The Secrets Of British Airways Flight 149 - Stephen Davis | Modern Wisdom Podcast 359

Stephen Davis is an investigative reporter and an author. On August 1st 1990, British Airways flight 149 departed London for Kuwait, on board were nearly 400 passengers including 9 secret service operatives. They landed in a war zone as Sadam Hussein's army rolled into Kuwait and took them hostage. For the next 5 months they were used as human shields, and for the last 30 years BA and the UK Government has covered up BA Flight 149, why they were really there and what happened. Stephen has been investigating this story since it happened and today we get to hear what 30 years of research has uncovered. Did Margaret Thatcher know what was going on? Why did Flight 149 land in Kuwait? Did British Airways knowingly put passengers in danger? Is there an MI6 conspiracy to cover it up? Sponsors: Get 10% discount on your first month from BetterHelp at https://betterhelp.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get 20% discount & free shipping on your Lawnmower 4.0 at https://www.manscaped.com/ (use code MODERNWISDOM) Extra Stuff: Buy Operation Trojan Horse - https://amzn.to/3lPXIF9 Check out Stephen's website - https://stephendaviswriter.com/ Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom #flight149 #britishairways #operationtrojanhorse - 00:00 Intro 00:30 What Happened on Flight 149? 09:14 After the Iraqi Capture 18:07 State of the Passengers 25:39 How Did the Captain React? 32:41 Rescuing the Passengers 44:30 Thatcher’s Reason for the Landing 50:06 Geopolitical Implications 54:48 Cover-ups from Political Leaders 58:31 Progress 30 Years On 1:06:30 Where to Find Stephen - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  The Saudis had had a previous offer from a man who went to the Saudi Defence Minister, Aritz Shaldi, and said, "I will raise an army of holy warriors, a hundred thousand strong army, and I will kick Saddam out of Kuwait City for you." And this man, when he found out that they had allowed American troops in, instead of his offer, this man Osama bin Laden swore revenge.

• 0:26Chris Williamson?

  Stephen Davis, welcome to the show.

• 0:28Speaker 00

  Thank you very much, pleased to be here.

• 0:30Chris Williamson?

  How long have you been researching British Airways Flight 149?

• 0:36Speaker 00

  Half my life. I first got a tip-off about this when I was on the news desk of The Independent on Sunday in August 1990, three days after the plane landed. And I'm 64 years old now, so 31 years, so pretty much half my life. It's been a long, long journey.

• 0:59Chris Williamson?

  What's compelling about this story? Why have you bothered spending three decades on it?

• 1:04Speaker 00

  I'm an investigative reporter. First off, I don't like being lied to.

• 1:10Speaker 00

  And, but several things drove me on. These people suffered a double injustice. First off, they were landed in a war zone as a result of a secret mission ordered by Mrs Thatcher.

• 1:26Speaker 00

  But secondly, they were denied even the recognition of the terrible things that happened to them when they were in captivity. So a few months after this, the Royal Military Police were commissioned by the government to do a load of interviews with the Human Shields, as they had become known. And they produced a report called Operation Sandcastle. And it was a horror story of rapes, other assaults, mock executions, near starvation conditions. It was supposed to be presented to Parliament and they promptly suppressed it, and it has been kept secret for 30 years. So the people on the plane...

• 2:08Speaker 00

  Were lied to about why they were there in the first place. But also denied recognition of the terrible things that happened to them while they were there. So those two things drove me on. The more I met weird official denials and contradictory annials from British Airways and the British government, the more I kept going. And then the other thing was meeting the victims of this, many of whom have suffered PTSD and lifelong trauma as a result of this ordeal. And again, just denied the public recognition.

• 2:47Speaker 00

  So every time I would talk to one and at one stage during every interview, you could see them start to tremble or tear up as they remembered something terrible that had happened to them. It made me angrier and more determined to carry on.

• 3:01Chris Williamson?

  Okay, so someone that's not familiar with this particular case, what's the story?

• 3:06Speaker 00

  Okay, so on the morning of the first of August in nineteen ninety, Saddam had been threatening to invade Kuwait for some time. A huge amount of Iraqi troops were gathered on the border. It was reported by the BBC that morning. A British Airways flight one four nine was due to take off and fly to Kuwait, which was a crew transfer and refueling stop. And then on to Madras in India and then on to Kuala Lumpur.

• 3:42Speaker 00

  As it sat on the ground, there was a two hour delay. During this time, a group of young, very fit men got on board at the last minute. Most of the passengers thought instantly these guys are soldiers, went to the back of the plane, sat down. The plane took off.

• 4:07Speaker 00

  When it was between three and four hours flying time from Kuwait, the invasion started. Iraqi troops crossed the border.

• 4:21Speaker 00

  All other flights that were going to Kuwait city were turned away, but BA one four nine was not, and it flew on. It landed in Kuwait at four o'clock on the morning of the second.

• 4:38Speaker 00

  And at that stage, Iraqi tanks were already in the city and surrounding the airport. When the door opened and Clyde Ervey, the chief purser, uh, there was a uniformed British military officer waiting. And Clyde thought, he must be here for the Kuwaiti royal who was travelling in first class. But no, this man was there to collect the young men at the back. He said, can you please get them? And we're in a hurry. So these men get off, they have people waiting for them with cases and gear. And then they vanish from the airport, never to be seen again, not captured by the Iraqis.

• 5:22Speaker 00

  Everybody else on the plane is captured by the Iraqis and used as human shields.

• 5:31Speaker 00

  And so who that mystery group were and why they were there and why the plane was allowed to land in the midst of a war zone were the three things that drove my investigation over the years.

• 5:50Chris Williamson?

  Is it likely that the only reason the plane was delayed in taking off to permit those guys to make it on?

• 5:56Speaker 00

  That appears to be the case. Uh, when I interviewed Captain Buniet, who was the captain, uh, who subsequently turns out to have been an MI6 asset, he told me it was an issue with the air conditioning. It may or may not have been, but it was seemed like a bit of an excuse. We know now that the men who arrived at the last minute were checked in using military ticketing codes. And the British Airways lady who checked them in, who subsequently told colleagues that they had military codes, uh, subsequently refused to talk about it. And remarkably enough, um, Chris, uh, was given a new job at the Ministry of Defence.

• 6:40Chris Williamson?

  I've seen that captain say the air conditioning thing on a documentary as well.

• 6:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, look, it may have been, I think it was one of the, the captain always has the ability to delay the fight if he's worried about it. Richard told me, Richard Bunier told me that he was also thought if he delayed the flight, maybe it would be cancelled.

• 7:05Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, that if you push it later, the the ground invasion may begin and they won't actually have to take off.

• 7:11Speaker 00

  Yes, but to be honest, as I subsequently found during the course of the my investigation, some of the things he told me in our two initial interviews were, let's say, a bit deceptive.

• 7:24Chris Williamson?

  Was there anyone else interesting on the passenger manifest?

• 7:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, there was a, there was a Kuwaiti royal, a senior member of the royal family, who was seemed to have double duty as both the minister of sport and the head of security. And he was on the flight and he died shortly. So he went to the Dasman Palace and he actually died, I think, defending the palace from Iraqis. So he was one of the early casualties. Other than that, the they were a mixture of, there were a few people landing in Kuwait. There was an American banker called George Shalumina's family, who had a remarkable story.

• 8:12Speaker 00

  Of course, the crew were getting off in Kuwait and there was a replacement crew to fly on the next leg. But most of the passengers, British, French, Malaysian, Canadian, Indian, Germans, Spanish, et cetera, et cetera, 15 different countries, Danish, were flying on to either Madras or Kuala Lumpur. And

• 8:43Speaker 00

  Some of these people made decisions which seemed in the hindsight to be okay, which really proved out to be costly. A couple called the Halkyards, Kiwis, fellow Kiwis of mine, Henry and Daphne Halkyard, who were New Zealanders but also had British passports, made the last minute decision to fly on their British passports, which meant in captivity they were treated as Brits, not New Zealanders. And that was not a good deal for them.

• 9:14Chris Williamson?

  What happens once the passengers are captured by the Iraqis?

• 9:18Speaker 00

  Well, this was the interesting thing. It was clear originally the Iraqis didn't really know what to do with them. The initial few days, Chris, of the occupation were chaotic, very chaotic. And actually, some people just escaped then by getting in their cars and driving to Saudi Arabia and Jordan. A lot of the troops that were initially occupying Kuwait were conscripts into Saddam's army, not the Republican Guard, who were the elite, the fanatics. And the conscripts were, by all accounts, pretty hopeless. And not to mention, apparently scruffy uniforms and not very well fed. The conscripts were often hungry.

• 10:03Speaker 00

  Anyway, so the Iraqis had this prize, a British Airways plane. And all of these people didn't really know what to do with them. So they took them to hotels. And they kept them in these hotels for several days or sometimes a week. And that was an interesting example then of spin, kind of affecting how people think of a story. So initially, the Foreign Office is briefing, yes, 149s landed in a war zone, but don't worry, the passengers are like having a little holiday.

• 10:45Speaker 00

  They're sipping cocktails by the pool in the sunshine in luxury hotels. And of course, with spin, often the first version of the story you get out is what is believed.

• 11:00Speaker 00

  Um. So that became the common belief. And it was true for a few days. As I said, the Iraqis kept them in hotels and they were looked after by the aircrew and they were fed and. And but then, of course, Saddam worked out that he had this prize. And after that, they were sent and often moved constantly. And ended up at seventy different places all over Kuwait and Iraq. Along with Westerners captured on the ground, who became human shields who joined them. And these seventy places were sites which Saddam had identified as potential sites which the Allies would attack.

• 11:45Speaker 00

  If they attacked his country or tried to kick him out of Iraq. So that's where the phrase "human shields" goes. Saddam put them there in dams and chemical warfare plants. And ironically enough, this was when Saddam actually had weapons of mass destruction programs. And so he put them in places he thought the Allies would bomb. So for a long time, of course, these people thought there would be a good chance they would be killed by their own side. And then they had a hellish time in captivity, most of them.

• 12:18Chris Williamson?

  What is this team of operatives doing while everyone's in this first hotel?

• 12:24Speaker 00

  Okay, so they dispersed. One group were actually picked up by Iraqis, but obviously not a very clever bunch. And talked their way out of it and were let go.

• 12:36Chris Williamson?

  How many was there in total of these special operatives?

• 12:38Speaker 00

  The nine, four two-man teams and an intelligence officer. Um. So this is a surveillance operation. It's important to bear in mind, people have this idea of special forces operations as men who. Go in with guns blazing and all firing SAS, SBS, all of that. And of course, they can do if required, if they're attacking somebody. But the specialization of these groups is actually to.

• 13:10Speaker 00

  To hide and observe and report back intelligence to blend in. And so these teams were set up in various parts of Kuwait to report on what the Iraqi movements were, the placement of where the Republican Guard was, you know, where they were putting their artillery, classic intelligence, which you then feed back to London and Washington. So they had all gone and the passengers were all in captivity.

• 13:38Chris Williamson?

  How do you know what these intelligence officers were doing? Surely this is all secret information?

• 13:43Speaker 00

  Well, it was and for a long time. And then I've done a lot of reporting on special forces. And I have, by the way, on three, no, four separate occasions, had the UK government take legal action against me to stop stories coming out. And I've beaten them four times in a row, so I'm probably a bit of an irritant. So I have a lot of contacts. And eventually with a colleague from Television New Zealand, we flew to Britain and it's the usual thing, you have a contact who trusts you and then he introduces you to somebody else. And eventually I had a man who's very well known in the special forces community and has

• 14:28Speaker 00

  been on television called Snapper Warren, and he confirmed that the mission took place because one of his mates was on it. And then after a long other process, I actually ended up interviewing people from the mission and who planned the mission. So this is all from the horse's mouth.

• 14:45Chris Williamson?

  Okay, so what are they doing? There's four of them get caught, but then let go because they talk their way out of it.

• 14:51Speaker 00

  Two of them get caught, but and so the four two man teams were at four different places in Kuwait. My contacts ended up in southern Kuwait, which was one of the crucial things. So their job, they ended up setting up a hide in a village near a crossroads where they could observe the movement of Iraqi troops. And they would hide all day long. And they were quickly able to establish that the Iraqis were taking up defensive, not offensive positions in southern Kuwait and not getting too near the border with Saudi Arabia.

• 15:33Speaker 00

  This particular group, um, two guys, uh, got into trouble because, um, they ate some rations which made one of them really, really ill with severe food poisoning. And so ill that they had to be rescued. And they ended up with one guy dragging his mate across the desert hour after hour to this wadi where they were rescued by a, a American special forces helicopter.

• 16:10Speaker 00

  And taken to a warship, US warship called the US Antietam where they ended up in the sick bay. Now, this is an interesting thing, Chris. This was a key moment for me in confirming part of the investigation.

• 16:25Speaker 00

  I ended up with many sources. The British government will tell you now, if you phone them up tomorrow, they would say, oh, no, this never happened, Chris. This, this mission never existed. These people, it just didn't happen. But unfortunately for them, I tracked down the captain of the US warship, the Antietam, a wonderful man called Lawrence Eddingfield.

• 16:53Chris Williamson?

  He's a pastor now, isn't he?

• 16:54Speaker 00

  Yes, so he had gone from being a captain to being a very senior planning man at the Pentagon. And then a vicar at a church in San Diego where I went to talk to him. Uh, so a man of completely and utterly un-impeachable reputation. And unfortunately for the Brits, um, Lawrence decided to tell the truth and confirmed every single part of the story. He visited the men in the sick bay. He knows exactly what happened. He had them on his ship. They were picked up by this rescue helicopter that arrived on one four nine.

• 17:33Speaker 00

  So we're in this weird business now. Sometimes, I mean, I, I, I, I'm not a person who is opposed to national security on legitimate grounds. Clearly, special forces and spying, there has to be a degree of secrecy. And a lot of my contacts, you know, would would say adamantly, that's the case. But sometimes it becomes absurd. You know, thirty years later, they're still denying it when I when I have an on camera confirmation from the the US captain. So, yeah, it becomes a bit crazy, really.

• 18:07Chris Williamson?

  What are the conditions of the passengers at this point?

• 18:11Speaker 00

  Okay, so it was luck of the draw. So first off, um, how you were treated depended on whether your country was being seen to be aggressive in intent in intent towards Saddam or not. Um, and I I had a memorable occasion, uh, conversation recently with one of the stewardesses. So she described being in the hotel and Iraqi troops came in and they had two lists. And it's and then they got all the passengers and they divided you on the left, you on the right, which of course has a lot of sinister historical echoes.

• 18:55Chris Williamson?

  Especially with some German people on board, yeah.

• 18:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. And this, but this woman said, so she realized that the people on the left uh were mainly white and Americans and British and so forth. And the people on the other side were Indians and Malays and others. But the funny thing, not amusing in retrospect, but she thought to herself, she looked at the other group and thought, oh, those poor people, they're going to be really given a hard time, but and we're all right because we're on this side. And in fact, it was the exact opposite, of course.

• 19:39Speaker 00

  Uh, the Indians and Malays were better treated and and let go early. So Saddam had, you know, this this sort of, as it were, um, I don't know whether I can say it on your podcast shit list effectively. And, um, and then the French.

• 19:59Speaker 00

  For a long time, there were a lot of French passengers captured, over fifty. For a long time, they thought that they were going to be okay because Mitterrand was refusing to join Bush's grand coalition. And then suddenly, one day, there's an announcement that Mitterrand and the French have joined, and they're suddenly plummeting to despair, because that puts them in the bad category, not the good category. Right from the start, of course, the British and Americans were prizes, because Thatcher was gung ho and saying, "Yeah, we're going to kick him out, we're going to invade." Bush was saying, "I've drawn a line in the sand," his famous quote.

• 20:40Speaker 00

  But other countries, people who had Irish passports, were okay. So it was a real mixture, in terms of nationality. And, of course, the Iraqis also reacted to every single thing that Bush and Thatcher said. So, at one stage, the passengers heard to their horror, somebody asked Thatcher a question, saying, "Are the fact that all these human shields being held in Iraq and Kuwait, will it stop you taking military action?" And Thatcher said, "Oh, no, we won't." And so, saw the passengers all thinking, "Well, that's great, we're going to be bombed, that's just terrific."

• 21:21Speaker 00

  And at that very moment, by the way, in one of the camps, in a couple of the camps, Iraqi troops turned up and started digging big trenches. And eventually, the passengers were told by some friendly guards, "Oh, we're very sorry, but when the invasion starts, we're to shoot you and dump your bodies in these trenches." So, how you were treated, first off, was dictated by geopolitics. And the other part was really the luck of the draw in who held you, who was in charge of your captivity.

• 22:01Speaker 00

  So if you were in a camp run by the Baathists, who were the real hardliners, real hardliners, you got a very hard time indeed. And one of the most shocking stories I heard was some people in a camp who were taken out of the camp in the middle of the night, driven out in the desert, made to get out, given shovels, made to dig a deep trench, made to kneel in front of the trench, soldiers lined up behind them, and of course, by this stage, the people are convinced they're going to be shot in the back of the head and dumped in the trench.

• 22:40Speaker 00

  And then, um, there's a click, and the, and the Baathists fall about laughing. It was their idea of a joke, psychological torture. So you could end up in a place like that. A couple of the people I interviewed, such as Barry Manners, ended up with a, an engineer at a dam who was determined to treat them courteously, despite Saddam's instructions, and despite the guards wanting to be meaner. So he took a great risk. I mean, he actually invited them to tea at his house and did what he could, tried to give them food. Uh, Barry became lifelong friends with this man, which is rather nice.

• 23:23Speaker 00

  And, um, and, and Mr. Troll, as I call him, immigrated to Sydney, where I spoke to him recently. So there was an element of randomness, there was an element of luck of the draw. Um, a lot of people thought about escaping, and there were various complicated escape plans. There was a bit of the old POW spirit among the Brits, you know. Uh, they didn't quite get to the stage of working out how to dig a tunnel, but it was more or less like that. But when they heard that... Douglas Crossbury, who was a Brit who had decided to try and drive out, ended up being, his car was riddled with gunfire by Iraqis and he was killed. That kind of put a damper on the whole.

• 24:08Chris Williamson?

  Was he one of the passengers?

• 24:10Speaker 00

  No, he was captured on the ground.

• 24:12Chris Williamson?

  Got you.

• 24:13Speaker 00

  But my book, Operation Trojan Horse, of course, includes the stories of all the human shields, both the ones who arrived on 149 and the ones who were captured on the ground. But that, that was quickly communicated to everybody. And after that, it was, they had to be pretty careful. A lot of the Iraqi guards were pretty trigger happy. They would pull their weapon, you know, at one stage, Barry Manners told me he lost his temper and started shouting at, he just had enough. He started shouting at the guards and the officer just got it, pointed at Barry and was gonna shoot him till other people calmed him down.

• 24:56Speaker 00

  So it was a very, it was a terrible ordeal. And as I said, what really has made me cross over the years is, hopefully it's changed in the last week or so, but people didn't realise what a horrible time these people had. And some people used to say to them, oh, when they got back, oh, well, you're safe and well. You had a bit of a holiday, you know, terrible. There's a, one passenger who was 14 years old and Jennifer Chapel, and she has suffered lifelong depression and mental health problems. She's literally never recovered from her ordeal, as have others.

• 25:39Chris Williamson?

  Didn't the captain try and hide somewhere, the captain and some of the crew?

• 25:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, so this is a controversial moment. So at one stage, Bourn Yate decided to escape and he did so. And he took a few of his crew with him, not all. And it's fair to say, I wouldn't judge the man not having walked in his shoes in that difficult circumstance. But it's fair to say that a lot of the passengers felt completely abandoned. You know, the captain deserting the sinking ship. And I had a very interesting conversation with Richard Bournier about this when I was interviewing him. So he ended up, he escaped and ended up with the Kuwaiti Resistance.

• 26:31Speaker 00

  And I asked him, I said, Richard, how did you find the Kuwaiti Resistance after you escaped? And he said, well, I walked out of the hotel in my shorts and T-shirt and I knocked on a few doors and I found them. And I was sitting in his living room at the time and there are certain moments as a journalist when you're looking at somebody and you know they're not telling the truth. And he was looking at me and he knew, I knew he wasn't telling the truth. But clearly he wasn't going to say anything more. The idea of this Englishman knocking

• 27:13Speaker 00

  on doors in an Iraqi occupied city and saying, hello, is anybody from the Kuwaiti Resistance here?

• 27:19Chris Williamson?

  That's the most British way to do it, though. If you're going to do it.

• 27:22Speaker 00

  Well, it is.

• 27:22Chris Williamson?

  Excuse me, is anybody in? Is this the Kuwaiti Resistance? I'm looking for you at the moment.

• 27:29Speaker 00

  But it's absurd. And the Kuwaiti Resistance was subject to the most brutal repression. And when I read Richard's diary, actually, one of the Resistance people helping him

• 27:40Speaker 00

  was brutally captured and tortured. One of the great unsaid stories about this, by the way, is the incredible heroism of the Kuwaiti Resistance, many of them young women. So Richard's escape, in fairness to him also, he had, obviously as an MI6 asset, he had reason to be worried about being captured. And he also had a reason to be worried about being captured, funny enough, because of his dad. So at one stage, the Bourniers lived in Baghdad and his dad was a businessman who apparently had fallen out with Saddam Hussein. So Saddam Hussein is not somebody you want to make an enemy of. So, you know, there's a lot of different opinions

• 28:23Speaker 00

  on whether Richard Bournier was right to free, flee. He clearly had been given contacts in the Resistance in advance to use if he had to, and that's how he found them. But, you know, I wouldn't judge. I mean, you know.

• 28:41Speaker 00

  Genuine fear of his life, probably. Should he have gone? Should he say? Who knows? And Richard, by the way, like so many of these people who were involved in this, by the way, Chris died before their time. You know, Richard died in his 50s. His co-pilot Gordon Galt died in his 50s. The chief engineer Wildman died in his 60s. So that's three for three in the cockpit who died. What circumstances? Well, of a variety. I think a heart attack, cancer. You know, I'm not saying anything nefarious happened to them, but you know, definitely the the accumulated stress and things of that ordeal.

• 29:23Speaker 00

  Lots of people, Carol Miles, the woman who checked in the men and

• 29:32Speaker 00

  kept the secret, she died before her time. And Mike Longden, the controller at BA on the day, a man who I would have loved to have interviewed, died of a heart attack just a few months later. Um, many of the passengers who've suffered mental health problems or physical health problems have died early. Stress is a hell of a drug. Exactly. Poor Denise Stier, one of the stewardesses, her husband Neil, who who suffered badly from PTSD and who spent a long time trying to get to the truth of this matter, died. British Airways, by the way, treated this, their own staff and passengers

• 30:17Speaker 00

  appallingly. I mean, they, when several passengers, several of the staff tried to write books or find out the truth, British Airways threatened them. And its passengers, you know, here's a situation where British Airways fought tooth and nail all the way to the House of Lords, not to pay compensation to the British passengers.

• 30:43Speaker 00

  At the same time, it turns out they got a massive insurance settlement from their plane. Now, their plane was not destroyed by the Iraqis, as we've been told for years. It was sitting intact on the runway. It was destroyed by the US Air Force deliberately. So here's British Airways denying any compensation to its passengers while pocketing a large cheque because, you know, the Allies blew up their own plane. Amazing.

• 31:15Chris Williamson?

  You knew this, right? Because there's this very famous photo, the back of a blown off tail of the British Airways flight. But as you said in the book, the Iraqis were taking light bulbs out, copper piping, anything that they could that was of value because they had quite scarce resources. So having an entire functioning plane and then blowing that up was at odds with their modus operandi outside of that. So it looks like the Americans blew up the British plane to...

• 31:45Speaker 00

  At the request of the Brits, almost certainly. I mean, it always struck me as being unlikely. Remember that it couldn't have been accidental. I mean, remember BA149 was literally sitting there by itself at the airport. It's not like it's next to a military target or surrounded by other things. It's sitting there on its own and for weeks and weeks and weeks. And as I said, the Iraqis were busy looting stuff and why not? The plane's a prize. Why not just fly it back? Alternatively, just leave it there.

• 32:21Chris Williamson?

  Take it as a trophy, yeah, exactly.

• 32:23Speaker 00

  As a symbol. And suddenly it ends up as this wreckage. And as I said, it really always struck me as unlikely that it happened. And then I had two different sources, one in the US and one in Britain, confirm that it was blown up by our lot, as it were.

• 32:41Chris Williamson?

  How did the passengers get back? Because they're distributed, right? You've got 70 different locations. You've got some of them in hiding with the Kuwaiti resistance. What happens to get them back to the country?

• 32:54Speaker 00

  Well, a lot of different things, really. First off, there were some early releases of various nationalities who Saddam thought should be on his side. Malaysians and Indians and others got home reasonably early. Then a lot of the passengers used to call them, the human shears used to call them celebrity visits. People get turning up in Baghdad to be captured on camera, talking to Saddam Hussein, negotiating the release of hostages. Jesse Jackson turned up. I think Edward Heath went. Tony Bin went.

• 33:39Chris Williamson?

  Who are these people?

• 33:41Speaker 00

  Jesse Jackson's an American, well-known African-American politician and civil rights campaigner. And Heath, of course, is former British Prime Minister. Bin's a British politician. Anyway, the celebrity visits, they turned up and there was this great photo opportunities and then Saddam would release a few people so they could go home. The passengers were very cynical about this exercise, as they were about the Iraqis used to run this television programme called Guest News.

• 34:20Speaker 00

  And the passengers would be gathered and Saddam would turn up with an Iraqi crew and hear that all these happy people, the benefit of our wonderful hospitality. That's when the famous image happened of Saddam patting the boy Stuart Lockwood on the head. So, and by the way, during this, unreported, Saddam, a few minutes later or beforehand, another little boy apparently kicked him in the shins, hard. And Saddam turned around and said, who are his parents? That was a bad moment for the parents.

• 35:01Speaker 00

  So anyway, there was this all this weird stuff going on like um and people being released. Then after a month or so, he announced he would let the woman and children go. He was being, at the time, I think he had hopes that they would let him keep Kuwait and there would be some negotiating settlements. So this was the sort of great dictator's gesture. And that led to some incredibly intense moments because husbands and wives.

• 35:35Speaker 00

  You know, does the wife go and the husband stay? The husband, of course, had no choice, but the wife had a choice. And I'd one amazing description in a camp where a lot of couples were kept. There was this long, after they heard, there was this kind of long night of intense emotional whispering conversations. Um, where husbands and wives decided and then incredibly painful departures. Some of the wives decided to stay with their husbands. They didn't all go? No, the Halkyards, Daphne and Henry.

• 36:16Speaker 00

  Um, Daphne decided to stay with Henry. And when I interviewed them, and this is, I interviewed them on camera seven years later. When they talked about the moment, just the memory of it. Daphne had tears in her eyes and Henry was very emotional and said, look, I will forever be grateful to her for staying with me. Um, but of course, I think he also constantly had doubts about whether it was the right thing to do, as you would a natural human.

• 36:58Speaker 00

  Was this the right thing to do? And Henry, by the way, his daughter Rowan said he never ever recovered from this, ever. Um, and he died a few years later. Daphne died recently. Um, so, yeah, these tremendously intense and emotional decisions. So that happened. Then, of course, Saddam had a whole package of men and a few women. And often, by the way, Chris, they were moved around. So some of them, they were shuffled around in the middle of the night, not knowing where they were going. And they'd be at an electricity substation, as they recognized.

• 37:41Speaker 00

  Sometimes they didn't even know where they were because they were shoved in at night in, in sheds and the windows were. So they could, they could have been anywhere. Another time, they, the bus turned up at something which was obviously to do with chemical warfare. So that was particularly scary for them. They were only a few, you know, imagine that being bombed. I mean, just absolutely horrendous. They had to live with that. Um, the quality of the food deteriorated, the attitude of the guards deteriorated. Um, it was clear they were going to be killed if there was an invasion.

• 38:21Speaker 00

  So for several months after that, it was even more hellish for those who were caught behind. Then Saddam Hussein, of course, in many ways

• 38:35Speaker 00

  was a very odd individual in his decision making, as we know. Um, for instance, why would anybody pretend to the West? He still had weapons of mass destruction programs when he didn't. Which, you know, if he'd owned up to it and allowed them to inspect it, it would be no 2003 Gulf War. But also in a decision which nobody to this day ever understands. In December, as the war buildup was in full swing.

• 39:13Speaker 00

  And the Westerners were seriously worried, the Western military planners were seriously worried about these hostages. They had, the SAS and Delta Force had drawn up possible rescue plans. Put in special forces teams and try to get them out before the war started. So there's no boots on the ground yet at this stage? No, no, it's a build up to war. Um, and, but they decided it was impossible, they didn't really know where everybody was. And this would have been seventy odd simultaneous special forces rescue operations. So they had to abandon it. So Western planners, military planners.

• 39:53Speaker 00

  Their planning was really made difficult by the presence of these human shields, which was Saddam's intention. Should we bomb this dam? Should we bomb this other place? Uh, here's a place we probably should bomb, a bridge. But we don't know whether the human, uh, human shields are there or not. They had some locations identified and others not. Um.

• 40:19Speaker 00

  If the Marines storm

• 40:22Speaker 00

  into this beach at Kuwait, should we first shell these hotels and gun emplacements? Maybe not because there are hostages in that hotel. So all these incredibly difficult decisions. And Saddam had a trump card to play. Now Thatcher and Bush kept saying it didn't matter. But it mattered to the military planners. And there is quite a history, Chris, of

• 40:58Speaker 00

  prisoners of war being killed in, in, in bombing missions. Uh, famously, years later, it was revealed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hundreds and hundreds of Americans were killed. They were held as prisoners in the cities. Um, so here's the situation. And then in early December, before the war started, Saddam, I don't know, woke up one day and made a public announcement that he was letting everybody go.

• 41:33Speaker 00

  And the military planners were overjoyed. This removed a whole set of problems that they then didn't have to think about. Nobody knows why, as I said, the best explanation I've heard is that still in the back of his mind, he thought he could negotiate his way out of the war. The war started, by the way, in a dispute about an oil field, which is half in Kuwait and half in Iraq. The proceeds of the oil field, that was one of the main issues. So the best explanation for this inexplicable decision was he thought, I'll make another gesture, I'll have the world on my side, I'm a man of peace. Excuse me. I'm a man of peace and

• 42:20Speaker 00

  and this will help me as a negotiator.

• 42:24Speaker 00

  But whatever the reason was, all the men got let go. Uh, brought home, there were these tremendously emotional reunions. But then everybody forgot about them. It's classically the media where we, you know, often for big stories, we can only concentrate on one big thing at a time. And I maybe even at the Independent on Sunday, I was really interested in investigating these people. But by December, the war was coming. And the invasion was coming, the Gulf War was coming, Desert Storm was coming. So we all got interested in that. And, and, you know, we set up a war desk and we arranged for coverage and correspondents and TV crews went and

• 43:10Speaker 00

  and so the hostages were forgotten.

• 43:14Speaker 00

  And left, they got virtually no help of any kind. No offers of

• 43:21Speaker 00

  psychological help.

• 43:24Speaker 00

  No real offers of financial help.

• 43:28Speaker 00

  There was a British Medical Journal study saying there was an extraordinary high percentage of them that lost their jobs, their homes, their their mental wellbeing. They were forgotten about. Um, they were briefly debriefed when they arrived by spies who wanted to know where they were and what the place looked like. And that was it, they were gone. And then, as I said, a few months later. Operation Sandcastle is commissioned, which would have been presented to Parliament and reminded people what happened to the hostages, but was suppressed, clearly because the war

• 44:09Speaker 00

  was over, portrayed as a great success, victory for Bush, victory for Thatcher, you know, victory for freedom in the West. Um, and they didn't want anybody thinking of or being reminded of why British Airways Flight 149 landed and what actually happened to all the human shields in captivity.

• 44:31Chris Williamson?

  What was Thatcher's reason for British Airways Flight landing?

• 44:36Speaker 00

  To, um, was basically a favour to the Americans to get a, an observation team on the ground in a hurry, um, so they could keep an eye on the Kuwaiti, um, sorry, the Iraqi troop movements in Kuwait.

• 44:51Chris Williamson?

  What was her public, what was her public statement about it, though? What was the justification? She can't have said that to the public.

• 44:57Speaker 00

  No, no, no, she's denied it ever happened and, and she gave a completely false, not denied the plane landed, but she's denied that it ever happened, there was a mission. She gave a completely false statement to Parliament a month later. Uh, she said, the plane landed, um, the crew got off, the replacement crew got on, and all of this happened before the invasion. Then she repeated it, all of this happened before the invasion. It's completely untrue. The invasion started when the plane was four hours flying time. And she knew on the day, I have the actual intelligence flash messages which went around in London and Washington. So a month later, she's lying about it.

• 45:38Speaker 00

  And then the lies and cover-ups have been perpetrated ever since. It's fair to say the, the people I've talked to from the team on the ground felt it was a military success that they delivered valuable intelligence on the Iraqi troop movements and they helped. Um, but they have a conscience about what happened to the passengers. You see, one of the things, you know, often things in history, Chris, as we know, are cock-ups and not conspiracies. Um, to an extent, and it's important to understand when they originally drew up this plan.

• 46:16Speaker 00

  The team who were going in were told that the, um, Kuwaiti military would hold out for between three and five days. When the Iraqis crossed the border, as I explain in Operation Trojan Horse, the Kuwaiti military collapsed like a pack of cards in a few hours. The Kuwaiti royal family took off to Saudi Arabia in a long convoy of Mercedes and Range Rovers without leaving any instructions for the defence of their country.

• 46:53Speaker 00

  So rather than, uh, three to five days, Iraqi tanks arrived at Kuwait airport in about three or four hours. And so it's fair to say that the mission as originally planned, one four nine would have taken off long before. But that doesn't let them off the hook because the simple fact is that the invasion started when the plane was four hours flying time and could have been turned around any time up to the point of final descent, by which day Iraqi troops were at the airport. And Kuwaiti air traffic controllers remember.

• 47:33Speaker 00

  Kuwaiti air traffic controllers were contacting a Kuwaiti Airlines flight and say, "You must land in Bahrain, don't come here." And yet, nobody told 149 not to land. Outrageous.

• 47:46Chris Williamson?

  It was a case of the air traffic controllers not telling 149 not to land, not that they told them and the captain didn't hear or turned off the radio?

• 47:55Speaker 00

  They didn't, well, the air traffic controllers never delivered a warning. All messages on approach were normal messages. Now, here's one mystery, by the way, and if there's anybody out there who knows this, please feel free to contact me. One mystery I've never been able to solve is why Kuwaiti air traffic controllers who had radar with all the approaching planes or flights, why would they say, "Turn away" to one plane and not another? I mean, they're responsible professionals doing their job. Why would they do that? The best explanation that I've heard,

• 48:38Speaker 00

  and I haven't had it thoroughly sourced enough to put it in the book, but I didn't, so I didn't, but it's plausible, was that the Brits, because there was a big British military liaison team in Kuwait, the Brits had put somebody in the control tower, effectively taking it over, to make sure no Kuwaiti air traffic controller said to 149, "Oh, you better turn around here", because they wanted the plane to land.

• 49:03Chris Williamson?

  And all of this was to facilitate getting those nine men

• 49:06Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 49:07Chris Williamson?

  onto the ground?

• 49:08Speaker 00

  Getting the team onto the ground who disappeared and wall, others were captured. And so, yeah, if there's anybody out there who knows what happened in the air traffic control tower, please feel free to contact me. So, as a military mission, I think...

• 49:31Speaker 00

  You know, you can say there was justification for it, but there was no justification once you knew the invasion started of risking those people's lives. And bear in mind, Chris, that in landing the plane while tanks were at the airport and the airport soon to be bombed by MiG fighters, of course, they were dropping their own team in it as well. It was perfectly possible that those nine guys could have been captured. And I can tell you what, if their identities had been revealed as special forces, they would have been very badly treated indeed by the Iraqis.

• 50:06Chris Williamson?

  What's the broader geopolitical implications of what's happened?

• 50:11Speaker 00

  So this is interesting. The team were sending back very clear intelligence. The fear was that Saddam, having taken over Kuwait, would go on to invade northern Iraq, at which point the dictator would control 40% of the world's oil supply. So I have historically, as it were, I've read all the history and all the reports. We have this moment when Dick Cheney and Norman Schwarzkopf fly to Saudi Arabia, I think the 6th of August it was, four days after the plane landed. And they talk to the Saudi king, and they show

• 50:56Speaker 00

  him satellite images, and they say, look, we can help you stop the Iraqis invading your country, but you have to allow our troops and planes to base themselves in your country. Now, during this famous meeting, the king turned to his fellow princes and brothers, who universally said, no, don't want it. And the Saudis had by this stage sent their own scout troops over the border and could detect no sign of Iraqi troops close to the

• 51:35Speaker 00

  border. And by this stage, the teams who had landed on 149 were sending intelligence back. Saying there's no evidence they're adopting offensive positions. And it turns out there was satellite imagery taken by the Russians, but apparently quite accurate and broken by an American newspaper at the time, although the story was ignored, that the Iraqi troops weren't in offensive positions. So they had all of this suggesting that there was no need for American troops on Saudi soil. And the king's everybody telling the king, don't do it.

• 52:19Speaker 00

  But Cheney and Schwarzkopf saying, oh, you might be invaded by the Iraqis. We can help you. Let our troops in. So for some reason, the king said, yes. They were so surprised, by the way, that Schwarzkopf said he nearly fell off his chair. And Dick Clark, who was in the meeting, a senior State Department guy, said, we were shocked. We never expected them in a million years to say yes. So the Saudis had had a previous offer from a man who went to the Saudi Defense Minister, a rich Saudi, and said, I will raise an army of holy warriors, a hundred thousand strong army, and I will kick Saddam out of Kuwait City for you.

• 53:03Speaker 00

  And this man, when he found out that they had allowed American troops in, instead of his offer, this man Osama bin Laden swore revenge. And of course, on nine eleven carried out his threat. There would have been no nine eleven without American troops on Saudi soil. And Dick Clark, in the book Trojan Horse, you will find a remarkable comment from Dick Clark, who's an expert in this field, saying, actually, thirty years of chaos and destruction in the Middle East, including the Gulf War, including ISIS, including failed states,

• 53:45Speaker 00

  all comes from that crucial decision to have American troops on Saudi soil. So the significance of this is immense, much wider than just.

• 53:58Speaker 00

  The hostages and curiously, this is one of the unexamined parts of history. People just accepted at face value that Cheney and Schwarzkopf were presenting a proper case and presenting the accurate intelligence. As we know now, of course, there's a long history of misuse of intelligence in these areas. But this is huge. This is where history changed gears. And my closing sentence in Operation Trojan Horse is if the if the secret team that had gone in on 149, if their intelligence had been acted upon and there'd been no American

• 54:42Speaker 00

  troops allowed, and the world would clearly be a safer, more peaceful place now, clearly.

• 54:49Chris Williamson?

  Do you think that Cheney and Schwarzkopf were lying about what the British intelligence officers were feeding back? Were they a culpable insight on the ground that was allowing them to say, we've actually seen it, British have got some intelligence officers that are down there, this is what we're being told?

• 55:09Speaker 00

  That's a good question. I mean, they had satellite pictures, which apparently showed Iraqi troops somewhere, although there doesn't seem to be satellite pictures which showed them near the border. They could have, I think it was case of cherry picking. That's the problem with misuse of intelligence. Of course, intelligence by definition, it's not, there's not exactitudes in intelligence. It's bits of this and bits of that and best guesses. And you can often have intelligence that's contradictory. So you can just cherry pick the bits that you want to achieve the aim that you want and ignore the rest.

• 55:50Speaker 00

  Although that being said, Cheney, of course, has a reputation for, you know, completely exaggerating and totally misusing intelligence.

• 56:00Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, like if you're going to lie about what the assets are feeding back to you in terms of information, why not just lie about the assets being there at all?

• 56:09Speaker 00

  And of course, part of the interesting thing in the cover up, you know, say the year after the Gulf War, when America had bases in Saudi and, you know, maybe some of the consequences are becoming clear to people, if there was a revelation.

• 56:26Speaker 00

  That the Brits were delivering intelligence on the ground right from the start, that the Iraqis were adopting defensive positions, there would have been very hard questions asked by everybody. So that was kind of another reason for the cover up, I think. You know, the fact the mission was there, the fact they dropped all these people in terrible circumstances, and the fact they ignored a lot of the intelligence that was delivered. And bear in mind that right from the start, um, Mrs Thatcher was very gung ho about this whole thing, right from the first minute. One of the extraordinary revelations, I think, in my, in my book, in Operation Trojan Horse,

• 57:10Speaker 00

  was when the team were briefed, they were told that if necessary, if necessary, and if the Republican Guard were in southern Kuwait looking, um, threatening, uh, Thatcher was prepared to authorize a tactical nuclear weapon on the Republican Guard. So basically Thatcher was prepared to nuke southern Kuwait, which is just mind boggling, really. Um, when I, when we spoke to her private secretary, he denied it all, but you know, my team, my people are adamant. And actually, if you look at Thatcher's comments about the use of nuclear weapons, there's a long history of her being willing to use them, dating right back to the Falklands.

• 57:55Speaker 00

  So, yes, um, so there were multiple reasons, including, I think, protecting Thatcher's reputation. You know, I think this was part of the cover up. The fact that she was all kind of, you know, super gung ho and super aggressive. I think there was an element of protecting her reputation as a statesman. And of course, as you said previously, during this whole business, she was actually dumped and replaced by John Major.

• 58:26Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, perilous time to be a Prime Minister in the UK at that point. What about the last few months or so? Because obviously it's 30th anniversary. You've brought the book out, calling to account people trying to say, British Airways, what have you done? Why haven't we seen the correct reports? Look at all of the damage that's been done to people. Look at the implications that occurred geopolitically in terms of terror, in terms of boots on the ground and wars and loss of life and all that stuff. What's happened recently?

• 58:58Speaker 00

  Okay, so for a long time, I never thought I was actually going to get the book out. The previous efforts had been frustrated, actively frustrated. I'd been deliberately sent misinformation and disinformation to disrupt the process years ago. And unfortunately, most of the media had given up on this. So for the last 15 years, I've carried out my investigation in my own time. The fantastic New Statesman and its great editor and friend of mine, Peter Willby, ran a piece by me about 16 years ago about this. But most of the media had given up, put it in the too hard basket.

• 59:39Speaker 00

  So I kept going and got a publisher and an American publisher. And we arranged this reunion on August the 2nd, which it was supposed to be a 30 year reunion, but the pandemic put paid to that. So it was August the 2nd, just gone. And so I appeared at a press conference. Alongside me remarkably was a retired MI6 officer called Tony Pace, who courageously had agreed to appear to back the passenger's case. I mean, this is unheard of. MI6 agents are bound by a lifelong official secrets act.

• 1:00:24Speaker 00

  They can go to jail for revealing things.

• 1:00:28Speaker 00

  Tony was the man who, so British Airways have claimed for thirty years that the briefer at the Kuwaiti Embassy said it was safe to fly, so they flew. Tony Pace was this briefer. And he says the opposite. He didn't tell them it was safe to fly at all. He specifically said if you have a plane going through mid, after midnight, it could get caught in the Iraqi invasion, which the plane was due to land at four AM. So faced with that warning, by the way, from the briefer, no airline in its right mind would have flown to Kuwait, but British Airways did. So here is Pace, breaking his silence, appearing in the press

• 1:01:12Speaker 00

  conference alongside me, risking prosecution under the Official Secrets Act, a very brave man. So here we are, we have the press conference, there's me and Pace and some of the other human shields, lots of media, which was great, the charming Jon Snow, who interviewed me afterwards and read a good piece, the BBC. In a weird moment, by the way, when Tony Pace met Jon Snow, Tony said, I know you. And the two of them were in a church choir together at twelve years old. How weird is that? Of all the things, my MI6 contact, Jon Snow

• 1:01:55Speaker 00

  turning up to a press conference in a choir together at age twelve. Anyway, after the press conference and after the interviews, to be honest, I felt, I mean, obviously adrenaline was pumping. To be honest, I felt overwhelmingly melancholy. And I had to go and sit upstairs in a room by myself for a couple of minutes. And I started to worry whether I had raised the hopes of these people. I mean, there's a demand for an apology, there's a demand for the release of documents.

• 1:02:35Speaker 00

  And I thought, oh, have I raised the hopes of all of these people beyond what's achievable?

• 1:02:43Speaker 00

  Because, well, I can tell you for a start, they will never admit to the deniable mission. Actually, governments of all stripes, Tories and and Labour, like the ability to do this black op stuff. So they're never going to own up to that in a hundred years. Uh, British Airways will never own up to what they did because they'd be facing tremendous financial claims. There was, I think, a chance that we'll get Sandcastle released under the thirty year rule. And so it should, there's no earthly national security reason now for not telling people what happened, the suffering that these people suffered thirty years ago, is there? There's no reason whatsoever. Anyway, I sat there thinking to myself, ah,

• 1:03:27Speaker 00

  I really hope I haven't raised their hopes too high. Anyway, then I went upstairs and all the human shields had gathered in another room. We were put on a lunch for them in a reunion and I walked in and they all just came over to me one by one to hug me and say, thank you for bringing this to the public attention. And, you know, to be honest, a lot of them were crying and so was I. Um, a- and then I thought, it's okay, you know. A- and and since then, by the way, I've had so many other people come out of the woodwork and email me, people on the plane who I hadn't even talked to before, saying the same thing.

• 1:04:09Speaker 00

  So, you know, at least I have the satisfaction after thirty years' work of of the m- many more people knowing what happened to the human shields of the Gulf War than did before. So after that, I ceased being melancholy and felt reasonably cheerful again. And um, and and in fact, we've got now a major podcast in preparation next year, which is going to be the story of the story. And also, I have a fantastic scriptwriter called Matt Orton, who's one of Britain's top scriptwriters, and a production company called House Productions, working on a TV drama. So hopefully, next year, there'll be yet more of a burst of publicity to further embarrass

• 1:04:54Speaker 00

  the government in keeping this pointless secret.

• 1:04:58Chris Williamson?

  I love it. I mean, the podcasts that I've heard about similar things is a very popular one called Passenger List, which is basically, basically this story but fictionalized. That's unbelievably popular. You know, dramatizing this will, will get attention on it. And if it can help bring these people some closure, I suppose it's efforts well spent.

• 1:05:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I'm not as a, as a, as a pretty serious, I think my friends would tell you, invest in a reporter. I'm not, I'm slightly uncomfortable with the dramatization of anything. But

• 1:05:36Chris Williamson?

  Sex sells, Stephen.

• 1:05:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, I know. And, and but, but it's a way to bring it to, to closer public attention. And it's also a way, to be frank, to tell some of the more horrific stories. I mean, in, in some of the more horrific cases, I have, of course, not identified the people who were the victims. Terrible things happened to people while they were there. And so when we dramatize it, we can, of course, show people the terrible things while creating some kind of composite character to whip in. So, so I guess in that way, it's helpful. But yes, you're right. Look, it's the modern world, and I'm, I'm a little old fashioned

• 1:06:21Speaker 00

  about some of these things. So, you know.

• 1:06:25Chris Williamson?

  Stephen Davis, ladies and gentlemen, Operation Trojan Horse, the most shocking government cover up of the last 30 years will be linked in the show notes below. Where else should people go? Is there somewhere they can go to sort of keep up to date with developments around this?

• 1:06:38Speaker 00

  Yes, so obviously, uh, the book is hardcover and it's available on Amazon. The audiobook is out now, but you could also, um, uh, look at my site, stephendaviswriter.com, uh, stevendaviswriteraltogether.com. And if people are, so one of the things this experience taught me was a real interest in misinformation and disinformation. So I've actually developed a course about that. I teach it at university in New Zealand, University of Otago. I have a tremendous interest in the use of misinformation and disinformation. And if people want to read how misinformation and disinformation was used in this particular story, if you go to my site and you will find a headline called misinformation and

• 1:07:23Speaker 00

  disinformation, click on that and you will read quite an interesting case history. So I'll be updating that site when I finish my, you know, two weeks worth of interviews with people like you. And, um, and, and we'll be continually pushing for, you know, there's some suggestion of new legal action by the passengers. We'll be, we'll, I'm going to keep going pushing for the truth on this, Chris. Stephen, thanks very much for today. Brilliant, no trouble.