Nixon Tapes - Anthony Summer - Real Crime With Mark Austin TV - Monty Python’s Flying Circus TV - Golda Meir - Lord Wright: Thorne v Motor Trade Association 1937 - King of the Underworld 1952 - Watergate 1994 TV - The New Statesman TV - The Man Who Wasn’t There 2001 - Independent online - Web of Make Believe: Death, Lies & the Internet TV - Cyber Hell TV -
John Dean: We have a cancer within, close to the presidency, that’s growing. It’s growing daily. We’re being blackmailed.
Nixon: How much money do you need?
John Dean: I would say these people are going to cost a million dollars over the next two years.
Nixon: We could get that. And you could get it in cash. I know where it could be gotten. I mean it’s not easy but it could be done. Nixon tapes
Mafia bosses obtained information about Hoover’s sex life and used it for decades to keep the FBI at bay ... Without this, the Mafia as we know it might never have gained its hold on America. Anthony Summer, The Secret Life of J Edgar Hoover, jacket quote
A bomber on the loose, a town in fear. Behind the campaign of terror a plot to extort millions from Britain’s biggest retailer. Real Crime With Mark Austin: The Tesco Bomber, ITV 2010
The letter contained few clues about the author’s identity. ibid.
Tesco received a second threatening letter. ibid.
He carried out his threat. A device had exploded in a Bournemouth suburb ... Police called in the bomb squad. ibid.
The bomber expanded his operation: seven more menacing letters were sent to Tesco’s customer’s homes. ibid.
In the mid-1990s blackmailer Edgar Pearce had carried out a similar extortion campaign against Barclay’s Bank and supermarket giant Sainsbury’s. ibid.
The Tesco bomber had been captured on camera ... He’d used the same postbox in Bradpole Road. ibid.
His name was Robert Edward Dyer. ibid.
Robert Dyer was released from prison in 2007. He still lives in southern England. ibid.
Herbert Anchovy Presents Blackmail: ‘Hello, good evening and welcome to Blackmail.’ Monty Python’s And Now for Something Completely Different, BBC 1972
There’s the address to send it to: Blackmail, Behind the Hot Water Pipes. Third Washroom Along. Victoria Station. ibid.
Hello, good evening and welcome to Blackmail. And to start tonight’s programme we go north to Preston in Lancashire and Mrs Betty Teal. Hello, Mrs Teal. Now this is for £15. And it’s to stop us revealing the name of your lover in Bolton. Monty Python’s Flying Circus s2e5: The Grill o Mat, BBC 1970
If we should give in then no Israeli anywhere in the world can feel that his life is same. It is blackmail of the worst kind. Golda Meir, Olympic Munich Hostage Massacre of 1972
I think the word menace is to be liberally construed and not as limited to threats of violence but as including threats of any action detrimental to or unpleasant to the person addressed. It may also include a warning that in certain events such action is intended. Lord Wright, Thorne v Motor Trade Association [1937] AC 797
I can’t possibly let you have any more money. King of the Underworld 1952 starring Tod Slaughter & Patrick Barr & Tucker McGuire & Ingeborg Wells & David Davies & Frank Hawkins & Len Sharp & Anne Valerie et al, director Victor M Gover, opening scene her to shark on dog-n-bone
Nixon’s men paid out over a quarter of a million dollars in hush money that summer. (Watergate & Nixon & Blackmail & Bribery) Watergate, BBC 1994
The biggest margin in history: it looked like he had got away with it. ibid.
Envelopes stuffed with cash had been dispatched to Howard Hunt an his men. ibid.
Dean tried to persuade the president that Hunt’s blackmail threatened all the inner circle especially Nixon’s close friend John Mitchell who had organised the Watergate break in. ibid.
Dean knew the president needed a scapegoat before the senate hearing started and he began to fear he was it. ibid.
The chap on the left is very high up in Scotland Yard, and the chap on the right is very high up in er the chap on the left. The New Statesman s3e3: Let Them Sniff Cake, ITV 1991
In a way I felt bad for Big Dave. I knew that ten grand was going to pinch him where it hurt. But Doris was two-timing me and I guess somewhere that pinched a little too. The Man Who Wasn’t There 2001 starring Billy Bob Thornton & Frances McDormand & Michael Badalucco & Richard Jenkins & Scarlett Johansson & Jon Polito & Tony Shalhoub & James Gandolfini et al, director Joel Coen, Ed’s commentary
One morning in December 1824, the Duke of Wellington received an unpleasant letter. ‘My Lord Duke’, it began, ‘in Harriette Wilson’s Memoirs, which I am about to publish, are various anecdotes of Your Grace which it would be most desirable to withhold, at least such is my opinion. I have stopped the Press for the moment, but as the publication will take place next week, little delay can necessarily take place’.
The letter, signed by one Joseph Stockdale, a pornographer and scandal-monger, was a naked attempt at blackmail. The Duke was a field marshal, cabinet minister, national hero, husband and father, while Harriette Wilson was a famous London courtesan past her prime, then living in exile in Paris. Wellington was being asked to pay money to be left out of her memoirs.
His response is famous: ‘Publish and be damned.’ And they did. Through 1825 the memoirs appeared by instalments, each with a dramatis personae listing the notables named in order of rank – ‘Dukes: Argyll, Beaufort, De Guiche, Leinster …’ and so on through earls and viscounts down to humble esquires.
London society was thrilled and scandalised. Half the aristocracy was named in the book, and painted in a most unflattering light. The memoirs went through 31 editions in one year; excerpts were pirated and sold as illustrated broadsheets and French and German editions quickly appeared to delight the gossips of the Continent. Independent online article 20 March 1994, ‘Rear Window: When Wellington said publish & be damned: The Field Marshal and the Scarlet Woman’
People don’t know that what you put out there stays out there. Web of Make Believe: Death, Lies & the Internet IV: Sextortion, victim, Netflix 2022
Seth Williams … seemed kind of cute in his profile picture … so we started chatting … He had access to my Facebook account … It was terrifying. ibid.
This is going to ruin your life and it’s your fault. ibid. perpetrator to victim
Perpetrators can attack thousands of people. ibid. woman
Many victims, including minors, were blackmailed into filming sexual videos. Cyber Hell, news, Netflix 2022
Exclusive: Sexually exploitative videos circulating on Telegram assumed to be run by teens. 19,000 child pornography links shared. ibid.