03-02-2010, 02:26 AM
FRONT PAGE
Intelligence, N. 81, 8 June 1998, p. 1
BELGIUM
THATCHER, ASTRA, IRAQ & MURDER OF GERALD BULL
The international press has been caught sleeping ... or has
intentionally ignored a "block-buster": 40 pages of raw
intelligence data from MI5 and MI6 directly implicating the
inner circle of British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, in
the murder of Gerald Bull in Brussels on 22 March 1990. That
is what Walter De Bock revealed in the Flemish daily, "De
Morgen", on 15 April and which has generated in the
international press ... two articles. The documents have been
passed on to the Belgian judge, Christian De Valkeneer, who has
been investigating the Bull murder and recently decided to
reopen the case on the basis of this documentation.
Gerald Bull was a Canadian engineer who had been working in
Belgium and secretly collaborating with the Iraqi regime of
Saddam Hussein in developing the "Super Cannon" which was
supposed to be able to hit Israel from Iraq. Quite normally,
the murder inquiry got under way by investigating the possible
involvement of Mossad, but after six years, including two years
of intensive work just after the murder, De Valkeneer shelved
the inquiry with little or nothing to prove Israeli
implication. It now appears that Mossad's nemesis, the Tory
British defense and intelligence establishment (the "Old Boy"
network), is the real culprit and handily turned the inquiry
toward Mossad to cover its own tracks and, in particular, those
of Stephan Adolph Kock, the central figure of the Bull murder
and apparently the direct liaison to the Conservative Old Boy
network and the Thatcher inner circle (see our biography of
Kock in INT, n. 76 16). Following the "De Morgen" revelations,
the "Independent" published a one-page article entitled "Who is
Stephan Kock?" on 26 April. The only other article on the
affair was published by the Sunday magazine, "Business Times".
Needless to say, publication of MI5 and MI6 documents in the
British press would have been met with a rigorous "D Notice"
before public release.
Bull was a serious rival to the Thatcher-Old Boy clique since
they were involved in truly "cut-throat" competition on the
same market: illegally furnishing arms to Iraq during the
Iraq-Iran war. Much more so than Bull, the Thatcher-Old Boy
clique -- a very pro-NATO and pro-US group -- was illegally
furnishing both sides, making sure neither side gained a
strategic advantage, while making tremendous profits. Bull
knew this and apparently had extensive documentation on the
Thatcher-Old Boy clique's secret arms traffic, but this
"insurance policy" didn't save him from British "Big Boy
rules". Judge De Valkeneer is now focusing his investigation
on a mysterious visit to Brussels of a four-member SAS team
lead by Kock and including Terry Hardy, "MoD" (British Ministry
of Defence), Colonel Ian Jack, SHAPE liaison officer to the SAS
and other British special forces, Michael Blane, British
"Tactical Support Staff". Kock is described as a former SAS
officer, an MI5 agent and -- which is exceptional -- also an
MI6 agent, and a director of Astra Holdings with which Bull had
been fighting "tooth and nail" for the ownership of the Belgian
PRB munitions firm, formerly the Pouderies Reunies de Belgique.
In this fight with the Thatcher-Old Boy clique, Bull lost the
battle for PRB and then his life.
On 2 March 1990, a fax message, with the heading "Visit of UK
MoD Special Forces Staff to PRB", announced the arrival in
Brussels of the above four-member team for a supposed 19-21
March visit to PRB facilities. The team was particularly
interested in looking into the possible production of special
forces explosive devices by PRB, according to the fax. PRB had
never produced such devices and was in no way equipped to do
so. The team supposedly left Brussels for London on the
evening of 21 March. The next day Bull was killed and this
team's visit to Brussels is the center of Judge De Valkeneer's
new investigation. De Valkeneer also has a 6 March 1990
document from Astra announcing the team's arrival and intention
to visit four PRB ammunition factories. Besides Kock, an Astra
director, none of the team members had previously had anything
to do with PRB.
Just before his death on 22 March, Bull had a five-hour meeting
with Chris Gumbley, until just a few days previously director
general of Astra Holdings, in Brussels. The meeting was also
attended by two lawyers, one a Swiss who had also worked as a
PRB representative, and a Belgian who was Bull's lawyer.
Gumbley had been brutally ejected by Kock from Astra management
and Astra chairman of the board, Gerald James, had his board
chairmanship taken away from him, but was left as an ordinary
board member. This "coup" was executed by Kock alone, who was
Astra's new executive director apparently acting on behalf of
the Thatcher-Old Boy clique. After this "coup", and several
weeks before his death, Bull met with James.
Since the murder of Bull, Kock denied, in several different
official British inquiries, that he had traveled to Brussels at
the time, but later admitted he had been in Brussels in March
1990. According to "De Morgen", Kock was the only person aware
of the meeting between Gumbley and Bull because Gumbley had
told him. He was also the top MI5 and MI6 agent for
information concerning illegal international arms traffic and
therefore would have known about Bull's involvement in the
Iraqi Super Cannon and probably also about Bull's knowledge of
the Thatcher-Old Boy clique's international arms trafficking.
Indeed, this seems to have been the subject of the Gumbley-Bull
meeting.
The owner of PRB, Societe Generale, had been trying to sell the
company to either Bull or Astra -- then under James and Gumbley
-- without letting either know until the very end they were
competing against each other. When Astra bought control of
PRB, both Bull and Astra wanted to know how they had been
manipulated. Bull, having worked with PRB since the 1970s,
including for his arms deals and Super Cannon work for Iraq,
knew very well that PRB was insolvent and, without the secret
Iraq deals, would have been bankrupt long ago. Astra
management, under James and Gumbley, did not know this and
thought they were purchasing a dynamic munitions manufacturer.
Bull soon learned Astra's position, and, probably feeling that
both he and the James-Gumbley Astra management had been
manipulated by Societe Generale and the Thatcher-Old Boy clique
(Bull's real competitors), Bull apparently sought revenge by
"cluing them in". This is not at all what Kock and the
Thatcher-Old Boy clique wanted. James and Gumbley were kicked
out and Bull was "terminated with extreme prejudice" (CIA, not
MI6 terminology).
The "termination" of Bull did not come any too early. During
his 22 March meeting with James and Gumbley, Bull gave them
explosive information on deep involvement of senior British
Conservative Party officials in massive illegal weapons
contracts with Iran and Iraq extending over many years. Some
of this came out in the "Iraqgate" scandal involving Matrix
Churchill (see INT, n. 55 12, n. 59 29 & n. 79 28). Via Kock,
the Thatcher inner circle probably knew what was happening in
Brussels. James and Gumbley had had trouble with Thatcher's
Tory government and the Thatcher inner circle which was
secretly furnishing Iran and Iraq with arms to keep them
strategically balanced.
In the center of the Thatcher-Old Boy clique is the Midland
Bank, MI6 and the SAS. In the 1980s, when Margaret Thatcher
came to power, a leading figure at Midland was French
aristocrat, Count Herve de Carmoy, who headed a secret
department in charge of financing the illegal British arms
traffic with Iraq and Iran. In 1988, de Carmoy left the
Midland to take up a senior job at the Societe Generale and,
indirectly, the PRB. Later, at Societe Generale, de Carmoy was
succeeded by the Belgian aristocrat and former Belgian military
counter-espionage officer, Viscount Steve Davignon, who also
negotiated with Bull and Astra. Societe Generale, Midland Bank
and the Thatcher-Old Boy clique all knew about PRB's real
situation and hid it from the James-Gumbley management of Astra
which bought control of PRB just before being disposed of.
James told "De Morgen" that Kock was a top MI6 and MI5
informant and also in direct contact with the Thatcher inner
circle via Richard Unwin, also a MI6 officer who was directly
linked to Gerald Howarth, chief of Thatcher's cabinet. In
1997, Howarth was elected a Tory MP against a "New Labour"
candidate.
"De Morgen" considered the principal question behind this
affair to be why the Thatcher-Old Boy clique was so interested
in Astra and PRB. The Thatcher defense industry in the 1980s
was involved in massive illegal arms trade to Iran and Iraq and
they wanted to maintain a monopoly and suppress any leaks.
After the Iraq-Iran war, the British defense industry continued
to export arms to Iraq which helped build up the Iraq armed
forces, led to the invasion of Kuwait and made the Gulf War
possible. This traffic passed through complicated networks
involving third parties, and the Thatcher-Old Boy clique
controlled them with Kock as coordinator and "enforcer". In
early 1990, James and Gumbley became a risk for this vast
operation and were pushed aside. They decided to contact Bull
who could tell them much more about the network and the central
role of the Thatcher-Old Boy clique. Bull was out for revenge,
sided with James and Gumbley, and furnished massive
documentation and specialized lawyers to "blow" the British
network and expose the Thatcher government. James met Bull
briefly, then Gumbley decided to secretly meet Bull for five
hours on 22 March just before Bull's murder. After that,
Gumbley and James underwent serious harassment in Great
Britain.
After Bull's murder, PRB changed its name and became Gechem,
sold off its ammunitions production capacity and kept only
synthetic foam production. James and Gumbley tried to fight
back under difficult circumstances and Kock seems to have "done
further service" for the Thatcher-Old Boy clique. Recently,
James claims to have seen documents, supposedly from the CIA or
the US State Department, stating that Kock was much more active
than previously known. One document reportedly mentions that
Kock, on 26 March-2 April 1990, just after the Bull murder, was
"shadowed" in Santiago, Chile, at the Hotel Carrera with
another MI6 officer, Roger Holdness. Holdness was probably the
"Michael Blane" who was a member of the team which visited
Brussels.
On 31 March 1990, in Hotel Carrera room 406, Jonathan Moyle,
British defense journalist working as editor of "Defence
Helicopter World", was murdered as a poorly-disguised
"suicide". Moyle was investigating the very same thing up
against which Bull had come: secret British involvement in
weapons traffic to Iraq, this time involving helicopters (see
"Great Britain/Chile - Death of Journalist J. Moyle", INT, n.
76 34). The official British inquiry into Moyle's death ran
into serious obstacles and eventually led nowhere, probably due
to the fact that the British prime minister's son, Mark
Thatcher, was linked to Chilian arms dealer, Carlos Cardoen,
who Moyle was investigating. Cardoen, since condemned in a US
court, has consistently claimed his Iraqi weapons sales were
known and "verified" by British and US military attaches based
in Santiago. Judge De Valkeneer has indeed a hefty task cut
out for himself.
http://www.blythe.org/Intelligence/readme/81sum
Copyright @ Walter De Bock and "De Morgen", 1998
Intelligence, N. 81, 8 June 1998, p. 1
BELGIUM
THATCHER, ASTRA, IRAQ & MURDER OF GERALD BULL
The international press has been caught sleeping ... or has
intentionally ignored a "block-buster": 40 pages of raw
intelligence data from MI5 and MI6 directly implicating the
inner circle of British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, in
the murder of Gerald Bull in Brussels on 22 March 1990. That
is what Walter De Bock revealed in the Flemish daily, "De
Morgen", on 15 April and which has generated in the
international press ... two articles. The documents have been
passed on to the Belgian judge, Christian De Valkeneer, who has
been investigating the Bull murder and recently decided to
reopen the case on the basis of this documentation.
Gerald Bull was a Canadian engineer who had been working in
Belgium and secretly collaborating with the Iraqi regime of
Saddam Hussein in developing the "Super Cannon" which was
supposed to be able to hit Israel from Iraq. Quite normally,
the murder inquiry got under way by investigating the possible
involvement of Mossad, but after six years, including two years
of intensive work just after the murder, De Valkeneer shelved
the inquiry with little or nothing to prove Israeli
implication. It now appears that Mossad's nemesis, the Tory
British defense and intelligence establishment (the "Old Boy"
network), is the real culprit and handily turned the inquiry
toward Mossad to cover its own tracks and, in particular, those
of Stephan Adolph Kock, the central figure of the Bull murder
and apparently the direct liaison to the Conservative Old Boy
network and the Thatcher inner circle (see our biography of
Kock in INT, n. 76 16). Following the "De Morgen" revelations,
the "Independent" published a one-page article entitled "Who is
Stephan Kock?" on 26 April. The only other article on the
affair was published by the Sunday magazine, "Business Times".
Needless to say, publication of MI5 and MI6 documents in the
British press would have been met with a rigorous "D Notice"
before public release.
Bull was a serious rival to the Thatcher-Old Boy clique since
they were involved in truly "cut-throat" competition on the
same market: illegally furnishing arms to Iraq during the
Iraq-Iran war. Much more so than Bull, the Thatcher-Old Boy
clique -- a very pro-NATO and pro-US group -- was illegally
furnishing both sides, making sure neither side gained a
strategic advantage, while making tremendous profits. Bull
knew this and apparently had extensive documentation on the
Thatcher-Old Boy clique's secret arms traffic, but this
"insurance policy" didn't save him from British "Big Boy
rules". Judge De Valkeneer is now focusing his investigation
on a mysterious visit to Brussels of a four-member SAS team
lead by Kock and including Terry Hardy, "MoD" (British Ministry
of Defence), Colonel Ian Jack, SHAPE liaison officer to the SAS
and other British special forces, Michael Blane, British
"Tactical Support Staff". Kock is described as a former SAS
officer, an MI5 agent and -- which is exceptional -- also an
MI6 agent, and a director of Astra Holdings with which Bull had
been fighting "tooth and nail" for the ownership of the Belgian
PRB munitions firm, formerly the Pouderies Reunies de Belgique.
In this fight with the Thatcher-Old Boy clique, Bull lost the
battle for PRB and then his life.
On 2 March 1990, a fax message, with the heading "Visit of UK
MoD Special Forces Staff to PRB", announced the arrival in
Brussels of the above four-member team for a supposed 19-21
March visit to PRB facilities. The team was particularly
interested in looking into the possible production of special
forces explosive devices by PRB, according to the fax. PRB had
never produced such devices and was in no way equipped to do
so. The team supposedly left Brussels for London on the
evening of 21 March. The next day Bull was killed and this
team's visit to Brussels is the center of Judge De Valkeneer's
new investigation. De Valkeneer also has a 6 March 1990
document from Astra announcing the team's arrival and intention
to visit four PRB ammunition factories. Besides Kock, an Astra
director, none of the team members had previously had anything
to do with PRB.
Just before his death on 22 March, Bull had a five-hour meeting
with Chris Gumbley, until just a few days previously director
general of Astra Holdings, in Brussels. The meeting was also
attended by two lawyers, one a Swiss who had also worked as a
PRB representative, and a Belgian who was Bull's lawyer.
Gumbley had been brutally ejected by Kock from Astra management
and Astra chairman of the board, Gerald James, had his board
chairmanship taken away from him, but was left as an ordinary
board member. This "coup" was executed by Kock alone, who was
Astra's new executive director apparently acting on behalf of
the Thatcher-Old Boy clique. After this "coup", and several
weeks before his death, Bull met with James.
Since the murder of Bull, Kock denied, in several different
official British inquiries, that he had traveled to Brussels at
the time, but later admitted he had been in Brussels in March
1990. According to "De Morgen", Kock was the only person aware
of the meeting between Gumbley and Bull because Gumbley had
told him. He was also the top MI5 and MI6 agent for
information concerning illegal international arms traffic and
therefore would have known about Bull's involvement in the
Iraqi Super Cannon and probably also about Bull's knowledge of
the Thatcher-Old Boy clique's international arms trafficking.
Indeed, this seems to have been the subject of the Gumbley-Bull
meeting.
The owner of PRB, Societe Generale, had been trying to sell the
company to either Bull or Astra -- then under James and Gumbley
-- without letting either know until the very end they were
competing against each other. When Astra bought control of
PRB, both Bull and Astra wanted to know how they had been
manipulated. Bull, having worked with PRB since the 1970s,
including for his arms deals and Super Cannon work for Iraq,
knew very well that PRB was insolvent and, without the secret
Iraq deals, would have been bankrupt long ago. Astra
management, under James and Gumbley, did not know this and
thought they were purchasing a dynamic munitions manufacturer.
Bull soon learned Astra's position, and, probably feeling that
both he and the James-Gumbley Astra management had been
manipulated by Societe Generale and the Thatcher-Old Boy clique
(Bull's real competitors), Bull apparently sought revenge by
"cluing them in". This is not at all what Kock and the
Thatcher-Old Boy clique wanted. James and Gumbley were kicked
out and Bull was "terminated with extreme prejudice" (CIA, not
MI6 terminology).
The "termination" of Bull did not come any too early. During
his 22 March meeting with James and Gumbley, Bull gave them
explosive information on deep involvement of senior British
Conservative Party officials in massive illegal weapons
contracts with Iran and Iraq extending over many years. Some
of this came out in the "Iraqgate" scandal involving Matrix
Churchill (see INT, n. 55 12, n. 59 29 & n. 79 28). Via Kock,
the Thatcher inner circle probably knew what was happening in
Brussels. James and Gumbley had had trouble with Thatcher's
Tory government and the Thatcher inner circle which was
secretly furnishing Iran and Iraq with arms to keep them
strategically balanced.
In the center of the Thatcher-Old Boy clique is the Midland
Bank, MI6 and the SAS. In the 1980s, when Margaret Thatcher
came to power, a leading figure at Midland was French
aristocrat, Count Herve de Carmoy, who headed a secret
department in charge of financing the illegal British arms
traffic with Iraq and Iran. In 1988, de Carmoy left the
Midland to take up a senior job at the Societe Generale and,
indirectly, the PRB. Later, at Societe Generale, de Carmoy was
succeeded by the Belgian aristocrat and former Belgian military
counter-espionage officer, Viscount Steve Davignon, who also
negotiated with Bull and Astra. Societe Generale, Midland Bank
and the Thatcher-Old Boy clique all knew about PRB's real
situation and hid it from the James-Gumbley management of Astra
which bought control of PRB just before being disposed of.
James told "De Morgen" that Kock was a top MI6 and MI5
informant and also in direct contact with the Thatcher inner
circle via Richard Unwin, also a MI6 officer who was directly
linked to Gerald Howarth, chief of Thatcher's cabinet. In
1997, Howarth was elected a Tory MP against a "New Labour"
candidate.
"De Morgen" considered the principal question behind this
affair to be why the Thatcher-Old Boy clique was so interested
in Astra and PRB. The Thatcher defense industry in the 1980s
was involved in massive illegal arms trade to Iran and Iraq and
they wanted to maintain a monopoly and suppress any leaks.
After the Iraq-Iran war, the British defense industry continued
to export arms to Iraq which helped build up the Iraq armed
forces, led to the invasion of Kuwait and made the Gulf War
possible. This traffic passed through complicated networks
involving third parties, and the Thatcher-Old Boy clique
controlled them with Kock as coordinator and "enforcer". In
early 1990, James and Gumbley became a risk for this vast
operation and were pushed aside. They decided to contact Bull
who could tell them much more about the network and the central
role of the Thatcher-Old Boy clique. Bull was out for revenge,
sided with James and Gumbley, and furnished massive
documentation and specialized lawyers to "blow" the British
network and expose the Thatcher government. James met Bull
briefly, then Gumbley decided to secretly meet Bull for five
hours on 22 March just before Bull's murder. After that,
Gumbley and James underwent serious harassment in Great
Britain.
After Bull's murder, PRB changed its name and became Gechem,
sold off its ammunitions production capacity and kept only
synthetic foam production. James and Gumbley tried to fight
back under difficult circumstances and Kock seems to have "done
further service" for the Thatcher-Old Boy clique. Recently,
James claims to have seen documents, supposedly from the CIA or
the US State Department, stating that Kock was much more active
than previously known. One document reportedly mentions that
Kock, on 26 March-2 April 1990, just after the Bull murder, was
"shadowed" in Santiago, Chile, at the Hotel Carrera with
another MI6 officer, Roger Holdness. Holdness was probably the
"Michael Blane" who was a member of the team which visited
Brussels.
On 31 March 1990, in Hotel Carrera room 406, Jonathan Moyle,
British defense journalist working as editor of "Defence
Helicopter World", was murdered as a poorly-disguised
"suicide". Moyle was investigating the very same thing up
against which Bull had come: secret British involvement in
weapons traffic to Iraq, this time involving helicopters (see
"Great Britain/Chile - Death of Journalist J. Moyle", INT, n.
76 34). The official British inquiry into Moyle's death ran
into serious obstacles and eventually led nowhere, probably due
to the fact that the British prime minister's son, Mark
Thatcher, was linked to Chilian arms dealer, Carlos Cardoen,
who Moyle was investigating. Cardoen, since condemned in a US
court, has consistently claimed his Iraqi weapons sales were
known and "verified" by British and US military attaches based
in Santiago. Judge De Valkeneer has indeed a hefty task cut
out for himself.
http://www.blythe.org/Intelligence/readme/81sum
Copyright @ Walter De Bock and "De Morgen", 1998
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.