THE POWER BEHIND THE THRONE
Last week I wrote about Mercia MacDermott who was a close friend of Alexander Lilov one of the principle movers and shakers of the Politburo to murder Georgi Markov a dissident who was an outspoken critic of the Bulgarian Communist regime. This happened on the streets of London in September 1978.
Before Markov was murdered he was under surveillance by an elderly English lady called Mrs Bartlett. Immediately before Markov’s assassination she travelled to Sofia in Bulgaria, where she still resides.
Aldrich Ames was a counterintelligence officer and analyst at the CIA who worked on the Soviet-Eastern European division. From 1985 CIA agents in the Eastern Bloc countries started to disappear at an alarming rate. Initially the CIA did not believe that one of their own could be giving highly classified material to the Soviets.
The CIA had found it deplorable that the trio of Burgess, Maclean and Philby, who were all high ranking officers in the intelligence services, had betrayed Great Britain and their allies for years, before they were unmasked.
The British intelligence services were certain that Aldrich Ames betrayed Mrs MacDermott.
Mercia MacDermott was permitted to continue to live in Bulgaria but her influence declined rapidly. She eventually returned to England. She never returned to her beloved Bulgaria.
In April 1991 the Bulgarian government announced the names of two non-Bulgarians that had received medals in 1979. This was for their involvement in the Markov murder. According to the author Gordon Logan, their code names were ‘Hector’ and ‘Atanas’.
‘Atanas’ was Mercia MacDermott who received the Order of the Red Banner of Labour. Mrs Bartlett was ‘Hector.’
According to Wikipedia Alexander Lilov came to live in London around 1985. He had fallen from favour in Bulgaria for criticising the communist government’s economic policy. Lilov was the government minister that decided to have Markov’s murdered on the streets of London.
So why would the British government allow Lilov to live in England?
Who did murder Georgi Markov?
More in the next post.
