The Feather Men: secret SAS committee?

[Jan Klimkowski]

I saw the movie Killer Eilte, with De Niro and Statham, last night. It claims to be based on the "true story" depicted in Ranulph Fiennes' book The Feather Men.

So, is it fact or fiction?

The SAS is adamant that it's fiction.

However, the correction (which I've highlighted in bold italicised text) at the bottom of the Daily Mail piece below, suggests that there may be a factual basis for at least some of the book's claims.

How Ranulph Fiennes cashed in on the 'murder' of SAS heroes

By Tony Rennell Daily Mail
Created 8:55 PM on 16th July 2010

A gripping 'true' book by the great explorer tells how a sheik sent assassins to kill four SAS soldiers. As it's made into a film, there's just one question: is it all bunkum?

The barren Brecon Beacons in Wales were at their winter worst.

Hurricane-force winds whipped up the snow and freezing rain to a deadly chill factor of minus 50c. Visibility was down to a few yards.

But these were not conditions to halt the SAS.

Valour: Under fire in the desert, the sort of terrain in which Major Mike Kealy forged his heroic reputation

A notoriously tough endurance test known as the Long March was under way for would-be recruits to the elite regiment - a 41-mile mountain slog in full kit and laden pack, to be completed in less than 17 hours.

Fighting their way through the blizzard, one team - a corporal and captain - could just make out ahead of them what they mistook for a rock protruding from the blanket of snow.

As they got closer, they saw it was the hunched figure of a soldier who had set out before them. He was unconscious, barely alive, his pulse flickering and faint.

They manoeuvred him into a survival bag, and, while the captain went for help, the corporal climbed in beside the frozen man, using his body heat in a bid to revive him.

It was to no avail. When Major Mike Kealy DSO was finally brought off the mountain 19 hours later, he was dead.

His death in 1979 stunned the hardened men of the regiment.

Dangerous terrain: The Brecon Beacons National Park, which hosts regular military training, can be a harsh environment in the wrong weather

Kealy was a legend after his courage six years earlier in a clandestine war against communist insurgents in the desert kingdom of Oman.

At the battle of Mirbat, he and eight other SAS men fought off an attack by several hundred guerillas, killing up to 80 of them.

Years later, as newly appointed commander of his own SAS squadron, to prove to his men - and himself - that he was as fit as the best of them, he had opted to go on the endurance march.

But alone on the mountain, exhaustion and exposure had got the better of the 33-year-old.

In a white-out worse than anyone could remember, he had ploughed on when others sought shelter. Hypothermia fuddled his brain and judgment.

His young widow, Maggi, was devastated, all the more so because she was the mother of five-week-old twins and a toddler of three. She had no stomach for the inquest, at which his death was ruled an accident.

The author: Sir Ranulph Fiennes, pictured here in 1991 around the release of his controversial novel The Feather Men

Nor did she have any idea how, a dozen years later, her husband's death would be dramatically - and, in her view, unfairly - reinterpreted by a man many saw as one of Britain's modern-day heroes, Sir Ranulph Fiennes.

In 1991, Fiennes - Old Etonian, ex-military, adventurer, polar trekker and author - published his ninth book.

The Feather Men caused a sensation because it laid out in compelling detail an extraordinary, but faintly plausible conspiracy theory surrounding men of the SAS murdered by hitmen working for an Arab.

Now, that book is being made into a Hollywood blockbuster starring Robert de Niro and Clive Owen.

Fiennes was a SAS legend, too, but for the wrong reasons.

He had passed the selection - though only, by his own admission, by cheating on the Long March. He had arranged a lift with a local farmer.

He got away with that, but was kicked out of the regiment soon after when police arrested him for detonating plastic explosives in a private protest about the use of a Wiltshire trout stream in the Rex Harrison Dr Dolittle film.

A few years later, though, he was allowed to join the SAS reserves in a minor capacity while he planned his first expeditions.

In The Feather Men, Fiennes spun a supposedly true tale of four Britons who had served in Oman being tracked down by contract killers on behalf of a sheik seeking revenge for the deaths of his sons.

The Feather Men of the title were an underground vigilante group of SAS veterans trying to thwart the assassins.

It read with all the verve and dramatic flair of a novel, but was stuffed full of facts and real events. And one of those real events was the death of Mike Kealy - but with a crucial difference.

The major, Fiennes claimed, was murdered.

Star treatment: Actor Clive Owen is to appear in a film based on The Feather Men

A hired killer infiltrated the SAS exercise, slipped a drug into Kealy's tea that befuddled him when he was out on the mountain, then ambushed him in the snowstorm, injected him with an overdose of insulin and left him to die of exposure.

The apparently innocent deaths of three other real-life Oman veterans over 17 years - one in a helicopter crash, another in a car crash, a third from a heart attack - were also 'revealed' to be cleverly disguised revenge murders.

And how did Fiennes know all this? Because, in a twist to the tale, he claims he had been the intended fifth victim.

He had served in Oman, too, though in the Sultan's army, which was also fighting the rebel sheik, rather than in the SAS.

He claims the killers had come for him, pouncing on him one dark October night in 1990 in a lane near his remote farmhouse on Exmoor, but the mystery Feather Men appeared out of nowhere to save him.

Then, passing him their dossiers on the four 'murders', the Feather Men asked him to write 'the true story' of what had taken place.


A subheading in small print on the title page posed the question that Fiennes thereafter ducked: 'Fact or Fiction?'

And that, Fiennes claimed, was precisely what he had done.

In an author's note, he claimed to describe 'these events with complete attention to accuracy,' adding that 'some of the dialogue and the emotions, the inner thoughts and the assumptions are, of course, mine'.

In the acknowledgements, relatives of the four men were thanked for their co-operation, among them, Maggi Kealy.

Bloomsbury, the book's publisher - who described it as a 'true adventure' - had no doubt it was factual and stood by its accuracy, according to reports at the time.

Confusingly, however, a subheading in small print on the title page posed the question that Fiennes thereafter ducked: 'Fact or Fiction?'

The SAS was sure of the answer and made its views known.

Outraged former officers briefed reporters that they had never heard of the Feather Men and did not believe the murder stories.

The regiment took the unprecedented step of going on record with a statement from the adjutant, Lt-Col Ian Smith, that 'we disown Ranulph Fiennes and his book'.
Who dares wins? Sir Ranuph Fiennes and his book were disowned by the SAS

Who dares wins? Sir Ranuph Fiennes and his book were disowned by the SAS

A former officer, and Mike Kealy's closest friend since their days together at Sandhurst, ridicules the idea that an outsider could infiltrate himself into an SAS exercise.

'I was flabbergasted by the book,' he told the Mail last week.

'It was utter b****, the figment of a fertile imagination. What was really upsetting was that it was making a story out of a tragedy.'

Some soldiers maintained that Fiennes, a hereditary baronet, had been 'ungentlemanly' in inserting real people into his story and then changing the nature of their deaths for dramatic impact in order to sell his book.

Others used more forthright language.

But Fiennes appeared unfazed by those who damned him. Nor would he clear up the mystery. When asked if it was fact or fiction, he would answer with an ambiguous: 'Yes.'

The families of the four men said nothing publicly, dismissing the book as fantasy and not wanting to get into a wrangle with Fiennes that would give it yet more publicity.

Maggi Kealy had remarried and refused to get involved. Two decades on, she regrets this decision.

She is furious that a film is being made. The title has changed to The Killer elite, but the acknowledged source is Fiennes's book.

Maggi Denaro, as she now is, believes that Fiennes should do the decent thing and make it clear, once and for all, that her late husband was not murdered and that The Feather Men is fiction, not fact.

'It's time he grew up. He's made his money out of the book. He should come clean,' she says.

At the very least, she wants him to acknowledge the hurt his claims caused.

'When the book came out saying Mike had been murdered, we knew it wasn't true.

More...

Pictured: The British troops befriending Afghan villagers days before they were gunned down by renegade soldier

'But that didn't stop our children from being upset when other people believed it.'

Her daughter, Alice, who was 16 when the book was published, could accept the notion that, as she put it, 'it was plain, old cold that killed Dad' on those frozen mountains.

But the idea of him being murdered was understandably disturbing. She says it cast a shadow over her teenage years.

Now she and her mother fear the film and the fanfare that will go with it will rake up all that unhealthy speculation once again.

It is hard not to sympathise with Kealy's family in their distress.

Fiennes, 66, is a fine British hero with unrivalled achievements, from his polar circumnavigation of the world as a young man to being the oldest Briton to climb Everest.

At many levels, his life of danger and daring is an inspiration. This is a man with the guts to hack-saw off his own frost-bitten fingers.

Yet, with The Feather men, he stands accused of riding roughshod over the feelings of those who lost loved ones in tragic circumstances.

Given the chance this week to explain himself , Fiennes issued a statement to the Mail through his present publisher, Hodder & Stoughton.

'The Feather Men is an amalgam of fact and fiction,' he said.

'Before it was published in 1991, I sent copies of the manuscript to people named in the book then alive and to the next of kin of the deceased, including Major Mike Kealy's wife and mother.

'I also sent it to the SAS. All concerned approved the final manuscript. The film being made of the book under the title of The Killer Elite is pure fiction.'

It is far from the frank admission to which Maggi Denaro believes she is entitled.

What she is waiting for is an unequivocal acknowledgment from Fiennes that his account of her husband's death was made up.

He should also, she says, reflect on 'the anger, anxiety and sorrow he has caused the families of the men "used" in his book'.

As for the forthcoming film, she wants to be reassured that the publicity will not link it to the book 'without confirming constantly that the way the characters are portrayed as dying is fiction'.

If all this comes about, she may finally be able to be free of The Feather Men and the mysterious story that has weighed on her family for 20 years.

Additional reporting: Alastair McQueen

Valour: Under fire in the desert. Inset: Ranulph Fiennes


Sir Ranulph Fiennes

An earlier version of this article of 16 July 2010 reported that the widow of Major Mike Kealy was not consulted in detail before the book was published. In fact she had read and approved every page which referred to her husband. Sir Ranulph has asked us to make clear that SAS Head Quarters were also consulted over the text of the book. We are happy to do so.

The scenes in the film where the major dies on the SAS "Long March" endurance test are amongst the least convincing part of the film.

Far more interesting, in a deep political sense, is the claim that there was a secret committee of (former?) SAS officers known as the Feather Men whose actions would include murder. In the film's title, a Killer Elite.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Wiki sez the following.

I've highlighted a key passage in bold.

The novel caused considerable controversy over the claim that it was based on real events. Publisher Bloomsbury described it as a "true adventure" when it was published in 1991. Fiennes claimed that the Feather Men had shown him detailed dossiers on the assassins and their victims, and requested that he write an "authorised" history of the group. A source in the Ministry of Defence told The Daily Telegraph:

Many events Fiennes describes simply never took place. Frankly, it's just another example of the Special Forces' reputation being exploited for commercial gain.

Fiennes himself remained vague on the story's veracity, asserting that it was up to the reader to decide whether it was fact or fiction, and suggested journalists subject events and people described in the book to "forensic examination", and to draw their own conclusions.[2] Fiennes describes his novels as "factional", meaning a blend of fact and fiction. The hardcover editions had the words "Fact or fiction?" printed on the covers, and contained an index, maps and photographs as a non-fiction book would. The paperback editions, however, presented the book as purely fiction and omitted the index and illustrations.[3]

However, there is a paperback edition of The Feather Men which includes photographs of the victims and other real life characters, a map (Oman in 1976) and other illustrations (e.g. a block diagram of the modification of the BMW car brake system to incorporate remote radio control) and an index. It was published by Signet in 1992 - ISBN 0-451-17455-0

In June 2010, Alice Clarke, the daughter of SAS soldier Major Mike Kealy whose death is depicted in The Feather Men at the hands of The Clinic, spoke out, saying that her father had died during an endurance exercise in the Brecon Beacons in 1979. Describing Fiennes' claims as "disgraceful", she stated that her mother had confronted the author at the Hay Festival, and he had admitted to her that the story was a work of fiction.[2]

Fiennes responded in a statement issued to the Daily Mail through his publisher: he did provide copies of the manuscript for family members of the deceased men to review, and the SAS was also provided with a copy prior to the book being published. There were no complaints on the manuscript being published.[4]

In 2011, Fiennes stated in an interview with The Daily Beast that the book was "all fiction", and reaffirmed that he had the signed permission of the soldiers' families, including Kealy's wife, to mention them in the book.[5]

The last sentence misrepresents the Daily Beast interview of Sir Ranulph Fiennes.

Note that the book was first published in 1991, and the interview is in 2011.

The pertinent quote from Fiennes is: "I had chose to change my mind from time-to-time in terms of answering people, and at the moment, I choose to say that the book, and therefore the film, are total fiction. In 20 years time, I might change my mind."

Here is a fuller extract.

Q: So why did you end up transferring to Oman, where much of The Feather Men is set?

Fiennes: When I was thrown out of the SAS for misuse of explosives on civilian property [for the dam incident], I was thrown back to Germany and the tanks. I tried to escape after a year, and one of the people in that regiment that had been to the then-secret war in Oman, let me know that it was a wonderful place to be and so, having been taught Arabic, I went out there.

Q: What inspired you to write The Feather Men?

Fiennes: Now that you've started to ask me about the book, my answers to your questions will become evasive.

Q: Do the best you can.

Fiennes: When the book came out 20 years ago, on the cover in big letters it said, "Fact or Fiction?" It left it to the reader to decide whether it was fact or fiction, but it complicated the issue by putting photographs of people with a lot of real names in the book. It was probably confusing to readers as to what was fact and what was fiction. I had chose to change my mind from time-to-time in terms of answering people, and at the moment, I choose to say that the book, and therefore the film, are total fiction. In 20 years time, I might change my mind.

The idea was to sell more books and at the time, the person who was going to put new books in the bookshop was told to put it in the "fiction" side of the shop or the "non-fiction" side of the shop, and at the time people only read one or the other, so if you put it on both sides of the shop you got both sets of book buyers.

Q: You had previously claimed in interviews around the time of the book's release that this shadow organization called "The Feather Men," which protected ex-SAS operatives, did exist.

Fiennes: If I did, that's what I did. Yes. But I'm telling you now that it was all fiction.

Q: How do you feel about the film Killer Elite being marketed as "based on a true story?"

Fiennes: The publishers and literary agents have written to them and said it was quite clear that they shouldn't have done that, and that they should change it to words like "inspired by" instead of "based on." Maybe they'll change it, but I don't know.

There was also an incident where you were confronted by the angry mother of one of the real-life men in the book who you claimed was murdered, when he wasn't.

There was a guy who I said was killed in the U.K. in very bad weather in Wales on the mountains during an SAS selection course, and I'm saying that he wasn't killed. He died of hypothermia up there, and that is what the inquest said. At the time I wrote the book, I went to the lady in question and showed her the text of the book because Bloomsbury, who later published the Harry Potter books, would not publish the book unless the next of kin of the dead officers signed every page of what I was saying about their late relatives. I still possess the signatures in question. That lady signed every page, and when this film came out recently and a newspaper asked her about it, she said that I never correlated the text with her. I've found her signature and showed it to her, and she apologized and said it was a long time ago and she had forgotten about it.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Intriguing thread on the Army Rumour Service.

Here is one provocative snippet:

Many of you are asking whether or not the background to this book is true? Well I can offer two pieces of information which may well convince people of the truth and they are as follows: -

1. An author by the name of David Mason released his book 'Shadow Over Babylon' in 1993 which went on to be a best seller. At the time of publication David Mason was interviewed on the radio - I can't remember who interviewed him but having read 'The Feather Men' my ears pricked up when his name was mentioned, so I intently listened to the forthcoming interview, which took place about the time of his book being published. I remember quite clearly the interviewer asking about his book and a specific question as to how he managed to get the book published etc. (For those who have not read the book it is basically about Iraq and the would be assasination of Saddam). David Mason's went on to tell the story about his great friend Ranulph Fiennes who two years previously had penned a story called 'The Feather Men' which he submitted for publication. He met with the publisher who liked the treatment but was unsure as to the pedigree or background and suggested to Ranulph that if there was such a group then perhaps he could/would arrange a meeting with just such an individual, and what was deemed as part of the deal, Sir Ranulph was to present the individual at a luncheon date in the near future, and if this could happen then his book would almost certainly be published. With this in mind Sir Ranulph agreed and telephoned David Mason who he hadn't seen for a time and suggested that as he was going to be up in town on a certain date to meet with his publisher that perhaps David would care to join him and get a free lunch on the publisher, and afterwards they would get some time together to catch up on the past etc. David Mason readily agreed to this completely unaware of what was going on. At lunch David was introduced to the publisher and they chatted extensively over lunch about this and that, the publisher now and again posing certain questions that according to the story only a bone fide 'Feather Man' would know the answers (don't forget the book had not been published nor had David Mason or Sir Ranulph seen each other for some time) therefore the publisher was convinced. Later in the day David Mason asked Sir Ranulph what it was all about and Sir Ranulph then told him about how the publisher had wanted to meet a 'Feather Man' before he would agree to publish the book. So David Mason was set up! He didn't forget this and told the interviewer that he had said to Sir Ranulph that on that basis he now owed him a favour and left it at that. No more was said until 1993 when 'Shadow over Babylon' was ready for publication and David Mason contacted Sir Ranulph for a second introduction to Bloomsbury and in particular to his publisher in return for his being set-up by Sir Ranulph two years previously, and of course Sir Ranulph was only too pleased to return the favour.

2. The second pointer is that Sir Ranulph Fiennes in his book 'The Feather Men' published photographs of various members of the Regiment all of whom he stated had died, however he also reproduced a photograph of David Mason in the Middle East in 1977 which proves that David Mason was indeed well known to Sir Ranulph and possibly a good friend of his thus bearing out the fact that both men knew each other reasonably well and that as with anyone in the regiment they became good friends.

I think with both of these items that there is a very strong possibilty of such a group existing - in fact I would suggest that not only does such a group exist but it is probably also known to have another link that could be known as Group 13.

I hope this post goes some way to answer the speculation about 'The Feather Men'.

The DPF thread on Group 13, including some of David Guyatt's work, which mentions The Feather Men, can be seen here.

[Magda Hassan]

Some sheiks are so ungrateful. After all the SAS have done for them....

[David Guyatt]

I remember reading The Feather Men and found it to be pretty compelling. Certainly I came away convinced the underlying story was true. If memory serves, the leader of the Feather Men was David Stirling, the founder of the SAS, who was also involved in the planned coup d'etat of Prime Minister Harold Wilson (LOBSTER has much on this, I think).

[David Guyatt]

I saw the movie Killer Eilte, with De Niro and Statham, last night. It claims to be based on the "true story" depicted in Ranulph Fiennes' book The Feather Men.

So, is it fact or fiction?

The SAS is adamant that it's fiction.

I was at a party recently having drinks with friends. During the course of the evening one of my friends was regaling me with some quite hilarious stories of his days in the military. Without any prompting, or even thought on my part, he asked if I had ever heard of the Feather Men. I told him I had read the book years ago. He confirmed it was true. He was in a position to know.

[Jan Klimkowski]

I saw the movie Killer Eilte, with De Niro and Statham, last night. It claims to be based on the "true story" depicted in Ranulph Fiennes' book The Feather Men.

So, is it fact or fiction?

The SAS is adamant that it's fiction.

I was at a party recently having drinks with friends. During the course of the evening one of my friends was regaling me with some quite hilarious stories of his days in the military. Without any prompting, or even thought on my part, he asked if I had ever heard of the Feather Men. I told him I had read the book years ago. He confirmed it was true. He was in a position to know.

David - thanks for sharing.

I still don't have much of a sense of why Fiennes would have written the book in the first place.

[David Guyatt]

Nor I, Jan.

Except that I don't think the book actually went nearly as far, or as deep, as I think I might've have, had their been a will. Just my sense of things, is all.

But I'm willing to bet the large sum of a pint of beer (okay, I'll stretch to 2 - don't want to be called mean) that, based on the publication date of 1991, in other words just barely post Thacthcula, that it might've been a veiled threat of what could come out had there been an unwanted reckoning.

I was indirectly involved in the post Thathcula cleaning of the stables, albeit in a different industry, but one that had almost direct connections, and a back door entrance to that number in that street in Westminster - not that I knew that at the time though, I was simply an unimportant middle tanking exec - but I saw things, heard things, met people and, oddly, remember things too - and have subsequently made a point of finding out too.

Anyway, the foregoing purely and simply is a guess on my part.

[Phil Dragoo]

The pretext that the sultan would buy contracts on four SAS who participated in this event:

The first pressing problem that Qaboos bin Said faced as Sultan was an armed communist insurgency from South Yemen, the Dhofar Rebellion (19651975). The Sultanate eventually defeated the incursion with help from the Shah of Iran, Jordanian troops sent from his friend King Hussein of Jordan, British Special Forces, and the Royal Air Force.

is counterintuitive. Our friend the colonel from Vietnam remarked his fellow officers invited him to Saudi as good money was offered for security. That would have been in the period of the Rebellion.

I did read Shadow Over Babylon by David Mason. It was awkward--that suspension of disbelief thing never even close. The sniper shot Saddam in the slapstick anatomy. Somehow reality made this novel a nonstarter: body doubles, decoy convoys, brutal retaliation as plot after plot was uncovered.

In re Mason's reviews, one said between Clancy and Forsythe--Clancy is so wordy he's unreadable; and, he is proudly pursuing that one book a year for his two million readers. As for Forsythe, nothing approaches Day of the Jackal.

In terms of tampering with BMW brakes: very relevant with Hasting's sudden demise.