The secret listeners

Posted:
Fri Jan 18, 2013 6:24 am
by ozzy72
I knew that they'd been listening to the Generals, but I'd never realised Latimer House was used! Tis only a couple of miles from my house and I pass it regularly....
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20698098
Re: The secret listeners

Posted:
Fri Jan 18, 2013 6:33 am
by Fozzer
Good grief!
Excellent find, Mark!
Its amazing what went on, unbeknown to most of us at the time...or since!
(Another Bletchley Park!
http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/ ).
Paul....

...!
Re: The secret listeners

Posted:
Fri Jan 18, 2013 11:47 pm
by Webb
Blimey! That's not very cricket, is it?
Re: The secret listeners

Posted:
Mon Jan 21, 2013 11:33 am
by ozzy72
No it isn't, it's what is known as stroking the cat. But hey it got results

Oh and the Germans don't play cricket....
Re: The secret listeners

Posted:
Thu May 02, 2013 10:02 pm
by Webb
I don't know if you get PBS.
Secrets of the Dead - Bugging Hitler's SoldiersSpied upon by MI19 in a bugging operation of unprecedented scale and cunning, 4,000 German POW’s revealed their inner thoughts about the Third Reich and let slip military secrets that helped the Allies win WWII. Based on groundbreaking research conducted by a German historian, the film tells the story of how those conversations were recorded and how they can now reveal, in more shocking detail than ever before, the hearts and minds of the German fighter. In total, more than 100,000 hours of these secret recordings were made. Only now have they all been declassified, researched and cross referenced. They represent a startling new body of evidence with which to revisit events of the war and they show the political divisions between those top generals who supported the Nazi ideology and those that did not. They also demonstrate the complicity of the rank-and-file soldiers in taking part in Nazi war crimes. Now, 60 years later the chilling and totally uncensored thoughts of the Nazi elite will be heard. The documentary includes intense, full-dialogue dramatic reconstructions that use the verbatim transcripts of these bugged conversations to reveal the dark heart of the Nazi regime as never before. Hearing these shocking conversations will be like taking a time machine back into psyche of Hitler’s Germany.
Re: The secret listeners

Posted:
Thu May 02, 2013 10:52 pm
by Webb
NARRATOR
As they stripped the stately homes of listening equipment, MI19 faced a choice: They had 50 thousand pages of damning transcripts. But releasing them meant revealing their methods of espionage.
HELEN FRY SYNC
Now Churchill wanted them released for war crimes trials… and what’s now emerging is that there was an intense debate within British Intelligence over whether the files should or should not be released.
SONKE SYNC
So there is an exchange of letters, what should we do with this material, should we use this in the Nuremberg Trials, for example, and the answer was very clear, no. We were very successful, we want to be successful in the future as well, so keep it secret, close your mouth, and we lock it away.
NARRATOR
In the end, the British chose to protect their new methods for the coming cold war – even at the expense of justice.
Not one of Trent Park’s prisoners was ever convicted of a single war crime on the basis of what they said while imprisoned.
END