(edit title) Capt. Simon Hayward,'The Phantom', Palme Assassin? Has Book About 'The Shadow' Narrowed Suspects? Options

[*Trowbridge H. Ford*]

Sure seems so.

For the striking resemblance between Hayward and 'The Phantom', see the front cover of Hayward's autobiography, Under Fire: My Own Story, and for 'The Phantom's, see Jan Bondeson, p. 54.

For confusing 'The Phantom' for 'The Shadow', read same.

For learning more about Hayward, read this:

Captain Simon Hayward: The Making of Olof Palme’s Assassin and Its Blowback
by Trowbridge H. Ford

On the night of October 9, 1987, four loyalist gunmen working for the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) broke into the West Belfast flat of Francisco Notarantonio, long time member of the IRA, and retired taxi driver, and killed him as he lay in bed with his wife. According to Peter Harclerode in Secret Soldiers, the incident finally persuaded his Force Research Unit handlers in the British Army that its mole Brian Nelson, the Association’s chief intelligence officer, might be passing along information from its Crucible and Vengeful computer systems to facilitate sectarian murders.

Starting in May 1987, Nelson had helped organize the UDA’s shooting of bread van driver Dermot Hackett, two other taxi drivers, Edward Campbell and Mickey Power, in July and August, Patrick Hamill in the same fashion as Notarantonio shortly thereafter, and finally young Jim Meighan on Sept. 20th. Alex Maskey, a Sinn Fein city councillor for Belfast, only escaped the murderous efforts of another UDA assassin, posing as a cabbie, because of the quick work by surgeons at the Royal Victoria Hospital. A year later, as Peter Everett discussed in Issue Eleven of Eye Spy, Nelson called upon FRU free-lancer Ken Barrett, apparently aka ‘Geoff’, to finish the job, but he arrived too late at the restaurant where Maskey was eating to effect the killing. Nelson, when questioned by his handlers about these incidents, denied, of course, that he had had any knowledge that the information he supplied to the UDA was to be used in the slayings.

According to Nicholas Davies in Ten Thirty Three – The Inside Story of Britain’s Killing Machine in Northern Ireland, Nelson, aka Agent 6137, had earned his place in the UDA after he was released from prison in 1980 for helping kill a Catholic by beating him, setting his hair afire, and finally denying him life-sustaining medication. Nelson, codename 10-33, had become a member of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) after he had been discharged from The Black Watch in 1969. In November 1985, Nelson reportedly offered his services to British military intelligence as an informer so that he could exact revenge upon another UVF member who the UDA refused to discipline for trying to rape his wife.

In April 1986, four months after the fallout from the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement had settled, especially the 14 Intelligence Company’s kidnapping, and the IRA’s reprisal killing of renegade Derry quartermaster Frank Hegarty for tipping off authorities about the locations of various IRA depots of Libyan-supplied weapons in the Republic, the Nelsons moved suddenly to West Germany where he became a professional roof tiler. Then in October, Nelson was sent to South Africa to procure arms from supplier Armscor for a leaner, meaner UDA whose UVF and UFF murder squads were seeking military-like proficiency. At the same time, Nelson, who had been approached again for disclosure of UDA plans in sectarian struggles by the FRU’s Colonel J, aka Gordon Kerr, because of pressure from MI5′s Joint Irish Section, informed his FRU handlers of the trip, and they arranged a three-week visit for him to Johannesburg, under the watchful eye of MI6, to complete the deal.

By January 1987, the FRU was so happy with Nelson’s performance that two of its agents went to Munich to persuade him, and his family to return to Northern Ireland for more mole work within the UDA. In explaining his new found wealth, the FRU arranged with West German counterintelligence for Nelson to win, it seems, a lottery for £20,000. “Shortly after his return to Belfast,” Harclerode added, “he was given a series of conducted tours of republican areas by the FRU, with establishments frequented by the Provisionals being pointed out to him.” (p. 561) Nelson was to funnel what he gained from UDA intelligence on republican activities to FRU handlers so that joint plans could be devised about what the IRA was planning, and what was to be done about it. .

The relation between Nelson and the FRU apparently proved perfect when the UDA decided to assassinate Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams in June 1987, what it had attempted but without success on March 14, 1984. On that occasion, a UFF assassination squad, led by John Gregg and Gerard Welsh, decided to kill the just-elected London MP as he left an adjourned magistrates court session in Belfast, answering charges of obstructing justice. As Joe Keenan, son of long-time IRA volunteer, and fellow passenger Sean Keenan, was driving down Howard Street, Gregg’s UFF car, driven by Colin Gray, overtook the one Adams was in, spraying it with at least 12 rounds, three of which hit Adams in the neck, shoulder, and arm, and one of which hit Sean Keenan riding in the backseat.

Fortunately, it seems, another military intelligence informer had told it about the attack, and it had had the 14 Intelligence Company remove powder from the ammunition planned for use in the attack so that it would not be lethal. Since neither the car nor the driver had been incapacitated in the attack, Adams and Sean Keenan were driven directly to the Royal Victoria Hospital for the necessary repairs. Then members of the Intelligence & Security Group appeared on the scene, and arrested the three UFF members. The shooters were subsequently given 18 years in prison for the attempt, and driver Gray received 12 years for his trouble.

In the summer and fall of 1987, the UDA planned three attempts on Adams’ life, all using motorcyclists, but none of them materialized because of tipoffs to the FRU by Nelson. In the first case, the 14 Intelligence Company, and the RUC’s Special Branch, along with regular policemen, and soldiers, had the site, the Housing Exectuive offices, so well surrounded that not even the craziest of assassins would have tried it. Two weeks later, it was the same arrangement at another site. Some months later, the UDA planned another attack, with motorcyclists pulling up beside Adams’ car to put a limpet mine on its roof, set to explode later, but the effort was called off, apparently because it was too reminiscent of the first effort.

Then in 1988, the UDA, finally fully armed, thanks reportedly to the arms shipment from South Africa, went on a sectarian shooting spree, highlighted by Michael Stone shooting up the mourners attending the funerals of the three volunteers killed by the SAS at Gibraltar in May, resulting in the murders of Kevin Brady, John Murray, and Thomas McErlean. It was these killings which resulted three days later in the brutal murders of the two Army corporals, Robert Howes and Derek Wood, when they stumbled across the funeral cortege of one of the above.

The campaign had been kicked off in January with the killing of Catholic Billy Kane, also lying in bed, and was followed the next day by the murder of Ulster Defence Regiment Captain Timothy Armstrong, the assassins thinking that he was another undesirable Catholic. In May, there was a repeat of these killings, with the UDA this time killing Seamus Murray, and Terry McDaid, the FRU finally assuring the shaken Nelson that he had connections with his dangerous brother, Declan. Then the UDA, with FRU approval, had its assassins kill senior PIRA officer Brendan Davidson, feigning that they were regular RUC policemen making a security check. The UDA, with full FRU assistance, finished the year by killing suspected PIRA member Gerard Slane, and the McNally brothers, Francis, and Phelim, more cases of mistaken identity.

In 1989, the chief victim of the UDA/FRU shooting spree was solicitor Pat Finucane, who had represented famous hunger-striker Bobby Sands, and was employed by Gervaise McKerr’s widow to determine why he was killed by an RUC Headquarters Mobile Service Unit back in the fall of 1982.

According to Everett, Finucane was murdered because of his successful defence of Patrick McEwen, who was charged with killing the two corporals. According to Harclerode, the UDA had planned to assassinate Finucane in September 1987, but the FRU saw that he was provided the same protection that Adams had been given three months before. (p. 568) In March 1988, the same process resulted in Finucane being protected from assassination. In February 1989, it was an entirely different matter, though, when three UDA assassins got lucky, not just Barrett as Everett claimed, marching into his house unnoticed, and gunning him down in front of his wife and children, only to escape without difficultly.

Other significant UDA killings in 1989 were finishing off Catholic Ian Catney in January, what the breakaway Irish National Liberation Army had attempted two years before at Belfast’s Smithfield Market. Then there was another mistaken identity shooting, that of Protestant David Dorman, a week later due to faulty intelligence. “The two gunmen,” Harclerode added, “had been seen running towards a nearby loyalist housing estate which was quickly sealed off. Shortly afterwards, four men were arrested and taken way for questioning.” (p. 567)

Nelson’s career with the UDA was finally finished in August 1989, according to Harclerode, when two of its assassins used a RUC P-Card plan of his residence, and photograph of Loughlin Maginn, to kill him. When the UDA bragged about its intelligence in murdering the PIRA intelligence officer, producing the expected scepticism about the claim, it published the FRU file on Maginn, obliging the government to appoint Deputy Constable of the Cambridgeshire Police John Stevens to conduct an inquiry of Army collusion in loyalist killings.

The trouble with these sometimes erroneous explanations of FRU/UDA murders is that they are dealt with in a disjointed, episodic fashion, an approach which seems completely unjustified when we are told by Davies that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, as chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, was continually provided with Military Intelligence Source Reports (MISRs) regarding individual operations. This was no renegade, hit-or-miss campaign. We need to put these killings, and others in the changing counter-terrorist context of Northern Ireland, one which appreciates its evolving causes, objectives, strategies, organizations, operatives, and limitations. After the successful completion of the Falklands War, Britain was prepared to go all out with its own campaign of terror in order to defeat revolutionary Irish nationalism.

The disjointed character of Harclerode’s analysis is best captured in his setting the scene, the Hyde Park bombings by the PIRA in the summer of 1982 (p. 134), as far away as possible from the six reprisal killings in the province a few months later (pp. 532-5), what led to the appointment in March 1984 of John Stalker, Deputy Chief Constable of the Greater Manchester Police, to conduct an inquiry similar to Stevens’s. With Britain’s defence forces stretched to the limit because of the growing confrontation with Argentina, the killing of four soldiers in the Queen’s Household Cavalry, two police officers, and six Royal Green Jackets bandmen with nail bombs was the last thing Britain needed.

To settle scores, though, Captain Simon Hayward of the Life Guards volunteered to lead UDA squads, and re-inforced Headquarters Mobile Service Units (HMSU) of the RUC to settle scores with the republicans, resulting in the above killings, and a few others. The killings, though, were completely unfocused, thanks to more faulty intelligence from George Poyntz, and apparently David Burton aka Bertelstein. Hayward teamed up with the UDA’s John McMichael and Michael Stone, already notorious for working with now murdered Captain Robert Nairac, to kill Seamus Grew on September 22, 1982, but without success, requiring a similarly led HMSU to do it two and a half months later. Hayward, McMichael, and Stone, it seems, did manage to assassinate ex-internee Peter Corrigan in the meantime.

Once the crisis passed, Hayward decided to join the 14 Intelligence Company, hoping that the new service could find a permanent place for the somewhat disabled but most talented captain. Hayward had lost the middle segments of the middle and ring fingers on his right hand in an accident involving a Ferret vehicle in Cyprus in March 1976, and thought that the unconventional force might be able to give him a new identity too, especially in light of the Stalker inquiry. By the time this police officer had put his Interim Report together during the summer of 1985, requiring only the tapes of the controversial killing of Michael Tighe in a Lurgan hayloft on November 24, 1982, to complete his inquiry, Hayward had successfully completed the course for the Company, and had become Operations Officer for its South Detachment in Northern Ireland, adopting the operational identity of James Rennie just to be on the safe side. (For his fictionalized account of the transformation, see The Operators: On the Streets with Britain’s Most Secret Service.)

Rennie now seemed far removed from any trouble Stalker could make, especially given the opposition of RUC Chief Constable Sir John Hermon, and MI5 to handing over the tapes. Stalker was then removed from the inquiry under suspicion that he was connected to the criminal activities of Manchester’s Quality Street Gang, especially drug-running, through dealings with businessman Kevin Taylor.

Just when Colonel Gordon Kerr was recruiting Nelson to become a military mole in the UDA, the JIC was altering its focus on what to do with the PIRA, and its supporters, a change which required Hayward aka Rennie from trying to stop IRA Active Service Units (ASUs) in East Tyrone from blowing up undermanned RUC police stations to directing more sectarian killings, as he had done in 1982. Thatcher’s JIC was committed to making it seem that the Soviets, through their clients, especially Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, were assisting the republicans in taking over the North by force, a ploy it would punish by helping to destroy the USSR as a Cold War player.

Hayward’s assignment was to expose the stockpiling of Libyan weapons in the Republic by means of Hegarty’s arrest while leading another series of so-called shoot-to-kill murders to meet the alleged PIRA threat which would give him a believable alibi for triggering the showdown with the Soviets, the shooting to Swedish statsminister Olof Palme in Stockholm at the end of February 1986. Hayward saw to it that McMichael and Stone disposed of joiner Kevin McPolin in Lisburn as the new campaign commenced. Then he apparently led the drawn-out assassination of arms mover Francis Bradley on February 18, 1986, one so outrageous that it was being hotly debated in the press when Palme was murdered. Hayward had been actively sizing up Bradley for the shooting, even having his picture taken in military battlegear outside McVeys’ cafe in Magherafelt during the process, ever since unknown parties had shot up the Castledawson Police Station on December 9, 1985.

While the shooting of Palme, apparently by Hayward while reassessing the performance of his bodyguards, went off without a hitch, the problems with the South Detachment’s Ops Officer only increased for British officials as the Swedish police failed to find a likely suspect for the shooting, thanks particularly to SIS’s false leads. Jo Thomas of The New York Times published a belated story of the recent killings in the province, especially Bradley’s, to keep Hayward’s alibi going, and he added to it by helping entice Seamus McElwaine from across the border two months later, in the hope of catching the long sought-after James Lynagh, resulting in McElwain’s execution, and Sean Lynch’s wounding.

Still, Group 13, which included Chairman of the Joint Intelillgence Committee Sir Percy Craddock, former SIS Chief Sir Colin Figures, current chief Christopher Curwen, his deputy Colin McColl, Defence Intelligence Staff Chief Derek Boorman, DIS Director General for Management and Support of Intelligence Vice Admiral John Kerr, DGSS Anthony Duff, DDGSS Patrick Walker, G Branch Director John Deverell, Cabinet Secretary Sir Robert Armstrong, and Sovbloc operatives Gordon Barrass, Harry Burke, and Gerry Warner, and who had arranged the statsminister’s shooting, were increasingly anxious about Hayward’s continuing presence, and functioning in Northern Ireland, especially when the Iran-Contra scandal started unraveling in the fall. These officials are responsible for Whitehall’s unwritten code of keeping quiet at all costs about current operations. To ease the pressure, Hayward attended the PQS 2 course back in Ashford, successful completion of which would apparently lead to his being promoted to major, and given a top military intelligence post in Whitehall.

Just when Hayward was taking leave of Northern Ireland in early 1987, Nelson was back at work with the UDA over the strongest protests by MI5. Deverell believed that his use in the Hayward case would just compound the problem rather than end it, especially by leading the UDA to suspect that Nelson was working for the PIRA. His first assignment, it seems, was to help IRA volunteer, and longest British mole within the republican movement DOOK (aka DUKE and ‘Steak Knife’) set Hayward up on a drugs smuggling charge in Sweden.

This would lead to his being in the hands of Swedish authorities if investigations of Iran-Contra, now underway, ever revealed his role in the Stockholm assassination. Hayward’s brother Christopher, who had purchased the drug-running catamaran True Love from Kevin Taylor, was apparently forced to join the plot under threat from DOOK that he would kill his Army agent brother if he didn’t cooperate. As for who DOOK is, he sounds like Padraic Wilson, long-time leader of the PIRA, and its commanding officer in the high security Maze Prison until his release in 1999.

Wilson had apparently been turned by the British when the Keenans, Adams, and Martin McGuinness made a mess of the breakaway Provisionals. At first, Wilson tried to make the most of the revolutionary Free Derry movement, going to the greatest trouble despite the security net to attend the funeral of one of Sean’s sons killed in the process. Before Bloody Sunday, what might well have been sparked by a McGuinness first shot, Wilson, according to Harclerode, told members of the Mobile Reconnaisance Force (forerunner of the FRU), who had set up the Gemini Health Studio massage parlour on Belfast’s Antrim Road to gather intelligence from talkative clients, who of his colleagues had killed three young Scots of the 1st Battalion Royal Highland Fusiliers, based at Girdwood Barracks. (p. 317)

This intelligence gathering operation by the MRF ‘ladies’ was ‘blown’, as they say, in October 1972 after double agents Seamus Wright, Kevin McKee, and an unacknowledged third one were forced to disclose to the PIRA leadership its relation to the Four Square Laundry intelligence-gathering operation next door.

What Harclerode, nor anyone else for that matter (See, e.g., Tony Geraghty, The Irish War, p. 89ff.), failed to tell us is how Wilson, it seems, somehow managed to escape both execution at the hands of the PIRA, and incarceration at those of the British. Wilson would have had all kinds of problems explaining his visits to the massage parlour. Perhaps, he was the third unknown volunteer (n. b. that Harclerode makes no mention of him), suspected of working with the ‘Freds’, but since he was only 15, he was excused because of expected adolescent impulses.

Afterall, the Ardoyne IRA had already murdered enough mere youths. While the PIRA leadership was making Wright and McKee pay for their liberties, and the MRF and its allies in the ‘Det’ were regrouping elsewhere after the attacks on October 2nd, Wilson, it seems, was able to become an Army informer, at that time not yet an anathema within the nationalist community. (Taylor, pp. 59-60)

Harclerode thought that he had gotten round these difficulties and developments by writing vaguely about Paddy Wilson, a leading figure in the nationalist community, divulging the names of the PIRA killers of Fusiliers Dougald McCaughey, John, and Joseph McCaig one night after drinking beer with the boys, and bonking the girls from the MRF. Harclerode was apparently alluding to the veteran SDLP Senator to the old Stormont upper house, Paddy Wilson, who was assassinated, along with his secretary, by the UFF’s John White on June 26, 1973, shortly after the ending of the massage parlour, and laundry collection operations. Wilson and Protestant Irene Andrews were savagely stabbed to death, and their bodies mutilated in a quarry just outside Belfast. She even had her breasts sliced off to indicate, it seems, the sectarian sources of the slayings.

Of course, there was no way that this moderate Catholic politician would have known who killed the soldiers. And if he had, there was no way that he would have been honored, along with hard-line Unionist Senator from Strabane, Jack Barnhill, in the Senate Rotunda with memorials of the new Northern Ireland Assemby, what colleague Gerry Fitt had been recommending for years, and the cross-party Stormont Commission agreed to. Barnhill was assassinated, and his house destroyed by the Official IRA on December 12, 1971, thirty years to the day before the memorials were commemorated. Innocent victim of the Troubles Senator Paddy Wilson was mentioned, along with Barnhill, and British Conservatives Airey Neave, and Ian Gow, when Irish Taoiseach John Bruton opened the All-Party Negotiations leading to the Good Friday Agreement. In sum, Senator Paddy Wilson could not have been Harclerode’s Paddy Wilson.

If he were Padraic Wilson, this leads to all kinds of ugly conclusions. First, it shows that there was systematic collusion between the Intelligence and Security Group (NI), and the loyalists paramilitaries much longer than previously thought. Wilson provided British authorities with inside information about armed assaults, like the one at Loughgall in 1987, and arms shipments, especially the ones from Libya, starting in 1971. White could only have murdered Senator Wilson, and Ms. Andrews on a tip from the female MRF agents, what they saw as ideal cover for Padraic Wilson not being suspected by the PIRA as being an Army informer. He would have been assured of the safety of his covert role by their assassinations. This assurance would have been strengthened when White was finally brought to trial, and convicted of the murders in 1978 when the military campaign by MI5 and the SAS against the nationalists was in full swing.

As with all clandestine relations, when things change, what was previously accepted or at least tolerated can become a death warrant. ‘Steak Knife’ seems to have prevented some unnecessary killings while MI6′s Michael Oatley was seeking a settlement with the IRA’s Billy McKee. Once negotiations broke down, and MI5 and the ‘Det’ started going after the republicans, however, ‘Steak Knife’s role became increasingly unacceptable, especially when the UDA’s “Shankill Butcher” Lennie Murphy, recruiter of McMichael and Stone, became involved. Then the Active Service Unit, directed apparently by Brian Keenan, in Britain went wild, culminating in the famous Balcombe Street shootout.

‘Steak Knife’ apparently did help arrange the SAS assassination of John Francis Green, the suspected leader of the shooting of the Scottish soldiers; helped in the 1980 imprisonment of Keenan for 18 years for conspiring to cause the explosions on the British mainland; and arranged for the UDA to kill Murphy when he threatened again to go on the rampage after being released from prison during Hayward’s 1982 retribution campaign.

Wilson’s long-time association with the Army, for which he was paid £75,000 per year in a secret Gibraltar bank account, suffered a severe setback, though, when the UDA, with 14 Intelligence Company assistance, almost killed Brian Keenan’s father, and Gerry Adams, not to forget the risks to brother Joe. Wilson had not bargained for this kind of retribution. While the military intelligence people have cooked up this story about having safely doctored the ammunition, no one in his right mind would believe it, given the extent and seriousness of the wounds. And one doubts that Wilson was ever told of the precautions. As former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Sir Patrick Mayhew explained about such murders: “If you do shoot, then you don’t shoot to tickle, you don’t shoot to miss, you do shoot to kill.” (Quoted from Peter Taylor, Brits: The War Against the IRA, p. 255) This may help explain why subsequent assassination attempts on Adams got nowhere, thanks to Wilson’s disclosures to the IRA leadership.

For good measure, MI5 officer Michael Bettaney, while on remand in Brixton jail for spying for the Soviets, had given fellow prisoners in the IRA, particularly Keenan, an earful of what the Security Service, and Army intelligence had been doing against it in Northern Ireland (Mark Urban, Big Boys’ Rules, p. 99), what became a red flag for DOOK (or ‘Steak Knife’) when he saw the Army captain ‘holidaying’ with his brother Chris on Ibiza in February 1987. DOOK had apparently learned from Martin McGuinness of the 150-ton shipment of Libyan arms on the Eksund for a PIRA ‘tet offensive’ (Ed Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA, p. 1ff.), and had stationed himself on the island to help the FRU intercept it from Malta. What Bettaney had seen in the province while working for MI5 was so bad that he converted to Catholicism, took up drinking, and became a left-winger.

While Simon’s brother maneuvered him into driving his Jaguar to Stockholm, on the pretext that it was being sold to an Englishman living there, the luxury car was loaded with 50.5 kilos of cannibis to secure his imprisonment when discovered. (For an explanation of this, see Simon Hayward’s rare autobiography, Under Fire: My Own Story; not to be confused with co-conspirator Oliver North’s Under Fire: An American Story.) In order to hide the cargo properly, the Jaguar had to be stolen for the time-consuming operation to be performed, necessitating Hayward being drugged by someone calling himself ‘Brian’ (p. 69), apparently Nelson. Meanwhile, DOOK, the well-heeled, nasty IRA man, in the company of a 35-year-old brunette, apparently calling herself Heather Weissand (whose existence and identity Hayward was most reluctant to recognize), made arrangements with drug dealer Forbes Mitchell to secure his arrest after he arrived in Sweden – what happened outside Linköping on Friday, March 13, 1987.

While Brian Nelson, along with RUC Special Branch’s Ian Phoenix, and FRU’s Mags, ultimately known as Captain M, and really Captain Margaret Walshaw, were making up as best they could for Hayward’s absence from Northern Ireland, he was slowly being prosecuted in the Swedish capital for drug smuggling. Phoenix replaced Hayward during Operation Judy, the Loughgall Massacre of 8 IRA volunteers on April 26th – what ‘Mary’, according to Peter Taylor, had forced when she was called off at the last moment from protecting UDR officer William Graham from an IRA AUS the previous day. (See her description in Taylor, pp. 270-1.)

She had been leading Graham’s protective surveillance since Hayward’s depature 10 weeks before. Expecting the case to be dropped because of Hayward’s connections in the UK, given the fact that it depended upon what Britain’s National Drugs Intelligence Unit officers could persuade Mitchell to testify to, he was shocked when found guilty in August. Hayward reacted by hiring a private detective to determine facts surrounding the case so that its prosecution could be overturned on appeal.

It was heard in early October, and turned on whether DOOK could persuade the court that Hayward knew what he alone was doing all along, what Weissand was prepared to corroborate. Of course, Hayward wanted DOOK to be forced to appear so that he could be subjected to cross examination about his role, but he persisted in refusing, claiming that he had already testified truthfully. When his lawyer, Dutchman H. K. ter Brake, was obliged to testify, he was asked who his client was. He declined to identify him, explaining to the court: “He is afraid of anything that will reveal his identity. He is afraid of the British Army.” (Quoted from Hayward, p. 340.)

ter Brake was never asked why. Then the court heard a letter from DOOK, claiming that he was the victim of a plot by the British press to scapegoat him, but he added that “…the truth will come out.” DOOK implied that if something happened to him because of UDA/FRU action, his lawyer would have more to tell the court. On this note, it was adjourned on October 7th.

Two nights later, Notarantino instead of ‘Steak Knife’ was assassinated, thanks to intervention by the FRU’s Captain M or Mags who decided that changing targets was essential, given DOOK’s obvious threat. (It is interesting to note that Hayward was soon calling his wife of be, Sandra Agar, ‘Sands’ after meeting her through a personal ad he had placed in Private Eye.)

When the court reconvened on October 15th, Hayward began to suspect that his appeal was doomed, once a letter from Ms. Weissand to ter Brake was introduced, confirming a conversation she had had with one of the prosecutors the day after Notarantino’s assassination. She stated that she had been present at the meeting of Simon, Chris, and DOOK at Santa Eulalia, and that at no time had Chris and DOOK left the table to conspire against Simon. (For its text, see Hayward, p. 356.)

While the defence tried to make much of the fact that no one knew who Ms. Weissand really was, and that she too was afraid to appear in person, these doubts were cleared up by the time the court rejected the appeal two weeks later, as one of the prosecutors summed up: “…Heather Weissand sounded credible to me on the telephone, HK ter Brake thought the same…Dook is not involved in this affair…that is nothing but a smokescreen put forward by the defence to cloud the issue…” (Quoted from p. 361.) Apparently, London had reassured Stockholm under the strictest secrecy that Weissand was a British military intelligence officer, unavailable for the court because of assignment on a chartered sailing yacht, apparently DOOK’s.

On October 28th, it had helped secure the capture of the Eksund off the coast of Brittany by French authorities. Clearly, British ones put a higher priority on keeping on good terms with the PIRA man than the Ops Officer.

Once Hayward was safely locked up for a five-year sentence, Britain’s ‘killing machine in Northern Ireland,’ to use Davies’ term, saw to the elimination of grounds for further blackmail by either ‘Steak Knife’ or Rennie, the details of which will have to be left for another time.

[Jamtjim]

For learning more about Hayward, read this:

Captain Simon Hayward: The Making of Olof Palme’s Assassin and Its Blowback
by Trowbridge H. Ford

One thing is for sure, if an article is written by Trowbridge "Fantasy" Ford then the chances are that one will be unable to "learn" anything from it as the majority of it will simply be made up...

I can't be bothered to read the whole thing just now as quite frankly the tedious and inept nature of the writing requires more endurance that I can muster at this minute. However if this latest Trowpost is up to the authors usual standard, we can safely assume that it is a load of nonsense anyway. I will try to build up the stamina to subject myself to it later.

Oh and Trowbridge, you owe Jimmy 1000:- for that bet which you lost. When are you going to be a man and pay him? Or are you just going to continue to welch?

[dave.smith]

Trow, first off congratulations on the donation. I was inspired by you and will be matching your amount.

Now about this post, although I find your theories fascinating, it's probably not for the right reasons. We all like to think that there may be more to human interaction and international relations etc than we see on the surface, but few people would go to the length that you do to try to prove it. I think the world really would be a more boring place without people like you, people who are obviously wired far differently from the norm.

However, even though I always enjoy starting to read your posts, I can't ever finish, and I quickly become confused. This isn't because I am stupid, in fact I have a very high IQ. It's because you just let rip with too much information at once. Please, rather post summaries with links to more detailed resources, in a more organized manner, so people can read parts they are interested in and skip the rest.

[Jimmy]

Do you really believe he donated the money?????

Then you must really believe all his other Once upon a time stories.

Pay up Trow, the street is a public area. Try calling the cops on that one.

[*Trowbridge H. Ford*]

Thanks, Dave, for following what I suggested about giving money to Roger Pettersson's wildlife group.

You can just see why Jimmy never gets anything straight. I said that I would be giving the money I was going to donate to him to Pettersson's group at the end of the month, only for him questioning if I am really going to donate it there. Today, according to my calendar is only June 7th, so I have more then three weeks to make good on my promise.

I actually give 200SEK a month automatically from my bank account, and I have given over 5,000 by now, having the Handelsbank statements to prove it.

Then he has converted my statement about his getting nothing if he drops by here, and my perhaps calling the cops if he starts trouble into my calling the cops if he just walks by on public land.

The guy's a mental case.

I certainly agree with your complaints about the complexity of my explanations of the Palme murder, but if I don't make it so, no one will believe what I claim, as conspiracies are at best most complicated.

To understand the Plame one, one must see how Hayward was most belatedly selected to do the job, and why he was willing to do it: why Plame was chosen to be killed and why Reagan was willing to go along with it so as not to seriously risk impeachment and possible removal from office for acting illegally in supplying the Contras with arms: why Ollie North was given his own chain of command in doing that business and how he finally got connected to Hayward; how US Navy Secretary John Lehman, Jr. planned to effect it but it was prevented by all the spying that the Agency's Rick Ames, the Bureau's Robert Hanssen, and the Mossad's Jonathan Pollard disclosed to Moscow; how Soviet spy Stig Bergling was set up as the assassin but why it failed to work out; how Hayward and Derrick Bird practiced the Stockholm assassination by ambushing young Francis Bradley ten days before and why Bird went on the rampage when he suspected he was going to be made the fallguy for both killings, why Maggie Thatcher had been most secretive about such operations and went berserk when Hayward was allowed by the Foreign and Defence Secretaries to publish his own autobiography, Under Fire: My Own Story - what led to her political downfall a year later: etc.

If you want to know more about any of these matters, or something else, just let me know.

[Snoopy!]

If you want to know more about any of these matters, or something else, just let me know.

hahahahahha Trow thinks he is a universal mentor on everything & anything ...pillock, pay up you stooge.

[Jimmy]

A question

Why does he post all his ( I will be nice ) theories here ?

It is just dumbfounding

[Gamla Hälsingebock]

I have a lot of trouble keeping up with Trow's posts but as my late wife was from Northern Ireland and these things were discussed YEARS ago my memory picked up a bit, and what he says is valid...it happened! At least as I can remember...only some of it mind you.

I did not, couldn't, read all of Trows postings...if there is anybody out there that will tell me WHY Palme was killed, I would be most appreciative, the only exception is please be BRIEF!

Tack'
GH

[*Trowbridge H. Ford*]

Here is about as brief as I can get. Gamla, about why Palme was assassinated:

The Swedish Social Democratic statsminister had long been a thorn in Washington's side because of his policies for the developing world, especially in Vietnam, and in Scandinavia, particularly wanting to make it nuclear free - what the hawks in Washington considered being a Soviet tool. When he stopped the passage of 80 Israeli HAWK missiles through Sweden on their way to Iran - what NSC adviser Ollie North was conducting in the hope of retrieving American hostages they were holding, and resulting in the signing of illegal presidential findings to account for - Ollie was obliged to get covert government in Britain to supply his assassin, apparently Captain Simon Hayward, its leading assassin, to do the job after London and Washington were unable to find a free-lance assassin.

To bring on board other agencies which were bound to learn about the killing, especially NATO and Anglo-American naval and intelligence services which were bound to learn about it, and could leak what happened, the Stockholm assassination would trigger a non-nuclear conclusion to the Cold War with the Soviets. Anglo-American submarines would sink Soviet ones when they hurried responded to the Stockholm surprise while CIA eavesdropping on Moscow's response would determine if it was arming its ICBMs for a first strike - what Washington would nullify with a first strike out its own on them.

This was all nullified by Moscow's own spying which resulted in its totally prepared for the surprise, and compounded by more surprises - i.e., the Atlantic Fleet Commander Admiral Carl Trost refusing to cooperate in the misadventure, and NATO troops in Norway which were expected to overrun the Soviet bases on the Kola Peninsula being ground to a halt by devastating avalanches.

There was also a surprise in Stockholm too - the fallguy set up to look like the assassin, Soviet spy Stig Bergling who was in prison for his crimes, was not provided any help by the knowing KGB in his expected escape, and he declined to go to Moscow on his own when he was given compassionate leave from prison on the night of the assassination to get married. Hayward, it seems, had no problem killing the statsminister after he, along with 'The Shadow', aka 'The Phantom' had been stalking his activities as a member of the KMS, Ltd team which was reassessing the performance of his bodyguards.

When Hayward determined that none of them were in sight when the Palmes were finally on their own in their return home from the movie theater, Hayward killed the unsuspecting statsminister with one most well-placed bullet to his heart, and just grassed Mrs. Palme with another to make it look like he wanted to kill her too.

Of course, with Bergling not going to the USSR then, the assasination had no communist paternity, and no communist response, so it was just an unsolveable crime - though the Swedish authorities tried to pin it on the Mad Austrian, Viktor Gunnarsson, Christer Pettersson, 'The Shadow' et al. - everyone except the assassin who did it because it would be too embarrassing themselves - i.e., aiding and abetting the breaking down of Palme's security so that one of the gamekeepers could play poacher.

Thanks to the Soviets' spying and countermeasures, though, the rest of us were not cut down too because of the plot being the wildest gamble since Moscow had all kinds of weapons that they plan had not taken account of, especially 82 nuclear-armed SS-23 missiles which Soviet hawk Marshal Nicolai Ogarkov would have fired off if the shooting had started.

(Sorry but this is about as short as I can make it.)

[Jamtjim]

Trow, first off congratulations on the donation. I was inspired by you and will be matching your amount.

Dave, how do you know he has really made a donation? Trow claims lots of things, most of which are untrue so why would this be any different? Also, how can you match an unknown amount of money? Even the "evidence" posted by Trow (but which could well have been created by himself) does not state an amount... wait a minute!

I actually give 200SEK a month automatically from my bank account, and I have given over 5,000 by now, having the Handelsbank statements to prove it.

Haha... so the money Trowbridge has donated in a vain attempt make up for welching on his bet with Jimmy turns out never to have happened at all. Trow (according to himself) has been making regular donations for the last two years but yet he tried to create the illusion that he was making a new one to try to get people off his back. Fantasy Ford, you have been exposed as a cheat once more...

Dave, is this fraud someone you really want to respect? I'd think that one over if I were you!

Now about this post, although I find your theories fascinating...

Why does he post all his ( I will be nice ) theories here ?

Now I don't wish to be overly pedantic here, but Trow does not post "theories". A theory in it's true sense of the word is a model which is demonstrable based on then evidence. Trows fairy tales from the loony bin are at best "hypotheses" but in most cases are now more than pulp fiction speculation... certainly not "theories".

Here I am forced to admit that I have as yet been able to get through the latest work of Trow fiction. I did try to last night but the soporific nature of the amateurishly written Trowpost took its toll on me and I was asleep before getting less than half way through.

However, anybody wishing to gauge the likely veracity of a tale such as this would be wise to first check the references. Indeed, as we can be reasonably sure Trow was not present at any of the events he describes, he must therefore have based his stories on the accounts of the people who have. It was interesting that Trow provided not a single source... not even one... this alone should be enough to set alarm bells ringing. Indeed it seem that Trowbridge has rather changed his modus operandi as previously he was apt to quote impressively long list of references designed, not doubt, to create an illusion of credibility to his claims. That was of course until I decided to check them out and discovered that in the main they didn't exist or else did not state what Trow claimed. It seems that having his little fraud exposed, Trow has been forced to leave out the fictitious evidence and simply rely on the hope that the sloppy, uncritical reader will overlook the lack of basis for his fairy tales.

Maybe I will try again later, if I can summon up the energy to read this vacuous crap. However as I said before, the story related here is highly unlikely to be true as it has been written by Trowbridge and, given his fraudulent form, is most probably fabricated.

Now Trowbridge, you owe Jimmy his winnings, as well an additional thousand kronor which you said you would donate to charity... Pay up you cheat!

[skogsbo]

more utter bullocks, so despite the scale of the US and UK special forces, they could find anyone to work as an assasain, not they wanted anyone in the first place. So they used someone from 14Int, which is primarily a reconnaissance unit, and nothing to do with taking people out? Truly deluded.
If the some government authorities needed to take someone out, it would be a more professional job than was done, and no one would have seen this so called look-a-likey... they would have removed her and any other potential witness at the same time. Another innocent death is of little consequene when operating on that level.

Ps. Trow don't forget, volume does not necessarily mean quality, when it comes to the scale of your posts.

[Jamtjim]

Well thanks for the appraisal skogsbo, I suspected as much.

Well done for actually reading Trow's nonsense, I have yet to summon the energy to submit myself to it's unremitting stupidity.

[*Trowbridge H. Ford*]

Sorry, Skogsbo, but it is you who are dealing in utter bollocks.

The CIA and MI6 tried to recruit an assassin for Palme, but failed.

See SSI report by agent Haukka: "Samtal med Jovan Birchan 4 April 1986," and its attempts to recruit criminal Kenneth Neilberg. For failed attempts to recruit an assassin in Britain, see Duncan Campbell's article in the New Statesman & Society in June 1988, as I recall.

The 14 Intelligence Company was not just involved in reconnaissance but a combination of what the FRU and the SAS performed. See Mark Urban's Big Boys' Rules, especially p. 38ff.

And in talking about the grazing shot at Mrs. Palme, you are overlooking that it was deliberately made not to look like a professional one, but what a vengeance seeking Stig Bergling attempted before he made his way off to Moscow.

You should engage in serious thought before you just start shooting your mouth off.

[Jamtjim]

Sorry, Skogsbo, but it is you who are dealing in utter bollocks.

Really Trow? Given your particular forms, I would think that it is the other way round!

The CIA and MI6 tried to recruit an assassin for Palme, but failed.

Got any proof? Of course not... therefore we must assume that it is bollocks!

See SSI report by agent Haukka: "Samtal med Jovan Birchan 4 April 1986," and its attempts to recruit criminal Kenneth Neilberg. For failed attempts to recruit an assassin in Britain, see Duncan Campbell's article in the New Statesman & Society in June 1988, as I recall.

The 14 Intelligence Company was not just involved in reconnaissance but a combination of what the FRU and the SAS performed. See Mark Urban's Big Boys' Rules, especially p. 38ff.

Are you sure that you have understood these correctly? We know you have certain comprehension problems as well as a penchant presenting false information for so one wonders if the sources you quote actually say what you infer. Even if they do, how do you know that they are not written by an author equally dishonest as yourself?

And in talking about the grazing shot at Mrs. Palme, you are overlooking that it was deliberately made not to look like a professional one, but what a vengeance seeking Stig Bergling attempted before he made his way off to Moscow.

Evidence? Guess not.

[quote]You should engage in serious thought before you just start shooting your mouth off./quote]

Whereas you should simply engage in thought... any kind would make a pleasant change!

Now when are you going to stop welching and start paying?

[skogsbo]

Sorry, Skogsbo, but it is you who are dealing in utter bollocks.The CIA and MI6 tried to recruit an assassin for Palme, but failed. The 14 Intelligence Company was not just in ... (show full quote)

Sorry, Skogsbo, but it is you who are dealing in utter bollocks.
The CIA and MI6 tried to recruit an assassin for Palme, but failed.
The 14 Intelligence Company was not just involved in reconnaissance but a combination of what the FRU and the SAS performed. ... (hide full quote)

14 int, or rather Special Reconnaissance Regiment as they are now renamed, are the eyes and ears on the ground, through many different means. They are armed, but are not the front line of attack. For them to continuously step forward and be the front line would be counter productive and effectively blow their physical cover or their methods of gathering int. They may remain in place when a recce goes live and other forces move in, but that is not what their primary role is, nor what they trained for. Indeed many are couriers, rather than operators, so they just collect stuff for others and move it around etc.

If the CIA or MI6 wanted a hit they have the means, they just order one of their staff or use SF people, the military chain of command just does as it is told, it does look for volunteers, you follow orders! UK SF have done many hits around the world on legitimate military targets, drugs lords in S America and the like, but there is no requirement or deserve to take out civilians in other Euro nations.

If a professional hit kills everyone , you claim it was a professional job, if someone misses you claim isn't deliberatley missing?