The Secret of Flight 149: Spies, Lies and Saddam’s Human Shields.

This is a story that the American and British governments would rather you did not read, a secret they have spent two decades trying to hide. On the day that Iraqi tanks rolled into Kuwait in August 1990, British intelligence smuggled in a secret spy unit on a doomed British Airways flight, BA149. The price? A gift to Saddam Hussein of 385 human shields, passengers and crew trapped and taken hostage because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Written by award winning investigative journalist Stephen Davis, this is the story of the secret mission and the cover-up, the lies told by the US and UK governments and a deniable group of spies and special forces soldiers called The Increment, a group still operating today. Most of all its the gripping and sad tale of the fate of the human shields, adults and children, in their own words - American, British, French, Indian, Malaysian, Italian, Spanish, German, Australian, Canadian and New Zealanders.