British spies ‘smuggled message about Putin’s new supersonic bomber hidden in pilots’ TEA’
BRITISH spooks reportedly stashed top secret Russian plans aboard a Blackjack nuclear bomber bound for Venezuela. The audacious plot was hatched smuggle out information about multi-million pound upgrades to Russia’s supersonic TU-160 which made them difficult to track. The bomber’s upgrades, which had been ordered by Vladimir Putin, made it difficult for NATO fighters to […]
BRITISH spooks reportedly stashed top secret Russian plans aboard a Blackjack nuclear bomber bound for Venezuela.
The audacious plot was hatched smuggle out information about multi-million pound upgrades to Russia’s supersonic TU-160 which made them difficult to track.
The bomber’s upgrades, which had been ordered by Vladimir Putin, made it difficult for NATO fighters to lock on to it, The Sunday Express reports.
An agent within a Russian airbase where the TU-160s — nicknamed Blackjacks — managed to get hold of the plans.
But they faced a problem of getting the highly sought of information out of Russia, which is rigorous in protecting its top secrets.
So a genius plan was made which involved stashing the plans at the bottom of a packet of loose tea which the pilots of a Blackjack bomber were known to drink on their gruelling 13 hour journey to the Venezuelan capital of Caracas.
It was then to be retrieved from an airport bin after it was thrown away.
That it worked was due, in no small part, to luck, but such is the way with many operations
Intelligence source
Agents even had to work out how much tea the pilots would drink because if there was too much, the packet would not be thrown away.
But the plan reportedly worked.
When the plane landed at Simon Bolivar airport in Venezuela, a spy retrieved the discarded packet and then gave it to a CIA officer at a hotel.
An intelligence source said: “An hour after landing, a quantity of rubbish, which included the tea packet, was taken from the aircraft while it was being refuelled.
“The packet, which contained a small amount of tea, was among items placed in a rubbish disposal point.
“That it worked was due, in no small part, to luck, but such is the way with many operations.”
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The secrets were shared with UK and NATO forces.
The Blackjack bomber had been sent to the South American country in December as a show of support President Nicolas Maduro, whose failed socialist policies had impoverished the once wealthy country.
Russia’s economy relies on the re-selling of Venezuelan oil and gas after Putin signed a pact with the late leader Hugo Chavez in 2008.
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