17 April 2001
Source: Gordon Logann.

See earlier report: http://cryptome.org/markov-file.htm

[Fax of letter, 1 page.]

HOME SECRETARY

QUEEN ANNE'S GATE LONDON SW1H 9AT

Sir Teddy Taylor MP
House of Commons
London SW1A 0AA

29 JAN 2001

Dear Teddy,

Thank you for your letter of 3 November which followed up on our earlier correspondence relating to Mr Gordon Logan's, at the English Language Centre in Jubai, Saudi Arabia, concerns, among other things, about alleged Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) involvement in the deaths of Georgi Markov and Robert Maxwell. While you said you did not expect an answer, nevertheless I thought that you would appreciate one. I am sorry that it has taken so long to send one.

As a result of the referral of your earlier letter, I understand that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office had prepared a letter to send to Mr Logan. In the vent this was not sent as Mr Logan called in at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on Thursday, 21 December and was seen by an official. I understand that at the meeting Mr Logan said that he intended to write to the independent statutory tribunal set up to deal with complaints. You may wish to note that the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act of 2000 consolidated the old Intelligence Services Tribunal into a single tribunal dealing with any complaints relating to any of the three intelligence and security agencies, relating to official interception of communications, or relating to official interference with property, including interference by the police. The Investigatory Powers Tribunal's address is PO Box 33220, London SW1A 9XD.

Despite your misgivings, I can assure you that the Security Service, under my authority, operates under proper and effective statutory, ministerial and administrative controls. The Secret Intelligence Services, under the authority of the Foreign Secretary, similarly operates under such controls. In view of his interest, I am copying this letter to the Foreign Secretary.

Yours ever,

Jack

JACK STRAW

From: 	Gordon Logann  
Sent:	Friday, April 13, 2001 3:53 PM
To:	'[email protected]'
Subject:	The Markov Kompromat

I am faxing you a copy of a letter that was sent by British Home Secretary
Jack Straw to Sir Teddy Taylor MP  on 29th Jan. The Home Secretary's
letter concerns my accusations of MI6 involvement in the murders of the
Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov and the British media magnate Robert
Maxwell. These are the subject of a file in the House of Commons library
and were posted on Cryptome in December. (See 'The Moscow Coup and MI6's
Murders' at www.cryptome.org/markov-file.htm). At the end of his letter,
the Home Secretary states that 'in view of his interest [in the above
accusations, G.L.], I am copying this letter to the Foreign Secretary.'

This revelation on the part of the Home Secretary is remarkable, and not
surprisingly was followed five weeks later by a visit to London by the
Bulgarian Foreign Minister, Nadezhda Mikhailova. She spent two days in
talks with Foreign Secretary Robin Cook.Cook had been sent on a wild goose
chase to Michaelova in 1998 to demand co-operation on the Markov Case, not
knowing that she had been briefed not to inform the benighted British
Foreign Secretary that it was in fact his own subordinates that were
holding up the investigation. 

The explanation for this extraordinary turn around is no doubt the fact
that on 22nd January, the German owned Bulgarian newspaper '24 chasa', had
begun serializing the Cryptome article on its front page. On the first
day, there was a large photograph of the MI6 agent Mercia Macdermott, who
organized the Markov murder and received a medal for it. (She was probably
also responsible for the campaign to change the names of the Turks in the
eighties, which marked the beginning of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans.)
The following day, it was announced that Tsar Simeon II was going to
return to live in Bulgaria. This decision had been awaited for all of
twelve years, and it is no surprise that it came hours after the exposure
of Macdermott's exploits to the Bulgarian public. Tsar Simeon would
certainly have known that the Markov/Macdermott 'kompromat' (or blackmail)
had been used by the Bulgarian socialists and the Russian Embassy to
isolate his country from the West, and to permit it to be plundered as
Russia was (by people such as former Kremlin aide Pavel Borodin, whose
bail in Switzerland has just been paid by Putin at a cost to the average
Evgeni of 2.92 million dollars.)

It is likely that the publication of the Macdermott/Markov story, coming
as it did a few days after the beginning of the Bush presidency, was done
with covert Bulgarian government approval, in order to neutralize the
'kompromat', and herald a government drive to break out of its enforced
international isolation. This has most certainly succeeded, and the Bush
administration has been quick to express its support. In March, the
Director of the FBI visited Sofia with a posse of ten associates to
personally congratulate the Kostov government on throwing out three
Russian diplomats for espionage, and on the arrest of two spies in the
Ministry of Defence. From newspaper reports it seems likely that NATO will
move in to stay. Prime Minister Kostov has also received promises of
pre-electoral international support that would have been most unlikely a
few months ago.

I visited Bulgaria at the begining of March and had a long meeting with
former President Zhelev (whose firing of his KGB-appointed intelligence
chiefs triggered the abortive Moscow coup of 1991). Amongst the topics of
discussion was his role in the fall of the government of Philip Dimitrov,
and the likelihood that the Markov kompromat was the explanation for the
withdrawal of Western diplomatic support for Dimitrov. I also managed to
get in touch with Vladimir Kostov, the co-victim who had survived a
similar attack in the Paris metro a ten days prior to the Markov murder.
Kostov, an intelligence officer who defected, now a journalist, told me
that, 'all this should have come out ten years ago'. He is right - the
facts underlying the Moscow coup have been distorted by revanchists like
Communist Party Gensek Gennadi Zyuganov for years. It is notable that both
Kostov and Zhelev are on record as saying that the unravelling of the
Markov murder depends on the British government, and not the Bulgarian
government. This problem has been raised with particular acuteness with
Bulgaria's application to join the European Union, a condition of which is
that a satisfactory conclusion be reached in the Markov murder
investigation.

In Britain, the Home Affairs correspondent of the Observer, Martin Bright,
whom I met in December, has told me twice that he was going to publish a
substantial article on the Markov murder - once in January and once in
March - on both occasions he was pre-empted by Whitehall, which dumped
stories on him, thus displacing Markov. The first was in January, when MI6
raked up an old story from its files and tricked Blair into firing his
close friend, the pro-European Mandelson. The second occasion was in March
when Whitehall released the Hammond report, which exonerated Mandelson,
and made Blair look an idiot. The Mandelson scandal came as a godsend to
MI6 Director General, Sir Richard Dearlove, who has so far managed to keep
the Markov story out of the British press for over a year, and has also
got rid of Mandelson, who had been Blair's candidate for the post of
Foreign Secretary. Cook and Dearlove have been at loggerheads since last
February - when David Shayler and I proved to Cook that MI6 were making a
fool of him - so Dearlove will be grooming a puppet of his own choosing
for the post of Foreign Secretary, which will fall vacant after the
election, since Cook is almost certain to be moved. The removal of
Mandelson was followed by a campaign to remove another pro-European from
the government, Cook's deputy, Keith Vaz. In connection with the latter
case, Cook has stated that it is forces opposed to the government's
European policy that are causing the problems. He is of course referring
to MI6, which in its role at the centre of Britain's secret government
(better known as the Joint Intelligence Committee), is making a mockery of
parliamentary democracy, since the spooks are terrified of European
freedom of information legislation and the danger of, heaven forbid,
oversight.

Yours sincerely,


Gordon Logan