A gong for the secret detective

31 December 1998
Manchester Evening News
Steve Panter


A TOP-SECRET detective who risked his life time after time in the line of duty has been honoured for his courage. The master of deep infiltration of major crime rings becomes an OBE today. Henri Exton headed Greater Manchester Police undercover unit before he retired five years ago. The former detective chief inspector has continued in his specialist field and is now with the Ministry of Defence. His work while he was in Manchester varied from penetrating notorious soccer gangs to uncovering evidence which proved a convicted killer innocent.

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Police question two over missing woman

3 July 1998
The Scotsman
John McCann

STRATHCLYDE Police are to question two convicted paedophiles over claims that one confessed to killing Alison McGarrigle, 40, who has been missing from her home in Rothesay for more than a year.

Officially police have dismissed as "speculation" claims that Charles O'Neill, 35, confessed to fellow-inmates at Glasgow's Barlinnie prison that he killed Ms McGarrigle and that she was "feeding the fish in Rothesay harbour".

But last night a police source confirmed that officers will interview O'Neill, 35, and his cousin William Lauchlan, 21, who await sentence after they were convicted of a series of sex attacks on six boys aged between nine and 17.

Their pleas of not guilty to attacks on nine other boys were accepted by the court.

While police continue to treat the woman's disappearance as a missing persons case, one line of inquiry is that Ms McGarrigle, who has three children, may have stayed with the men at a flat they rented in Largs.

Members of the missing woman's family have repeatedly appealed for information.

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'Bumf-free' post for a GP in Portugal

25 May 1996
Pulse
An English GP who works in Portugal believes the 'feelbad factor' in British general practice may attract applicants for a post in his Algarve practice. Dr Bernard Landau, who left Britain seven years ago to practise in the Albufeira holiday resort, is looking for a partner to join him and part-time GP Dr Steve Beck.

The newcomer will treat local people, expatriates and tourists from the private practice and will earn around #45,000, said Dr Landau. 'The partner, ideally strong on ENT or dermatology, will work one night in two, will enjoy 10 weeks' holiday and have none of the paperwork problems of GPs in Britain,' he said. 'GPs back home have to put up with so many stresses. Here we have no Government reports to fill in, no item-of-service bumf and virtually no night visits in winter.'

Continue Reading... Labels: Cathy Landau, Cathy Morris, Dr Bernard Landau

The use of part time spies by MI6

4 April 1991

The Guardian
Richard Norton-Taylor

OUTLINE

SECRET INTELLIGENCE SERVICE - MI6

• has used businessmen and tried to use journalists as freelance contacts, or what it calls "approved unofficial agents" 
• "successive governments have maintained the fiction that it does not exist in peacetime; thus it cannot be held to account, and can deny everything" 
• MI6 has an officer attached to most large embassies abroad 
• Embassys go to lengths to disguise their agents 
• Most host countries know exactly who they are 
• Known to have placed agents in banks abroad, and in companies which have branches in locations where there is no official government presence 
• "Persuaded the Observer newspaper to take on Kim Philby as its Beirut correspondent after his fellow Soviet agents, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, fled to Moscow in 1951." 
• Its use of outsiders is well known.

Continue Reading... Labels: Find Madeleine Fund

Exposing a secret service, the MI5

27 April 1990 
The Times
Sheridan Morley

The sight of former high-ranking MI5 officers fleeing from television reporters, much after the fashion of suspect double-glazing salesmen on the run from Esther Rantzen or Roger Cook, is not an attractive one. Last night's This Week investigation (ITV) is going to need some sort of official reaction beyond that of the slammed door.

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