with legal procedure. It was the former possibility and the latter requirement that held back the hardliners, Lukyanov in particular, and made it necessary to give Kryuchkov an extra push. In selling the idea of launching a state of emergency in Gorbachev's absence, he made the point that Gorbachev himself would not be compromised, as Yanayev surely would sooner or later.

After the coup, rumours were circulating in Sofia that there had been a connection between events in Sofia and events in Moscow, and newspapers were full of speculation about what it was. The President's party newspaper hinted at the link between the removal of the Intelligence chiefs and the Moscow coup, but never followed it up. Yeltsin sent a delegation to deny that there was any connection, and there was a public argument between Dimitrov and General Oleg Kalugin, who was one of the KGB officers involved in the Markov murder.

It is remarkable that only one book, by Martin Sixmith, has been 'permitted' on the coup. Sixsmith's main contribution was to cover up the responsibility of Kryuchkov, since the British wanted to get the KGB role hushed up. Sixsmith wastes a lot of time on Anatoly Lukyanov (not to be confused with the Bulgarian Prime Minister, Andrei Lukanov), claiming that he was the 'mastermind' responsible for summoning the plotters to the Kremlin. Initially Lukyanov was to carry the can because he had written a few notes objecting to the draft Union Treaty, which was one reason why the non-KGB plotters got involved.

The treaty itself was a scarecrow, constructed by the only two republican signatories, Yeltsin and Nazarbayev, and only got published on the Thursday or Friday, no doubt to push the non-KGB plotters into the trap. Yeltsin and Nazarbayev were in fact the two republican leaders who foiled the plotters. Nazarbayev played an important role in harassing his old hunting buddy, Yazov, over the phone, persuading him not to allow the soldiers to shoot.

At the beginning of 1991, MI6 were in bad shape. The Cold War gains that had been made possible paradoxically by none other than Aldrich Ames, whose recruitment lulled Vladimir Kryuchkov into a false sense of security, were counterbalanced by the fact that the KGB had become impenetrable overnight. In 1985, both MI6 and the CIA had ceased to have agents in place in the Soviet Union. Moreover, for MI6 the legacy of the Markov/Macdermott case was entirely negative - a liability that placed them in a uniquely vulnerable position in Britain itself vis-à-vis the KGB.

Paradoxically, it was that liability that became the trump card that brought down the Soviet Union. The secret British involvement in foiling the long-awaited hardliners' coup gave MI6 an international reputation second to none. So much so that in Eastern Europe, at least three countries have chosen MI6, rather than the CIA, to advise them on the reforming of their intelligence services.

As the recent object of a botched, and above all unbelievably foolish, MI6 operation, I doubt whether that reputation is deserved. I know James Bond, and in spite of all the 'techint', in the field of human intelligence he's a bungling rat, dependent on the mistakes and the help of others.

Gordon Logan - November 1999


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