"The Horny Goat" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 16 Sep 2007 13:09:16 +0100, "William Black"
wrote:

Very few WWII documents are still secret in the UK and these relate almost
entirly to matters involving treason or disloyalty by people still alive.

Has HM Government actually come out and said this sometime in the past
decade?

2005 I seem to remember.

Sixty years after the end of the war.

All the files retained are now in the Public Record Officeand are numbered

Something like sixty files are not available to the public.

I'd be interested in your views on what might still be considered
secret other than that now - I would presume this was altered by the
events of 1991 and their aftermath.

I believe that, amongst others, the files relating to two officers in the
Italian navy are still not available and the investigation by Anthony Blunt,
who was working for MI-5 at the time, into the relations between the late
Duke of Winsor and Nazi Germany is still secret.

One of the Italian officers was, the last time I heard, campaigning for his
file to be released as he was supposed to have been seduced in the USA when
he was the Italian Naval Atache there, and Italian naval cyphers stolen, or
at least the key to the safe where they were stored were stolen, by his
girlfriend.

He's almost certsainly innocent of anything and the whole story was a
fabrication to cover up the intercepts and decrypts that let to The Battle
of Cape Matapan, but as he's alive they won't release the file...

Have the documents referred to by Tolstoy (in The Last Secret)
concerning the children of Russian nationals who were NOT Soviet
citizens but were nonetheless deported to the Soviet Union (usually to
either immediate execution or long stretches in labor camps which
often amounted to the same thing) by both Britain and the United
States ever been declassified?

All the Don Cossack and similar stuff held by the UK was released years ago,
HMG did withdraw some in 1991 when they were hanging Tolstoy and a crooked
property developer called Watts out to dry, but it's all back on the shelf
now.

Thatcher unveiled a memorial to them over twenty-five years ago, it's
across the road from the Natural History Museum.

No idea about the US stuff but I think all the US files from WWII have now
been released.

Tolstoy's book wasn't called 'The Last Secret', that's a term used by well
know Nazi sympathiser and holocaust denier David Irvine.

Tolstoy's book, the one that got him sued, was 'The Minister and the
Massacres'

It didn't actually get him sued either. Watts was passing out nasty
leaflets that used Tolstoy's book as a source and when he got sued Tolstoy
decided to get himself named as 'co defendant' along with Watts who'd tried
to destroy Lord Aldington's life.

The whole sordid story is related here.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/polit...563440,00.html

Now I'm not a man who would normally defend a Tory banker, but it seems to
me that Tolstoy was on the wrong side and got what he richly deserved.

--
William Black


I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.
Barbeques on fire by the chalets past the castle headland
I watched the gift shops glitter in the darkness off the Newborough gate
All these moments will be lost in time, like icecream on the beach
Time for tea.