Sacked spy reflects badly on British Intelligence
By DUNCAN CAMPBELL
EDINBURGH, SATURDAY
For the old and not-so-old boys and girls of British Intelligence, it has
been a week of bewildering blunder and outright disaster. After a five- year
battle with a dissident ex- undercover agent, the names of 117 senior Secret
Intelligence Service (SIS) officers are now filed away in a million
computers around the world.
Like the Spycatcher battle in Tasmania more than a decade ago, the British
Government has achieved precisely the opposite of what it intended. Then,
they tried to persuade Australian courts to ban the book written by
spook-turned-farmer Peter Wright. After months of debate, they failed.
This time, in the new world of the Internet, the battle was over before
Britain's Cabinet Secretary could even blink.
The one-time image of Britain's Secret Service as svelte James Bonds or
impenetrably thoughtful George Smileys has gone forever. In place for the
21st century is a new image crafted by their ex-spy, 37-year-old New
Zealand-born Richard Tomlinson. He has posed, cross-eyed, leaning in front
of MI6's ``Head Office'' - the absurdly modernist, Aztec-like structure on
the south bank of the River Thames that is now Britain's spy HQ. From a
million Internet screens, Tomlinson now leers out at them. Meanwhile, the
Internet plays the theme from Monty Python's Flying Circus.
The seeds of the catastrophe were sown five years ago when Tomlinson, a star
Cambridge engineering graduate, was found to be a ``loose cannon'' and sent
packing from SIS after an undercover stint in the Balkans. Tomlinson's
principal grievance is that he was peremptorily sacked and then denied
compensation. He was banned, on security grounds, from appealing to an
industrial tribunal.
With each passing year since SIS blocked Tomlinson from going to the
tribunal, its actions against him have seemed more and more spiteful, yet
have been increasingly ineffective. Each has provoked new leaks.
In 1996, Tomlinson threatened to use his personal computer to publish
memoirs on the Internet. When he then attempted to sell the memoirs to an
Australian publisher, he was arrested and jailed for breaching the Official
Secrets Act. Released a year ago, he returned to New Zealand in search of a
media job. As a condition of parole, he was banned from using the Internet.
On Friday 7 August last year he was seated, ready to depart on Qantas from
Auckland to Sydney, to meet journalists from Channel9. He was ordered off
the plane by NZ officials and escorted back to have his Auckland hotel room
searched by police and NZSIS agents. They told him that they had received a
``fax from Canberra''. All his computer equipment was seized.
The Auckland incident was the cap on a year-long series of incidents that
Tomlinson calls ``hounding''. He had already been arrested in France. He was
expelled from the United States at the end of August.
Ten days later, allegedly by ``accident'', some of his private computer
files were ``discovered'' on computers in an Internet cafe{AAC} in Geneva.
The first file gave details of an alleged 1992 assassination plot against
Slobodan Milosevic. Three methods were proposed, including staging a car
crash in a Geneva subway tunnel. Tomlinson's dossier named six MI6 staff he
said were involved in the plot.
Five days later another file ``accidentally'' left at the Swiss Internet
cafe{AAC} revealed a top-level British spy inside the German Bundesbank.
This was part of a spying project against Britain's European partners,
codenamed JETSTREAM by MI6. Yesterday, the two files were still on the
Internet.
With the status of an international pariah, Tomlinson was forced to stay in
Switzerland. In January, he tried again to enter France - and was detained
again.
Since then, he and the British Government have waged ever more bitter and
pettier warfare. This escalated to boiling point in March. He started
e-mailing me then, complaining that, during four months in the hands of the
French police, his computer had been tampered with by MI6.
A month later, he wrote: ``It might interest you to know that my computer
self-destructed the other day. Every file on the whole hard disk, including
all the system files, mysteriously compressed themselves while I was
browsing the Internet.''
He added: ``I had just threatened the bastards to publish my database of MI6
officers on the Internet if they didn't stop harassing me. It may have been
a desperation measure (sic). Anyway, they didn't succeed. I've got all that
sort of stuff backed up.''
A week later, after a computer technician had reportedly confirmed his
fears, Richard Tomlinson e-mailed me again. He was very angry, and bitterly
recounted the SIS interventions that had had him thrown out of France,
Australia and the US. ``I am currently therefore about to publish on the
Internet my database of MI6 officers, which I know will upset them. I
suspect that this threat was the cause of my computer crash - stay tuned for
further news.''
There was one more message: ``I am trying to force them to negotiate, but I
am deadly serious in my intent to carry out the threat. MI6 are obviously
very worried as the Treasury Solicitor has been faxing all sorts of
counter-threats and pleading missives. I certainly am going to give
publicity to it. I'll keep you posted.''
Tomlinson's now peripatetic MI6 website started up in Switzerland four days
later, but was closed by British legal action within hours. It then
launched, and re-launched, in the US. That site, called Geocities ``Paris
Jardin 8767'' contained a short list of nine MI6 names whom Tomlinson
alleged had been involved in plots to kill both President Milosevic and
Princess Diana. These names had previously appeared on the Swiss Internet
site, enabling Tomlinson to claim that they were ``in the public domain''.
But the long list of 117 names simultaneously appeared on a new Internet
site, run by the Executive Intelligence Review, a US paper and Internet
publication. The next morning, Wednesday, the list was spotted by MI6.
At lunchtime, the British Government moved to silence the national media.
Using the D-Notice system that Australia similarly enforced, Rear Admiral
David Pulvertaft warned editors that ``a US-based website has today
published on the Internet a list which identifies a large number of SIS
(MI6) officers. Departmental officers are examining how the damage of this
disclosure can be minimised. While this is in progress, I would ask that
editors do not interpret the information in the website as being widely
disclosed and do not, therefore, publish the address or the content of the
website''.
But the damage was already done, although the spooks didn't know it. A
Canadian Internet enthusiast had already copied the list, and had sent it on
to tens of thousand of computers around the world. By the time Admiral
Pulvertaft had gone into action, copies of the list had long been
automatically copied into computer databanks from Moscow to Melbourne - and
Belgrade, and Baghdad, and Beijing.
The Foreign Office was not prepared to comment on why it decided to issue a
warning, effectively ensuring that the list was found and disseminated.
The folly of the decision sank home in London this weekend as officials
watched the list from Executive Intelligence Review (EIR) spread across the
world.
EIR is no ordinary US magazine. It is run by Lyndon LaRouche, a wannabe US
presidential candidate and convicted felon whose main thesis on world
affairs is that they are secretly controlled by a drugs cartel run by
British royalty. Even among conspiracy buffs, information emanating from
LaRouche lies low on the credibility scale. Had the Government not drawn
attention to the list, and said that it was true and damaging and from
Tomlinson, it would never have been taken seriously and, in all probability,
never read.
A day after the Government warning, the list was found. It then spread like
wildfire. Distribution has now gone so far that the position is
irrecoverable. The new list identified a string of officials in senior
positions. They included the former controller of Middle Eastern MI6
activity, Geoffrey Tantum, and MI6's man in Zagreb. Tomlinson had previously
leaked information about how this agent had interfered in British politics
by arranging to plant articles in the Spectator, the British political
magazine. Two other names on the ``short list'' included former ``C''s or
chiefs, including Sir David Spedding and Sir Colin McColl.
The Tomlinson file, now everywhere on the Internet, repeats claims that MI6
developed a plan to assassinate Slobodan Milosevic. ``The plan was fully
typed, and attached to a yellow `minute board', signifying that this was a
formal and accountable document."
Although Tomlinson continues to deny that the EIR list is ``his'' MI6
database, no other candidate is available. One personal comment had been
accidentally left in the list. In a sign of typically English disaffection,
an agent said to have been posted to Lagos in 1995 is described as a
``wanker''. As the row blew up, Richard Tomlinson told me in an e-mail:
``People are jumping to the wrong conclusion. My website does not contain
any names, other than a few that are already in the public domain.'' All of
this is true, but may not be to the point. The short list went on to his
website. The long list, which also contains the names he admits publishing,
was launched in a different way.
No wonder author John Le Carre called it ``the Circus''.
Wendy Laing
Writer
Visit my virtual home at
http://www.ozemail.com.au/~wendave
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