The Secrets Of British Airways Flight 149 - Stephen Davis
Guests: Stephen Davis
Full transcript · Read the full conversation in order, with its original context.
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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 100,000 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.
Stephen Davis, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. Please to be here. How long have you been researching British Airways Flight 149? Half my life. I first um got a tip-off about this when I was on the news desk of the Independent on Sunday in August 1990, 3 days after the plane landed. Um and I'm 64 years old now, so 31 years. So, pretty much half my life. It's been a long, long journey. What's compelling about this story? Why
have you bothered spending three decades on it? I'm an investigative reporter. First off, I don't like being lied to. Um and but several things drove me on. These people suffered a double injustice. First off, they were landed in a war zone um as a result of a secret mission ordered by Mrs. Thatcher. But secondly, they were denied even the 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 uh they produced a report called Operation Sandcastle. And um 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 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 denials 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. 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. Okay, so someone that's not familiar
with this particular case, what's the story? Okay. So, on the morning of the 1st of August uh in 1990, uh Saddam had been threatening to invade Kuwait for some Uh a huge amount of Iraqi troops were gathered on the border. It was reported by the BBC that morning. A British Airways Flight 149 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. As it sat on the ground, there was a 2-hour delay. During this time, a group of young, very fit men got on board at the last minute. Uh most of the passengers thought instantly, "These guys are soldiers." Went to the back of the plane, sat down. The plane took off. When it was between 3 and 4 hours flying time from the invasion started. Iraqi troops crossed the border. All other flights that were going to
Kuwait City were turned away, but BA 149 not, and it flew on. It landed in Kuwait at 4:00 on the morning of the And at that stage, Iraqi tanks were already in the city and surrounding the airport. When the door opened and Clive Earthy, the chief purser, uh there was a uniform British military officer waiting. And Clive thought he must be here for the Kuwaiti royal who was traveling 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 So, these men get off. They have uh people waiting for them with cases and and then they vanish from the airport, never to be seen again, not captured by the Iraqis. Everybody else on the plane is captured by the Iraqis and used as human shields. 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. Is it likely that the only reason the plane was delayed in taking off to permit those guys to make it on? That appears to be the case. When I interviewed Captain Bunyard, who was the captain, 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 Defense.
I've seen that captain say the air conditioning thing on a documentary as Yeah, I mean, look, it may have been I think it was one of the the captain always has the ability to delay the flight if he's worried about it. Richard told me, Richard Bunyard told me that he was also thought if he delayed the flight, um maybe it would be canceled. Yeah. Yeah, that if you push it later, the the ground invasion may begin, and
they won't actually have to take off. 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 let's say, a bit deceptive. Was there anyone else interesting on the passenger 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 um the Minister of Sport and the head of
And um he was on the flight, and he died uh 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 um There were a few people landing in Kuwait. Um There was an American banker called George Shalloum and his family, who had a remarkable story. Um 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, uh Germans, Spanish, etc., etc., 15 different countries, Danish, were flying on to either uh Madras or um Kuala Lumpur. And 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, uh Henry
and Daphne Halkyard, uh who had 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. What happens once the passengers are captured by the Iraqis? Well, this was the interesting thing. It was clear originally the Iraqis didn't really know what to do with them.
Uh the initial few days, Chris, of the occupation were chaotic. Very chaotic. And um 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 and not very well fed. They were The conscripts were often hungry. Anyway, so the Iraqis were 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
So, initially the Foreign Office is briefing, yes, 149's landed in a war zone, but don't worry, the passengers are like having a little holiday. They're They're sipping cocktails by the pool in the sunshine in luxury hotels. And um and of course with spin, often the first version of the story you get out is what is believed. 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 air crew, 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 70 different places all over Kuwait and Iraq, along Westerners captured on the ground who became human shields, who joined them. And these 70 places were sites which Saddam had identified as potential sites
which the allies would attack 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 good
chance they would be killed by their own And then they had hellish a hellish time in captivity, most of them. What is this team of operatives doing while everyone's in this first hotel? 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. How many was there in total of these special operatives?
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 um to hide and observe and report back intelligence, to blend
Um 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 So, they had all gone, and the passengers were all in captivity. How do you know what these intelligence officers were doing? Surely this is all
secret information. Well, it was and for a long time, and then I've done a lot of reporting on special forces, and um 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 I've beaten them four times in a row, so I'm probably a bit of an irritant. Um 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 uh been on television called Snap Award, 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. Okay, so what are they doing? There There's four of them get caught, but then let go because they talked their way out of it. What are the rest of them doing? caught, but then So, the four two-man teams were at four different places in Um my contacts ended up in southern Kuwait, which was one of the crucial things. So, their job
uh they ended up setting up a hide um in a in a a village near a crossroads where they could observe the movement of Iraqi 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. This particular group, two guys, uh got into trouble 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 American special forces helicopter. And taken to a war US warship called the USS 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. I ended up with many sources. The British government will tell you now, if you phoned them up tomorrow, they would say, oh no, this never happened, Chris. This This mission never existed. These people It just didn't But unfortunately for them, I tracked down the captain of the US warship, the Antietam, a wonderful man called Lawrence Edingfield. He's a pastor now, isn't he?
Yes. So, he had gone from being 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 unimpeachable 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 149. So, we're in this weird business now. Sometimes I mean I look I'm 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, 30 years later they're still denying it. When I When I have a on-camera confirmation from the the US captain. So, yeah, it becomes a bit crazy, really. What are the conditions of the passengers at this point? Okay, so it was luck of the draw. So, first off, um how you were treated depended on whether your country was being seemed to be aggressive and content and intent towards Saddam or Um and I had a memorable occasion
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 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. Especially with some German people on board, yeah. Absolutely. And this But this woman said, so she realized that the people on
the left 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 fact 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, and we're all right because we're on this side. And in fact, it was the exact
opposite, of course. 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, I I know whether I can say it on your podcast [ __ ] list effectively. And um and then the French for a long time, a lot of French passengers captured over 50. For a long time they thought that they were going to be okay because was refusing to join Bush's grand
And then suddenly one day there's an announcement that Mitterrand and the French have joined and they suddenly plummet into despair cuz that puts them in the bad category, not the good 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 them out. We're going to invade." Bush was saying, "I've drawn a line in the sand." His
famous quote. Um but other countries people who had Irish passports were okay. So, it was a real mixture in 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 uh the fact that all these human shields being being uh held in Iraq and Kuwait "Will it stop you taking military
And Thatcher said, "Oh, no, we won't." And so saw the passenger all thinking, "Well, that's great. We're going to be bombed. That's just terrific." 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 you in these 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 So, if you were in a camp run by the who were the real hardliners real hardliners you got a very hard time 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 by this stage the people are convinced they're going to be shot in the back of the head and dumped in the trench. And then um there's a click and the and the Ba'athists 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. 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 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 uh Douglas Crossley 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 one of the passengers? No, he was captured on the ground. Got you. Um but my book uh 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 quite uh you know um at one stage um Barry Manners told me he lost his temper started shouting at the guy. He just had
enough. He started shouting at the guards and the officer just got a pointed at Barry and was going to shoot him till other people calmed him down. 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 realize 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." There's a um one passenger who was 14 years old and Jennifer Chappell and she has suffered lifelong depression and mental health problems. She's literally never recovered from her As have others. Didn't the captain try and hide somewhere? The captain and some of the Yeah, so this is a controversial moment. So, at one stage um
Bourne yacht 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 I wouldn't judge the man not having walked in his shoes in that difficult circumstance. Um but it 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 uh Richard Bourne
yacht about this when I was interviewing So, he ended up he escaped and ended up with the Kuwaiti resistance. And I asked him, I said "Richard, how did you find the Kuwaiti resistance after you 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
and you know they're not telling the 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 uh Englishman knocking on doors in an Iraqi-occupied city saying, "Hello, is anybody from the Kuwaiti resistance here?" Is just the way to do it, though. If you're going to do it. It is Excuse me, is anybody in? Is this the Kuwaiti resistance? I'm
looking for you at the moment. But it's absurd. And the Kuwaiti any Kuwaiti resistance was subject to the most brutal repression. And when I read Richard's diary, actually one of the resistance people helping him um uh was brutally captured and tortured. Um one of the great untold 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, funnily enough, because of his dad. So, at one stage the Bourne yachts lived in And his dad was a businessman who apparently had fallen out with Saddam Hussein. So uh Saddam Hussein is not somebody you want to make an enemy of. So, you know, there's a lot of different opinions
on whether Richard Bourne yacht 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 genuine fear of his life, probably. Should he have gone? Should he say? Who 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 Golf 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, a a variety. Um 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. Lots of people. Carol Miles
the woman who checked in the men kept the secret she died before her time. And Michael Landon, 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 Stress is a hell of a drug. Exactly. Poor um uh Denise Styles, one of the stewardesses,
her husband Neil, who who suffered badly from PTSD and who's spent a long time trying to get to the truth of this died. British Airways, by the way, treated this their own staff and I mean, they when several passengers several of the staff tried to write books or find out the truth, British Airways threatened them. And it's 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 At the same time, 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 So, here's British Airways denying any compensation to its passengers while pocketing a large check because, you
know, the allies blew up their own plane. Amazing. You knew this, right? Because there's this very famous photo the back of a blown off tail of 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 of the Brits, almost certainly. I mean, it always struck me as being unlikely. Remember that it it couldn't have been accidental. I mean, remember BA 149 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 and and why not? It's a the plane's a prize. Why not just fly it back? Alternatively, um just leave it there. As they didn't know where it was. Yeah, exactly. Um as a symbol. And suddenly it ends up as this wreckage. And as I said, it it really always struck me as unlikely that it happened.
And then I had two different sources, one in the US and one Brit confirmed it was blown up by our lot, as it were. 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 What what happens to get them back to the country? Well, a lot of different things, really. Um first off, there were there were some
early releases of various nationalities who Saddam thought should be on his Um you know, Malaysians and Indians and others got home reasonably early. then um a lot of the the the passengers used to call them the human shields used to call them celebrity visits. People get turning up in Baghdad to be uh captured on camera talking to Saddam Hussein negotiating the release of Um Jesse Jackson turned up um
uh I think Edward Heath went, Tony Benn these people? Um uh Jesse Jackson's the uh American um well-known um African-American um and civil rights campaigner. And um Heath, of course, is former British Prime Minister. Benn's a British politician. Anyway, the celebrity visits, they they turned up and there was this great photo opportunities and um and then Saddam would release a few people so they could go home. Um
the passengers were very cynical about this exercise, as they were about the Iraqis used to run this television program called Guest News and the passengers would be gathered and Saddam would turn up with an Iraqi crew and um here they're all these happy people, the benefit of our wonderful That's when the famous image happened of uh Saddam patting the boy Stuart Lockwood on the head. Um so, and by the way, during this,
a few minutes later or beforehand, another little boy um apparently kicked him in the shins, hard. And Saddam turned round and said, "Who are the who are his parents?" That was a very bad moment for the parents. 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 women 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 settlement. So, this was the sort of great And that led to some incredibly intense because um husbands and wives, you know, does the wife go and the husband stay? The husband, of course, had no choice, but the wife had a choice. I had 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 where husbands and wives decided and then incredibly painful departures. Some of the wives decided to stay with their husband. all go. No. The Halkyards, Daphne and Henry, Daphne decided to stay with Henry. And when I interviewed them, and this is I interviewed them on camera 7 years 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. Was this the right thing to do? And Henry, by the way, his daughter, Rowan, said he never ever from this, ever. Um and he died a few years later. Daphne had died recently.
Um so, yeah, these tremendously intense and emotional decisions. So, that 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 that they recognized. 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 their 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. 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. So, for several months after that, it was even more hellish for those who were caught behind. Saddam Hussein, of course, in many ways 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, there would be no 2003 Gulf War. But also, in a decision which nobody to this day ever understands, in December, as the war build-up was in full swing, and the Westerners were seriously worried, the Western military planners were seriously worried about these They had the SAS and Delta Force had drawn up possible rescue plans, put in
special forces teams and 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 that they didn't really know where everybody was. and this would have been 70 odd simultaneous special forces West kill So, they had to abandon it. So, Western military planners, 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 human shields are there or not. They had some locations identified and others if the Marines storm 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 there is quite a history, Chris, of prisoners of war being killed in in in bombing missions. Uh famously, years later it was revealed in Hiroshima and hun- hundreds and hundreds of Americans were killed. They were held as prisoners
in the cities. so, here's the situation. And then in early December, before the war started, I don't know, woke up one day and made a public announcement that he was letting everybody go. 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 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 Excuse me. I'm a man of peace, and um
and this will help me as a negotiator. But whatever the reason was, all the men got let go. brought home there were these tremendously emotional reunions. But then everybody forgot about them. It's classically the media where we you know, often it 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 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 correspondence and TV crews went, and and so the hostages were forgotten. And left. They got virtually no help of any kind. No offer of psychological help. No real offers of financial help.
There was a British Medical Journal study saying there was an extraordinary uh high percentage of them that lost their jobs, their homes, their mental well-being. 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 Clearly because the war 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.
What was Thatcher's reason for British Airways flight landing? To um was basically a favor to the Americans to get a an observation team on the ground in a hurry, um so they could keep an eye on the uh Kuwaiti um sorry, the Iraqi troop movements in Kuwait. What was her public What was her public statement about it though? What was her justification? She can't have said that to the public. 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 face false statement to Parliament a month later. Uh she said the plane 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 4 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, and then the lies and cover-ups have ever since. It's fair to say the the the people I've talked to from the team on the ground felt it was a military 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, the team who were going in were told that the Kuwaiti military would hold out for between 3 and 5 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 defense of their So, rather than uh 3 to 5 days, Iraqi tanks arrived at Kuwait Airport in about 3 and 4 hours. And so, it's fair to say that the
mission as originally planned, 149 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 4 hours flying time and could have been turned around anytime up to the point of final descent, by which stage Iraqi troops were at the airport. And Kuwaiti air traffic controllers, remember, 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. So, it was 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. They didn't Well, this they the air traffic controllers never delivered a warning. All 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, 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, cuz 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." Cuz they wanted the plane to
land. And all of this was to facilitate getting those nine men Absolutely. on the ground. Getting the team onto the ground who disappeared and and and while others were captured. And so, yeah, if there's anybody out there who was knows what happened in the air traffic control tower, please feel free to to um contact me. So, the the as a military mission, I think you know, you can say there was justification for it, but there was no
justification once you knew the invasion 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. What's the broader geopolitical implications of what's happened? So this is interesting. Um the team was sending back very clear intelligence. The 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 uh Dick Cheney and Norman Schwarzkopf fly to Saudi Arabia, think the 6th of August it was, 4 days after the plane And they talk to the Saudi king and they show him satellite images and they say, "Look, we can help you stop the Iraqis invading your country, but you have to allow you our troops and planes to base themselves in your country." Now during this famous meeting, the king
turned to his fellow princes and who universally said, "No. Don't want it." 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 border. And by this stage, the teams who had landed on 149 were sending intelligence back "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 "Don't do it." 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 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 a rich Saudi, and said, "I will raise an army of holy warriors,
a 100,000 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. And of course on 9/11 carried out his threat. There would have been no 9/11 American troops on Saudi soil. And Dick in the book Trojan Horse, you will find a remarkable comment from Dick Clark,
who's an expert in this field, saying, "Actually, 30 years of chaos and destruction in the Middle East, including the Gulf War, including ISIS, including failed states, all comes from that crucial decision to have American troops on Saudi soil." So the significance of this is immense, much wider than just the hostages. And curiously, this is one of the unexamined parts of history. People just accepted it 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 Um but this is huge. This is a This is This is where history changed gears. And my closing sentence in um Operation Trojan Horse is, "If the If the secret team that had gone in on 149, if their intelligence had
acted upon and there'd been no American troops allowed, then the world would clearly be a safer, more peaceful place now." Do you think that Cheney and Schwarzkopf were lying about what the British intelligence officers were feeding back? Were they uh a culpable insight on the ground that was allowing them to say, "We've actually seen it. British have got some intelligence that are down there. This
is what we're being told." 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 They They could have I I think it was case of cherry-picking. That's the problem with misuse of intelligence. Because intelligence, by definition, it's not this 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 and ignore the rest. Um although that being said, Cheney, of course, has a reputation for um for you know, completely exaggerating and totally misusing intelligence. So 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? 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 um becoming clear to people, if there was a revelation that the Brits were delivering intelligence on the ground right from
the start that the Iraqis were adopting offensive 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,
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, 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 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, what dating right back to the Falklands. 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. Yeah, perilous time to be a prime
minister in the UK at that point. Yes. What What about the last few months or so? Cuz obviously you've 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?" Okay, so for a long time I never thought I was actually going to get the book out. Uh the previous efforts had been frustrated, actively frustrated. I'd been deliberately sent misinformation and disinformation to disrupt the process years ago. And 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. Um the the fantastic New Statesman and its great editor and friend of mine, Peter Wilby, 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. So I um kept going and got a publisher and an American publisher and we arranged this on August the 2nd, which it was supposed to be uh 30-year reunion, but the pandemic put paid to that. So it was
August the 2nd just gone and um so I appeared at a press conference. Alongside me, remarkably, was an MI I would hide MI6 officer called Tony Pace, who courageously had agreed to appear to back the passengers' case. I mean, this is unheard of. MI6 agents are bound by a lifelong uh official secrets act. They can go to jail for revealing things. Tony was the man who So British Airways have claimed for
30 years that the briefer at the Kuwaiti Embassy said it was safe to fly and 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 past midnight, it could get caught in the Iraqi invasion, which uh the plane was due to land at 4:00 a.m. So faced with that warning, by the way, from the
briefer, no airline in its right mind would have flown to a Kuwait, but British Airways did. So here is Pace breaking his silence, appearing in the press conference alongside me, risking prosecution under the official secrets act, a very brave 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. Uh the charming Jon Snow,
um who came interviewed me afterwards and wrote a good piece, the BBC. Um 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 12 years old. How weird is that? Of all the things, my MI6 contact, Jon Snow, turning up to a press conference in a choir together at age 12. Anyway, after the press conference and after the interviews,
to be honest, I felt I mean, obviously, the adrenaline was pumping. To be honest, I felt overwhelmingly melancholy. 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 I mean, there's a demand for an apology, there's a demand for the release of And I thought, "Ah, have I raised the hopes of all of these people beyond
what's achievable?" Because well, I can tell you for a start, they will never admit to the deliberate mission. Actually, governments of all stripes, Tories and and Labour, like the ability to do this black ops stuff. So they're never going to own up to that in 100 years. Uh British Airways will never own up to what they did because they'd be facing financial claims. There was, I think, a chance that we'll get Sandcastle
released under the 30-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 30 years ago, is there? There's no reason Anyway, I sat there thinking to myself, 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 out on a lunch for
them in the reunion. And I walked in and they all just came over to me one by 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 and then I thought, "It's okay, you know." And 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. So, you know, at least I have the satisfaction after 30 years' work of of the 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 um also, I have a fantastic um 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 the government in keeping the sick pointless secret. 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. Yeah, I mean, I'm not as a as a as a pretty serious, I think my friends would tell you, and this could be reporter. I'm not I'm slightly uncomfortable with the
dramatization of anything.
Sex sells, Stephen. Sex sells, you know. And and but but it it it's a way to bring it to um 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 Um and so when we dramatize it, we can,
of course, show people the terrible things while creating some kind of composite character to represent. 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 about some of these things. So, you 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? Yes, so obviously, uh it the book is hardback and it's available on Amazon. The audio book is out now, but you could also um uh look at my site, Uh stevedaviswriter altogether.com. And if people are So one of the things that 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'll find a headline called Misinformation and Disinformation, click on that and you will read quite a quite
an interesting case history. So I'll be updating that site when I finish my, you know, 2 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. Thank you very much for tuning in. If
you enjoyed that, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few months. And don't forget to subscribe. Makes me very happy indeed.