Sidney George Reilly - Crypto-Jew: Inspired Ian Fleming's "James Bond"

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Sidney George Reilly


Lieutenant Sidney George Reilly, MC[1] (c. March 24, 1873/1874 – November 5, 1925), famously known as the Ace of Spies, was a Jewish Russian- or Ukrainian-born adventurer and secret agent employed by Scotland Yard, the British Secret Service Bureau and later the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS).[2] He is alleged to have spied for at least four nations.[3] His notoriety during the 1920s was created in part by his friend, British diplomat and journalist Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, who sensationalised their thwarted operation to overthrow the Bolshevik government in 1918.[4]

After Reilly's death, the London Evening Standard published in May, 1931, a Master Spy serial glorifying his exploits. Later, Ian Fleming would use Reilly as a model for James Bond. Today, many historians consider Reilly to be the first 20th century super-spy.[2] Much of what is known about him could be false, as Reilly was a master of deception.


Origins and youth

The origins, identities, and activities of Sidney George Reilly have befuddled researchers and intelligence agencies for more than a century; hence, much of his purported life and many of his notorious exploits should be cautiously examined. Reilly himself told several versions of his origins to confuse and mislead investigators. Reilly claimed to be the son of (a) an Irish merchant seaman, (b) an Irish clergyman, and (c) an aristocratic landowner and habitué of the Imperial court of Czar Alexander III of Russia.

Apparently, Reilly was born Georgi Rosenblum in Odessa, then a Black Sea port of the Russian Empire (now Ukraine), on March 24, 1874 (Lockhart 1986); however, other theories of Reilly's birthplace and origins exist. In Ace of Spies: The True Story of Sidney Reilly (pg. 28), author Andrew Cook states Reilly was born on March 24, 1873, in the Jewish Kherson gubernia of Czarist Russia, as Salomon (Shlomo) Rosenblum, and later that "Sidney Reilly" was the illegitimate son of Paulina (Perla), his acknowledged mother, and Dr. Mikhail Abramovich Rosenblum, the trusted first cousin of Reilly's putative father, Grigory (Hersh) Rosenblum (Cook 2004).

 Early life
An 1880s portrait of Salomon Rosenblum photographed in his youth, one of the few that exist.

According to Reilly, in 1892, the Imperial Russian Secret Police (Czarist Ochrana) arrested him for being a messenger for the Friends of Enlightenment revolutionary group. When he was released, Grigory (Reilly's assumed father) told him that his mother, Paulina, was dead, and that his true, biological father was her Jewish doctor, Mikhail A. Rosenblum. Re-christening himself Sigmund Rosenblum, he faked his death in Odessa Harbour and stowed away aboard a British ship bound for South America (Lockhart 1986).

In Brazil, Reilly adopted the name Pedro and worked odd jobs: dock worker, road mender, plantation laborer, and in 1895, cook for a British intelligence expedition (Deacon 1987). Allegedly Reilly saved both the expedition and the life of Major Charles Fothergill when hostile natives attacked them. Reilly seized a British officer's pistol and with expert, single-hand marksmanship killed the attacking natives (Cook 2004). Appropriately for a fantastic story, Major Fothergill rewarded Reilly with £1,500, a British passport, and passage to Britain. There Reilly became Sidney Rosenblum (Lockhart 1986).

Evidence asserted in Andrew Cook's Ace of Spies: The True Story of Sidney Reilly (pg. 32) contradicts the aforementioned Brazilian scenario and declares the British expedition incident to be unsubstantiated. Cook states that the arrival of Sidney Reilly in London in December 1895 was via France and prompted by Reilly's unscrupulous acquisition of a large sum of money in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, a residential suburb of Paris, necessitating a hasty flight. According to Cook, Reilly and a Russian accomplice, Yan Voitek, waylaid two Italian anarchists on December 25, 1895, and robbed them of a substantial amount of revolutionary funds. One anarchist's throat was cut; the other, Constant Della Cassa, died from knife wounds in Fontainebleau Hospital three days later. By the time Della Cassa's death appeared in the newspapers, police had learned that one of the assailants, whose physical description matched Reilly's, was already en route to England. Reilly's accomplice, Voitek, would later relate this incident and his other dealings with Reilly to the British Secret Intelligence Service (Cook 2004).

Regardless of whether Reilly arrived in England via Brazil or France, Reilly was residing under the name of Sigmund Rosenblum at the Albert Mansions, a prestigious apartment block in Rosetta Street, Waterloo, London, in early 1896 (Cook 2004). Now settled in England, Reilly created the Ozone Preparations Company, which peddled miracle cures. Because of his knowledge of languages, Reilly became a paid informant for the émigré intelligence network of William Melville, superintendent of Scotland Yard's Special Branch and, according to Cook, later the clandestine head of the British Secret Service Bureau,[6] which was founded in 1909.[7]

 In London: 1890s

In 1897, Sidney Reilly was involved in the sudden and suspicious death of the elderly Reverend Hugh Thomas. It has been verified that Reilly had a torrid affair with Thomas' youthful wife, Margaret Callaghan, just prior to Thomas' demise (Cook 2004).

Reilly, identifying himself as Sigmund Rosenblum, first met Thomas in London via Reilly's Ozone Preparations Company. Thomas had a kidney inflammation and was intrigued by the miracle cures peddled by Reilly. Thomas introduced Rosenblum to his young wife at his Manor House, and an affair between the two developed over the next six months (Cook 2004).

On March 4, 1898, Thomas altered his will and appointed Margaret as an executor. A week after the making of the new will, Reverend Thomas and his nurse arrived at Newhaven Harbour Station. On March 12, 1898, in that same hotel, Reverend Thomas was found dead in his bed. A mysterious Dr. T.W. Andrew, who matched the physical description of Sidney Reilly, appeared on the scene to certify Thomas' death as generic influenza and, signing the relevant documents, proclaimed that there was no need for an inquest. Records indicate that no Dr. T.W. Andrew existed in Great Britain circa 1897 (Cook 2004). Margaret Callaghan insisted Thomas' body be ready for burial a mere day and a half after his death. Six weeks later, Margaret inherited about £800,000. The Metropolitan Police did not investigate Dr. T.W. Andrew, nor did they investigate the nurse Margaret had hired, even though the nurse was previously linked to the arsenic poisoning of a former employer (Cook 2004).

Four months later, on August 22, 1898, Reilly married Margaret Callaghan Thomas. The two witnesses at the ceremony were Charles Richard Cross and Joseph Bell. Bell was an Admiralty clerk, while Charles Cross was a government official. Both eventually married daughters of Henry Freeman Pannett, a close associate of William Melville. The marriage brought not only the wealth Reilly desired but provided a pretext to discard Sigmund Rosenblum and, with the help of Melville, assume the identity of Sidney George Reilly, husband of Margaret Thomas Reilly. This new identity was the key to achieving his desire to return to Czarist Russia and voyage to the Far East (Cook 2004).

 Czarist Russia and the Far East
A ukiyoe print of the night attack on Port Arthur by the Japanese Navy. The surprise attack was allegedly made possible by the intelligence gathering of Sidney Reilly and Ho-Liang-Shung.
"    [Sidney Reilly's role] is one of the unsolved riddles about the Russo-Japanese War.[8]
—Professor Ian H. Nish, London School of Economics[9]    "

In June 1899, Sidney Reilly and his first wife Margaret Callaghan Thomas traveled to Czarist Russia using Reilly's new British passport—a cover identity purportedly created by William Melville (Cook 2004). While Margaret remained in St. Petersburg, Reilly is alleged to have reconnoitered the Caucasus for its oil deposits and compiled a resource prospectus as part of "The Great Game." He reported his findings to the British government which paid him for completing the assignment. In early 1901, Reilly and his wife voyaged from Port Said, Egypt, across the globe to the Far East (Lockhart 1986).

Shortly before the Russo-Japanese War, Reilly appeared in Port Arthur, Manchuria, as a double-agent serving both the British and the Japanese interests (Deacon 1987). As the Russian-controlled Port Arthur lay under the ever-darkening specter of Japanese invasion, Reilly and business partner Moisei (Moses) Akimovich Ginsburg turned the precarious situation to their financial benefit. They purchased enormous amounts of food, raw materials, medicine, and coal—and made a small fortune as war profiteers (Cook 2004).

Reilly would have an even greater success in January 1904, when he and a Chinese engineer acquaintance, Ho-Liang-Shung, allegedly stole the Port Arthur harbor defense plans for the Japanese Navy. Guided by these stolen plans, the Japanese Navy navigated through the Russian minefield protecting the harbor and launched a surprise attack on Port Arthur. Yet the stolen plans did not help the Japanese much. More than 31,000 Russians ultimately perished defending Port Arthur, but Japanese losses were much higher, losses that nearly undermined their war effort (Cook 2004).

Historian Winfried Ludecke suggests that upon leaving Port Arthur, Manchuria, Reilly voyaged to Imperial Japan in the company of an unknown mistress. If Reilly did visit Japan, presumably to receive espionage pay, he could not have stayed very long, for by June 1904 Reilly appeared in Paris, France (Cook 2004). During the brief time Reilly spent in Paris, he renewed his close acquaintance with William Melville, the first Director General of MI5, whom Reilly had last seen in 1899 just prior to his departure from London. Reilly's meeting with Melville is most significant, for within a matter of weeks Melville was to use Reilly's expertise in what would later become known as The D'Arcy Affair (Lockhart 1986).

 D'Arcy Affair

In 1904, the Board of the Admiralty projected that petroleum would supplant coal as the primary source of fuel for the Royal Navy. During their investigation, the British Admiralty learned that William Knox D'Arcy—who later founded the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) in April 1909—had obtained a valuable concession from the Persian government regarding the oil rights in southern Persia and that D'Arcy was negotiating a similar concession from the Turkish Government for oil rights in Mesopotamia. The British Admiralty purportedly initiated efforts to entice D'Arcy to sell his newly acquired oil rights to the British Government rather than the French de Rothschilds (Lockhart 1986).

In Reilly: Ace of Spies, Robin Bruce Lockhart repeats one of Reilly's oft-recited tales of how, at the British Admiralty's request, Reilly located William Knox D'Arcy in the south of France and clandestinely approached him in disguise. According to Reilly, he boarded Lord de Rothschild's yacht attired as a Catholic priest and secretly persuaded D'Arcy to terminate negotiations with the French Rothschilds and return to London to meet with the British Admiralty (Lockhart 1986). Biographer Andrew Cook is skeptical about Reilly's involvement in the D'Arcy Affair, for in February 1904, Reilly was purportedly still in Port Arthur, Manchuria. Cook further claims that it was Reilly's intelligence chief, William Melville, and a British intelligence officer, Henry Curtis Bennett, who undertook the D'Arcy assignment (Cook 2004).

Although the extent of his involvement in the D'Arcy Affair is unknown, it has been verified that Reilly stayed in the French Riviera on the Côte d'Azur after the incident—a location very near the Rothschild yacht. After conclusion of the D'Arcy Affair, Reilly journeyed to Brussels, and shortly thereafter, in January 1905, he arrived in St. Petersburg, Russia, (Cook 2004).

An alternative scenario put forward in The Prize by Daniel Yergin has the Admiralty putting forward a "Syndicate of Patriots" to keep D'Arcy's concession in British hands, apparently with the full and eager co-operation of D'Arcy himself.[10]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Reilly

http://www.sidneyreilly.com/BOOK/chapterfour.html

[kolnidre]

No matter what the real truth of Reilly/Rosenblum's biography, the story sounds quite fascinating and Cook's book (certainly no pun intended, and sorry to all Booker Ervin fans for any unintentional association) seems like a fine yarn. Unfortunately, as with so many works that could even potentially paint the Chosenites(TM) in a negative light, it's out of print. Guess it never even made a second printing in paperback.

Very nice find. Thanks for posting.

[LatinAmericanview]

Turkish Government for oil rights in Mesopotamia. The British Admiralty purportedly initiated efforts to entice D'Arcy to sell his newly acquired oil rights to the British Government rather than the French de Rothschilds (Lockhart 1986).

This is misleading. British interests were handled by a Detering. He was apparently was a dutch Jew and created Anglo-Dutch companies. A precursor to Shell

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Reilly (Rosenblum) gets a brief mentioned in The Red Symphony:
http://www.mailstar.net/red-symphony.html
-------

G. - And you still deny the inborn stupidity of the bourgeoisie?

R. - I deny it in the bourgeoisie as a class, but not in certain sectors. The existence of madhouses does not prove universal madness. Freemasonry is also a madhouse, but at liberty. But I continue further: the revolution has been victorious, the seizure of power has been achieved. There arises the first problem, peace, and with it the first differences within the party, in which there participate the forces of the coalition, which takes advantage of power. I shall not explain to you that which is well known about the struggle which developed in Moscow between the adherents and opponents of the peace of Brest-Litovsk. I shall only point out to you that which had already become evident then and was later called the Trotzkvist opposition, i.e. these are the people, a part of whom have already been liquidated and the other part is to be liquidated: they were all against the signing of the peace treaty. That peace was a mistake and an unconscious betrayal by Lenin of the

{p. 31} International Revolution. Imagine to yourself the Bolsheviks in Versailles at the Peace Conference, and then in the League of Nations, finding themselves inside Germany with the Red Army, which had been armed and increased by the Allies. The Soviet State should have participated with arms in the German revolution ... Quite another map of Europe would then have emerged. But Lenin, intoxicated with power, with the help of Stalin, who had also tasted the fruits of power supported by the national Russian wing of the party, having at their disposal the material recources, enforced their will. Then was born "Socialism in one country," i.e. National-Communism, which has to-day reached its apogee under Stalin. It is obvious that there was a struggle, but only in such a form and extent that the Communist State should not be destroyed; this condition was binding on the opposition during the whole time of its further struggle right up to the present day. This was the reason for our first failure and all those which followed. But the fight was severe, cruel, although concealed in order not to compromise our participation in power. Trotzky organized, with the help of his friends, the attempt on Lenin's life by Kaplan. On his orders Blumkin killed the ambassador Mirbach. The coup d'etat which was prepared by Spiridonova with her social-revolutionaries had been co-ordinated with Trotzky. His man for all these affairs, who was immune from all suspicions, was that Rosenblum, a Lithuanian Jew, who used the name of O'Reilly, and was known as the best spy of the British Intelligence. In fact he was a man from "Them." The reason why this famous Rosenblum was chosen, who was known only as a British spy, was that in case of failure the responsibility for assassinations and conspiracies would fall not on Trotzky, and not on us, but on England. So it happened. Thanks to the Civil War we rejected conspiratorial and terrorist methods as we were given the chance of having in our hands the real forces of the State, insofar as Trotzky became the organizer and chief of the Soviet Army; before that the army had continuously retreated before the Whites and the territory of the USSR was reduced to the size of the former Moscow Principality. But here, as if by magic, it begins to win. What do you think, why? As the result of magic or chance? I shall tell you: when Trotzky took over the top command of the Red Army then he had by this in his hands the forces necessary to seize power. A series of victories was to increase his prestige and forces: it was already possible to defeat the Whites. Do you think that that official history was true which ascribes to the unarmed and ill-disciplined Red Army the fact that with its help there was achieved a series of victories?

G. - But to whom then?

R. - To the extent of ninety per cent they were indebted to "Them." You must not forget that the Whites were, in their way, democratic. The Mensheviks were with them and the remnants of all the old Liberal parties. Inside these forces "They" always had in their service many people, consciously and unconsciously. When Trotzky began to command then these people were ordered systematically to betray the Whites and at the same time they were promised participation, in a more or less short time, in the Soviet Government. Maisky was one of those people, one of the few in the case of which this promise was carried out, but he was able to achieve this only after Stalin had become convinced of his loyalty. This sabotage, linked with a progressive diminution of the help of the Allies to the White generals, who apart from all that

{p. 32} were luckless idiots, forced them to experience defeat after defeat. Finally Wilson introduced in his famous 14 Points Point 6, * {see footnote below} the existence of which was enough in order to bring to an end once and for all the attempts of the Whites to fight against the USSR. The Civil War strengthens the position of Trotzky as the heir of Lenin. So it was without any doubt. The old revolutionary could now die, having acquired fame. If he remained alive after the bullet of Kaplan, he did not emerge alive after the secret process of the forcible ending of his life, to which he was subjected.

f. - Trotsky shortened his life? This is a big favourable point for our trial! Was it not Levin who was Lenin's doctor?

R. - Trotzky? ... It is probable that he participated, but it is quite certain that he knew about it. But as far as the technical realization is concerned ..., that is unimportant; who knows this? "They" have a sufficient number of channels in order to penetrate to wherever they want.

G. - In any event the murder of Lenin is a matter of the greatest importance and it would be worth while to transfer it for examination to the next trial ... What do you think, Rakovsky, if you were by chance to be the author of this affair? It is clear that if you fail to achieve success in this conversation ... The technical execution suits you well as a doctor ...

R. - I do not recommend this to you. Leave this matter alone, it is sufficiently dangerous for Stalin himself. You will be able to spread your propaganda as you wish: but "They" have their propaganda which is more powerful and the question as to qui podest - who gains, will force one to see in Stalin the murderer of Lenin, and that argument will be stronger than any confessions extracted frorn Levin, me or anyone else.