Op JB

Op JB (book)
A compelling first-person narrative account of how a young spook played a key role in "Operation James Bond" - which allowed Martin Bormann to escape from Berlin at the end of WWII.

Op JB is a book written by John Ainsworth-Davis under the psuedonym 'Christopher Creighton'. It recounts his experience leading Operation James Bond, a top secret mission ordered by Desmond Morton, to recover the huge Nazi fortune salted in Switzerland away by Martin Bormann, Hitler's private secretary. Ainsworth-Davis recounts that the operation was personally approved by UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill, King George VI and US President Franklin Roosevelt, and was led by Ian Fleming and himself. OpJb became a bestseller in France and Germany. However, the publisher never reprinted further editions and it was never published in the USA.

Veracity

The publishers' preface states that "in the end, readers will have to make their own judgements about what they believe. What is not in doubt is that this book is a thrilling story from a remarkable man". Ainsworth-Davis' account, alleges that Martin Bormann was successfully rescued from Berlin, taken back to UK and died in Paraguay in 1959. Published 50 years after the fact, his account is detailed and compelling but lacks supporting references. It include copies of two single page, typewritten letters:

1. A poorly photocopied 1954 letter from Winston Churchill instructing him to say nothing about the operation until Churchill is dead.
2. A 1963 letter by Ian Fleming confirming the basic account.

Corroboration

Canadian Journalist and spook Milton Shulman reportedly advised John Ainsworth Davis on Op JB and put an account of this collaboration in his autobiography, Marilyn, Hitler & Me.

Appendix

Op JB has one appendix which deals with an unrelated event. In it, Ainsworth-Davis describes how he destroyed the Dutch submarine K-XVII with all hands after they stumbled across the Japanese fleet heading for Hawaii.

Corporate media reception

The Independent wrote in 1996 "A rattling good yarn? Certainly. Believable? Hardly. The author has done his best to match his story with what has been published, but not enough. The recent row over the Anglo-Swiss negotiations on German funds in Swiss banks, provoked by American declassification, came too late for him. He is unaware too of the remarkable detective work by the American writer, Lynn H. Nicholas, on the fate of the Nazi war loot."

Investigation of Bormann's remains

In 1996 The OpJB book became a bestseller in Germany, which unsettled the German government so much that in 1997 the German prosecutor^[Who?] called for a thorough forensics and DNA investigation on the remains of Martin Bormann.

The forensic results came back after the legal medical team matched blood from a Bormann relative, the match was positive. A confirmation of the remains being those of Bormann was released to the world’s press, along with the statement that the official narrative was correct:- Martin Bormann had indeed died in 1945, at the Berlin site where his remains were found in 1972.

Criticism

On the publication of the 1998 Bormann DNA report, and statements given to the media, London’s Daily Express newspaper called the Bormann report a ‘’whitewash’’ perpetrated by the Brandt government. Later the Stewart Steven foreign editor of the Daily Express was sacked for publishing the ‘’whitewash’’ article. Stewart Steven was part of team that went to Buenos Aires to investigate Bormann documents. The findings were verified as valid evidence as to Bormanns survival. After which he published an article as to Bormanns survival, he was bullied into resigning as editor of The Daily Express

Criticism from: Nigel West aka Rupert Allason /spy writer/Spook

At the time of publication in 1996, OpJB author John Ainsworth-Davis, was passed off as a 'charlatan' and 'fantasist'. It has also been claimed that Christopher Creighton aka John Ainsworth-Davis not only invented the stories within OpJB, but was never even in the Royal Navy, let alone the NID. (Naval Intelligence Division). In 2013 Nigel West wrote to Christopher Creighton's close confidante, investigative journalist Laurence de Mello to continue the character assassination. {{QB| My connection with 'Creighton' is simply that I was employed by one of his sponsors (Milton Schulman) to investigate his claims (OpJB) and establish his true identity. I did both. He is a charlatan but I suspect he probably believes his own fantasies. Alas, I cannot account for others, such as Lady Mountbatten who, you say, have appeared to give him some credence.

Laurence de Mello believes these are curious comments from West on John Ainsworth-Davis and Schulman:

considering Schulman was not only a sponsor and firm supporter of OPJB the book, and apart from his glittering career as a London film and theatre critic, Shulman was a highly trained, former military intelligence officer and authority on the Wehrmacht. In fact, West wrote a blatant distortion of the truth, claiming he had been employed by Shulman to 'investigate' Creighton. The truth is, it was Creighton and Shulman who had given West £1000 in 1991, five years before publication, challenging West to prove that Creighton was a fraud and the content of the OpJB book was fiction. West failed to do so and Shulman believed and continued to support Creighton as his sponsor. Why would West make such a false allegation and distortion of the facts? Yet he accuses Creighton as being a liar and charlatan! He may feel secure knowing that Shulman is no longer alive to defend the facts, but West fails to remember that Schulman left a paper trail. Therefore We need to ask, who is Nigel West exactly? and who is he working for? Wikipedia tells us Nigel West aka Rupert Allason is an author, former politician and military historian. Yet what would qualify a historian and 'spy' writer to be 'lecturing' the intelligence communities including the KGB in Moscow and the CIA at their headquarters in Langley? What could West possibly be teaching some of the best and most lethal Intel agents in the world? He is even the recipient of the U.S. Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO)'s Lifetime Literature Achievement Award! Without knowing the full answer to that, it's obvious that whoever West is being employed by, it is by those that have an agenda with the CIA. OPJB can not be on their 'allow to publish' list.

Milton Shulman- film critic and former Intelligence Agent supported OpJB and Christopher Creighton as legitimate.

Milton Shulman 1998 :

West was commissioned by Creighton and myself to expand upon his criticisms of the book and do a thoroughly investigative job on Creighton's story. For this we paid him £1,000 in June 1991 and, three months later, we received thirty-three pages of typewritten foolscap, setting out his reasons for maintaining his position that OpJB was a work of fiction. In his. opening paragraphs he added that he had used 'The Paladin' as a basis for uncovering the Inconsistencies and conflicts inherent In Creighton's book, but he added that in this research he had sought the assistance of Brian Garfield, the author of The Paladin, who had confirmed to West his continuing confidence in Creighton's account of these events. There followed a series of lengthy exchanges between Creighton and West. The thrust of West's analysis was that the totality of Creighton's exploits could not be believed by any responsible historian. To establish the justice of his finding, he set out to prove the impossibility of Creighton's story as told in The Paladin, although Garfield repeatedly said that what West picked up as untrue was what he himself had invented as the author of a book of pure fiction. Nevertheless West insisted that fiction or not, it provided ,because it was said to be based on Creighton's career and sufficient evidence that Creighton was a liar. In addition to this sweeping generalization that a novel could be used to discredit OpJB, he picked up a number of facts in The Paladin which, he said, established Creighton's ignorance and unreliability about places and people he wrote about. For instance West doubted that Creighton's father had ever been part of the British relay team that took part in the 1920 Olympic Games, yet the Who's Who entry under Jack Ainsworth-Davis (his true name) states clearly that he was on that winning team. West also discounted Creighton's accounts of U-boat destructions, Canadian training camps in clandestine killing and the sinking of the Dutch submarine K-XVI. To the last objection Creighton simply replied that if divers were employed he would be proved right. There were more picayune details about Creighton's childhood and schooling which were easily rebutted. The charge of paraphrenia was soon dropped because Creighton had overwhelming documentation to prove his family connections with Churchill, Morton and Mountbatten as well as undeniable proof that he worked with Olivier and Coward, Roger Moore, Donald Sinden and Martine Carol. West's contention that Creighton was a paranoic name-dropper turned out to be a preposterous allegation. The most disappointing aspect of West's report was its paucity of information about OpJB. Only five pages of the thirty-three submitted dealt directly with attempting to rubbish Creighton's facts. If a winner had to be chosen, I believe Creighton's specific details were more convincing than West's often vague or instinctive allegations. To give him credit, West was frank about acknowledging the difficulty of assessing an operation which Creighton had originally dubbed -The Operation That Never Was. The secrecy surrounding it was total and any written documents about it had had to be shredded and destroyed. Only three people knew what was going on, Creighton, Susan Kemp and Barbara Brabenov are still alive. MI5 and MI6 were excluded from the plan. Although Susan Kemp is supposedly willing to authenticate Creighton's story, she has neither come forward nor revealed her true identity. West's report was written in August 1992. In 1996 Susan Kemp did reveal her real identity to me in my flat, and also spoke to two associates of Simon & Schuster, who published OpJP in that year, asserting that her involvement in the Bormann affair as contained in Creighton's book was true, although Nigel West remained adamant in his view that the book was a work of fiction he nevertheless agreed, if asked, to write a foreword to it.

OPJB the book, a reader comments;

if you actually read West's "Counterfeit Spies" you'll notice he complains about the FICTIONAL elements of the FICTIONAL novel 'The Paladin` (Christopher Creighton & Brian Garfield) while documenting FACTS like that Creighton is indeed who he says he is (spy and Commando)--to include a statement by BSC Director Sir William Stephenson (The Man Called Intrepid).

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