George Blake has died
Thread Starter
Join Date: Aug 2020
Location: Cheshire
Posts: 80
George Blake has died
Many may be justified in taking some comfort in hearing of the passing of traitor George Blake in Moscow today.
Blake was sent by MI6 to Berlin in 1955, and passed on highly secret information to the Soviets about "Operation
Gold". From 1950 The British and Americans had dug a tunnel into the Soviet zone (East Germany) and accessed
three landline communication cables of the Soviet army. These linked Soviet headquarters at Zossen (25mins from
SXF) to the Soviet Embassy in East Berlin. The British and U.S. were able to tap-into and record the intercepted
Soviet messages until 1955, when Blake arrived and a year later gave the game away.
Lance Shippey
Blake was sent by MI6 to Berlin in 1955, and passed on highly secret information to the Soviets about "Operation
Gold". From 1950 The British and Americans had dug a tunnel into the Soviet zone (East Germany) and accessed
three landline communication cables of the Soviet army. These linked Soviet headquarters at Zossen (25mins from
SXF) to the Soviet Embassy in East Berlin. The British and U.S. were able to tap-into and record the intercepted
Soviet messages until 1955, when Blake arrived and a year later gave the game away.
Lance Shippey
Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: attitude is nominal
Posts: 1,192
Original parts of that tunnel were later recovered and can (under normal conditions, now it is closed for the time being) be seen and walked through at Alliierten Museum in Berlin.
Plus Hastings TG503 outside.
http://www.alliiertenmuseum.de/en/ex...ighlights.html
Plus Hastings TG503 outside.
http://www.alliiertenmuseum.de/en/ex...ighlights.html
Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: Vendee
Posts: 138
George Blake has died
Sorry chaps, but no tears shed by old Uncle Fred. One of those blighters like Philby and his lot who got a lot of good people killed.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...t-dies-aged-98
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...t-dies-aged-98
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Fieldsworthy
Posts: 86
Originally Posted by Uncle Fred
Sorry chaps, but no tears shed by old Uncle Fred. One of those blighters like Philby and his lot who got a lot of good people killed.
At least he was not motivated by money but instead had the courage of his conviction and maintained his beliefs on communism well past the point even the commies, themselves, had abandoned it and begun defecting en masse in the other direction. It's hard to find that depth of political dedication these days, outside of islamomaniacism of course.
Still, he should've got the rope and would've if it'd been a hot war instead of cold.
Man Bilong Balus long PNG
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Now officially on Life's scrap heap, now being an Age Pensioner and not liking it one little bit! I'd rather be flying but in the meantime still continuing the never ending search for a bad bottle of Red!
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Still, he should've got the rope
Join Date: Feb 2010
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It might practically be the harder punishment to be kept away from your original life for tens of years being a retired spy in the east. Isolated, under constant surveillance with only selected minders around you. A lot of time to think about it and no way back.
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Location: UK
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Eclan - thoughtful, thank you; otherwise usual suspects, usual responses.
Interesting juxtaposition of Blake versus the other 'notables'. Philby's death count was vast, including near 200 in one operation in Albania. He, however, was impeccably English and believed "as an English Gentleman". Blunt achieves and maintains high office, even when 'outed'. The 'Establishment' reigns in any and all areas of British life and woe betide you if you aren't 'one of us'! Still makes for interesting reading and the 'Fifth Man' remains to be defined. Peter Wright was, of course, utterly beyond the pale !
Interesting juxtaposition of Blake versus the other 'notables'. Philby's death count was vast, including near 200 in one operation in Albania. He, however, was impeccably English and believed "as an English Gentleman". Blunt achieves and maintains high office, even when 'outed'. The 'Establishment' reigns in any and all areas of British life and woe betide you if you aren't 'one of us'! Still makes for interesting reading and the 'Fifth Man' remains to be defined. Peter Wright was, of course, utterly beyond the pale !
Gentleman Aviator
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There were strong rumours at the time of his conviction that the 42 year sentence reflected one year for each agent whose death was a result of Blake's treachery.
Join Date: Feb 2010
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Kim Philby speaking at Stasi headquarters in 1981, original Stasi film:
https://www.bstu.de/en/the-stasi/art...th-an-mi6-spy/
Courtesy of the german Stasi file archives institution.
https://www.bstu.de/en/
https://www.bstu.de/en/the-stasi/art...th-an-mi6-spy/
In August 1981 Central Department A (HV A) invited an important guest to the Berlin ministry headquarters: the British double agent Kim Philby. Philby was born in India in 1912. While studying at the elite Cambridge University in England, he encountered Guy Burgess, an enthusiastic communist who was able to spark in Philby a passion for the ideology as well. His enthusiasm became so intense that in 1933 Philby joined the Communist International (Comintern) in Vienna, where he was recruited by the Soviet secret service GPU (Gossudarstwennoje polititscheskoje uprawlenije). After a stint working as a journalist for Soviet intelligence in the Spanish Civil War, Philby, with the help of Burgess, was successfully recruited by the British foreign Secret Intelligence Service (SIS or MI6).
He began working there in counterespionage and was later placed in charge of the alliance with the U.S intelligence agency Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Following a few interim appointments, in 1949 he was promoted to liaison officer of the British secret service in the United States. This position provided him excellent access to information he could pass on to his actual employers in the Soviet Union. Together with two friends from his university days, the previously mentioned Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, who were both employed in the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., he was able to provide highly sensitive material to Moscow.
He began working there in counterespionage and was later placed in charge of the alliance with the U.S intelligence agency Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Following a few interim appointments, in 1949 he was promoted to liaison officer of the British secret service in the United States. This position provided him excellent access to information he could pass on to his actual employers in the Soviet Union. Together with two friends from his university days, the previously mentioned Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, who were both employed in the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., he was able to provide highly sensitive material to Moscow.
Courtesy of the german Stasi file archives institution.
https://www.bstu.de/en/
Last edited by Less Hair; 27th Dec 2020 at 14:02.
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Fieldsworthy
Posts: 86
Originally Posted by Cornish Jack
Eclan - thoughtful, thank you; otherwise usual suspects, usual responses.
Interesting juxtaposition of Blake versus the other 'notables'. Philby's death count was vast, including near 200 in one operation in Albania. He, however, was impeccably English and believed "as an English Gentleman". Blunt achieves and maintains high office, even when 'outed'. The 'Establishment' reigns in any and all areas of British life and woe betide you if you aren't 'one of us'! Still makes for interesting reading and the 'Fifth Man' remains to be defined. Peter Wright was, of course, utterly beyond the pale !
Interesting juxtaposition of Blake versus the other 'notables'. Philby's death count was vast, including near 200 in one operation in Albania. He, however, was impeccably English and believed "as an English Gentleman". Blunt achieves and maintains high office, even when 'outed'. The 'Establishment' reigns in any and all areas of British life and woe betide you if you aren't 'one of us'! Still makes for interesting reading and the 'Fifth Man' remains to be defined. Peter Wright was, of course, utterly beyond the pale !
Join Date: Oct 2002
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It was certainly a different era back then. Mind you, some of the more famous spies probably did a lot to raise awareness of the threats to our security. I remember going to an early morning interview with a security officer at what was then the Admiralty Underwater Weapons Establishment, at Portland. I arrived at his office at the same time as he did, and as he unlocked he opened a steel cabinet door and showed me the security passes for Harry Houghton and Ethel Gee that he'd taped inside the cabinet door. He said he kept them there as a reminder of the need to be vigilant. After that friendly introduction, he proceeded to grill me for hours about (innocent) contacts I'd had with the crew of a Romanian fish processing ship . . .
Thread Starter
Join Date: Aug 2020
Location: Cheshire
Posts: 80
I presume Blake died from old age, rather than the
shock of receiving a pair of Vladimir underpants in
his Christmas stocking. ? I can't see what he found
endearing in Karl Marx. My grandmother could never
see the humour in the brothers, and switched to a
different channel when they came on.
Lance Shippey
shock of receiving a pair of Vladimir underpants in
his Christmas stocking. ? I can't see what he found
endearing in Karl Marx. My grandmother could never
see the humour in the brothers, and switched to a
different channel when they came on.
Lance Shippey
Join Date: Oct 2018
Location: Mostly South of England
Posts: 35
Originally Posted by Lance Shippey
I presume Blake died from old age, rather than the
shock of receiving a pair of Vladimir underpants in
his Christmas stocking. ? I can't see what he found
endearing in Karl Marx. My grandmother could never
see the humour in the brothers, and switched to a
different channel when they came on.
Lance Shippey
shock of receiving a pair of Vladimir underpants in
his Christmas stocking. ? I can't see what he found
endearing in Karl Marx. My grandmother could never
see the humour in the brothers, and switched to a
different channel when they came on.
Lance Shippey
Well, technically, yes, he did die of old age just a couple of days ago.
But I like to think that he died inside in 1990 when he witnessed the coming down of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Communist ideals he held so dear and considered warranted the reckless endangerment and death of countless men and women - many of them his former countrymen. And he did it by himself; just him and his idiotic sense of self-importance.
Wish we'd got to him with a blow torch and pair of pliers before he spouted.
