Frank Kitson
General Sir Frank Kitson OBE, KCB, MC (born 1926) is a retired British Officer and counterinsurgency theorist. He rose to be Commander-in-Chief UK Land Forces from 1982 to 1985 and was Aide-de-Camp General to the Queen from 1983 to 1985. In 1985 he became a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire. He saw active service in counter revolutionary operations in post war colonial conflicts. He is one of the leading theorists of counterinsurgency to have emerged from the British military.
The Historian Bernard Porter has noted:
- "Between 1970 and 1972 Kitson served in Northern Ireland as commander of a brigade in Belfast. He may have been largely responsible for the setting up and development of ‘Psyops’ units there. If he was not, then somebody else was. By all accounts this side of the army’s work expanded enormously over the next ten years, and involved some techniques which could be described as devious. That may be putting it mildly indeed. Among the ‘tricks’ attributed to various British intelligence agencies in Northern Ireland in the 1970s - army intelligence, MI5, MI6, British Special Branch, RUC Special Branch - were torture, for which Britain was censured by the European Human Rights Commission in 1976; murder, faked to look like ‘sectarian’ killings; the planting of bombs in Dublin in 1974 ...; homosexual seduction and blackmail; ‘black’ propaganda and disinformation; ‘shooting to kill’; fabricating evidence; and ‘covering up’. At one stage, because of inter-departmental rivalry, MI5 and MI6 were rumoured to be indulging in covert operations against each other..."[1]
Contents
Career
Kitson was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Rifle Brigade as of 23 February 1946.[2]
He was promoted to Lieutenant as of 10 April 1948, with seniority from 15 December 1947.[3]
- Kenya 1951
- Malaysia 1957
- Oman 1958-1959
He was awarded the OBE on 13 June 1959.[4]
- Cyprus 1962
Kitson was appointed a Brevet Lt-Col. on 1 July 1964.[5] He became a full Lt-Col on 31 December 1966.[6]
- Britain 1969-1987
- Ireland 1970-1972[7]
Kitson was appointed Aide-De-Camp General to the Queen on 15 February 1983, succeeding Sir Anthony Farrar-Hockley.[8]
Counterinsurgency Theorist
His earlier published work on counter-gangs and measures of deception, including the use of defectors, continues to provoke strong opinions. Although sometimes wrongly credited with inventing concepts of pseudo-gangs and pseudo-operations (for example, used earlier in the Huk Insurrection[9] in the Philippines), his writing gave the issue a wider audience. In retirement he has given evidence to the Saville Inquiry[10] into Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland.
Publications
- Gangs and Counter-gangs (1960), Barrie and Rockliff
- Low Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency and Peacekeeping (1971), Faber and Faber - reprint 1991 ISBN 0-571-16181-2
- Bunch of Five (1977)
- Kitson, Frank (1987) Warfare as a Whole, London:Faber and Faber.
- Prince Rupert: Admiral and General-at-sea (1998), Constable and Robinson
- Old Ironsides: The Military Biography of Oliver Cromwell (2004), Weidenfeld Military
External Resources
- Bloody Sunday Inquiry Statement of Sir Frank Kitson, 18 October 2001, accessed 4 December 2007.
- Bloody Sunday Inquiry Day 237 - Frank Kitson, 24 September 2002.
See Also
David Kilcullen | John Nagl | Robert Thompson | Orde Wingate
Notes
- ↑ Bernard Porter (1989) Plots and Paranoia, p.199, Unwin Hyman Ltd.
- ↑ SUPPLEMENT TO THE LONDON GAZETTE, 26 MARCH, 1946, London Gazette, issue 3750, page 1527.
- ↑ SUPPLEMENT TO THE LONDON GAZETTE, 9 APRIL, 1948, London Gazette, Issue 38526, page 2260.
- ↑ SUPPLEMENT TO THE LONDON GAZETTE, 13TH JUNE 1959, London Gazette, issue 41727, page 3704.
- ↑ SUPPLEMENT TO The London Gazette of Tuesday, 3oth June 1964, London Gazette, Issue 43371, p.5715.
- ↑ SUPPLEMENT TO THE LONDON GAZETTE, lOra JANUARY 1967, London Gazette, issue 44223, page 310.
- ↑ Namebase Frank Kitson, accessed 5 December 2007
- ↑ SUPPLEMENT TO THE LONDON GAZETTE, 15™ FEBRUARY 1983, London Gazette, Issue 49625, Page 2218.
- ↑ Cline, Lawrence E. (2005) Pseudo Operations and Counterinsurgency: Lessons from other countries, Strategic Studies Institute, page 1
- ↑ Bloody Sunday Inquiry website
