Churchill's Secret Enemy

JOSEPH BALL - MI5 SPY & APPEASEMENT'S FIXER

Major Sir George Joseph Ball (1885-1961) Confidant and Political Advisor to
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain 1937-1940. He was headhunted out of
career with the British Security Service MI5 to become Deputy of Publicity with
Conservative Central Office in 1927 and then Director of the Conservative Research
Department 1930-45. Ball secretly operated agents in the British Labour and
Liberal Party headquarters, activities described by a retired MI6 Officer in the
London Times as Britain's Watergate. He covertly controlled an anti-jewish journal
called Truth used to character assassinate Chamberlain's opponents such as Winston
Churchill and Anthony Eden. Ball whilst working at MI5 was responsible for the
publication of the forged Zinoviev Letter derived from MI6 intelligence leaked in
breach of the Official Secrets Act and published through the activities of ex-MI5
officer Donald im Thurn. The Letter led to the defeat of Britain's First Labour
Government at the polls in 1924 and the destruction of the British Liberal Party
(as a party of government reducing a national party with 159 MPs to a rump of 40
MPs) with the unseating of Liberal ex-Prime Minister Herbert Asquith. The Letter
led to a massive Conservative landslide, Ball was responsible for covert
operations against the trade unions in the General Strike in 1926 and was shortly
after employed by the Conservative Party. Ball was responsible for the cover-up of
the role of the intelligence agencies and conservatives in the Zinoviev Letter
publication, preventing the truth about the story reaching the media in 1928, 1931
and 1956. His Private papers reveal that he purchased Im Thurn's letters after the
latters death in 1930,and that he had also obtained im Thurn's journal which was
also found in his papers. Having persuaded Guy Kindersley from publishing his book
on the affair in 1956, the truth emerged in the 1966 Sunday Times investigation
which demonstrated the letter was forged. This was upheld in a secret MI5 report
by Millicent Bagot in 1970 following a 3 year investigation and kept out of the
public domain for 29 years until the Bennett Report of 1999 proved the letter was
after all a forgery and named Ball as one of the serving intelligence officers
implicating in it's illegal publication. Joseph Ball then went on to mastermind
the Maundy Gregory Honours scandal cover-up in 1933, and made arrangments for
Gregory be spirited to France after his brief imprisonment to live the high hog in
Paris on secret funds. Ball was a key figure in the 1930's appeasement of Nazi
Germany and Fascist Italy. He sponsored a series of covert backchannels to Nazi
and Fascist Leadership figures. Ball arranged for a British Maltese Lawyer named
Adrian Dingli who he knew from Grays Inn since 1912 to advice the Italian Embassy
in London and become a link to Fascist Italian Ambassador Count Dino Grandi. He
sponsored the Conservative MP Henry Drummond-Wolff to visit Herman Goering in
Berlin in a succession of visits from 1937 to 1939. With the arrival of the Second
World War these links continued with a meeting of pro-peace peers at the Duke of
Westminster's London residence to support a negotiated peace with Nazi Germany.
Whilst Dingli was despatched to Rome in 1940 on a secret mission to Mussolini.
When Dingli attempted to publish details of his mission, his book was seized by
MI5 under the OSA. In a chilling letter to leading appeaser Samuel Hoare in the
1950's BAll described how MI5 dealt with him in the usual manner and described how
Dingli shot himself after being investigated for alleged financial embezzlement.
Ball was an acquaintance of James Bond writer Ian Fleming and whilst at MI5 had
been the Boss to the legendary "M" - the MI5 officer Maxwell Knight. Ball
maintained a strong working relationship with pro-appeasement Press Baron Lord
Kemsley who was an important sponsor of Fleming's career at the Sunday Times. Ball
had been a key adviser to Neville Chamberlain in the events running up to "Plan Z"
the strategy to arrange for the aging Prime Minister to surprise the world by
flying to Germany to meet with Hitler in person. As a political fixer, dirty
tricks expert, spin doctor and a master in black propaganda Ball orchestrated the
secret campaign against Winston Churchill's attempt to resist appeasement. He
coordinated the campaign via Conservative Central Office to see Churchill
deselected in his Epping Constituency follow the latters brave and unpopular
opposition to Munich. He arranged for a smear campaign in 1939 which effectively
blocked Churchill's entry to the cabinet prior to september 1939 which might have
sent the clear signal of British intend to resist Nazi aggression. He boasted to
Munich rebel Ronald Tree that he had bugged his telephone. In June 1939 Ball met
with the anti-semitic Right Club leader Archibald Ramsay at the Carlton club to
hear evidence of a supposed Judeo-Masonic Conspiracy against Neville Chamberlain
and invited Ramsay to collect further evidence which in 1940 led to White Russian
German Spy Anna Wolkoff using American Diplomat Tyler Kent to spy on Churchill's
secret communications with US President Franklin Roosevelt. Wolkoff and Ramsay
were interned under the DR I8B legislation dealing with British Faccists whilst
Tyler Kent was imprisoned by the USA. Ball's anti-semitic editor of Truth, Henry
Newnham attended clandestine pro-peace meetings with far right figures such as
Ramsay, Admiral Domvile and Oswald Mosley but but escaped internment and
prosecution. After the Fall of Chamberlain in May 1940, Ball was appointed at
Chamberlain's insistance on the Home Defence Security Executive as Deputy Chairman
under appeaser Lord Swinton in opposition to Winston Churchill's wishes. Ball was
given overarching supervision of both MI5 and MI6 following the dismissal of MI5
founder Sir Vernon Kell by Churchill. He exerted dominance through his
Chairmanship of the Secuity Intelligence Centre and saw the appointment of his
friend Sir William Crocker causing alarm in MI5.

More to follow.....