S.P.E.C.T.R.E Like Organization behind Somali Piracy

I had posted last month about: Crime Sydicates Running Somali Piracy. In The Independent article cited, they mentioned:

Front organisations are believed to have signed up to the Lloyd's List ship movement database, and sources such as Jane's Intelligence, to ascertain protective measures being undertaken by the shippers.

The Guardian follows up on the British connection in this piece by Giles Tremlett:

In each case, according to the report, the pirates had full knowledge of the cargo, nationality and course of the vessel.

It is not clear who these ­"consultants" were, but Dincel believes they may work inside the industry. "They knew the ­vessel, they knew the cargo, they knew the loading ports, they knew the destination, they knew everything," he said. "The knew their job."

Andrew Mwangura, who heads the East African's Seafarer's Assistance Programme, a piracy monitoring group based in Mombassa, Kenya, said negotiations over hijacked ships often involve Somalis in London. "Not only for the Karagöl, but for many other ships, the negotiations involve people in London," he said.

This is a fascinating international conspiracy. The UK press are leading the way to uncovering it. If you watch the news you tend to think of it as rinky-dink bandits hijacking whatever they happen to come across. Not so, it is very organized.

Note: S.P.E.C.T.R.E is a crime organization from James Bond novels. Dr. No and Ernst Stavro Blofeld were members. They were highly organized and not attached to any national loyalty. It stands for: Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion.

Crime Syndicates Running Somali Piracy

The Independent has a fascinating article about the filthy lucre in modern piracy. Syndicates control it and it reminds me of S.P.E.C.T.R.E from James Bond novels. (Read the full article here)

The security company Idarat Maritime, which specialises in maritime protection, is working with leading Lloyd's underwriters to formulate safeguards for shippers. Christopher Ledger, a former Royal Marine officer and a director of the firm, said: "There is evidence that syndicates based in the Gulf – some in Dubai – play a significant role in the piracy which is taking place off the African coast. There are huge amounts of money involved and this gives the syndicates access to increasingly sophisticated means of moving money as well as access to modern technology in carrying out the hijackings. This is an international problem and the shipping companies need to ensure that their crews learn how to deal with it."

Investigators have discovered that the pirate gangs are exploiting information available to the shipping industry to plan their attacks. Front organisations are believed to have signed up to the Lloyd's List ship movement database, and sources such as Jane's Intelligence, to ascertain protective measures being undertaken by the shippers. In addition they have bought equipment to monitor radio traffic.

A few well-funded pirate syndicates have experimented with a "stealth" paint such as AR 1, invented by a German scientist living in the UAE, which is credited with making boats difficult to spot via the long-range radar of cargo liners.

It is not clear whether the use of the paint has been effective in helping hijackings, but its use, say the security companies, shows that the pirates are seeking out advanced technology and have the means to acquire it.

Andrew Mwangura, a piracy expert in the Kenyan port of Mombasa, says the gun-wielding Somalis who are fighting and dying in the hijackings are the just the front men of larger syndicates. "They are just the small fish. The big sharks operate out of places like Dubai, Nairobi and Mombasa," he said.

It's articles like this that make me fear the collapse of newspapers. This is fantastic journalism. Bloggers don't have the reach, nor the resources to pull this off. Kudos to The Independent.

Thunderball

Declassified documents from 1968 reveal that a US B52 crashed on the ice off Greenland complete with four nuclear weapons. Only three were ever recovered. Story Here

The high explosives surrounding the four nuclear weapons had detonated but without setting off the actual nuclear devices, which had not been armed by the crew.

....

The documents make clear that within weeks of the incident,
investigators piecing together the fragments realised that only three of the weapons could be accounted for.

Ian Fleming's Thunderballimmediately comes to mind. SPECTRE stage a crash of a British nuclear bomber off the coast of the Bahamas. They then dive and recover the nukes. It's my favorite Bond novel and a so-so film. However, there was one part of the novel that gave me a chill. (This story proves that there was something to it.)

Bond is accessing the situation with M:

'Would that [the crash landing] explode the bombs?'

'No they are absolutely safe until they're armed. Apparantly even a direct drop, like the one from the B-47 over North Carolina in 1958, would only explode the TNT trigger to the thing. Not the plutonium.'

Yikes.