ForumGarden

I note today's news article:Fans have long suspected that Forsyth, 77, acclaimed for his highly realistic spy novels, may have been involved with British Intelligence.

He told the BBC it started when he was asked to send information from the Biafran War in Nigeria.

He said he was approached by an intelligence officer who asked him to "tell us what's going on" during the civil war, which lasted from 1967 to 1970.

"For the last year of the Biafran War I was sending... both journalistic reports to the media and other reports to my new friend," he said.

Frederick Forsyth reveals MI6 spying past - BBC News



The next time a journalist is executed in a war zone on a charge of spying, this appalling squit of a self-publicist will be personally responsible for the death. How dare he put information like this into the public domain. More to the point, how dare he have behaved in such an unethical way in the first place. Confirming that reporters in the field send information back to their government's security services is lethal.

Well, as a journalists, he had a duty to report the conditions where as he said, "children were dying like flies" and perhaps whatever else might have shown the world what was going on, but of course, that could have cost him his head. Interesting problem.

But, as you say, his announcement could likely put the lives of many journalists in the field in jeopardy.

He probably should have left it a secret, even though many of us already knew that not all people out there are what they may seem.

He should have kept it a secret. It can endanger who knows who.

No wonder his novels were so realistic......

You can bet that in a war zone reporters/journalists are under suspicion anyway, and no doubt will have under-cover agents watching their every move !

I read "The Odessa File" in high school and it scared the heck out of me.

"The Dogs of War," is still my favorite Christopher Walken movie.

"The Fourth Protocol" is eerily scary and realistic. I think I'll watch it tonight.

And of course, "The Day of the Jackal," is unforgettable. Both versions.

Now I'll see those movies a bit more horrifically since I know they are based on real knowledge.

But this does remind me of a line from "Five Million Years to Earth" (Quatermass and the Pit for you Brits)

Locksmith: "I've worked on all kinds of secret jobs for the military that I can't talk about."

Military Officer: "So why are you talking about them then?"

One book I might think about buying (aren't libraries great?).

re day of tye jackal did you know de gaulle would have ben killed had he not been in a citroen - despite the tyres being shot out they were able to get away because of the oleo-pneumatic suspension. So far as I know that is not an apochryphal story. Used to like citroen now they're just like everybody else.