Greetings! Here's the very first look at the cover for my latest book and first half of my prologue from The Post Office. Please excuse the lack of activity on my blog in recent weeks as I have been overly busy removing commas from this latest work.
Thank you and enjoy!
Prologue
In
the run up to the Arab Spring I was assistant attached by the British
home office and loosely, MI6, to CIA operations in Iran. My job was
the same as it had always been, to babysit. For the benefit of those
who remember the reports at the time, the demonstrations, the rebels
and revolutions, conflict and politics, most of the details
surrounding the uprising have been left completely undisclosed,
suppressed and forgotten in the hope they never see the light of day
in a published manuscript again.
Enough
time has passed that those that may cause me the most harm for
writing this, are now dead. Even now I am still breaking the official
secrets act and as such have had to suppress certain identities and
particular dates to protect those still sensitive details and active
operations. Under the circumstances I request that the reader grant
me this liberty.
It
would be an understatement to say I found my memory of events were
more accurate than I'd expected. From the outset, I hadn't intended
to take notes of the operation at all, indeed, it is drilled into
operatives to never write anything down and as much as possible, keep
one’s lips tightly shut. I started to take notes when I suspected
something fishy was going on, deciding to do so in case I needed to
protect myself and partly, just to try and figure out what happening
at the time.
Drawing
from my own notebooks, it took over a year to conduct and put
together interviews from others, hearing their points of view and
perspectives. Over the course of my research I'd collected three full
file boxes of photos, recordings, documents, reports and clippings
before I'd even put pen to paper. Any intelligence agency worth it’s
salt would agree these boxes a veritable gold mine and yet, here I
am, laying it out for all to see.
I
always considered myself an untidy scribbler and though I have
written many things in my time, never have I come across something
that deserved a finished product more than this particular chain of
events.
The
most difficult obstacle was gaining permission for publication from
the service, to disclose certain important points. I was advised I
could 'Infer possibilities' but under no circumstances allowed to
publish under my own name or reveal intelligence on active / ongoing
operations. I did the best I could.
Those
at the centre of these remarkable events deserve credit to which they
are due. Despite a persistent and resolute dedication to the call of
duty, one individual in particular is not likely to have his identity
openly revealed while he himself is still alive. If nothing else, let
this be a record so that some essence of a nameless man’s work may
be remembered.
There
are one or two details the reader should be aware of concerning
modern espionage techniques and operative work. The west is simply
too far advanced in certain areas to worry about the opposition any
more. Having said that, espionage and intelligence services around
the world are more active today than those operating during the
halcyon cold war, largely due to the increase in Cyber espionage of
recent years and ever spurring terrorism. Britain in particular is
one trying to catch up. GCHQ relocated to 'The Doughnut' in
Cheltenham in 2004 and now runs more than 50,000 employees, listening
to everything, everywhere, whenever possible.
MI5,
the domestic department of the Secret Intelligence Service have to
comply to certain homeland rules where MI6, working abroad,
essentially do not. Most of their tips, their information and
afferent intelligence now comes directly from and thanks to GCHQ.
These departments in turn make up part of JIC including an admiral,
general, minister, Police Commissioner and Civil Servant who decide
which department gets to deal with what and delegate.
Aside
from protecting themselves and their friends against China and
Russia, most of the work being conducted at this time is in
preparation for what will be popularly known as the Arab Spring. MI6
and the CIA liaised some time ago and ever since, had been working
more and more closely together on this one, particular project. It
isn't unheard of for the Americans to pass on a little white lie here
and there to their closest allies, nor was it impossible for them to
entirely pervert the truth. We needn't look too far back to see the
effects of intelligence sharing before the invasion of Iraq to get an
idea of such scenarios.
Never
the less, the two agencies enjoy a close relationship, even when
tensions become strained at times thanks to each other's cock ups.
'The Service', is a generic term coined to incorporate the
intelligence departments of the British government from civil
servants to JIC; GCHQ, the armed forces but is generally understood
to refer to MI5 and MI6. At times, there can be such a blur that
unless you have an actual desk job at Thames House one can never
really be sure for whom one is working. In most cases, it's a team
effort by all, each department doing their part.
All rights reserved. Copyright Roger Colins © 2014
Roger
#ThePostOffice #RogerColins
Thanks to all Plus 1's :)
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