David Shayler: snippets from Shaylergate 2000

The Umbrella Murder – and hints at how it was suppressed – was mentioned by Gordon Logan with reference to David Shayler's web site in March 2000:

Lastly, visitors to Shaylergate might like to know that Jane Tienne, the Cambridge lady who was, in her own words 'ruined' after trying to publish a book that merely suggested MI6 involvement in the Markov murder, is now incommunicado. I spoke to her twice. The first time she was animated and spoke freely. The second time, she was frightened. I passed her phone number to a few interested parties, so that they could hear the state that the security services had reduced her to. She was telephoned by some journalists wishing to get hold of a copy of the suppressed book, she refused, and her phone is now dead.


And again in May 2000:

David Connett of the Express is still sitting on the Markov material, apparently trying to get hold of a copy of the book on the Markov murder that MI6 tricked Mrs Markov into taking legal action against to have withdrawn – at a cost of 26,000 quid. The publisher of the book, Jane Tienne of Cambridge, is sitting on 20,000 copies of the book, and is so frightened that she is now incommunicado, except of course, to her relatives and the minders that MI5 have provided to console her in the poverty that they have inflicted on her, and of course to ensure that she doesn’t step out of line again, which is more to the point.


Without wanting to sound paranoid, you can imagine that I found these snippets quite worrying. I contacted Martin Bright after reading this by Gordon Logan:

In Britain, the Home Affairs correspondent of the Observer, Martin Bright, whom I met in December, has told me twice that he was going to publish a substantial article on the Markov murder - once in January and once in March - on both occasions he was pre-empted by Whitehall, which dumped stories on him, thus displacing Markov.

Martin came to see me in early 2003 and he was very interested in what I had to say. He never published that story either.