The Patton Assassination

First things first – Happy Birthday Mr President! The assassination of General George S. Patton on December 21^st 1945 will live in infamy. It was one of the most shocking events of the post-war world, albeit that the shock has been delayed by the absurd official pretense that the great commander died as the result of an automobile accident. Very frankly the accident theory is as silly as the idea that Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy.

The assassination presaged the unstable, violent post-war world, in which political assassinations, invariably organised by German intelligence, became a fact of life. This was the inevitable consequence of the failure to shut down German intelligence at the end of the war.

Reorganised into a new agency, the DVD, it was still headed by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, with the equally devious and sinister Generalleutnant Erwin von Lahousen as his deputy. Herr Admiral of course faked his death at the end of World War II.

It was yours truly who discovered the only known post-war photo of Admiral Canaris (below) published in an authorised biography by double-agent Charles Whiting. Whiting of course neglected to mention that the man he was writing about was not only still alive but had reviewed the manuscript, no mean feat for someone who was supposed to have been dead for over 20 years!

Canaris wanted to maneuver his man Dwight Eisenhower into the White House. Tired of being messed around by Eisenhower and another German double-agent, General George Marshall, General Patton had political ambitions of his own by 1945. He posed a major threat to the German plan to install Eisenhower in 1948. (In the events which happened of course the Germans has to wait until 1953 before they got their man Eisenhower into the White House.)

The assassination was organised by the German double-agent William ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan, who paid former OSS operative Douglas Bazata $10,000 to do the job. Bazata eventually coughed on September 25^th 1979, at an OSS reunion at the Washington Hilton. These events are recounted in one of the best books about the assassination, by Bill O’Reilly of Fox News and Martin Dugard, Killing Patton (Henry Holt, 2014).

Whilst the book comprehensively demolishes the accident argument it suffers from the weakness that the authors thought that Canaris had been executed earlier in 1945. They also work on the theory that Eisenhower was working for the Americans. In fairness, it’s an interesting theory and they’re not the only ones to have adopted it, but it’s wrong.

Eisenhower, who rose without a trace (he was the only five-star in history never to see combat), was Marshall’s protégé. As O’Reilly and Dugard point out, he frustrated Patton at every turn. Denying fuel to Patton’s famous Third Army was a nonsense, as was holding him back from D-Day.

D-Day of course was a stitch-up, as I explain in Spyhunter. The plan was to assassinate our community partner the Führer, install Rommel as President of Germany and make peace. Obsessed as they were with the Nazis, the Allies would probably have fallen for it, just as they messed up the peace in 1918, taking more casualties after the armistice than before, thanks to Germany’s Spanish Flu bio-weapon.

The date (June 6^th) was actually suggested by Rommel – it was his wife’s birthday and he needed an excuse to be away from the front. Normandy of course was the silliest part of northern France to invade. The topography favored the defenders and it was furthest from Germany.

The crash

Not only did Bazata murder General Patton in hospital, he was responsible for putting him there in the first place. Bazata was almost certainly the second man in the truck which suddenly veered across the road and rammed General Patton’s 1938 Cadillac on December 8^th 1945, near Mannheim.

As O’Reilly and Dugard point out there was a minimal investigation (of course, since ‘von’ Eisenhower was in the loop). All the records have been lost, naturally.

The only real controversy is whether or not Bazata paralyzed the general with an injection in the confusion following the crash. He claimed to have done so, but the other occupants of the car, PFC Horace Woodring, General Patton’s driver, and Brigadier-General Hap Gay, Patton’s Chief of Staff claim not to have seen anything.

Some nine years later Gay, who suggested the fatal hunting trip, was promoted to Lieutenant-General by Eisenhower. It’s possible that he was in on the hit, or agreed afterwards to stay silent. He was ambitious and wanted more stars. With Eisenhower and Marshall in on the plan he was in a delicate position.

Patton’s legacy

There’s no doubt that George Patton was the finest general of World War II. The efforts by the Abwehr to block his career and have him removed from command were a backhanded compliment.

‘Monty’ of course thought that he was the finest general on the Allied side, but then he never lacked for self-confidence! He was a great commander, to be sure, but he was no Patton.

If Patton had had his way the Third Army would have beaten the Russians to Berlin and the shape of post-war Europe would have looked very different. In the events which happened he was frustrated by Eisenhower. Setting the former Allies at each other’s throats was of course a key aim of German intelligence’s post-war strategy.

‘Strafer’ Gott

General Patton wasn’t the only Allied general to be murdered in World War II and its aftermath. On August 7^th 1942 Luftwaffe aircraft shot up the Bristol Bombay aircraft carrying the brilliant Lieutenant-General William Gott CB CBE DSO & Bar, MC to Cairo, where he was to assume command of the Eighth Army.

There is no doubt that it was an ambush and that the Luftwaffe were waiting. They repeatedly strafed the aircraft once it was on the ground to make sure of their man. German assets in Cairo made sure that the Bombay, a reliable but slow transport with wholly inadequate defensive armament, when it carried any at all, was unescorted. She was a sitting duck, sadly.

There is a fascinating article about this episode in the current (July) edition of Flypast magazine by Graham Pitchfork (p.61). Graham interviewed the Bombay’s pilot, Squadron Leader Hugh ‘Jimmy’ James AFC & Bar, DFM, not long before his death in 2015. Jimmy was just 19 when he was shot down.

Long suspecting that he had been ambushed, in 2005 Jimmy went to Germany and obtained confirmation from one of the Luftwaffe pilots who had shot him down, probably Oberleutnant Emil Clade. There is no doubt that Cairo was penetrated, indeed in Spyhunter I name the top German double-agent in the Middle East – Harold Macmillan. Macmillan of course went on to serve Germany loyally after the war, undermining Eden over Suez, hammering the RAF in 1957, applying to join the EEC and promoting fellow German agent Edward ‘von’ Heath, who eventually took us in.

The death of George Floyd

Note that I am still refraining from emotive use of the word ‘murder’. I am yet to be satisfied that the poor man was murdered. There are some puzzling aspects to the case.

For starters why would police officers murder a man in full view of a camera, whilst wearing body-cams themselves? Secondly, where’s the body-cam footage? I understand that it’s been released in the case of Rayshard Brooks, the African-American who decided to resist arrest in Atlanta GA after failing a field sobriety test, seize an officer’s Taser and run away. (White or black I’m not sure that I can think of an easier way of getting yourself shot in Georgia – a Taser may not be lethal but police side-arms certainly are and there’s no better way of relieving an officer of his firearm than disabling him first with a Taser.)

Is the reason the body-cam footage from Minnesota is being suppressed (assuming that it is being suppressed) is that it cannot be reconciled with the CNN video footage? I would not be surprised if the defense challenge this video, which is being widely questioned. CNN, remember, have form for pushing a scientific hoax (global warming) and fake news, such as the absurd suggestion that Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu. (‘Absurd’ because his claimed mother wasn’t pregnant in July 1961 and his claimed date of birth is in August 1961.)

Poor George Floyd was a sick man, which begs the question of why he decided to resist arrest in the first place. His heart was about 50% bigger than normal, presumably as a consequence of his hypertension and severe arteriosclerosis. He had sickle cell trait (a less severe, generally asymptomatic version of sickle cell disease) and Covid-19, which may have reduced his lung capacity.

He was or had been a smoker and a drug addict, and was high on fentanyl when arrested. Fentanyl is highly lethal, about 50 times more potent than heroin. For medicinal use it is normally prescribed in microgrammes. Two milligrams is enough to kill a healthy adult, and George Floyd, sadly, was not healthy. A synthetic opioid, it depresses the respiratory system.

There is no reporting of the hyoid bone being fractured and there were no soft tissue injuries to the neck, that is to say the autopsy failed to revel any sign of excessive force. My view of the case at present is that George Floyd had taken what for most adults would be a lethal dose of fentanyl, but which was not lethal for him because he was a long-term user. I don’t think that he was in a state of excited delirium due to the fentanyl and other drugs he had taken (he also had quantities of THC and methamphetamines in his system), but I conclude that he was showing some of the symptoms of excited delirium.

I suspect that the poor man died from a combination of respiratory depression due to the fentanyl, reduced lung capacity due to Covid-19, stress, clogged arteries and restricted breathing due to the way the officers restrained him. The pressure on his diaphragm may actually have been more important than the pressure on the neck, which can’t have been that great if there was no bruising.

Whilst he may not have been in a state of excited delirium, given that he presented with some of the symptoms and was resisting arrest, the officers may reasonably have believed that he was. They also had no way of knowing that the poor man was suffering from Coronavirus and had been imbibing fentanyl as opposed to cocaine, heroin or another drug. Certainly there is no sign that they knew that they were dealing with a suspect with Covid-19, which of course put them at risk.

There is enough here for civil liability, in my view, but not criminal, certainly not murder, as the officers lacked both the knowledge of the deceased’s condition and homicidal intent. Manslaughter in England would be a stretch, because of the amount of fentanyl in the deceased’s system. It would be open to a jury to conclude that whilst the type of restraint used by the officers contributed to George Floyd’s death, he helped bring his death upon himself, sadly, through a combination of drug use and resisting arrest when he was in no physical condition to do so.

For Minneapolis to scrap its efficient police department as a response to George Floyd’s death is almost as silly as burning down a Wendy restaurant because of the police shooting of Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta GA, and I’m not just saying that because I quite like Wendyburgers! Like the calls in Britain to scrap stop and search the likeliest beneficiaries will be organised crime. I gather there’s plenty of that in Minneapolis!

Vandalising a statue of Sir Winston Churchill in London over the disputed death of an African-American drug addict in Minneapolis is just silly, frankly. It also suggests that the vandals responsible wanted Germany to win World War II. Winston Churchill was no more a racist than Oprah Winfrey.

It’s also a bit silly blaming Britain for slavery, an institution which was developed in the Middle East and existed for thousands of years before Britain ever did. Slavery was never legal in England and my country, to her credit, took the lead in abolishing the trade. The Royal Navy lost many good men in suppressing this odious trade.

The majority of slavers over the course of history have been Arab. Moreover the slaves transported in British ships were captured in the interior by Africans. Europeans didn’t venture into the African interior in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, not if they were wise. The fact that African slaves were enslaved by other Africans before being sold doesn’t justify the trade, but it does mean that the blame needs to be spread a bit more fairly. There was also a trade going the other way of course – men, women and children from English coastal communities captured and taken to North Africa.

Madeleine McCann

Whilst I entirely agree with my colleague Ian Greenhalgh that General Patton was assassinated I regret to say that we are not entirely ad idem over the kidnap and murder of Madeleine McCann by the DVD. The Portuguese police investigation was as much a farce as the Leicestershire and Met investigations have been.

It’s important to note that the Portuguese weren’t actually trying to find poor little Madeleine – Lisbon already knew that there was a German pedophile ring operating in the Algarve and that they had captured her.  I agree that the McCanns had contacts in the Labour Party and I have no doubt that a government fixer turned up in Praia da Luz shortly after the kidnap.

The MI6 Head of Station Lisbon pretty much worked out what had happened within 48 hours, which is why the operation was handed over to me, deniably and informally, on the Sunday. It was way too political for Six and I was the only civilian in the UK outside the official agencies who could enlist the aid of the NSA.

The idea that two respectable British doctors would drug their young child and cart her body around Portugal in the trunk of a rental only has to be stated for its absurdity to be apparent. It also ignores Locard’s Exchange Principle – every contact leave a trace. There was no trace of Madeleine, dead or alive, in said rental, because she was never in it.

The truth, as much of it as could be published, appeared in Spyhunter in 2014. Not one of the so-called experts on the case has contacted me in the six years since. There was an article in yesterday’s Sun from two researchers, Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan, who keep popping up on TV to talk about the case. Like every other commentator they are not so much wedded to the preposterous single pedophile theory as welded to it.

The MSM will never get it! They’ll probably still be pushing the single pedophile theory at the end of the Phanerozoic Eon, which started 541 million years ago, never mind the end of the Cenozoic Era, the Quaternary Period or the Holocene Epoch. There’s no nice way of saying it. Intelligence work requires brains. Trying to do it without a brain is more difficult than running a marathon without legs. You can always strap on a prosthetic leg, but science has yet to come up with a prosthetic brain, sadly.

The Anglo-European negotiations

These are going badly, as predicted. GO2 having failed to assassinate Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his chief adviser Dominic Cummings with Coronavirus in March, the UK will definitely not be applying for an extension to the transitional period. We made it official this week. We’re already out of the EU and we leave the single market on December 31^st. Put the champagne on ice!

That Audi on the M23

Apparently not having enough to do policing BLM demos and right-wing counter-demos the rozzers continue to torment motorists with trivia. West Sussex police have just arrested two 38 year old men for driving an Audi RS6 at 201 mph on the M23 near Gatwick Airport. Allegedly the driver posted a video of the speedo, showing just over 200, on social media.

Always assuming that they can prove the video (if I were defending I’d put the rozzers to strict proof) they’ll be able to pot the driver for speeding, given that the limit was 70 mph, but dangerous driving?

The motorway speed limit in Britain is stupidly low. It’s designed to cause more accidents by increasing traffic density and driver fatigue (by lengthening journey times) and to slow down the economy. Assuming that the video has not been tampered with, the road was clear, the weather fine and no other road user was put at risk.

By definition the Audi RS6, even though it’s German, is capable of around 190 mph (allowing for speedometer error). Its braking system is designed for rapid deceleration from high speed and the driver, whoever he or she was (another problem for the prosecution!) was clearly capable of safely controlling his or her vehicle at speeds approaching 200 mph. If the vehicle had been borrowed without the owner’s permission, i.e. stolen, then the driver might be in greater legal peril, but that has yet to be established.

This week’s movie review: Crawl (2019, dir. Alexander Aja)

Part of our lock-down entertainment in Britain, Crawl is an enjoyable yarn concerning some giant alligators escaping during a hurricane and swimming into a flooded house. I gather that this is a problem in Florida, although it’s less of an issue in Wiltshire. Indeed if you owned a house in Wiltshire and were to put in an insurance claim stating that it had been flooded in a hurricane and your partner had been eaten by a giant alligator you might expect a call from a loss adjuster, even with Direct Line.

Kaya Scodelario and Barry Pepper turn in some quite reasonable performances, given the weaknesses of the script. By the standards of disaster movies it’s not that bad, and the alligators are quite well done. It’s enough to make you think twice before going down to the basement, anyway!

Moral of the story – don’t rob gas stations in the middle of a hurricane in Florida. You’ll wish you’d gone to Georgia and been shot instead.

Michael Shrimpton

Michael Shrimpton was a barrister from his call to the Bar in London in 1983 until being disbarred in 2019 over a fraudulently obtained conviction. He is a specialist in National Security and Constitutional Law, Strategic Intelligence and Counter-terrorism. He is a former Adjunct Professor of Intelligence Studies at the American Military University.

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