Former MI5 & MI6 Legal Director Looks Back at His Time in Cold War Berlin (449)

31:32The West Berliners couldn't handle an aircraft coming into West Berlin. They couldn't deal with any matter related to that. It was entirely for the Allies. So they set up this military court, and they introduced a judge from America to run it. The American judge, he was extremely interesting because the first thing he did was to say, you can't have a military court to deal with. There's got to be a civilian court. And if it's a civilian court, the first thing you must do is to have a jury. And it will have to be a jury of German West Berliners.

32:05David Bickford:So the first thing that happens is, of course, you have no real military court. You're having a civil court in Berlin. The next thing this judge did was to say the girlfriend had made a statement admitting hijacking. And she said, well, she wasn't given the usual warnings that would be given if she was in America. Therefore, her confession is ruled out. So she was released immediately. Of course, he presented the case to the West Berlin jury as the rights of Tida to come over from this awful communist state. And were they really going to convict him of hijacking? So they didn't convict him of hijacking, but they did convict him, I think, of brandishing a weapon.

32:59he was sentenced to time served and the interesting end story of that was the very next day

33:09David Bickford:my wife was on the West Berlin committee for the International Bar Association there was a huge meeting of the international the world's international lawyers coming into Berlin She was on the committee and we were invited to the evening reception to welcome all the international lawyers. Guess who served our table? Tida. He'd been immediately hired as a waiter. And that was an extraordinary life one led in Berlin. Wow, that's a brilliant story, that one. Before you came to Berlin, you must have had to do a lot of homework about all the legal agreements and how Berlin worked. Or did you pick that up as you went along when you were there?

33:58One knew about the Quadripartite Agreement, which had been set up in 1971, to try and calm life down, to make some rules as to how the corridors were to be run, what the relationship between East Germany and West Germany were, despite the fact that East Germany was never recognised as a state. So it was a very curious Alice in Wonderland agreement. So one had to familiarize oneself to a certain extent with that. But nothing really prepared oneself for what happened day to day. In the air corridors, for instance, aircraft had to fly at 10 ,000 feet if they were coming in from the west to Berlin.

34:46There was a very narrow corridor, about 20 kilometers wide, if I remember rightly. so they had to stick within that corridor if they strayed either left or right then they'd be buzzed by Russian military aircraft there was a an organization called the Berlin Air Safety Committee and that was housed in a building where the Russians the Americans the British and the French all operated together as air traffic controllers and as the policymakers for running the corridors. The Russians are quite often at the last minute, say we're having a Russian military aircraft exercise, therefore your aircraft have to travel higher because we're going to run it at 10 ,000 feet.

35:33Well, that would cause problems because that could cause delays at one end of the corridor or the other. That used to occur quite frequently. And of course, the other problem was that a number of aircraft were sent out to actually survey what was going on either side of the corridor. And if they strayed too far either side of the corridor to take their photographs or conduct their surveillance, then of course, the Russian military aircraft would come piling in and buzz them. And yeah, it was an interesting time, particularly at the time of the Afghan war. Absolutely. I thought that the Soviets had pulled out somewhat out of the four power meetings after the Berlin airlift.

36:27Yes, that was before my time, and it was partly that problem that created the need for the 1971 quadripartite agreement. Difficulties were unresolved. They relied on wartime agreements that had been made in haste, very vague provisions in them. For instance, there was a wonderful story of a border dispute up in Qatar, which was where the British had an airport. It was in the British sector. And the Russians claimed that the border was about 100 meters further into the British sector than we decided. And they had a number of disputes over this, guards clashing with each other. That was before the wall actually went up.

37:20The dispute was resolved one very hard winter when the snow was down, and the two commanders of either side met up, and they decided the best way to resolve this dispute was to paint a whole load of stones white and to put them down in the snow. Brilliant. Brilliant. Yeah. Nice bit of ambiguity then. Berlin was full of ambiguity, yes. The legal situation was Alice in Wonderland. Everything was smoothed over with words that could mean two things. Yeah, because I remember there was this weird bit of land in the British sector near Potsdamer Platz, the Lena Triangle, which was in the British zone but was East German territory.

38:14But the East Germans hadn't built the wall around it because it would have made a really weird shape. It was a bit of a no-man's land and there were squatters living there because it wasn't really owned by anybody. Yeah, that was a very typical Berlin situation. I mean, for instance, going through the wall, the checkpoint Charlie, which divided East Berlin from West Berlin, was an incredible experience. because West Berlin at that time, as I said earlier, was a showcase. Bright lights, neon signs, people bustling busy, very busy in the sense that it sounds a bit dramatic, but in a sense they were living for the day.

39:06It wasn't real in the sense that one expected the Russian tanks to come in any minute. That wasn't the case. It was the fact that the West Berliners felt very much that they represented the free West. They have a very strong feeling about that. And they made sure that the shops were full, that people could buy what they wanted, that they could show the East Berliners exactly what capitalism was like, what they were missing. when one went to checkpoint charlie one went through the checkpoint on on the allied side and you crossed it over and in front of you was the a barrier and then beyond that was the wall the solid block of wall goonie towers looking down and guards in a sort of guard hut that looked over you, at night searchlights coming down onto your vehicle as you went through.

40:20You crossed over the killing zone and you reached East Berlin. And there you met the East German border guards. They would check your documents. And we had, civilians had orange cards. They were called orange cards. I still have mine. You weren't allowed to talk to these German guards. So you were sitting while they, in your car, they would come up to you. They'd have rifles, weapons, gunitas, searchlights. And you'd hold your card up to the window of your car. And they would look at it to determine whether it was you. They'd look at you, look at your card, the photo on your card. Quite often they'd take time.

41:07They'd walk around your car looking at it, looking underneath it. I remember on one occasion, a colleague of mine was driving, and he had his card up at the window, and the guard refused to acknowledge it.

41:21David Bickford:And we sat there. He wasn't going to talk to the guard. The guard wasn't going to talk to him. And he just looked at it, and we just sat there. If one got into real problems, one wasn't allowed to talk to the East German guards. You had to ask for a Russian officer. That was all you could say to them, a Russian officer. Then you would deal with the Russian to sort out whatever problem the guard might have. Anyway, finally, the guard pointed at the window and made a circular motion with his finger. And my friend looked at his card and he saw it was upside down. So here you have this. that that's the epitome of the alice in wonderland situation in berlin you got that horror of going through the war because it was very eerie you went into to east berlin there was no light at night you had sparse street lamps there was no advertising there were no shops of course just the government shops very few people walking in the streets there was an immediate feeling of fear and it was more than psychological it was tangible the East Berliners would not approach your car they'd hardly look at it when you were driving through the feeling of oppression was quite staggering yeah get business done with the new American Express Graphite Business Cash Unlimited card.

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43:57I vividly remember crossing through Checkpoint Charlie. I can remember all the details. And also I went through Friedrichstraße as well when I was in Berlin. I wanted to try all the crossings that I was valid for just to get my money's worth out of the full experience.

44:16Now, one of the odd things about Berlin is each side could patrol the other side's sectors. So you had these things called flag tours. Yeah. And did you go on one of these for sort of like acclimatisation or just seeing what was going on? Yes, I did. Civilians were meant to go out on flag tours. And these were Range Rovers that were black. They had the British flag on them, number plate. and they were permitted to go into East Berlin to tour around, literally to show the flag, because the essence of Berlin was, as far as the Allies were concerned, that it was a free city. Everybody was allowed to go anywhere.

45:05But because of the wall, the West Berliners had to have permission and very difficult for them to get across. But we insisted on having our flag to The Russians had flag tours as well. They used to come over. I went on a number of flag tours, really to see what it was like, go out to the border with East Germany and just creep across just to see what would happen. And the flag tour officers were obviously more than that. They were looking out for stuff that they wanted to find. Then on the other hand, there were the missions into East Germany, which were a totally different matter. They were run by an organization called Bricksmith.

45:55The French had a mission as well, and the Americans had a mission. But these were missions to show that the Allies had freedom in East Germany as well. But of course, those operations were very much intelligence-seeking operations, and I have to say personnel who conducted those operations were incredible. Not only were they expert at undercover work, but they had an enormous amount of courage. They'd go out and they would go right up to the Russian areas, seeking out where their military were, what sort of tanks they had, finding out as much information as they could about the Russian military capability.

46:41yeah very brave yeah the French and the US had personnel in their military liaison missions killed on some of those patrols the British not there but yeah very brave the British were just brilliant at it I think that's rather like their intelligence agencies they are absolutely brilliant you would say that wouldn't you David but yes I would agree with you there I've interviewed a number of Bricksmiths personnel and their stories are phenomenal, as are yours, David, as well. If you'd like to hear more about Bricksmiths and the other Allied military liaison missions, there'll be a link in the episode information.

47:28So the flag tours could only patrol East Berlin, but Bricksmiths had that wider remit where they could patrol all of East Germany as long as it wasn't one of these agreed restricted areas. Agreed restricted areas, yes. And of course, those are the ones that they'd crawl into. Absolutely. I think your wife had a bit of an incident with the East German border guards with your son. Could you just explain that situation?

47:57David Bickford:You would bring that up, wouldn't you? My wife's never forgiven me, actually.

48:04Yeah, my son, he was the one that was with us in Berlin at that time. As I say, he was about six, seven. He was invited over to East Berlin to a friend of his in the East Berlin embassy. and the problem was that my wife would take him over drop him off in East Berlin and then come back without him going across the border of course one of the things that the East German border guards were absolutely hot on was to make absolutely sure that anybody who went across came back and the number of people who went across into East Berlin also came back into West Berlin and vice versa, that one didn't take someone across who hadn't gone out.

48:50Her problem was how to leave my son in East Berlin, come back by herself, and then go back and collect him and bring him back. The first time she left him, she came across to the border, and there were the guards. they stopped her peered into the car and then they brought guards all the way around the car and surrounded her and she was held there for about 20 minutes with these guards and they finally let her go so the next day

49:32David Bickford:she was a bit worried but nothing like that really fusses her she's brilliant And she goes over and she brings my son back. This time they let her through the first part of the checkpoint and then halted her right in the middle of no man's land. And that time they kept her there for an hour as they kept her under guard searchlights, because it was at night, searchlights absolutely on the car. Finally, they let her go. And the first thing she did was to come straight to my office. I was there with my American and French legal advisor opposite numbers. And she came in and she said she told us what would happen.

50:15And we said, this is very good because we wondered what would happen.

50:18David Bickford:She never forgave me for that. So she was the guinea pig for testing out some legal theory there. Yeah, absolutely. To see exactly what would happen. So, yeah. Brilliant. French are often forgotten about as being one of the occupying powers in West Berlin. What would they like to work with? Very good, yeah. In fact, my opposite number, he came from Strasbourg. There was a lot of German within his family anyway, and he had that very interesting mix of French-German. He was very good indeed. He'd been in Berlin for years and years. normally with the americans and ourselves we were posted out for two or three years to do a posting there but he'd been there for a number of years and was well used to all the situations so if one got into really hot water the first thing one did was to get hold of pierre and say here what was your experience back when when he'd come up with the answers yes the french were great.

51:23And I mean, that was always interesting because every year there was an Allied parade. The Americans was the 4th of July, the French were 14 years, and we were on the Queen's birthday. So we had military parades in Berlin.

51:41David Bickford:And of course, the military all tried to outdo each other in terms of their smartness and the vehicles and men that they had on parade. The French were always very keen to make sure that they were up with everybody else. And I remember one occasion, they brought in some parachute troops. And they had three of them jump over West Berlin, which was quite remarkable, given the fact that nobody was allowed to fly over West Berlin. And all three of them landed absolutely directly in front of the French Commandant. So I don't think anyone ever beat that for an Allied parade. It was also part and parcel of making sure that the West Berliners knew that we were there to protect them and to fight for them in their real hardship of trying to see their families over in East Berlin, trying to keep their businesses going with goods and transit coming up and down the corridors, doing their business via flights in and out.

52:56So it was very important to keep in very close contact with the West Berliners. And part of that was why we had these representational houses so that one would meet with the West Berliners, find out their problems and talk with them. And the Allied parades were very important from that perspective. What would the Americans like to work with? Great. So often people think, you know, American military can be hard, but we never came across that at all. They were very sure of themselves, the Americans. They were equally as responsive to the Russians as anyone else. I remember one reception. I've forgotten when they had it.

53:42It was during the detente with the Russians after the Afghan war, because they also started to get into detente. and they had an afternoon cocktail party and it was a time when the americans were going through a cutback so instead of the normal champagne glass it was zekt in berlin a sort of equivalent champagne they had these plastic glasses where you had the stems separated from the tops and the russians were all invited i still have a photograph actually of it the russians were all invited and they were very day-tourned.

54:23David Bickford:Everybody was very friendly, welcoming. Everybody trying to get on with each other again. The Russians were slightly nervous and they were twisting these glasses in their hands. One by one, the stem separated from the bowl. They just walked out. They thought this was the Americans winding them up. It took quite a long time for the Americans to get the Russians to understand this was a cutback problem, not a policy problem. Wow. Wow. Diplomatic incident over plastic champagne glasses. Absolutely. It was so Berlin. It was the bizarre part of Berlin. Yeah. Yeah. Brilliant. Because I think that incident features in one of your books that I've been reading, but I think you assign it to the British rather than to the Americans in there.

55:14David Bickford:Yes, I did. Yes. I thought that would be more diplomatic to assign it to the British. But now we know the truth. Now you know the truth, yes. Were you ever involved in any sort of disciplinary issues with the British troops or incidents that you had to deal with? Well, the actual discipline was left to the army and they had their own army legal advisors there. But we did get involved from time to time. There was one classic occasion when one of the soldiers up in Gatow had taken an army personnel carrier, smashed through the hangar doors, and driven down the main route towards the wall. well they'd sent out the british had sent out the mps to try and stop him and he ran straight over the mp van that put itself across the road straight through them fortunately no one was killed careered on down the heerstrasse the germans sent out two police cars he went straight through them finally we were getting really worried because he was heading straight for the wall and there was no indication he was going to stop.

56:32We were getting prepared because this was again nighttime. I was woken up and we were discussing how exactly we were going to approach the Russians about this to warn them what was going to happen and not to open fire on him as he came through. Finally, the West German police managed to get about half a dozen of their police guards in place. they'd formed a V echelon and gradually put on their brakes and just slowed him down and he finally had to stop

57:03David Bickford:so the MPs were raised to the spot and immediately arrested him and of course the first question was why on earth did he do it he said I was trying to get home to mummy which showed the sort of state he was in his court-martial was quite interesting actually because one of the questions that was put to him was why he smashed through the hangar doors instead of just opening them up. And he said, I thought I'd make too much noise. It was a typical Berlin, again, totally bizarre situation that could have created something really serious going through the wall. The East German guards would certainly have opened fire unless we managed to get the Russians to stop it.

57:49Absolutely. I was researching a similar incident in 1974 where apparently a US soldier drove a patent tank through into East Berlin or East Germany. It wasn't clear from the news reports, but yeah, it could have been, as you say, it could well have been a really serious incident. We were talking, and it seems like quite a while back, about Spandau, and I'd like to talk to you about prisoner number seven, Rudolf Hess. So this is Hitler's deputy Führer in there. He was sentenced to death at the Nuremberg trials, but it was commuted to life imprisonment. That was interesting. Hess was Hitler's deputy, and he'd flown over to England in 1941 to try and get the Brits to reach some accommodation with Hitler prior to Hitler going in and invading Russia.

58:45Hess had actually co-written Mein Kampf with Hitler when they were in prison after the Munich Putsch so he was totally responsible for the atrocities that the Nazis committed even though he wasn't actually in Berlin or in the dictatorship during most of the war. The Russians wanted to sentence him to death at the Nuremberg trials. But because he'd actually come over to Britain, we wanted to commute that to life imprisonment. So the Russians said, well, have him in prison, but he will stay there for life. And that's exactly what they did. They refused to let him out. We continually made representations to the Russians to release him, but they wouldn't do it.

59:37now spander was another curious place as i said earlier it was this 600 personnel prison absolutely empty except for this set of cells that that hess was kept in and there were the prison was administered by the four powers the russians the brits the americans and the French. And each month, the guard was changed. Military guard going into the prison every month, formal sort of military handover. And the warders were the same. There were Russian warders to deal with him and British warders. The governors were in charge. The lawyers were also in charge. And we used to meet up in Spandau to discuss the problems of Hess, for instance, the visits by his widow and his son.

1:00:40He quite often had illness, and he would have to be transported to the British military hospital, which was in the same sector as Spandau. That in itself was absolutely bizarre, because all the governors had to go with Hess to the hospital. So you had four governor's cars, plus the military escort for Hess, plus the vehicle in which Hess was with the warders alongside him.

1:01:09David Bickford:You had this sort of column of cars going from Spandau prison to the British military hospital to take him to have his treatment. Absolutely bizarre. The Russians were very difficult about it. They didn't want him to be outside prison at all. They had curtains in his vehicle, so he couldn't see out, he couldn't see anything. I remember that on one occasion, he'd been particularly unwell, and he'd been in hospital for some time, and he was lying in bed, and said that he really needed to have some sort of walkabout, that the hospital roof was flat. So I took him up to the hospital roof for a walkabout.

1:01:58And it was the first time he'd seen Berlin since he left Berlin in 1941. It was quite extraordinary. I got into most enormous trouble with the Russians over that, and they actually cut out his visits for a number of months, but we managed to persuade them in the end to have them back. But they hated him, and he wasn't actually there when Hitler invaded Russia. They knew that Mein Kampf had already predicted that's what Hitler wanted to do, so Hess was absolutely in favour of that. But he didn't want the Brits to still be at war with Nazi Germany when they went into Russia, because I think he foresaw the problems that would happen if Germany had to fight on two fronts.

1:02:52Did he comment at all about the skyline when he went up on the hospital roof? Yes, he knew what the American satellite dishes were for and listening dishes, because he was keen on astronomy and also was very up on satellite communication, space. And that intrigued him. But he knew exactly what they were for, exactly what they were for. He was an extraordinary man. He died in the war Nazi. He hadn't changed one bit. When I first went in to see him, he was sitting down. He was struggling to get up because he was well into his 80s then, and I went to help him, and he stopped me, and he said, no, I'll do it myself.

1:03:37Spoke very good English. He had his window open in his cell, slept with just a sheet. He was fanatical about his health, although, you know, the problems with it. And I remember on one occasion, all his television programs were vetted. He wasn't allowed to see anything about Germany, the Nazis. But he had one evening seen one about the gypsies, which had slipped through, and asked what he thought of that programme. He said, gypsies, pa! You haven't changed one iota. Did you have any other sort of exchanges with him? Did you get any? I can't imagine he was much into small talk, to be fair. No, not at all.

1:04:26No. No one wasn't allowed to talk to him about the Nazi era or anything like that. It was a question of making sure that if he was ill, our job is to make absolutely sure that the Russians would agree to him being taken to hospital. They treated him extraordinarily badly, of course, when they were in, during their month. And they were very difficult about Hess. Meetings with the Russians in Spandau were very difficult. Although I think the Russian governor, once you'd left business, the Russian governor became, as it were, a sort of mother Russia Russian. Although you dealt with them very carefully indeed, one was able to get on to a sort of much more personal relationship with the Russians.

1:05:18And yeah, he was a very interesting guy. I remember when we left Berlin, my wife and I, we had a big reception and we invited the Russians to it to say farewell. And he knew I had three sons. He came up to me and he gave me a bag wrapped in brown newspaper and I opened it up and there were three Russian soldiers' belts for your children, he said. That was the curious thing about the Russians. I like them enormously. And it's just sad that one has to treat them with a long spoon. I wrote a little song to remind you, Choice Hotels gets you more of the experiences you value. The Cambria Hotel's got it all.

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1:07:03You couldn't see more than about 10, 20 feet in front of you. And those fogs used to clamp down on East Germany, that flat wet land. We really found it very difficult to find our way. And we came up behind a lorry, one of the old East German lorries of battered and smoke pouring up, and followed him. One of the problems we had, of course, was we knew at some stage he was going to come off the motorway before we came up to checkpoint bravo and knowing that we weren't allowed to come off the motorway at all it was quite hairy making sure that we could follow him but at the same time make sure we didn't follow him off the motorway suddenly he started to turn left and we wondered is this the right turning or not.

1:07:53And we were beginning to think perhaps it is right. And then his arm came out of the window and he waved us on to go straight.

1:08:02David Bickford:Which you think, here's an East German. The thing that he would normally have done in one's own mind was to have actually led you off the motorway and got you into trouble. But no, here was this guy, knew we were all in trouble in this dreadful fog and helped us out. Wonderful. That's a great story. Great story. I guess some of these fogs were due to the lignite coal that they were using. And a number of people say there was quite a unique smell around Berlin from this coal, because obviously smoke doesn't respect international borders. No, absolutely not. And the East Germans used lignite, a cheap, cheap coal.

1:08:44The Westworld owners had to import theirs. But that lignite coal was horrific. It would bilge yellow out of the chimneys and it would flood over Berlin. Curiously enough, I developed a sore throat and it lasted months. And in the end, Carrie said, look, you've got to go and see a doc about this. I went to the doc at the military hospital and he looked at me and he said, I noticed you sitting there. You're a mouth breather. You breathe through your mouth. He said, what you're doing

1:09:14David Bickford:is you're breathing in all the lignite. He said, no wonder you've got a sore throat. He said, you've just got to get on with it. So that was that. But it was absolutely horrific. And of course, with that lignite pouring over West Berlin as well as the East were the crows. One of the odd things about Berlin that one remembers are the crows. They used to circle around West Berlin because there was nothing over in East Berlin to come, but the heat in West Berlin kept them circling. One of the really amusing things was every Christmas Boxing Day, the military wing of the military government and the civilian wing of the military government met in the snow for a hockey match where we played with a football and hockey sticks the british commandant military of course had to play one half for the army and one half for the british military government and i remember he suffered an absolutely immense collision and was flattened in the middle of the field was crowded around him as he recovered and he opened his eyes and he looked up above him in horror he said oh my god he said it's the end Of course, he'd seen all these crows circling around him.

1:10:36David Bickford:Brilliant.

1:10:41Now, you've taken some of the experiences that you had in Berlin into some books that you've written. Can you just explain why you decided to branch into fiction? Yeah, sure. We've done a lot of work on money laundering around the world. and suddenly my granddaughter she was i think about 10 then at school had been doing james bond for her english lessons quite why i'm not quite sure but anyway she'd she'd told her teacher that her grandfather was actually a spy and her teacher had said you can't tell these sort of stories

1:11:22David Bickford:this isn't right so she told me this and i said well hang on i said i'll make sure that this is all put right now if you like i'll come down and talk to your school about spies and the head teacher thought it was quite interesting so anyway i go down and i talk to them about spies and carrie and i went when we left we thought do you know something it's very interesting because of women in in in the spy fiction there aren't too many of them and why don't we write about a woman in spy fiction? Then we thought, of course, let's do something really different and let's have a Russian. So we set up the world of Katya as a Russian spy.

1:12:09And again, I've always been interested in that period between 1989 and about 2010, 2015, when there was that period of glasnost, perestroika, where we were beginning to get together with Russia, the West and Russia were beginning to get together. There was actually hope on the horizon that we might all get on. Economies were moving. But then on the other hand, of course, you had the mafias growing in Russia, you had all the capital flight coming out of Russia, and the problems started beginning to develop. We thought that in order to create that period, we would have an international intelligence agency that included the Russians, the Brits, the Americans, French.

1:12:57So Katya became an agent in that intelligence agency, which we called the G8, because at that time, the eight countries, including Russia, were part of the G8 Economic International Organization. So that was how Katya was born. And we wrote a trilogy of Katya's adventures. And then we decided that it would be very interesting to write about Lesky was Katya's immediate Russian boss. So we decided to write a story about how Lev Leviaski worked in Berlin before he ever met Kaccha. Although actually he meets Kaccha in this book because she's aged six at that time. But Lev Leviaski is a political advisor in Berlin opposite the American political advisor.

1:13:53The story's built around the Afghan war. Lev Leviasky, Russia is what he lives for. He's not really in favor of the communist regime. He has to go along with it for as long as he can so that eventually he can build what he sees as Mother Russia for the Russians. He wants to get his wife out of East Germany, East Berlin, into West Berlin. The American has a girlfriend in East Berlin. He wants to get her out into West Berlin. So what we have is this clash between the two over the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, but at the same time, can they get together to make a deal that each one can get the other out of East Berlin into the West.

1:14:51And that's what the story is about, and it's called Cold Protocol. Right, and I'll be adding links to these books in the episode information so people can explore those and buy those. David, is there anything that we've missed out about your experiences in West and East Berlin? No, I think we've covered it pretty well, and thank you very much because you've been absolutely great.

1:15:20David Bickford:Your questions have really led me on, which is really you, because it was a long time ago and memories can fade. But memories of Berlin are pretty stark, actually, I think. Yeah. No, it's been very kind of you. I've enjoyed it thoroughly. It's been a pleasure speaking with you. And yeah, it's been great fun. Loved listening to your stories. And I know the listeners will love them as well. so thank you very much for coming on Cold War Conversations thank you very much Ian it's been a real pleasure thank you the episode extras such as videos photos and other content are available via a link in the episode information the podcast wouldn't exist without the generous efforts of our financial supporters and I'd like to thank one and all of them for keeping the podcast on the road the cold war conversation continues in our facebook discussion group just search for cold war conversations in facebook thanks very much for listening and look forward to seeing you next week

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