THUNDERBOLT
Customs, MI6 & Their Gangster Inside The Global Heroin Trade
One of the murkiest episodes in the so-called wars on drugs and terrorism is up for cinematic treatment, The Upsetter has learned.
Film folk are looking at the relationship between an undercover Customs officer and a guerrilla gangster who became a grass.
The informant is Andreas Antoniades, a Greek Cypriot who turned on his comrades fighting for independence from British rule in the 1950s to become a double agent for MI6.
Known as Keravnos, Greek for Thunderbolt, he was relocated to London after his cover was blown in Cyprus and went on to pursue a life of violent crime under the protection of British spooks.
By the early 1990’s, when the UK was awash with drugs and drug money, Keravnos, by then in his sixties, was deployed for the next two decades helping undercover Customs officer ‘Guy Stanton’ penetrate those trafficking heroin into the UK.
Both men are now riddled with cancer and have written books. Stanton’s was published last year and is doing the rounds of film people looking to make drama out of their tales of derring do.
The Upsetter loves a good gangster film, but sadly the British ones covering the war on drugs are almost entirely onanistic fodder for the lad mag saddo.
There is a risk the Stanton-Keravnos story will follow suit, which would be a shame.
Though long retired from Customs, Stanton remains a company man, as his book amply demonstrates.
He no doubt lived a life of great courage and ingenuity. But he also lived a lie: that the war on drugs could be won and all his risk taking made a difference to the global supply chain.
The story that needs illuminating is what went on when MI6 and Customs got into bed with an assassin, traitor and gangster gambler called Thunderbolt.
Reporters on the Boston Globe’s Spotlight investigation unit did a formidable job unravelling the way Irish mob boss James ‘Whitey’ Bulger was mishandled by the local FBI while he ran amok killing those who got in the way of business.
Spotlight’s investigation and book Black Mass was background material for a film of the same name with Johnny Depp and Martin Scorsese’s earlier and better movie, The Departed.
Whitey’s corrupt relationship with the FBI led to a prison term for his main handler and an inquiry into how the tail wagged the dog in the war on drugs in Boston.
In the UK, a lengthy corruption inquiry into the handling of Keravnos left officials scrambling to cover up his activities here and in Afghanistan after the 2002 invasion to boot out the Taliban and capture Osama Bin Laden.
Keravnos continued to enrich himself through deals with the corrupt Afghan regime installed and bankrolled by the West.
Meanwhile, the heroin kept coming, as did a new type of islamic militancy making the UK a more dangerous but stoned place.
This reporter was all over the Keravnos story 20 years ago and in 2005 door-stepped the agent at his hideout in Dubai. He was angry with the Brits for having dropped him after six decades of ‘service’.
The real story of Thunderbolt and Stanton is no bromance of Brown, Bang! Bang! and Blowjobs wrapped in the Union Jack.
It’s a multi-layered, cautionary tale of the secret trade offs made fighting hopeless wars on drugs and terrorism where Britain was well and truly kicked up the Khyber.
