The GEC-Marconi scientist deaths conspiracy theory claims that between 1982 and 1990 a number of

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English ...

-based GEC-Marconi scientists and engineers who worked on the

Sting Ray torpedo The Sting Ray is a British acoustic homing lightweight torpedo (LWT) manufactured by GEC-Marconi, who were later bought out by BAE Systems. It entered service in 1983. Design and development In the 1950s the Royal Navy was equipped with ...

project and

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Strategic Defense Initiative The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), derisively nicknamed the "''Star Wars'' program", was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic strategic nuclear weapons (intercontinental ballist ...

-related projects died under mysterious circumstances. The first deaths to gain widespread attention and be linked to the theory came in 1986-1987. In just about a year, six different scientists died in mysterious circumstances, three of whom had worked for the Marconi company, a subsidiary of the defence group

General Electric Company The General Electric Company (GEC) was a major British industrial conglomerate involved in consumer and defence electronics, communications, and engineering. The company was founded in 1886, was Britain's largest private employer with over 250 ...

. Most deaths were ruled suicides or accidents. One died after driving his car, which had been packed full of petrol containers, into a building. Another tied a rope to his neck and a tree and then drove off in a car. A third died of carbon monoxide poisoning in his garage. No links were found between them. At the time, some opposition lawmakers in the

British parliament The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the Parliamentary sovereignty in the United Kingdom, supreme Legislature, legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of We ...

called for an investigation into the deaths. Proponents of the conspiracy theory link the deaths like a

James Bond The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional Secret Intelligence Service, British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 19 ...

-esque set of assassinations, variably blaming the Soviet spy agency

KGB The KGB (russian: links=no, lit=Committee for State Security, Комитет государственной безопасности (КГБ), a=ru-KGB.ogg, p=kəmʲɪˈtʲet ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əj bʲɪzɐˈpasnəsʲtʲɪ, Komitet gosud ...

, American spies, or even British spies. Proponents of the theory claim that the deaths were linked because of the scientists working on the same few classified projects, although most of the scientists had not been working closely together and were working on separate, mostly unclassified, projects.

References

Newspapers * * * * * * * * Books * Media * "Grave Secrets," a

20/20 Visual acuity (VA) commonly refers to the clarity of vision, but technically rates an examinee's ability to recognize small details with precision. Visual acuity is dependent on optical and neural factors, i.e. (1) the sharpness of the retinal ...

segment which aired on

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; May 5, 1989. Reported by

Stone Phillips Stone Stockton Phillips (born December 2, 1954) is an American television reporter and correspondent. He is best known as the former co-anchor of '' Dateline NBC'', a news magazine TV series. He also has worked as a substitute anchor for '' NB ...

and available on the "20C History Project"

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channel. {{DEFAULTSORT:Gec-Marconi Scientist Deaths Conspiracy Theory Deaths in the United Kingdom Cold War history of the United Kingdom Guglielmo Marconi Science and technology-related conspiracy theories BAE Systems General Electric Company