KGB responsible for death of Lord Mountbatten?



Nushin Namazi asks: Was there a motivation for either the KGB or the IRA to assassinate Lord Mountbatten? Did he threaten either organization? The IRA hated him because he represented the British establishment. It was quite unfair because he had good relations with the Irish Republic. If the KGB was involved, it was, because the represented "the imperialists".

Randy Black and Miles Seeley discussed the possible KGB involvement in the assassination of Lord Mountbatten. Randy says: Nothing about the former Soviet Union surprises me at this point, nor am I surprised that the USSR may have interfered in the affairs of the British.  The KGB had links with the secretary general of the Irish Communist Party, Michael O'Riordan, who was connected with the IRA. It was well-known already that the USSR had helped the IRA and its communist wing. In the mid-1960s, the IRA helped the KGB organize the escape of a Soviet agent, George Blake, from the London prison of Wormwood Scrubbs. Later, relations between the Soviets and Irish communists grew cold. Yet, O'Riordan still tried to get weapons for the IRA from the USSR. In 1972, the then KGB head Yuri Andropov issued a plan called Operation Splash, in which a Soviet ship would drop a cargo of 2 machine guns, 70 assault rifles and 100 Walter pistols to the bottom of the sea 90 kilometers from the Northern Irish coast. This information was recovered by the weekly from uncovered KGB archives. However, it is still not known whether the Irish received the cargo. In 1979, a KGB colonel promised to give O'Riordan the bomb to kill Moutbatten, the weekly wrote, quoting a former KGB official. The bomb was bought by agents of East Germany from a British sergeant. In a strange twist, the colonel was sent to an asylum after Lord Mountbatten was killed because the Queen's cousin was apparently a friend of the USSR.

Source: http://new.mn.ru/english/issue.php?2004-33-6>>

Miles Seeley objected to the facts presented by Cameron Sawyer in his story from Russia. I did some additional research and commented: Miles Seeley objected to the report that the KGB was responsible for death of Lord Mountbatten. Mr. Seeley says the KGB would not have carried out such support operations without complicity at the highest levels. While the article does not tell who that might have been, I found the original story that the media outlet drew its information from.  It appears that it was edited by someone unknown in the interest, perhaps, of brevity. Here is one statement was in the original story but had been deleted later: ….The KGB had links with the secretary general of the Irish Communist Party, Michael O’Riordan, who was connected with the IRA. It was well-known already that the USSR had helped the IRA and its communist wing. Joseph Stalin said once that “the Irish movement against British imperialism is a democratic movement” and that the Soviet Union “must support this movement.”….

Source: http://www.mosnews.com/news/2004/08/26/kgbirish.shtml


Regardless, to believe that no line officer would have taken part in this incident without a higher authority, as Mr. Seeley seems to assume, does not rule out that such approval was given. The article simply does not go so far as to reveal the name of that authority.


Source: http://wais.stanford.edu/webpage2/KGBDeathMountbatten.htm
 
Finally, if indeed Mr. Seeley’s personal pet peeve is conspiracies, then I assume that the conspiracy theorists who have made a fortune selling books about the JFK/MLK/RFK, et al. assassinations are to be disregarded also. And I haven’t even touched on the conspiracies about the insurrection at Waco, the bombing at Oklahoma City, the election of 2000, the apartment and theater bombings in Moscow, 9-11, etc., etc., etc.

RH: Well, all those books should be read with caution and even skepticism.


Miles Seeley answers Randy Black's theories about the assassinations of  men like Lord Mountbatten, President Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King: All I can say to Mr. Black about the assassinations of JFK and RFK is: I had close professional involvement in parts of the investigations of both assassinations. I know something about how intense and far-reaching they were, and I know personally that the orders were that no angle should be ignored, no relevant information  suppressed. I can't say more because of the oath I took as a CIA officer. Based upon what I knew then and later, I do indeed disregard all the books about conspiracies that have been written about those two tragedies. About the death of Martin Luther King, I know nothing.

Your comments are invited. Read the home page of the World Association of International Studies (WAIS) by simply double-clicking on:   http://wais.stanford.edu Mail to Ronald Hilton, Hoover Institution, Stanford, CA 94305-6010. Please inform us of any change of e-mail address.

Ronald Hilton 2004

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last updated: November 24, 2004