Thursday 9 September 2021

SOMERTON MAN MYSTERY: A WILDERNESS OF MIRRORS, SPIES





WITH THANKS TO 60 MINUTES 




The video is of course a clip from the 60 minutes 2013 programme about the Somerton Man. Gerry Feltus the well-respected ex Detective Sergeant from the SA Police Service provides us with a very short and sharp description of the environment at the time of the Somerton Man.

This was Gerry's view and I absolutely agree with him, the Somerton Man case is an Espionage case.

It was also in the era when James Jesus Angleton an ex OSS agent who joined the CIA in June of 1948, later to become head of counterintelligence was to use the term, 'A Wilderness of Mirrors' to describe another aspect of the Cold War environment,:

“...myriad of stratagems, deceptions, artifices, and all the other devices of disinformation which the Soviet bloc and its coordinated intelligence services use to confuse and split the West … an ever-fluid landscape where fact and illusion merge.”


Angleton's description sums it up beautifully, deception, artifices, disinformation all blended together as a counter-intelligence policy.

An aside note is that Angleton claimed authorship of the term but in reality, it was from a 1932 TS Elliot Poem, 'GERONTION'.

A great deal has been written about Angleton and indeed, the phrase A Wilderness of Mirrors was the title of a book of that name by David C Martin which details some of the events. If you subscribe to SCRIBD, it's available to read for free, fascinating.

You can also read more about Angleton here....


You can view the full  60 Minutes programme here:


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5 comments:

  1. The headline image showing the front cover of the book and the photos of the Somerton Man is quite interesting. Even making allowances for the video aspect ratio, the copy of the Rubaiyat shown is very close to the one displayed in the press all those years ago. It is apparently a longer and narrower one to that commonly believed to be the Whitcomb and Tombs version handed in to the Police all those years ago. I don't think there is any doubt that this is also a W&T edition but this one is of the kind that you could slip into an inside pocket.

    In the video clip they show an image of the last page bearing the words Tamam Shud but the colouration of the page and background to the words is a shade of grey and they appear on the left hand side page not the right. Could it be that this is the correct style of the book supposedly found in the car but just a different page background colour? It's a possibility.

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  2. And off they go, muddying the waters to give the impression of depth. So predictable and so sad.

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  3. I just saw a show on the Somerton Man. I have a theory on why his jacket had the label ripped off. I reckon the jacket was second-hand and the previous owners name was on the label so before or after he bought the Jacket the label was ripped off because it had the previous owners name on it.

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    1. Paul, I believe that you're on the right track. In those post war years there were mountains of various items of second hand clothing that were distributed amongst those in need or sold. It was commonplace to remove any labels that may have had the previous owners name written on it. The operative word being 'remove' to cut a label off is one thing but to have it torn off is another. On this blog you'll find images of the jacket, take a look at the label, was it cut or torn off? You should also consider that in the records, the police assisted by a local tailor examined the jacket closely, they actually took it apart for that purpose. The tailor made the comment that the machined feather stitching found in the jacket could only have come from an American manufacturing source. Did the final wearer of the jacket bring it with him from the US or was it bought in Australia? Where new US items of clothing imported to Australia for sale? Where second hand items imported for sale? There are other circumstances under which the jacket could have been made available here. On of which, sadly, could have been from civilian clothes of US servicemen serving from Australia who lost their lives. It was common for their belongings to be sent back to relatives or given to charities for example. I am sure you can come up with a number of options. One thing is for certain, a skilled investigator would have looked at all of them at the time. That applies especially to one who had gone to the lengths of having a skilled tailor take the jacket apart, why do you think they needed to do that? Thanks for your comment, I hope this has been of use for you.

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  4. Absolutely amazing now that I have seen a page myself I would never have thought that this was actually real, once the text and even the handwriting is zoomed In you can see that each line is actually text. There is so much to this that is intriguing.

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