Catherine Eisner: Treachery

Showing posts with label Treachery. Show all posts

Tuesday, 7 July 2015

Stoneburgh Spy Campus (Pt. 5): Tyrants, Ideologues and Spies are ‘Stronger by Treachery’ says Weisse

‘Bones are strongest at their broken places,’ declared Professor Hans-Jürgen Weissener (Stoneburgh Military Academy’s lecturer on politico-criminalistics), as he commenced his second lecture on Day Two of the Psychodynamics of Espionage conference, though, in my own view, his choice of expository text seemed to condemn his listeners to the aridities of a secular sermon.
But, surprisingly, the Prof then darted off on a tangent to illustrate how his text provided a precise metonym for current breaches of border security by insurgents, namely the strengthening of incursion tactics at Calais, the point of Britain’s weakest offshore defences .
‘The bones of a born survivor heal from a break,’ he explained. ‘They are strongest in the place where they were once broken.’
He then planked down a pair of wire-cutters on the lectern with a rhetorical flourish.
‘Similarly, the clandestines camped in Calais (whose political allegiances are of the most troubling dubiety) are now known to be surpassingly inventive in exploiting a chink in the armour of UK-bound hauliers – in this case, literally – and it is by this weakness that they strengthen their tactics to traffick hostiles into Britain.’
Weissener paused and flipped a switch.
At once an x-ray view was projected on to the screen behind him, revealing a cargo of trafficked illegals, massed inside a curtainsider truck. (They were so crammed together that some unfortunates among the human freight had been forced to stand.)

‘I don’t think it has yet been observed by the international Press,’ Weissener continued, ‘that the desperate conditions in the illegal camps at Calais resemble in many ways the PoW camps of two world wars insofar as latterday camp inmates are driven to attempt astonishing feats of ingenuity in their pursuit of new means of escape.’

He produced a length of cable and invited a conference delegate from the assembly to – stooge-like with a sickly grin – snip it with the wire-cutters.

‘Zapp! And that is how easy it is to get under the wire,’ Weissener told us grimly. ‘The wire in question is the high-tensile TIR cable [Transports Internationaux Routiers standard] that secures the curtainsider trucks transporting goods through the Channel Tunnel.

‘Yes, anti-slash armoured curtains may well be up to spec, and double padlocks clearly in evidence, BUT these are to no avail if would-be clandestine entrants to the United Kingdom have clipped the security cable and RECONNECTED IT WITH SUPER GLUE once they have penetrated the cargo space. This ploy means that – though the TIR cable is seen to pass through all fastening points and remains taut – the glued severed ends are actually concealed behind the curtainsider’s strap fasteners.

‘And, yes, the vigilant driver may well re-test the tension of the cable, say, after he’s been occupied at the pumps, YET – to return to my original proposition – the vehicle’s defences “are strongest at their broken places.” Or “strongest” certainly in the opinion of those clandestines whose deceptions have gained them admission to their free ride out of continental Europe.

‘Another thing. It is even known that padlocks are sheared off the tensioned TIR line then reassembled with super glue . . . the more easily later to prise them silently apart undetected.’

Pregnable Embassies

‘Notwithstanding this . . .’ again the lightning of the Prof ’s darting mind seized on another aside, ‘. . . there is a complacency prevailing in the haulage industry that’s very similar to the reliance placed by security agencies on the impregnability of those impressively substantial, antiquated, square-cornered, steel-plated safes in which our embassies overseas continue to hoard classified documents.

‘Fact. The seams of such safes can be easily detected and forced open with basic workmen’s tools such as a heavy hammer and cold chisel . . . even the best examples of this Victorian construction can be ripped open by driving a wedge or chisel into the riveted seams, usually found at one of the top corners. Once the rivets are popped, the corners can be peeled back . . . however, forgive me, for those safe-crackers among you I am anticipating the instruction you’ll receive for the next addition to your crime sheet . . . your Advanced Peterman Course this afternoon.’ [Polite laughter]

Outlawry Strengthened by Broken Pledges

At which point, I truly believed Stoneburgh’s most eminent theoretician had veered so far from his subject that he would find no way back.

I was wrong.

‘And now, you may ask, to what purpose do I mention these breached defences so easily penetrated by the exigent guile of self-taught outlaws “riding the rails” to Dover?
‘The lesson I adduce and which I wish our counterespionage agencies to take most to heart is: A successful law-breaker is strengthened by transgressive acts.
‘Being outside the rule of law, the “incursionists” crossing borders bound for this nation have no code of conduct to observe and the ease with which they evade international law-enforcers makes them stronger in their defiance of the polities of our hard-won democratic way of life.’
The effort of this peroration caused Professor Weissener to pause and reach for a glass of water. He was clearly troubled by the extreme complexity of his own circuitous argument.
He wiped his forehead and resumed, wandering off the point (judging by the response of his listeners) to cite any number of political and martial acts of treachery to substantiate his views.
‘The future historian will, no doubt, describe the present-day incursions upon Britain in an allegorical vein, and it’s true that no more striking example of deception by would-be insurgents is the sublime instance of the Trojan Horse, the symbol of a broken pledge since the ‘gift’ to the Trojans was dissembled as the Greeks’ offering of atonement to the goddess Athena.
‘Some of you may take this interpretation to be visionary, but the insidious peril I am combating is an actuality and one that may turn a foot soldier into a rebel leader, and make a declarant of broken promises stronger by treachery.
‘Hence arises a grave mischief.
‘Tyrants, ideologues and spies are stronger by treachery.
‘Modern history is replete with examples: Hitler and the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact (by his treacherous invasion of the Soviet Union Hitler reclaimed territories gained by the Soviets); Churchill and the forced repatriation – at the end of WW2 – of Cossacks (including women and children) to the USSR and their certain execution (an act of betrayal that has not tarnished Churchill’s reputation as revered ‘Saviour of the Nation’); the ambiguity of de Gaulle’s seeming promise to Algeria’s pieds noirs – “Je vous ai compris!”– and his subsequent u-turn did nothing to constrain his high-handed presidentialism during the succeeding decade of his politique de grandeur; Horatio Nelson’s betrayal of Neapolitan revolutionaries in 1799 in violation of the terms of an armistice has not toppled the admiral of ‘Immortal Memory’ from his pedestal nor impugned his gentleman’s ‘code of honour’; the posting to Washington of the master-spy Kim Philby as chief British intelligence officer at the capital served only to raise his espionage activities to a new level of treachery and strengthen his hand . . . and so on . . .’

A Trojan Horse Assumes Many Guises.

Professor Hans-Jürgen Weissener glanced at his watch and gathered together his lecture notes.
‘But here I must end my illustrations. My subject is treachery. Your job is counterespionage. Major problems of vital national security continue to confront us and your goal is to identify those who break the sacred bond of trust before they assume the false integrity that can make them seem unassailable despite the denunciations of whistleblowers, as was the case with that arch traitor and double agent, the odious dipsomaniacal snake in the grass Kim Philby.’
I smiled to myself, and such was the sustained impression of a secular sermon that I expected him to add, ‘Here endeth today’s lesson,’ but, instead, Weissener again flipped a switch and a final image was projected on to the conference screen above him.
‘Before I close I would earnestly impress upon you particularly the notion that a Trojan Horse can assume many guises, and we should heed those doubters who, like the seer Cassandra, saw through the incursionist deceptions that threatened Troy but were ignored, and hence had to face defeat and submission to a hostile occupation.’

Re. The trafficking of ‘incursionists’.
‘I would earnestly impress upon you particularly the notion
that a Trojan Horse can assume many guises.’
Professor Hans-Jürgen Weissener
(The limitless ingenuity of bootleggers in the Prohibition Era.)

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Calais Stowaways:

Penalties for hauliers caught with clandestines on board are variable, according to levels of negligence, with a maximum level of £2000 per stowaway.

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Catherine Eisner believes passionately in plot-driven suspense fiction, a devotion to literary craft that draws on studies in psychoanalytical criminology and psychoactive pharmacology to explore the dark side of motivation, and ignite plot twists with unexpected outcomes.

see Eisner’s Sister Morphine (2008)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/sister-morphine.html

(where the counterespionage operations of Stoneburgh may be read in Red Coffee)
and Listen Close to Me (2011)

Friday, 12 June 2015

Stoneburgh Spy Campus Archive . . . (Pt. 4) R.A.P.I.E.R. Birth of a Plausible Intriguer and Enterprising Rogue.

As outlined in the first of these occasional bulletins from the Archives of Stoneburgh Military Academy, the noted socialite ‘Barbara Ely’ had been seconded to the Applied Behavioural Science and Psychological Operations unit of military intelligence based at Stoneburgh; an outcome that was surely almost inevitable, given her close friendship with Anthony Blunt.

As a psycho-scenarist of criminal rôle-play for lectures in state espionage, this dazzling socialite won a reputation within intelligence circles that was close to legendary, a reputation evidently strengthened by the corpus of training ‘featurettes’ she devised for the instruction of probationary intelligence agents.

The scenarios range over a number of countersubversion activities encountered in the IOC (Intelligence Operations Course) taught at Stoneburgh, including Diplomatic Cover, Turnaround, Bona Fides, Rogue Agent, Stalking Horse, and the functions of a Useful Idiot.

For Turnaround see:
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/stoneburgh-spy-campus-pt-2-turnaround.html

Here (in an extract from Rogue Agent) is Barbara’s sketch of a disaffected fifteen-year-old (a youth modelled we have no doubt on the formative years of the traitor George Blake, a warped Calvinist) which gives us a glimpse of the schooldays of the ‘justifed sinner’ Blake professed himself to be. The ‘featurette’ is in the confessional mode of a schoolboy diary.

See also Profiling MI6’s Predestined Mole:
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/stoneburgh-spy-campus-pt-3-religio.html

‘Of course, Judas was reputedly a southpaw; medieval iconography invariably

depicts his bag of thirty pieces of silver clutched in his left hand.’

(Detail: Altar of the Holy Blood, lime-wood, Circa 1500, and arch traitor George Blake.

Note the Lacoste ‘Krokodil’ brand on Blake’s sports shirt; maybe his intended nod to

Soviet political satire of Western capitalism. Krokodil – a satirical periodical published in

the USSR – ridiculed capitalist countries and attacked political, ethnic and

religious groups judged to oppose the Soviet system.)

Friday, September 5 : I was put ‘On Report’ last week because of my late submission of an essay demanded by the school chaplain.
Old Hopalong [Rev. H. W. F. Walmesley] was once a star track runner, a champ of the hundred yard dash until invalided out of the army. His faith, like that of my father’s, is of a doctrinaire brand of muscular Christianity, and he is no less stern in censure of a miscreant’s lapses from high conduct.
So when this afternoon I was called out of class to report to his pastoral office in the school chapel I was pretty much prepared for any outburst of outraged godliness I may have provoked.
I found him in the robing-room of the vestry; a thin, dry, raw-boned man, with a curiously lazy right eye, which causes his active eye to gleam with greater fixity on the penitents summoned before him.
I saw my essay lay on the shelf of the ambry where the sky pilot and the choristers hang their vestments.
Old Hopalong was evidently in a tailspin. He sighed then huffed again on his spectacles to polish them.
‘I confess I am grievously displeased to see a debauchee so strayed from the path as to have wholly lost his way. I fear the clear light from the candle of the Lord no longer shines on your soul.’
He limped to the shelf and leafed through my manuscript.
‘I agree, sir,’ I answered placidly, ‘my premise is a somewhat complicated and abstruse calculation.’
Judas Iscariot: How the Twelfth Man Won the Match, my casuistical entry for the Divinity Prize Essay on the set topic of Predestination and the Betrayal Paradox, draws on the laws of cricket to examine the fulfilment of prophecy. I cited a recent notable county game in which the match was saved by a left-handed substitute player no less able than his fellows. (Three left-handed catches in two innings! A county record!) Of course, Judas was reputedly a southpaw; medieval iconography invariably depicts his bag of thirty pieces of silver clutched in his left hand.
My contention, then, has been to reveal to my schoolmasters that Judas was not the villain-of-the-piece nor unusually wicked, and the lesson we can learn from Judas’s rôle as fate-conniving instrument in the drama of the Apostolate is that out of any twelve men chosen for the advancing of an enterprise – in fact, out of any twelve men assembled on a field of play, never mind the cricket pitch – one man probably is, or will be, a Judas.
Old Hopalong pressed his hand to his forehead with all the febrility of a neurasthenic. Clearly he was impervious to reason, so I savoured all the more this unequal duel of brains.
He snorted and examined me forbiddingly over misted specs.
‘Qui vult decipi, decipiatur. I am not among the gullible who wish to be deceived, young man, nor shall I be deceived. My faith is a true blade that cuts through deceit.’
He pointed to an initialled comment scrawled in red pen on my essay’s title page.
I nodded and smiled encouragingly.
‘I can’t pretend to say I understand you very well.’
‘R.A.P.I.E.R.!’ He roared. ‘The Ready Answer of a Plausible Intriguer and Enterprising Rogue!’

His face had darkened a shade. He eased the celluloid of his dog collar as tears gathered in his failing eyes . . .

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Note: Kim Philby, the Third Man of the Cambridge Five spy ring, was an avid follower of cricket and occupied himself after his defection to the Soviet Union mostly by reading The Times sports pages.

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see Eisner’s Sister Morphine (2008)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/sister-morphine.html

(where the counterespionage operations of Stoneburgh may be read in Red Coffee)
and Listen Close to Me (2011)