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- [00:04]
A
For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes ad free listening, early access to series first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter and discounted books. Join the Declassified club@the restisclassified.com. Could a secret sacrifice CIA team have conspired to destroy the chances of England's football team? And could that secret have been kept until now? Or does it belong in the world of conspiracy theories? Well, welcome to the Rest Is classified. I'm David McCloskey.
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B
And I'm Gordon Carrera.
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A
And we are in the second and final part of our exploration of, as Gordon has written in my notes, one of the darkest claims we have ever looked at on the show we which is the idea that the Central Intelligence Agency might have poisoned might have poisoned Gordon, England's goalkeeper during the 1970 World Cup.
- [01:09]
B
That's right. I mean, what an allegation it is. Of all the things we've looked at, this is amongst the most serious and the darkest. But we are looking at this issue of whether it is indeed possible that during the 1970 World Cup, England's heroic goalkeeper Gordon Banks could have been somehow poisoned by someone else when he fell ill after a quote unquote quiet beer in his hotel room at the Guadalajara Hilton before a big game which led to him not playing England falling to a dramatic defeat after some goalkeeping errors, it said by his stand in, dashing the hopes of a nation but increasing the political popularity of a repressive Brazilian dictatorship which, as we've heard, the CIA might have at least plausibly had the motive to want to support. That is the theory. And with us again to explore this idea, we have Gabriel Gatehouse, who presenter of Foul Play, an audible podcast, but available wherever you get your podcasts exploring this idea. The CIA might have been behind all of this. Welcome Gabriel.
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C
Hello. Good to be with you again.
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B
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D
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C
So good, so good, so good.
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E
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- [04:32]
B
so Gabriel, let's explore a little bit what the real evidential chain is for this claim. What made you think that there could be something to this other than it just being a kind of idea?
- [04:48]
C
Yeah, I mean, look, when I first heard it, Gordon, I thought this is palpable nonsense. It's got to be nonsense, right? It's got, it's got the whiff of conspiracy theory all over it. The thing is that first made me think, hold on a second, maybe there is something to this is the alleged source of the story, right? So as you know, Gordon, especially when you're dealing with the world of intelligence, most of the time you don't get to documentary evidence. And, and really the quality of your sourcing is everything. So my first question when I started looking into this, I was like, let's see if this is even credible enough to investigate. My first question was, who is the source? So Ed Gordon Banks's grandson, who brought it to me, had heard it from a guy who was a family friend who had read it. It's a kind of. It's a chain that goes he heard it from him, who heard it from him, who heard it from him. But it ends up after four links in the chain with a very senior serving US Senator for the State of Missouri who was on the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, and who in the 1960s and 70s not only received briefings from the CIA, but was also personally close to successive CIA directors, but particularly Richard Helms, who was director of the CIA from 1966 to 1973. So at the time of the 1970 World cup in Mexico, when I saw that, I was like, okay, this is more than just some bloke heard it in a pub, right. And could be true, could not be true. The problem is the source is dead. Right. The name of the senator is Stuart Symington, Senator from Missouri from 1952 to 1976, 24 years. He contested the Democratic presidential nomination in 1960, but it went to John F. Kennedy instead. But, you know, a senior guy, he died in 1988. So a credible source. And that really for me was the starting point for thinking, okay, these are threads worth pulling at.
- [07:05]
A
I do think you're spot on, Gabriel, in kind of focusing on the quality of the source. As I was reading your investigation, you know, I was thinking about the sourcing chain from the lens of an intelligence officer and thinking that this is, okay, this is essentially fourth hand information, which obviously increases the likelihood that something has been garbled in the sourcing chain. But ultimately, and frankly, I actually put this question to a couple case officers who said if a case officer had confidence in the ultimate source and sort of felt like they could credibly have access to this information and if it gelled with other reporting, a lot of case officers would want to disseminate this in part because they get more credit for having collected intelligence that gets disseminated. A lot of what we call collection management officers or reports officers who kind of sit between the case officers and the analysts would probably look at the fourth hand information and say, we're going to keep this in ops traffic so that people could look at it, but you'd have a hard time citing it in a piece of finished production for one of our customers. It all comes down to that sourcing chain because you could have have a credible sourcing chain that's fourth hand. It just tends to, in an intelligence context, it's harder to kind of put it out there because there's a greater likelihood that it's potentially broken down somewhere.
- [08:34]
C
Yeah. And I think, you know, Gordon will know this as well. Like as journalists, we do the same thing. Like you really need to get to the source. And once you get to, oh, well, I heard it from so and so, but you can't speak to the original source then immediately it's, it's of less credibility than we're going. I did actually manage to eliminate one of the links in the chain, so. So it's a third hand report.
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A
Ok.
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C
The time we get to it, so, you know, it's still third hand. So it's still third hand with. No, certainly when we started off, no corroborating, second sourcing. Right. So if Gordon and I were still at the BBC, no way would this make it into a news report. Right, yeah.
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B
Like, you know, the editors would be
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C
like, yeah, a lot of work had to be done to build up a picture around. What other circumstantial evidence could we find to bolster the story?
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B
Yeah. And we're not going to give away everything that's in the podcast because it's a great journey and it's worth listening to. But I guess there's the claim. The next question would be, does the CIA have the kind of means and the opportunity to do it? In other words, how would you do something like this? I mean, David, I don't know what you think, but the kind of operation required to do a poisoning or something at a hotel room, it's the kind of thing that intelligence agencies do. But it's not entirely easy to get to someone's drink and bottle of beer or something like that, is it? But how possible is that? Does that feel to you, David?
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A
Well, I think if an intelligence agency wanted to. It's not like I would imagine the English national team had a tremendous amount of security associated with their, you know, the food supply. I mean, we talked about the team doctor who's kind of keeping tabs on it. I would imagine it could be as simple as having an asset or an access agent who works at the hotel. You know, I mean, and. And in that case, you would have a sense of, okay, where's the stuff being stored? How's it coming in? And that person would be able to help kind of create. I mean, we talk, Gordon, we do, you know, stories about assassinations. We talk about building up a pattern of life. You do something similar here where you'd see how. How is the team? What do they do day to day, how does that food come in? Where is it kept? And then you look for a vulnerability where someone who has access to the hotel might be able to tamper with it. It's not particularly complicated if you have someone who has access to the hotel.
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B
Gabriel, isn't it right that some of the hotel staff didn't actually like England that much? Which seems shocking to me.
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C
It is shocking to you. No, generally in Mexico, they were very pro. Brazil, but especially in Guadalajara, because there was this kind of weird dynamic whereby people of Guadalajara felt that players from their own local teams had been snubbed in selection for the Mexican national team. So they were Kind of cheering on Brazil. But generally the England team made themselves unpopular in that hotel. Not only by flying out all their own food, but they also brought out their own chef. And so there was, and they were kind of seen as standoffish. There wasn't a lot of love for the England team there. I mean, it's interesting what you say, David, about, you know, having an asset in the hotel. This is exactly what we looked into. And one of the questions. And we went to Guadalajara, we went to the hotel, we spoke to people who worked there. We also went to Mexico City, we looked at the archives of the Mexican secret police. Because my feeling was, and this was also the steer I was getting from former intelligence people that I was talking to was that they weren't going to send some gringo into the kitchens of the Guadalajara Hilton. Right. They'd have a local agent in there. Is that a fair assumption?
- [12:15]
A
Oh, I think so, yeah, absolutely. I mean, you could also, I suppose if you didn't have a local access agent of some sort, you could send someone in who's maybe ostensibly there to watch World cup matches and who's come from the United States, what have you. I mean, I think the point is you would, you would need someone who could. The ideal would be someone who actually works at the hotel who is being paid to do something and maybe they don't even know what they're doing, but that's the ideal. You could also have someone who shows up at the hotel for a stay and kind of monitors things as a guest. I suppose either could in theory work.
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B
So the idea of being able to get access to the hotel or to the food or the drink somehow it's not impossible. I guess the next question is the poisoned. How plausible is it that the CIA could have had access to something to make Gordon Banks ill? And here, David, we come to a friend of the show, no less, don't we? Everyone's favorite CIA poisoner in chief, Sidney Gottlieb, because he becomes a part of your story.
- [13:20]
A
That's right. Maybe a brief reminder for listeners on who Sid Gottlieb is. So he is the club footed, stuttering CIA biochemist who is the longtime head of the CIA's Technical Services Division, which becomes the Office of Technical Service. Essentially the sort of technical enablement of so many human intelligence operations. So he's, he's also the father, as I think we alluded to in the first episode, the father of the CIA's mind control program and experiments. MKUltra. MK Ultra experiments with LSD. He is responsible for one sub program of the MK Ultra kind of overall program at which an elephant was injected with, I think, 300,000 plus micrograms of LSD and died at the Oklahoma City Zoo. Sidney Gottlieb is also. I think it's fair to say, Gordon, that the CIA's poison work in the 1950s and 1960s really springs from the sort of warped mind of Sidney Gottlieb, who I believe prepared the poison, which was not used for a potential assassination on the then president of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba. Also, Sidney Gottlieb was a big hippie who grew his own food and tended to a goatherd. So there we go. That's the pen portrait of Sid Gottlieb. But it's all to say that the CIA does have. The CIA has a record with poisonings. This is not a controversial claim and fair to say, much more complex poisons than just giving a British goalkeeper some. Some dummy troubles.
- [14:58]
B
Yeah. Because the most famous ones were against Castro, weren't they? Some of. Some of the plots, I mean, there were both attempts to kill him, but also, I think, wasn't there a plot to make his beard fall out at one point and things like that? So. Which I guess feels more similar in the way to making Gordon Banks get a bit sick. I mean, Gabriel, that's where you ended up.
- [15:16]
C
So non lethal toxins. Right. So, again, I was helped in my slightly crazy endeavor by the wonderful openness of the American system, the American political system. And the wonderful thing is that Watergate and the fallout from Watergate led to all of these hearings in Congress about what the CIA was really up to. Started with the Church Committee hearings, Senator Frank Church in 1975, who really started looking into what the CIA had been up to. And I thought a lot of it was about kind of assassinations and stuff. But in fact, what I didn't realize until I started doing this investigation was that the very first hearing that the Church committee held in 1975 was into the CIA's use of toxins. That was the first thing that they addressed. And they got very exercised about the fact that the CIA had. Against a specific presidential order, President Nixon had ordered the destruction of all of America's biological agents. He basically said, the United States is going to get out of the biological warfare game. And the CIA, who had a nice little stash of shellfish toxin and cobra venom and other exotic things that Sidney Gottlieb had prepared, were like, well, we've spent years developing this stuff. We're not Just going to chuck it out. So what they did was they, they stashed it in a secret lab and when this all came out, obviously they started looking into it. I was cognizant of the fact, as you said, Gordon, that most of their efforts were focused a, not on England football players, but on politicians whom they hated, mostly Fidel Castro, but also that they were mostly, though they're not exclusively lethal poisons. Right? They were in, in the assassinations game. I looked through all of this testimony in the, the hearing on toxins and buried in the middle of it, they interview this CIA biologist by the name of Nathan Gordon. And the senators in the committee, they're, they're pushing him on, on all the lethal stuff and why the CIA was retaining it against a specific presidential order. And this poor Nathan Gordon does not want to be there, right? He really hates being there. He's asked for all the cameras to be switched off, but a transcript of his testimony survives. He keeps saying, well, do you know what, Senator? We were really more interested in the non lethal stuff. And then he says, and I will quote you this, he says, there are certain substances that can give you a real severe case of the tummies, as we like to call it. He goes on to say, this has a potential application in the field because if you want to render a certain person out of operation, out of contention at a certain time at a certain place, this is very, very useful. So I thought, huh, that's interesting because that kind of proves that they were into giving people the very self same thing that Gordon Banks had. So then I get to the end of this, the 250 pages of this testimony, of this report, and there's a little, there's an appendix and a docum is attached and it's a CIA document dated I think March or April 1970. So literally a matter of months before the World Cup. And it's a little list of all the poisons that the CIA was keeping in its secret lab. And amongst the shellfish toxin and the cobra venom and the lethal botulism toxin, there is salmonella. So I thought, wow, bloody hell. Motive, means, an opportunity. There's the means right there in black and white. It's so rare, I thought to find something actually in black and white that would seem to corroborate the story or would at least bolster the circumstantial evidence for this story.
- [19:26]
A
Could you talk to us a bit more, Gabriel, about the CIA connection in Mexico? At the same time, I guess we've talked conceptually about okay, you need somebody access to the hotel. The CIA has got the salvadella. But practically in your research, what was the nature of the Agency's networks and access in Mexico in this time period?
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C
Unrivaled, I think is probably the word to use, I think certainly in the western hemisphere. The CIA station in Mexico City in 1970 was the agency's largest operation, I think outside Saigon. Obviously the Vietnam War was going on at the time. A lot of efforts focused there. But in terms of the Western hemisphere, Mexico was it. And this is for a couple of reasons. One is Cuba, right? It's a useful place for keeping an eye on Cuba. Cuba's still an obsession of the United States government and the CIA. But number two is that it's a sort of happenstance of personality. The CIA station chief in Mexico City right up until just before the World cup. So summer of 1969 is a guy called Winston Scott. And he's this legendary old boy. He's one of the founding members of the CIA. He's a real operator. And he's built the Mexico City station up into this huge surveillance operation. And he's got agents everywhere, right? He's got them on the streets all the way up to the Presidential Palace. This guy had three successive Mexican presidents on the CIA payroll, right? So the President of Mexico at the time of the World cup was a paid CIA asset. And Scott basically had access to whole teams of Mexican security agents supplied to him by the Mexican Interior Ministry, whom he could deploy at his whim without having to ask for a buy or leave from the Mexicans themselves. So they were deeply embedded in Mexico at the time. And one of the reasons we know this, which is such a fantastic detail, is a lot of this stuff came out about Mexico City station because of the Kennedy assassination, right? So about six weeks before JFK is assassinated in Dallas, a certain Lee Harvey Oswald rocks up in Mexico City looking for a visa to go to the Soviet Union. Now, of course, Winston Scott, having put in place the largest surveillance operation in the Western Hemisphere, is all over this guy, right? He's photographing him, he's bugging his phone calls. He's got it all. He's got it all. And then when Kennedy's killed, of course, the official line from the CIA is we didn't know anything about this guy. Oswald wasn't on our radar at all. And so Winston Scott, who knows this isn't true, is incensed, right? Because his professional pride is at stake. Here's the CIA saying that he, Winston Scott, missed this Guy, he's not going to miss this guy. So not only were a lot of documents declassified from the CIA station during all the inquiries and investigations into the Kennedy assassination, but also this guy, and this was one of the leads that we really followed up in the podcast. Winston Scott, he's so annoyed that the CIA is saying that he missed Oswald, that he writes a memoir about his time as Mexico City station. And when he dies unexpectedly in 1971, the first thing the CIA does is they send their chief of counterintelligence, James Angleton to Mexico City to wrestle this manuscript out of the hands of Winston Scott's shell shocked widow. So this, I figured, you know, this guy was in charge. If somebody from the CIA had poisoned an English goalkeeper, he probably knew about it. Well, maybe he wrote about it in his memoir. And so a whole part of the podcast is us trying to get hold of this document which has been confiscated by the CIA to see if there's any clues in there.
- [23:39]
A
We talked in our miniseries for club members on the different theories behind the JFK assassination. Exactly about this point, Gabriel, which was the CIA is, you know, well, in particular that series looking at the CIA's photo surveillance operation at the, you know, Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City, which was, which was quite extensive and had led Win Scott and his team to probably don't want to get get into all the detail here, but probably, as you say, to have some sense that Lee Harvey Oswald had actually threatened Kennedy during his, during his little stay in Mexico City before he goes back to Dallas. But the. So the Mexico. So I think we're starting to get the sense of the different pieces here, which is, I think I want to come back to motive because I think that is the point where I am the. I am not yet convinced, but we have, we have the. We have the means. And the CIA certainly. Yeah, the Salvanella and the CIA certainly, if it had wanted to, could have had the opportunity through Win Scott's CIA networks in Mexico in 1970.
- [24:45]
B
So let's take a break there. When we come back, let's look at also the issue of whether we do see evidence of spy services interfering in some of these sporting tournaments and some of the interesting evidence of that happening over the years, including in World Cups, as well as our final thoughts on whether this theory about Gordon Banks does stack up or not. See you after the break. Hello, everybody. I hope you realize, dear listeners, that Father's Day is coming up on the 21st of June.
- [25:22]
A
It's all very exciting. Gordon and if you haven't got anything yet for your father, and if you're on speaking terms, we have an incredible gift idea for you.
- [25:31]
B
Because what more do dads love than something intelligence and espionage related?
- [25:38]
C
Ooh.
- [25:38]
A
And this year we're offering 25% off a gifted annual membership to the Declassified
- [25:45]
B
Club, so you can treat your father to early access to full series, bonus episodes, and much, much more.
- [25:54]
A
That's right, you could gift your dad what he truly wants, which is six hours on a Rock WMD with no ads in between. Give him the gift of more Gordon and David in his life.
- [26:05]
B
Yeah, that sounds good to me. So just head to therestisclassified.com and go to the gifts page. The gift will land straight in your father's inbox on Father's Day and it'll
- [26:15]
A
give us access to your computer. And if you want to give your dad something special to open on the day itself, why not gift him our exclusive secret Squirrels T shirt? Your gift confirmation email will include a discount code for one of these brilliant T shirts.
- [26:31]
B
Now that is a Father's Day present.
- [26:36]
F
Hi, this is Gary Lineker from Goal Hangers.
- [26:38]
C
The rest is football.
- [26:39]
F
This episode is brought to you by Wise. It's only when you start moving money between currencies that you really think about the exchange rate, the fee, and what might be hidden away in the small print. Whether you're living abroad, paying someone overseas, or just trying to manage your money across borders, you want a fair exchange rate, an easy transfer, and no surprise along the way. Wise keeps things simple. Wise is a smart way to move the currencies you need around the globe. It works in more than 160 countries and with over 40 currencies, most transfers arrive instantly. Wise uses the mid market exchange rate like the one you see on Google, with no markups or hidden fees. So when money needs to move, you can see the rate, know the fee, and get on with it. Join millions saving billions on hidden fees by downloading the Wise app today. Be smart, get wise T's and C's apply.
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- [28:34]
A
All right, well, welcome back. We are now, I think we've kind of, we've been talking about this intersection of espionage and, and sport specific to the 1970 World Cup. But it is, I think, fair to say, Gordon, it's a much broader tradition, isn't it, of espionage and sort of skullduggery connected to big global sporting events?
- [28:58]
B
Yeah, that's right, because there is, as we were saying, so much national prestige involved in these sporting events that inevitably spies get involved. You could see it right through the Cold War, particularly with the Olympics, and you would have, for instance, the KGB send teams out with the Soviet Olympic squad and their job was partly to guard the Olympic squad against kind of defections, you know, going out to the west, some of those sports people, but also, you know, look out for dirty tricks by the other side and maybe play their own dirty tricks. I mean, I looked at this because Vasily Machokin, subject of a fine book which is now out in paperback, just a brief plug, went to the 1956 Melbourne Olympics with a KGB team and it all goes terribly wrong. A round of all things, a water polo match with the Hungarian team and which turns violent. But then you also get this interesting history of where spy services are involved in doping. You see it with the East German with the stars. These are involved with athletes from East Germany, really massive doping campaigns. You, of course, get it with Russia. Its intelligence agencies are accused of being involved in big doping schemes, particularly for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. And this famous Dr. Rodchenkov, who's the director of the Anti Doping Centre, who bizarrely, in a very Russian way, is also in charge of doping, it becomes a whistleblower and says all of this was involved. And it's in that great documentary Icarus, which is saying, basically the FSB itself, the security services, are involved in trying to make sure as many Russian athletes win gold medals as possible. And actually even with the World Cups as well. I mean, we talked in our Russian interference series about Trump and the 2016 election, about Chris Steele, the British MI6 officer. And interestingly enough, his first contact with the FBI is because he's investigating the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups and the British Football Association. Ask him to look at what the Russians are doing because the Russians are bidding for the 2018 against England and meanwhile the Qataris are bidding at the same moment against the Americans for the 2022. So he's finding evidence of Russian corruption and paying of officials which he then shares with the FBI and gets him involved with the FBI, doesn't it? So there's this interesting kind of intersection there of spying and well, you know
- [31:30]
A
how you could end the 60 year drought, Gordon. And Gabriel is, well take a, take a page out of East Germany's playbook because from the, the mid-60s up through the 80s, the Stasi was giving female athletes anabolic steroids which allowed them to dominate the Games. And I think in one Olympics the East German women's swim team won 11 out of 13 golds and also suffered from longer term health problems from being fed anabolic steroids by the Stasi. But if you wanted to give Team England a little boost here in the 2026 World cup, start juicing.
- [32:14]
B
Thanks for the advice, David.
- [32:16]
C
One of the things I really wanted to look into was was there any evidence of the CIA or indeed other intelligence agencies, the kgb, you know, meddling in actual matches, football matches or sporting events to try and affect the outcome? There is a lot of evidence, as you said Gordon, about the Olympics, and both the KGB and the CIA were at it. But it seemed to me from at least from the historical record that what they were mostly after was access. They wanted access to people who lived behind the Iron Curtain who would be coming out to eg, the 68 Olympics in Mexico City where Wyn Scott sent one of his agents to infiltrate them there. But his job essentially, I think was to recruit agents, not to fix the 100 meters. So I was really, really trying to find evidence that the CIA ever actually meddled in a sporting event in the outcome and did.
- [33:18]
A
What did you find it? Instances, even, even circumstantial evidence of the Agency having done that.
- [33:24]
C
So there is this famous case of the World cup, eight years later, 78 in Argentina and Argent. So Argentina are the hosts. Bit like Brazil, they really, really want to win it. Bit like Brazil. They've got a military dictatorship that, a bit like Brazil is kind of supported by, by the Americans as a kind of bulwark against the spread of socialism in Latin America. So this is one match that Argentina needs to win against Peru and they need to win by four clear goals. And just before the match starts, the Argentinian dictator, another general, General Videla, he marches into the bowels of the stadium and he goes into the dressing room, but not the Argentinian dressing room. Right? He goes into the Peruvian dressing room and he gives a speech. And now what exactly he said has been disputed, some of the players, the Peruvian players have alleged that he alternately either threatened them or offered bribes to Peru as a country if they were to, you know, perhaps not play at their best. Now, this is disputed and there's no recording of the conversation. What I think no one disputes is that Peru had an absolutely disastrous match, lost by six goals, and Argentina went on to win the competition.
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B
And I mean, I was looking into this and it's fascinating because there's these people who claim that it's part of this thing called Operation Condor.
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A
That's a great name. I'm already, I'm already interested.
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B
It's a network of intelligence agencies of these right wing dictatorships who are working together against dissidents and leftists in this period. You know, and Pinochet is involved and you know, Argentina involved and Brazil is involved. And anyway, a Peruvian Senator supposedly in 2012 testifies under oath that the match had been fixed as part of a deal under Operation Condor and that Argentina took in 13 political dissidents who'd been kidnapped by Peruvian security forces and they get deported to Argentina where they can be then disappeared. And in return, Peru agrees to throw the match. Now that is, I mean, it's a kind of dark claim and it's one claim from someone who may have an agenda to it. So we should say it's unproven. But that is kind of hardcore stuff. And what I particularly like about it, Gabriel, one detail you didn't mention is that also supposedly visiting the dressing room according to some reports, is none other than Henry Kissinger.
- [36:07]
C
Yeah, so this was a real surprise to me because I actually knew about Argentina 78 from early on when I started doing this. But I kind of dismissed it because it didn't seem to have an obvious CIA connection. It was a sort of tangential. But then I found out about this Kissinger thing. So it is true that Kissinger was at the match. He was there. Obviously by 1978, Kissinger is no longer, longer Secretary of State, he's no longer in office, he's a private citizen. But, you know, Kissinger was kind of well known for his Machiavellian dark arts and supporting various dictatorships in Latin America. Now, some of the Peruvian players have alleged that Kissinger came with General Videla in his little visit to the dressing room. And after Videla had made his little speech, apparently allegedly Kissinger said good luck and then off he went. And all the Perugian players is like, what does that mean? What should we take now? I should say that Henry Kissinger, who was a soccer fan, he was a big football fan. He denied, he said he had no memory of ever visiting the Peruvian dressing room. He wasn't the match, though he unequivocally was there.
- [37:27]
B
I wonder if he has any recollection of bombing Cambodia as well and other things. And very hazy on supporting Latin American dictatorships generally was Henry Kissinger. So I mean, I think it's really, it's a kind of interesting question mark because you're right, Gabriel, it's not about the CIA, but on the surface, although you could say in the background is this operation on the surface which Henry Kissinger had backed and which was this, this idea we're going to back these dictators to repress left wing elements. And they're all these countries sharing information on these left wing elements. And so you could come up with a theory in which maybe it's, you know, there is something going on there in that six nil victory.
- [38:10]
C
That's right. And you know, on Operation Condor, you know, in 1970 was the time that Salvador Allende was coming to power in Chile. And Operation Condor I think came into effect slightly after the World Cup. I think it began in the early 70s. But certainly there is pretty persuasive documentary evidence that again the National Security Archive in Washington have done great work on, which shows that the Brazilians were helping the Americans try to discredit Allende's election and try to get him removed from office before the actual Coup happened in 73 as part of this Operation Condor. And this was a kind of quid pro quo for the Americans. So there's this kind of like mountain of sort of circumstantial evidence that piles up around the motive, which I know you said you found the least plausible aspect of it, David, that sort of seems to suggest that actually, you know, some kind of quid pro quo is not inconceivable. I mean a lot of people put in objections, right? They were like, number one, we like Britain better than we like Brazil. Which is true, I think in 1970.
- [39:34]
A
That is true. Yeah, yeah, that's true.
- [39:36]
C
Number two, one of them said to me, can you imagine the paperwork going backwards and forwards when the chief of station in Brazil writes to Langley and says, hey, I think we should poison the England goalkeeper in Mexico? So they then Write to the chief of station in Mexico who goes, well, have you, have you alerted London Station to this? And London Station goes, hell no, don't do that. That's ridiculous. And you know, just the sort of bureaucratic pile up that would likely happen if this were to have taken place.
- [40:10]
A
Oh, see, I don't agree with that. In 1970. No, no, I don't think. I think this is, this is pre church, right? This is pre church committee.
- [40:19]
C
Oh, really?
- [40:20]
A
That is an era where things weren't always put on paper. And, and it's, it's totally plausible to me that in this time period there could have been, you know, somebody. When Scott gets summoned to Langley or decides to go to Langley on his own and has a chat and comes back and there's no paperwork. I don't think bureaucratic pilot today. Absolutely. What you described, pre church. No way. I think there's a lot of stuff that just was never written down.
- [40:55]
C
Well, I'm very interested to hear you say that, David. I mean, there's a thread in this whole story that I never really pulled on in the podcast because it was just sort of too tangential, but David Attley Phillips, does that mean anything to you?
- [41:11]
A
I feel like I recognize that name.
- [41:13]
B
Wasn't he involved in Guatemala?
- [41:15]
C
Guatemala? Yes. Correct. Gordon? Yes, yes. Ten points for you, Gordon. He was a propagandist. He was involved in the Guatemala coup. He worked in Mexico City Station under Win Scott, but he was kind of a loose, kind of. He had the Cuba dossier, basically, that was basically his gig. But in 1970 he'd done a little sideways transfer and he was chief of station in Brazil. He was essentially one of Those kind of pre1975 pre church committee rogue operators who kind of went off and freelanced a bit and understood what people were telling him with a nod and a wink and went off and made them happen. And as somebody suggested to me the fact that Phillips had been stationed in Mexico for a long time, but during the World cup was chief of station in Brazil. The most likely way this might have happened, if it happened, would have been that Phillips, head of the CIA in Brazil, was doing a favor for his counterpart, head of security intelligence in the Brazilian regime, who's coming under pressure from his boss to make sure they win the World Cup. And over a couple of beers they're just like, well, maybe it'd be good if you got rid of that Gordon Banks.
- [42:27]
B
So I guess this is the point where as we come to an end, we should, should. We should really you know, nail our colors to the mast and say. Say, you know, how plausible we think it is. And I should say that there are some little twists and turns and revelations, including some very interesting documents you find late in the day, which are in the podcast series, which we've not given away. That's called Foul Play, the series. So we're not giving away the full story, it's fair to say. But I guess, David, I mean, have you been convinced that your former, you know, your predecessors could have come up with such a kind of outrageous operation as to poison an England goalkeeper?
- [43:09]
A
I'll say. I don't think it happened, but I think that it's. I can imagine how it could have happened, if that makes sense. I think you've made. Gabriel, I think you've made a compelling case on the means and opportunity. I think how you described the sort of chain of events there at the end, with Cos Brasilia having a conversation with the chief of station in Mexico City and having Salvadilla sent from Sidney Gottlieb's lab at Langley down to Mexico City and having, you know, an access agent or someone put it in the beer, that all would be very. There would be no record of that. I don't think there's any. I don't. There'd be no documents. I think Winscott might have written it in his memoir, but to my understanding, no one's gotten their hands on that in the open yet. So the whole shade you described feels very plausible to me. I think what I can't square the circle on all the way is just that the motive feels. It just feels like I'd be curious what you think, Gabriel, having looked into it so deeply, because it feels to me like at the end of the day, the Brits would have been the closest intelligence relationship we had, even at that time, certainly today. And poisoning. Poisoning the goalkeeper just feels like something
- [44:45]
C
that's just really going to piss him off.
- [44:47]
A
You probably wouldn't do for the Brazilians. But I guess if you think, hey, there's no way we're going to get caught at all because we're not going to write any of this stuff down and we're going to use someone in the hotel. You know, maybe it's. Maybe it's no risk. I don't know. Maybe I'm convincing myself as I. As I tell you, I don't buy the motive.
- [45:03]
C
So. So look, here. Here's where I'm at. I mean, I. I really tried my best to knock this story down. I mean, I I. And there are lots of other plausible explanations, right? One is it was just bad luck. Two is the quiet beers weren't that quiet and they went on a bit of a rampage and did some things that they were told not to do, and that's why it happened. Here's the thing, though. Every time I got to a point where I was like, I don't think this happened, I would find another bit of circumstantial evidence that would point to. To how plausible it is. So it was a really confounding, confounding sort of journey.
- [45:48]
B
Can I ask you a question, Gabriel? You have spent a lot of time on conspiracy theories and on Russia and Ukraine, and you've reported a lot from those countries. Have you ever considered the possibility that this story is a Russian active measure that you have? That the Russians have fed you this story in order to break the special relationship between the US and UK by feeding into the system some false documents or stories because they know nothing would do more damage to the relationship between our two countries than the idea that the CIA could have, you know, destroyed our chances of winning the World cup in 1970.
- [46:26]
A
Like the idea that the CIA was behind the AIDS virus, which was a KGB active measure.
- [46:31]
B
Yeah. Are you sure there's not Mr. Kliminkov somewhere in the background around, you know, feeding you, feeding you this stuff? I'm just checking. I'm just checking.
- [46:40]
C
I mean, that it's an interesting and very valid question. Number one, I would say, you know, at the moment, I'm not sure that Russia needs any help putting stress and strain on the special relationship that is that is happening as we speak. Look, if this is Russian active measures, which it could be, right, let's be honest about this, because the sourcing chain is third hand. One football journalist, very reputable, said he heard it from another football journalist who said he heard it from the senator. And the two top links in that chain are dead. So it could be that somewhere in that there's a Russian active measures campaign. I would say that this story emerged several decades ago and has sat almost unnoticed in an obscure chapter of an obscure book by a football writer for all of those many, many years. So if this is an active measures campaign by the Russians, it dates back to either the late 90s or the early noughties, and they've done a very poor job of promoting it.
- [47:52]
B
Yeah, it's a fair point.
- [47:54]
A
One other thing just to say on the sourcing chain, which we haven't really interrogated, and as I'm turning Over. I find. Not implausible, but perhaps a stretch is. This is. Do you have a. Do you know, Gabriel, when Senator Symington of Missouri might have heard this from someone inside the CIA? Because pre church, there's basically no congressional oversight. Like it's. Or it's very. It's very weak. So the idea that anyone inside CIA would tell a senator about this maybe also seems like a bit of a stretch to me, but that we haven't. We haven't interrogated that piece of the sourcing in this conversation.
- [48:33]
C
Okay, well, look, I do have an idea about that, and I do want to keep some of my little goodies back for my own podcast. However, I would say to you that you remember we talked about Dick Helms, who was Richard Helms, who was the head of the CIA from 66 72. When I had a look in Senator Symington's archives, there were a lot of letters that began dear Dick.
- [49:05]
B
I mean, I still think one of the challenges, though, is the chain of events to know that Gordon Banks would drink that beer, that specific beer, that he would get ill, that he would be ill enough to not play, but not ill enough to get really ill, because I don't think you'd want to kill someone, and that the goalkeeper who would come in, in his place would also not perform that well or be as good as him. You know, there's a lot of steps in the chain towards Brazil winning the World Cup.
- [49:38]
A
Well, maybe it wasn't the beer. Maybe they swabbed his toothbrush.
- [49:41]
B
You're right. Maybe it wasn't the beer. But there's. That's always the problem with a lot of these theories is you're like, there's a lot of steps.
- [49:48]
C
We're getting operational information from David here. They swabbed the toothbrushes. Gordon, pay attention. That's how they do it.
- [49:54]
A
He might have thought it was the beer, but actually, you know, as we're talking about it, if somebody was able. It's not hard to get access to hotel rooms, Right. If someone was able to get access to his hotel room, maybe they. Yeah. Was he brushing his teeth? I don't. I don't know.
- [50:12]
C
I'll ask Ed, the grandson. Can I just make one point, which is one of the things we examine in the podcast is was it a targeted attack? If it happened, was it a targeted attack on just Gordon Banks, or were they just generally going for the team and see to whom it sticks? The other thing I would just like to point out is having had done a relatively Deep dive into Sidney Gottlieb and the poisoning plots, mostly directed into Castro, but also against Patrice Lumumba and various other people. The one thing that really, really stands out is the CIA are not very good at things.
- [50:47]
B
Yeah, they don't get to Lumumba. They don't get to Castro.
- [50:50]
A
Well, baby, you've uncovered a very successful poisoning that has just not been discovered. Right. I mean, who knows. Who knows how many of these salmonella poisons there are that just have never been uncovered or reported? So we might actually. The batting average for the CIA poisoning people might be very, very good, but we just don't know the total number. To do the math.
- [51:12]
B
Can I just say. Yeah, yeah. Can I just say something has gone wrong with these episodes? Because I thought that the way it was going to work would be David would be there defending the idea that the CIA could have possibly carried out such a dastardly plot and would be deeply cynical about it. Instead, he's like, oh, yeah, they could have done it. Because I forgot the kind of vanity of CIA officers. You're like, yeah, we're capable of doing. Basically. Basically forget the special relationship. You tell them, yeah, you couldn't have got to him. You couldn't have done it. And the CIA guys are like, yeah, we can do that. We're capable of it. So I kind of. I misinterpreted you, David. I'm sorry.
- [51:53]
A
The other piece of this is that. But we're talking about, you know, Win Scott, and remind me again, the Name of the COs in Bogota.
- [52:03]
C
David Attlee Phillips.
- [52:04]
A
David Attlee Phillips, the chief of station of Brasilia, and then Win Scott, chief of station Mexico City. These are guys who are not. Maybe they're interacting with the Brits, but these are like Latin America guys. Right? They don't care. They don't care about MIS. They're not Anglophiles. They don't care about MI6. Right. Wow.
- [52:22]
C
I mean, I just got to counter you a little bit here, David. I'm gonna. So when Scott learned his spy craft in London, so he. He spent the Second World War in London.
- [52:31]
B
Well, that's. That explains everything.
- [52:34]
A
Maybe that's. Yeah, that's why he had no qualms about poisoning Brits after that had happened.
- [52:39]
C
Maybe that's the answer. So, yeah, I don't know. Look, to be honest with you, I've gone back and forwards on this, and, you know, I don't think it'll be a surprise to any of your listeners to say that at the end of it, we don't find a smoking gun, a bit of paper, where it said, you know, Friday afternoon, poisoned an English footballer, went down the pub afterwards to celebrate. You know, that's not the way these things worked. What I would say is that I uncovered more compelling circumstantial evidence to support the idea that this could have happened than I could ever have possibly dreamed when I first started.
- [53:21]
B
I. I'm afraid I just, you know, maybe I'm just too invested in the special relationship, but I just. There's something in me which just can't quite bring.
- [53:29]
A
What is it, Gordon? What makes you.
- [53:31]
B
I don't know anymore. I don't know anymore. These days, I'm like the last believer in that there might be something to it. Clearly, who thinks the Americans wouldn't dare do it to us? But now. Now, faced with you two, I'm like, okay, I give up. Well, Gabriel, I think that might be a suitable place to end it, with me giving up on the special relationship in the face of, you know, the circumstantial but, you know, mounting evidence of a CIA plot.
- [53:58]
A
But there's obviously been no tension on the special relationship because of it. Right? I mean, we. Maybe now that Gabriel's done, you know, this fine, fine podcast foul play, there will be some tension, but we're already thinking about invading Greenland, so it's kind of. It's probably going to be overshadowed by much, much larger dynamics, because otherwise this
- [54:15]
B
would be, you know, poisoning. Gordon Banks is about a bigger claim as you can get. I mean, my namesake. So this is a big deal.
- [54:21]
C
That, for me, is the biggest revelation, Gordon, is that you are named after Gordon Banks. And I have a reaction. I have a reaction from his grandson who says. I don't want to misquote him, who says, ha, ha, ha, ha. No way.
- [54:39]
B
Well, there you go.
- [54:40]
A
Thank you, Gabriel, for joining us, and once again want to commend to all of our listeners the incredible podcast Foul Play, which Gabriel has. Has made. It is an audible podcast. I believe it is available wherever you get your podcast. Would. Would heartily commend that to listeners.
- [55:00]
B
Yes, it is a great series from Gabriel. I've already listened to it all the way through. Next time on the Rest is Classified. We're going to start a series on Alexander Litvinenko, skipping forward to 2006, this Russian FSB officer who comes to London and who is killed and the question of who is behind it and whether it is indeed Vladimir Putin. And for club members, we've got something very special. We've got some terrific interviews with people directly involved in that story, including the police officer who led the investigation and Marina Litvinenko, the widow of Alexander Litvinenko. So do join the Rest is Classified Club, the Declassified club@the restisclassified.com if you want that extra content and if you want the ad free listening and be able to listen to all those episodes straight away. But Gabriel, thank you very much for joining us. And to everyone, we'll see you next time.
- [55:53]
A
We'll see you next time.