Wasn’t there some books that came out with photographs of Russian Naval Officers and one of them was identified as Crabb?

Blimey…a post about ‘Buster’ Crabb! Thank you sir! 🙂

I’ve got to say I’m always suspicious of ‘revelations’ that coincide with the publishing of a book or the showing of a TV documentary (and the making of money by somebody from the ‘success’ of either).

Of course it is very tempting to speculate about defection (or abduction) and a ‘new life’ as a Russian naval officer or (another story I’ve read) as a trainer of naval divers in East Germany but there are rather obvious problems with these versions.

Firstly, who is the body if it isn’t Crabb, and more importantly who is a planted body intended to deceive?

Surely if the Soviets wanted to hide the defection of Crabb a missing body is safer than risking a planted body being discovered as fake by the British.

Much has been made of the fact that Crabb’s ex-wife, girlfriend and former diving partner failed to identify the body as Crabb (after it had been in the sea for fourteen months) and that some were pressured by the British government into confirming it as Crabb despite this.

The conspiracy theorist would have us believe that the British government wanted to hide the ‘embarrassing’ defection of war-hero Crabb by saying the body was Crabb when it wasn’t. How would the British government have explained the embarrassment of a lunch meeting between Crabb and Khrushchev, televised for propaganda purposes, a few days, months or years after they confirmed Crabb was definitely the body found in the wetsuit?

Secondly, why no public information (or propaganda) about Crabb in the fifty years since he supposedly defected?

Thirdly, why do the only public accounts about Crabb to come from the former Soviet side both detail the circumstances surrounding his death?

Crabb would be about ninety-eight now, no piece of knowledge that he had in 1956 could be of any possible use to anybody in 2007 so there would be no point in concealing his defection now. Also there would surely have come a point in the last fifty years when all of the (limited) information Crabb could have divulged to the Soviets would be overshadowed by the propaganda value of such a high-profile defector.

To me, it just doesn’t stack up.