Excerpt 1 of HIMEOBS Investigation tape #9

[Cain]

Notes from HIMEOBS Investigation Interview #9: Anonymous Italian SISDE officer.



For the purposes of this interview, the agent will go by the name of "Antonio".  Interview took place over a week in the Grand Adriatico Hotel in Florence.  These notes were compiled from 42 cassette tapes used to do the interview.  The agent is fluent in English, thus no translator was necessary.

Interviewer: Antonio, welcome.  I hope you've enjoyed your room and stay here.

Antonio: Thank you.  Yes, I have, especially knowing it is your people and not me who will have to foot the bill for it!

Interviewer: *laughs*

Interviewer: Anyway, perhaps we should get down to business.  As you know, our interest is in the organization called HIMEOBS.  Through our sources, we were informed you are considered the most knowledgeable man in Italy on the subject, so we would like to hear what you have discovered or think about them.

Antonio: well, to say I know the most isn't really much, but then you are already aware of that.  But my time spent investigating the links between various criminal and political groups within Italy has probably given me an insight few others have.

Interviewer: perhaps you could tell us when you first heard of HIMEOBS?

Antonio: It would have been in 1981, in the wake of the P2 scandal.  I had just entered the service myself then, but obviously, with the situation as it was, we needed all the help that was available, regardless of experience.

Interviewer: I guess you mean with the scandal pretty much clearing out the upper management of the intelligence services, judiciary and military?

Antonio: exactly.  As well as many agents within our operations departments.  Even those who were not named but could be considered suspicious by association or lifestyle were allowed nowhere near the case or the many investigations it caused.  Anyway, among the documents seized in the raid were several bearing a crest with a bird of prey on it, perhaps an eagle or hawk of some description, and bearing the initials HIMEOBS.

Interviewer: and before this, the name had never been heard of?

Antonio: right.  The text itself in the documents was coded, with what turned out to be an old cipher used by the Bavarian radical Masonic lodges in the 18th century.  That wasn't really a problem, as we are on good terms with the Universities, in general, and could easily find an academic versed in Masonic symbolism and history to decipher it for us.  However, even when changed into Italian, or indeed any other Roman alphabet based language, it becomes only gibberish.  Not content with a code, they had also encrypted their message, making it impossible for our people to break it.

Interviewer: no-one at all could read it?  Even now?

Antonio: well, I don't know about now.  Computers are much faster and more sophisticated then they were back then.  But before I left the service a year ago, it remained unbroken.  All we had was the crest and the initials.  None of those arrested seemed to know what it meant, except perhaps Gelli himself, and he wont tell anyone.  Nor can we do anything to compel him, because of the terms of his extradition.

Interviewer: so what happened then?

Antonio: we ignored it.  The country was falling apart under the weight of the scandal, and we hadn't even uncovered the identities of ten percent of P2's members.  As the duly appointed guardians of the state, we had to concentrate on what we could take care of first, and worry about apparently unsolvable mysteries later.

Interviewer: but that changed with the death of...Lucas Percelli, in 1985?

Antonio:  Yes.  Percelli had been a police informant within the Calabrian Mafia, the 'Ndrangheta.  He had reported strange goings on at the Roccella Ionica Lodge there, which the 'Ndrangheta used as a cover for their less savoury activities.  The Lodge there had broken away from the Grand Lodge in London and had started to refer contemptuously to the English Grand Master as "His Imperial Majesty", using English for the phrase.

Interviewer: I certainly see the relevance, but why use those words?

Antonio: well, I was confused too, at first.  However, a researcher from one of the Universities we work with explained it to me.  As you may be aware, British Masonry is a pretty stale affair, with little interest in politics or temporal power.  A part of this stems from their acceptance of a divine being or architect, which infuriated the radical European lodges.  Of course, they were more interested in overthrowing Catholicism, like their Jacobin forebears.  Therefore, as a sign of their beliefs, they removed the references to the supreme being from their ceremonies in the 19th century, which led to the expulsion of the Parisian Lodge.  His Imperial Majesty is a reference both to the annoying English persistence in acting as if they still rule the world, and to the removed Supreme Being.  Its their way of summing up their rejection of British masonry for the Grand Orient lodges – those most heavily involved in Mafia and organized crime activities.

Interviewer: so you accept the hypothesis by Brian Freemantle, of a marriage of convenience between certain lodges, the Mafia and government intelligence services and political parties?

Antonio: it has certainly been true for Italy.  Remember, I worked P2 early in my career, and even 20 years after it first broke, we are still dealing with the repercussions of it.  It fails to be a conspiracy theory when you have arrest warrants and court proceedings.

Interviewer: so you believe that the Roccella Ionica Lodge was a centre of HIMEOBS activity, or even the birthplace of such an organization?

Antonio: a centre of activity, certainly, but most likely not where the organization was born.  I mean, its possible, certainly, but seems unlikely.  HIMEOBS appears to be truly transnational in its membership and ambitions, and one would expect such groups to gravitate to international financial centres – something which the evidence seems to support, incidentally.  The Lodge had been infiltrated to cover for dealings with the Calabrian Mafia, according to our informant.

Interviewer: what else did he tell you?

Antonio: about HIMEOBS?  Only that they appeared to be an international grouping.  Different messengers were used on various occasions, some of whom were not native Italian speakers.  Our analysts suspect there are American, Nicaraguan, English, French and Swedish accents.

Interviewer: [interrupting] Nicaraguan?  That's a rather odd one from that selection.

Antonio: yes, we thought so too.  The only thing we could come up with is that Gladio was aiding the Contras in their campaign and that HIMEOBS acquired an agent there.

Interviewer: oh yes, Gladio.  Perhaps we should save that particular mess for later?  What else did the informant tell you?

Antonio: only that they were manipulating enormous sums of money for international financial markets.  Mainly via insider training, but also using knowledge about terrorist attacks, undertaken by the strategy of tension, to buy up assets cheaply and to force prices up where they had monopoly control over a particular market.  The Calabrians were being kept in the loop for obvious reasons.

[Richter]

::eagerly awaits moar::

[Komada]

 


Brilliant


GEIF MOAR!!

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Full of Win

[Subtract Eight!]

indeed

[Cain]

Thanks all.  More are planned at some point within the next 6 weeks (I will have a creative surge with all this spare time).

[Cain]

HIMEOBS Investigation Tape #6

Interview of British Arms Industry insider, who will go by the name of Daniel Gibson for the interview.  The interview took place over three separate meetings in London's Hilton Hotel, in the autumn of 2005, and this excerpt is compiled from tape #2.

Interviewer: hello again Mr Gibson.  Are you ready to continue?

DG: As ready as I'll ever be, I suspect.

Interviewer: OK then, so you were telling us about how the contracts for exporting weapons to European allies had been transferred to your company, back in the 70s.  How does this figure into the HIMEOBS group?

DG: well, first off, I want to make it clear this wasn't my company.  Just in case the tape for the first interview should go missing...anyway, I was the legal consultant for the company at the time.  What had happened was that the government had wanted to purchase specially customized small arms consignments to give to our allies within NATO.

Interviewer: how were they customized, exactly?

DG: they were made to be lightweight, concealable.  Also, they didn't specifically use the 7.62x51mm NATO specification ammunition.  They used a variety of commonly available cartridges and calibre's – including Soviet ones.

Interviewer: and obviously that is not very normal.

DG: exactly. And its not like 7.62x51mm's are an endangered species.  My immediate assumption was that these were for special forces use – either to simulate more accurate conditions for OpFor training and behind enemy line actions, or else for operations where they didn't want to leave an obvious NATO fingerprint for the Soviets to find.

Interviewer: which of these is more likely?

DG: At first, I thought it was the former.  I mean, the latter is just getting a little too crazy for me, you know what I mean?  A little conspiratorial.  But then I looked into who had the contracts for exporting the weapons, the guys we were giving the arms to.

Interviewer: who were they?

DG: An outfit called HIMEOBS International.  I'd never heard of them before, and believe me, in this business, you keep track of people who get important government contracts like this.  So I did a little digging, and found out some very strange things about this company.

Interviewer: such as?

DG: first off, the articles of incorporation show the company was registered in Taiwan.  Back then, we didn't have hardly any South East Asian companies working in the UK, and certainly not getting UK Government contracts.  Secondly, the names of the Board of Directors were kind of odd as well.

Interviewer: Who were they?

DG: well, the one who stands out most is Airey Neave.

Interviewer: the Conservative Party MP?

DG: the one and same.  Another was the Baron of Epsom.

Interviewer: the names of people that were involved against the plots against Harold Wilson?  Neave and Epsom were both considered to be in the know about Operation Clockwork Orange, and  of course we keep hearing rumours about Mountbatten and an army coup d'etat plot...

DG: exactly, shady customers indeed.

Interviewer: so you believe that the HIMEOBS International company was a front so that certain right wing government officials could seize weapons intended for our allies, for other operations?

DG: It was exactly that.  After Neave's assassination, the company folded and the contracts were given to someone else, but the contracts from the government for the custom made weapons kept on coming in.  And when you consider those secret police in Italy and Switzerland, P-26 and the Gladiator lot....well, they have to get their weapons from somewhere, right?

Interviewer: and of course, if you want to blame attacks on left wing terrorists, you need to use the weapons they use, too.

[East Coast Hustle]

fucking swote!

[Jasper]

Excellent!

[TheLastLump]

Nicely done! This is going somewhere.... devious...

[Cain]

Indeed it is.

Just....slowly.

[Raphaella]

Bump for teh awesome!
This is great when you get a chance you should really do more. 

[Iason Ouabache]

Bump for teh awesome!
This is great when you get a chance you should really do more. 

Agreed.  This is pretty fucking awesome. 

[Ratonderio]

You stole this directly from ap!! 



I don't know if my tinkering would be useful, but if it would then I'd be glad to help.

[Cain]

Not bad at all, though it would probably look better on somewhere like infowars, or prison planet.  Since HIMEOBS obviously doesn't exist, the major press would not report on it.