A SPY'S TOOLBOX
Real-world examples of some of the tools used by espionage agents..
With a little imagination, you can turn most items into anything that fits a storyline.
Please note: My view is that the contents of the suitcase are 'litter' and were not owned by the Somerton Man.
The litter theory is interesting. But it could be challenged as looking like an attempt at being selective with the evidence. That said, it's also true that the suitcase and its contents could be construed as a carefully calibrated attempt to say absolutely nothing about the Somerton Man.
ReplyDeleteWhat convinced you that it's a red herring?
A very pertinent question. If you can bear with me for a few minutes and I'll try not to be too long-winded. What's important is to get as 'broad' as possible picture of the attendant evidence and circumstances of the sequence of events. You need a panoramic view of it all but from a distance, it's only in that way that you can see where things 'might' fit.
ReplyDeleteFirst you see the body on the beach, labels removed from the clothing, no papers, no wallet, no money, no watch, no anything that could possibly identify this man. When it comes to the autopsy and subsequent inquest, no definite cause of death and no sign of an information trail that would prove that the man lay on the beach all night from the time he was first seen by Lyons to the time of his discovery, again by Lyons.
In fact, the evidence from the autopsy has him eating at around 10 pm on the 30th November, where did he do that? He had an enlarged spleen, a common result for people who had been given an overdose of one of a number of 'truth serum' type drugs.
He was believed to have been poisoned and that digitalis was the drug used but no trace of it was found in his body. It is this absence of evidence that, in my view, was the evidence. It was evidence of someone deliberately concealing the man's identity and the type of poison used to kill him.
Are there any other examples of similar circumstances around a suspicious death? Yes, and in an earlier post I gave details of such events, they were assassinations carried out by Soviet agents and without exception they were poisonings that took place outside the Soviet Union. They had a whole department dedicated to the development of drugs and methods used to carry out the task. The element of concealment was key and concealment is a large part of the SM case.
Talking of cases, the suitcase formed another part of the deception, the diversion, a 'Метод диверсии' (diversion method') to coin a Russian phrase. There were said to be two things that linked the body of the man to the suitcase, the Barbours thread and the true negative being that the suitcase wasn't collected even after it had been left for another week or so after its discovery at the Adelaide Railway Station. The grass seed found in a sock the man wore and a similar seed found on the inside of one of the legs the trousers found in the suitcase, was of a common variety. The thread was examined and was found to be similar to the thread that had been used to repair a pocket in the trousers, the collar of the coat and attaching a button to the trousers. But when was the sewing done? How come the slippers in the suitcase were smaller than the shoes he was wearing when found? And the 'tools' in the case? They could have easily been used for many purposes. The clothing and other items, the lack of labels except for the Pelaco shirt and the elastostrap trousers. The aerograms and sheets of writing paper but no writing pad, no documents to say that these two items were examined either. Nothing in that suitcase could be used to identify the man except for the name Keane/Kean on the tie and the laundry bag which proved to be a dead end from the outset.
The suitcase and the body of the man did have a lot in common, very item on him did not in any way give a clue to his identity or where he was from and neither did any of the items in the suitcase. When you view the suitcase through the same lens that said that this was a well planned and executed assassination it all becomes simpler. They were both part of a plan that was designed to mislead and deceive and it has worked for 72 years near enough. Apologies for the long-winded version, I had hoped to avoid that.