Oh My Frogman Gone!

Geoff and Kestrel, that Most Excellent team of British Researchers, have been hard at work on their side of the pond. They tell me that Amazon UK has announced that THE CRABB ENIGMA will be available in August:
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This is a true story about Commander “Buster” Crabb, a British naval frogman who disappeared whilst undertaking an underwater ‘spying mission’ involving the Soviet cruiser Ordzhonikidze in 1956. Just over a year after he disappeared a body washed up, headless and handless, near Portsmouth. The Establishment took charge of the body and, at an inquest, declared it to be Crabb’s body. However, vital evidence was omitted and key witnesses not called.

It is now known that it was not his body and he was not buried in Portsmouth at that time. The problem for the establishment was that Crabb worked for the then head of the Royal Navy, Lord Mountbatten. At the time the US government security agencies alleged that Mountbatten was doing ‘unofficial’ business with senior officials within the Soviet Union.

This, of course, would be a valid explanation as to why the whole Crabb story is being held secret and cannot be disclosed for 100 years, meaning that the official papers will not be made public until 2056.

What's left to say to that? OMFG about covers it.

Before we leave "Buster"...

The LIFE magazine story of May 28, 1956, provides a detailed account of the days before and after Commander Crabb's disappearance.  Many think this last dive was done at the behest of  the foreign arm of  British Secret Intelligence, a belief  bolstered by the publication of  Peter Wright's SPYCATCHER. Wright claimed that Crabb was sent down to observe the hull and propeller design of the Ordzhonikidze, the radically fast new Russian cruiser that brought Premier Krushchev to Great Britain on a diplomatic call.

The Human Side

When Trickfox, a Canadian scientist and fellow forum member requested some beta testers for an invention of his,  Mr. Twigsnapper asked Linda to bring me a test unit.  The Astrologer and I rendezvoused with her and Tractorman George at our local Chevron station. It was a brief but intense get acquainted meeting and I remember being struck by something she said as we nattered away in the back seat of the Prius: “You ought to see some of the pictures!”

I assumed she was talking about surveillance photos, but the significance of that statement didn't really click until I read  JD's reference to pictures “taken through the Keyhole,”  made  in one of his e-mails to the author of "Defying Gravity," (Once Linda decided to write her memoirs, someone, presumably JD, arranged for her to be handed a packet of printouts of their (JD and the author's) correspondence on the anniversary of her Dad's birthday in 2009, and I have read through most of it. ) Anyway, wonderful though reconnaissance satellites are, the need for boots on  the ground will always remain.

JD  and Mr. Twigsnapper represent the human side of the espionage world or HUMINT, as it is known.   Although I have seen photos of each of them, I imagine that I might be sitting in the same room with either one of them and not know who they were, unless they wanted to be known.