SOMERTON MAN: LAPSTONE IMPLICATIONS

THE LAPSTONE IMPLICATIONS

(ECAFE)

THE LAPSTONE CONFERENCE BLUE MOUNTAINS DECEMBER 1948

In December 1948, the UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East ( ECAFE) held this conference at the Lapstone Hotel. Attended by many nations including the Soviet Union. Scheduled to start on Monday 30th November, both the Russian and Australian delegations were late and didn't attend until Tuesday 1st December 1948.

Our post though is not so much concerned with the conference itself, rather our focus is on those Russians who were delegates but who didn't actually turn up.

The Russian Delegation had some 14 members on arrival in Darwin around the 26th November 1948, they were led by Kirril Novikov, the recently appointed Russian Ambassador to India. Readers of this blog will be familiar with the name 'Novikov' as the Russian Consul to the US who was a close associate of Pavel Fedosimov, however as far as we know these two men are not related.

Novikov is seated in the centre of these 3 men. this particular photograph shows him attending a much later conference in Vienna.

The Lapstone Conference was the target of a joint MI5/Australian Intelligence and CIA surveillance operation which included phone taps, in room bugs and tailing of delegates.

THE LEAD-UP

Much was happening in Australia in the time leading up to the conference, apart from the awarding of a major contract for the building of the UK's latest jet fighter, the Vampire, and the relocation of the Royal Navy's 25 Submarine Squadron to Sydney. Work was continuing at a frantic pace in South Australia on the preparation of Woomera and the building of numerous labs and jet engine and fuel testing facilities in and around RAAF Edinburgh, Salisbury and Adelaide's other Northern suburbs. Rumours abounded that A-bombs were actually being built in the suburbs.

But there was another level of activity, earlier in 1948, Australia's Prime Minister, Ben Chifley had paid a hurried visit to the UK for an urgent meeting with UK Prime Minister Clem Atlee, the reason was to discuss the issue of high-level leaks of top secret information from Australia, so bad were these leaks that the Americans had stopped  information sharing with Australia and the UK. 

Chifley returned to Australia and set about building a new security service to be known as ASIO. To help him in this task, Atlee organised for Percy Sillitoe to travel to Australia. 

 Sir Percy Sillitoe

Sillitoe was accompanied by two others from MI5, Roger Hollis, (phototo the right) and Philip 

Hembley Scales.   

Both men were active in Australia right up to the time of the Lapstone conference and no doubt would have taken part at least in the planning of the Lapstone Surveillance exercise. Another man who was active in Australia at that time was an American Mormon missionary by the name of Bruce R McConkie, Mr. McConkie was also a CIA agent whose area of operations was the State of Victoria.

TWO MISSING DELEGATES

14 Russian delegates arrived via Quantas but only 12 made the forward flight to Sydney. The two missing delegates were:

1. A man known only as SHERBAKOV

2. A lady believed to have been Novikov's secretary, a Miss Bogotyreva

There are no known photographs of either of these two people, we will be following up on that aspect. Neither of these two delegates were seen again.

The question is of course, where did they go? Some time ago, regular commenter on things SM, Byron Deveson, suggested that just maybe Sherbakov was the Somerton Man, there being no photographs of Sherbakov, that is a difficult call to make.

Enter Wally Clayton.

 ROYAL COMMISSION ON ESPIONAGE

The Royal Commission was set up to investigate the implications of the Petrov Affair and the by then known espionage activities of the Soviet Government within Australia.

Amongst the many witnesses called was this man, Walter (Wally) Sneddon Clayton, also known as KLOD according to the VENONA cables. He was a known communist and was suspected of heading up a major Russian spy ring in Australia. This picture is an ASIO surveillance photograph.

Another active communist during 1948 and a man well known to Wally Clayton was this man , Laurence (Lance) Louis Sharkey:

Mr. Sharkey was the chair of the Communist Party of Australia Central Committee. In 1949 he was convicted of sedition and sentenced to 3 years imprisonment but only served 13 months.

In questioning Sharkey at the Royal Commission some years later, it transpired that Mr. Sharkey had been instructed by Wally Clayton to organise the illicit departure from Australia of a man via a ship leaving from Melbourne in December 1948.

Could this man who was spirited away from Australia have been Sherbakov? Was he connected in some way to the death of the Somerton Man? Was he the assassin?

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

JOHN RUFFELS

Much of this information came from the amazing original investigative work carried out by John Ruffels, John was the SM researcher who worked alongside Sturart Littlemore in the making of the 1978 'Inside Story' documentary. It was he who painstakingly searched books, documents and news clippings to uncover this information way back in 1978, a time when there was no internet nor mobile phones, John did the hard yards.

You should also know that it was John Ruffels that suggested to me that I should follow up on Sentaor Cavanagh's statement in the senate that spoke of South Australia becoming a dumping ground for dead spies. 

Senator Cavanagh had pointed to a book, The Atom Spies and in those pages, John independently found details of a meeting at the Earle Cinema in New York between Harry Gold and a tall, well built fair haired man with large hands who walked on his toes. John was not able to put a name to this man and it was years later when I followed up on John's suggestion and by then there was access to the FBI files not available to John in the late 1970's. It was in those files that I was able to find the name of the man who met Harry Gold at the Earle cinema, it was Pavel Ivanovich Fedosimov. There were no photographs of any kind available at that time, no doubt John would have been excited to see the close up of Fedosimov showing the missing teeth.  John had stated in his notes in 1978 that he believed that the man at the meeting with Harry Gold could well have been the Somerton Man. I concur.

With thanks to Clive Turner for his ongoing help and encouragement