Wensley Clarkson
Blake Publishing, London 1998, £16.99
Remember Jonathan Moyle, the ex-RAF officer, editor of Defence Helicopter World, who was found dead, hanging in a wardrobe in his hotel room in Chile in 1990? This is about him – and about his death. It is done in the most irritating manner possible, written as a novel, with lots of dialogue invented. The author says,
‘Some of those interviewed possess a remarkably memory and were able to describe in precise detail not only incidents but also how the people involved were dressed, moved and spoke. In other instances, however, I was given only the rudiments of a conversation and, following the example of Thucydides, “I put into the mouth of each speaker the sentiments proper to the occasion, expressed as I thought he would be likely to express them.”‘
In fact there is a quite an interesting account here, not only of the business of being an agent for SIS – presumably it is SIS, though other agencies are possible; and the author never quite resolves this – but also of the University of Aberystwyth, its MOD-funded Strategic Studies Department, and the recruitment of its students.
Moyle went to Aberystwyth, were he was a little prig. Offered a joint, he researched which students were smoking dope and handed over the information to the local Special Branch, to whom he also shopped what he thought were three ‘Welsh nationalists’. Nobody ever put out more flags saying, ‘Recruit me, I want to be an agent’. Which they duly did, of course.
The books concentrates on Moyle’s role as the editor of Defence Helicopter World – a piece of transparent cover for someone whose intelligence role must have been obvious to all concerned. He went sniffing round the Chilean arms manufacturer Cardoen who was planning to produce a kit enabling the conversion of a very common civilian Bell helicopter into a gunship, for sale to the Third World, notably Iraq. The proximate cause of Moyle’s death seems to have been a conversation with one of Cardoen’s flunkeys, to whom Moyle was foolish enough to say, in the run-up to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, ‘So Saddam’s going into Kuwait then?’ With Iraq about to sign a huge deal with Cardoen to buy the Bell conversion kits, this wasn’t exactly a clever move on Moyle’s part.
The book concludes with what purports to be an account of a confession by said (now dead) Cardoen flunkey to a third party, who passed it on to the author, that the Iraqis demanded Moyle’s death as part of the deal on the Bell kits. It may even be true.
On the rear cover the pictures of Moyle are captioned ‘Jonathan Moyle, the bravest British agent of recent times…..’ Which is one way of putting it. Another would be, brave but clumsy; and, and like so many before him, when it came to the crunch, abandoned by his employers. (Still unexplained is why the British Foreign Office put out the stories about Moyle dying as a result of auto-erotic asphyxia.) Given the shitty way the secret state treats its agents when they’re in trouble it’s a wonder anyone ever volunteers. But I guess the trick is to get them when, like Moyle, they’re young, dumb and full of cum.