From: Adam 

Phil Payne wrote:
>> Jeapes, Tony. SAS Secret War. London: Greenhill Books, 2005. (How the
>> British Special Air Service raised and employed irregular tribal forces
>> to counter a communist insurgency in Oman during the 1960s and 1970s.)
>
>> Jeapes & Kitson are both good reads though Kitson leaves out some of the
>> somewhat harsher methods. OK I admit to a leaning towards Jeapes for old
>> times sake
>
> I met Tony in Bangladesh in about 1982.  He's a tall bugger - stands out in
> a crowd.  Drank water out of a bottle he brought with him.  Very polite,
> very quiet.  I've no idea what he was doing there, but as someone said at
> the time: "He never goes anywhere without a reason".
>

Was this before of after the coup?

> I don't know if it's in the book, but one of the techniques he described
> (and I remember it as Aden, not Oman) was a stop and search of a truck.
> While the driver was being "questioned on the bonnet", the
search team went
> through a load of fruit and found a box of grenades.  Rather than make a
> fuss, they just screwed all the fuses down to "no delay". 
There were two
> grenade throwing incidents the next day, and two very dead insurgents.  A
> box of grenades with two missing was found on the police station steps the
> next morning and grenade throwing ceased to be a popular pastime for a
> while.
>

 Indeed.

> I'm amazed he's written a book, but I bet it's 100% authorized.
>
> He also told me a story about the Balcombe Street siege, but I'll leave it
> to his judgement.  If it's in the book, fine.  Their preferred mode of
> transport at the time was a furniture van. A "Hereford cattle truck".
>
>

One of the tactics less covered is the way to mess up a terrorist group....

I'll have to choose my words carefully but in essence a classic terrorist
structure is the "cell" structure where one group/cell only knows
about itself. This helps keep security risks upon capture to a minimum as
you can't divulge wot you don't know.

The second common org point is that of the "shared cache" wherein
weapons are pooled at secret points in overlapping circles i.e. cell A
shares a hide with cell d & another with cell b. B shares with a &
c & c shares with b & d. i.e. multiple hides none of which are
common to more than 2 cells.

The cells are divided so that only some know of one hide & only some
know of another.

The weakness is that if you find a willing person from cell a you can find
at least 1 hide & possibly dependant upon cell security 2 hides.

now the fun begins assuming you can nick a weapon from a common hide shared
with cell d & one from a hide shared with cell b.

you then shoot someone from cell c with one of the weapons &
(possibly...possibly later) someone from group b with a weapon from the
group a-d hide.

Then you replace the weapons in the hides.

& wait for some internecine warfare to break out as group c blames a or
b & group b blames a or d.

of course the local plod can be "unwitting helpers" as their
forensic ppl announce that the weapons used were "IRA guns used
before" & say with murders/shootings they were used in previously
thus giving the "boys" clues as to which of their comrade cells
carried out the hit on them.

Not that this ever happened of course but the name "Four Square
Laundry" comes to mind.


This is the sort of tactic which is oddly missing from most of the
published literature.

Adam

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