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MI6 NAMES --- why are the govt+press feeding us utter bollocks?
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Keywords: mi6bolloxx
The story is roughly as follows:
(1) an ex-MI6 man threatened to reveal names when the UK government
wouldn't stop harassing him in Geneva; they responded by having
his Swiss website shut down.
(2) A moronically incompetent press smear was then launched that
"Tomlinson's site revealing the names of 100 agents and putting
their lives in danger has reappeared on a Geocities site in the USA."
(3) However, the [USUALLY VERY RELIABLE] BBC TV newsnight programme
tells a different story in that:
{i} the Geocities site was from Larouchian conspiracy nuts
not a copy of Tomlinson's site.
The names they gave were sent to them anonymously,
and the evidence does not point to Tomlinson as the sender.
{ii} the say the names come from a TEN YEAR OLD EDITION of
the UK spywatching magazine Lobster, run by Robin Ramsay.
I have met Ramsay and can vouch that he is extremely reliable
on intelligence matters. (Try altavista "lobster"&"ramsay").
{iii}looking at the list, however, it says that people served
in say 1974 Paris 1979 Madrid 1983 Rome. If it **IS* a ten year
old list, dates have been added well into the 1990s.
In my opinion the evidence could easily point to MI6 sending out
the anonymous email in another crude attempt to frame Tomlinson.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
MORE DETAIL. I reproduce below what is in circulation purporting
to be the Laroucian document, but with the NAMES REMOVED.
It has three elements:
(a) Their opinion that MI6 murdered Diana and Dodi to get rid of
Diana and Dodi to get rid of a public embarassment. While I wouldn't
put it past MI6 to do this, I also wouldn't believe anything
the Larouchians said UNTIL I COULD CONFIRM IT FROM A CREDIBLE SOURCE.
(b) The two news elements of the story are as follows:
{i} that Mohammed "call me Al" Fayed believes his son was murdered
and is exercising his right to have new evidence considered before
the final report of the court of enquiry is released. This is
entirely to be expected.
{ii}that they recieved an anonymous email, which they reproduce.
It names the three top officials of MI6, accusing them of being
involved in the murder. Appended at the end is the ten-year-old
list of 100 names of people "involved in this evil organisation".
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
So what is to be gained by such a crude framing attempt?
Simply that most people don't have the Internet. Or listen to
intelligent late-night news programs. They will believe the
semi-comatose drivel that has been printed in low quality newspapers
and echoed in brief daytime news bulletins.
Here is the purported Larouchian document, with names removed.
[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[
: This article appeared in
: the May 14, 1999 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
:
: In case you have not heard, this is INCREDIBLE
: http://www.larouchepub.com/diana_mi6_2620.html
: ########
: The `MI6 factor' in the murder of Princess Diana
: by Our Special Correspondent
:
: Recently, EIR was one of several news organizations that received an
: unsolicited e-mail transmission, identifying senior officials of MI6,
: the British foreign intelligence service, including individuals who
: are accused of having been involved in the Aug. 31, 1997 deaths of
: Princess Diana, Dodi Fayed, and Henri Paul. The three were killed in
: a car crash in Paris, that, to this day, remains one of the great
: unsolved mysteries of the 20th century.
:
: More than 21 months after the crash, the official French
: investigation, headed by Judge Hervé Stephan, is still under way, and
: some of the most disturbing questions about the fatal crash remain
: unanswered, including the most basic question:Was it an assassination?
: EIR has been well-known for our exhaustive coverage of the death of
: Princess Diana, identifying otherwise unpublished leads, and pointing
: to the involvement of British and other intelligence agencies, in the
: run-up to the crash, and in the effort to cover up the evidence that
: Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed were the targets of a murder plot.
:
: Some of the information provided in the e-mail posting has been
: independently verified by EIR. Indeed, three MI6 officials, identified
: as having been intimately involved in the events leading up to the
: fatal crash, and the ensuing cover-up, have been previously identified
: by EIR as suspected culprits, acting on behalf of the House of
: Windsor, under the personal orders of Prince Philip.
: In late 1997, EIR published exclusive photographs showing that a team
: of at least seven men were surveilling the Ritz Hotel on the evening
: of Aug. 30, 1997--during the final hours before the crash in the Place
: d'Alma tunnel.
:
: As this issue of EIR goes to press,a French court is in the process of
: deciding whether Judge Stephan will be ordered to pursue further leads
: on the crash provided by Mohamed Al Fayed, the father of Dodi Fayed,
: who has made numerous public statements to the effect that he believes
: that the crash was not an accident. Al Fayed is a civil party to the
: case, and, as such, is entitled, under French law, to present new
: leads and evidence for consideration by the chief investigator before
: the final report is released.
: In the interest of furthering the investigation into the Paris crash,
: we publish the text of the anonymous document below. We cannot, at
: this time, independently authenticate many of the details provided.
: However, we pass the document along as "raw" material. As we pursue
: the leads contained in the document, we will keep our readers
: informed. Here is the e-mail text (the names section contains the year
: and city to which the alleged agents were posted):
:
: The e-mail posting
:{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{
:|
:|XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX of Gonville and Cauis College Cambridge is the
:|leading recruiter for MI6 agents. He identifies and recruits the most
:|intellectual geniuses for MI6.
:|
:|The following three people are members of MI6, an organisation which
:|forms this supposed great country's intelligence service. It
:|manipulates the ordinary people of this country who are unaware of its
:|illegal activities.
:|
:|XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX--Head of MI6--was ordered to organise the murder of
:|Diana, Princess of Wales and her friend Dodi Al Fayed.
:|XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX--Chief of staff for . He was
:|given an assignment and moved to Paris two weeks prior to the murder
:|of Diana, Princess of Wales and Dodi Al Fayed.
:|XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX--Principal assistant to .
:| He was also involved with Spedding in the murder.
:|
:|XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX--the incoming Head of MI6 in September 1999--
:|was in Paris two weeks before the Aug. 31, 1997 crash.
:|
:|The attached list identifies the unprincipled and unscrupulous
:|individuals involved with MI6 worldwide. The list was produced by an
:|honest man who has since left MI6 because he felt that the behaviour
:|of that organisation was unacceptable in a civilised society. They are
:|accountable to nobody for their law breaking activities. They are
:|subordinated to the elite people of this country, for example the
:|Royal household and the establishment.
:|The whole world should be aware of these individuals and their
:|capabilities. British citizens need to know that these people are
:|supported by those ruling this country. This "Al Capone" style
:|organisation has removed the human rights of ordinary people, not
:|only in this country but worldwide.
:|
:|[about 100 names follow in a format like this:
:|Tarquin Walsall Aardvark: 1973 Paris,1982 Madrid,1991 Wigan;born 1950.
:|Note that they're not named as "involved in the murder" but "involved
:|in MI6". It's said to be about 10 years old from the UK mag Lobster].
:|
:|}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}
:
:]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]
Here is a further and better article From:David Turner
MI6 LIST
========
Below is the list of alleged officers of the Secret Intelligence Service
(MI6) which is now being circulated on the Internet and which has
occasioned so much media attention in the last couple of days.
The story behind it appears to be as follows:
Richard Tomlinson, who was dismissed from his post at
MI6 in 1995 and subsequently gaoled for threatening to publish a book about
MI6, established a website with IPworldcom in Switzerland (where he now lives)
at http://home.worldcom/rtomlins. On this site he threatened to
post a synopsis of his book, a directory of MI6 officers and a list of MI6
offices in various countries. On 30/4/1999, within a couple of hours of the
site being set up, the British government obtained an injunction in Switzerland
and had the site shut down. On 4/5/1999 another injunction was granted against
Tomlinson. He opened a mirror site with Geocities in America, but this too was
closed down (on 6/5/1999) when the British government complained to Geocities.
Tomlinson then opened a second mirror site with Geocities,
at http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Jardin/8787/, and this also was closed down
(on 12/5/1999). A zip-file of Tomlinson's site is currently available
at http://yya.com/mi6-rt.gz.
On his site Tomlinson had posted (on 12/5/1999) an affidavit in which he
apparently implied that MI6 was to blame for the car crash that killed
Princess Diana in 1997. In the affidavit he named the following as MI6 officers:
[DELETED] These names and [DELETED] were given in a letter Tomlinson
wrote to John Wadham, Director of Liberty, on 11/9/1998. That letter, which
concerns an alleged MI6 plot to assassinate Slobodan Milosevic, has been
available on the Web for some time:
at http://www.inside-news.ch/Shayler/!milosev.htm; mirrored
at http://jya.com/mi6-milsoevic.htm . (Tomlinson apparently believes
that the proposed modus operandi for assassinating Milosevic was actually
used in the supposed "assassination" of the Princess.)
According to a message ("MI6 Drops their pants??? - THIS IS UNREAL") posted
on the alt.talk.royalty newsgroup by Raymond Amundson on 11/5/1999,
the website of Executive Intelligence Review (EIR) was carrying an article
entitled "The `MI6 factor' in the murder of Princess Diana"
at http://www.larouchepub.com/diana_mi6_2620.html , taken from
the 14/5/1999 edition of EIR. The text of the article, as given by Amundson,
states that "Recently, EIR was one of several news organizations that
received an unsolicited e-mail transmission, identifying senior officials
of MI6, the British foreign intelligence service, including individuals who
are accused of having been involved in the Aug. 31, 1997 deaths of Princess
Diana, Dodi Fayed, and Henri Paul." The article then goes on to reproduce
the "unsolicited e-mail transmission" (see [ABOVE]). EIR, it should be noted,
is published by Lyndon LaRouche, a seriously deranged American right-wing
conspiracy theorist and cult leader who believes that the British Royal Family is
at the heart of a sinister world-wide conspiracy. On LaRouche, see Dennis King,
"Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism" (Doubleday, New York NY 1990).
It seems to have been the apparent publication of this article on the Web
that caused Rear-Admiral David Pulvertaft of the British government's Defence Press
and Broadcasting Advisory Committee to issue Defence Advisory Notice ("D-Notice")
No. 6, dated 12/5/1999, effectively instructing the British media not to publicise
the list of alleged MI6 officers or to indicate where to find it (
see http://jya.com/rfurl-dc.htm ). The
government (with Foreign Secretary Robin Cook leading the charge) condemned
Tomlinson as the source of the list, and commentators have indicated that
this seems highly likely; he himself, however, has denied any involvement.
There is now no sign of the alleged original article on the EIR website.
Amundson's message has been archived by DejaNews
at this query number and is mirrored
at http://jya.com/mi6-list.htm and
at http://www.kriminalnyt.dk/html/historie/mi6.html .
Related material is posted here( at 1 and 2 and 3).
As Channel 4 News and ITN's 11 O'clock news pointed out on 13/5/1999, a
number of the names on the list were published in Lobster magazine's "Who's
Who of the British Secret State" in May 1989 -- without any of the dire
consequences which the British government is now claiming will result from
the publication of the present list.
Robin Cook's current devotion to the Secret State and to the cult of
official secrecy provides an interesting contrast with the view he took 13
years ago. Then he wrote: "today's security services are not pitted against
the KGB, they parallel it in the surveillance of their domestic
population". Considering reform he wondered "whether it would not be
simpler merely to legislate for the abolition of the security services",
especially in light of Peter Wright's revelation "that MI5 provides no
discernible service to the public, even in the intervals between swapping
personnel with the Russians and destabilising democratically elected
governments" -- New Statesman, 12/12/1986, pp. 6 and 7.
DT
14/5/1999
[COPY OF SAME EMAIL]
Media Coverage
The Independent,The Observer,Sunday Times,Francis Wheen column,BBC interview.
Duncan Campbell.
Independent, 15/5/1999
(website)
Ex-spy publishes coded book on Net
By Charles Arthur and Paul Lashmar
Richard Tomlinson, the renegade former MI6 officer, has left another
timebomb ticking on the Internet. He has hidden the transcript of a book
about his work for the Secret Intelligence Service on one of the millions
of sites on the Web.
The book has been encrypted, but Mr Tomlinson could release the cipher
"keys" for worldwide reading in moments, by sending an e-mail from a phone
booth anywhere.
Mr Tomlinson had been planning the release of 117 names of former and
serving MI6 officers on to the Internet for weeks, although on Wednesday he
denied posting the list.
But ministers have little doubt he was behind one of Britain's biggest
security breaches for decades.
Last month Mr Tomlinson sent an e-mail to The Independent, reading: "I have
decided that since I cannot take MI6 to court for blocking my entry to France
(and Australia and USA) I have no option but to adopt a hardline response."
A week ago he left the Geneva hotel where he has been staying since last summer.
The book contains details of plans by MI6 to assassinate President Slobodan
Milosevic in the early 1990s, and a British-run "mole" in a senior position
in the German Bundesbank who leaked crucial information to Britain in
economic negotiations.
Mr Tomlinson also claims that MI6 has a unit specifically for stealing
military and economic secrets from European allies. These allegations have
already been leaked, but Mr Tomlinson claims the book also contains new
material that is potentially more embarrassing for the Government.
This new threat to expose the innermost secrets of Britain's spymasters
follows desperate Whitehall attempts over the past week to prevent the list
appearing on the Internet.
Mr Tomlinson, a 37-year-old Cambridge graduate who worked for MI6
between 1991 and 1995, was sacked then imprisoned in 1997 for breaking the
Official Secrets Act.
The full list, including names of the head of MI6, a Cambridge don and an
ex-minister's son, appeared yesterday in Internet discussion groups.
A spokesman for the Foreign Office admitted that the list's rapid spread
around the Internet was now "a fact of life" and any efforts now would be
"a damage limitation exercise". The spokesman called Mr Tomlinson
"irresponsible and unbalanced", adding: "We do not negotiate with people
who hold us to ransom."
But the Government claims that the list's publication "puts lives at risk"
was challenged yesterday by the editor of Lobster magazine, an
intelligence-watching journal.
Stephen Dorril said: "About 30 of the names were published in our magazine
in 1989. It's absolute rubbish to say lives are at risk. When it comes to
officers operating under 'light cover', where the names are published in
the public Diplomatic Lists, no serving MI6 officer has been killed in the
field since the 1940s."
(Paul Lashmar, the Observer)
The Observer, Sunday 16/05/1999
(website)
The modern-day spy
by-line???
MI6 'old school' resistance to reform is at the heart of Richard
Tomlinson's feud with his old bosses, writes Stephae [sic] Dorril
The disgruntled former agent Richard Tomlinson has thrown MI6 into turmoil.
His publication of agents' names on the Internet is a reminder that
management failure has been at the heart of MI6's problems in recent years.
The setback can be contained. But it is unnerving for the chief, Richard
Dearlove, and his close advisers, that Tomlinson has more ammunition in his
locker.
He knows the identities of the agents - the source of information on whom
the Services relies - including one or two whose prominence will ensure
major headlines if he reveals their names.
Equally they will be concerned that Tomlinson might reveal the identities
of the 'illegals'. Increasingly, MI6 officers are sent abroad and employed
during the day in conventional jobs such as journalism or accountancy.
There are also 'support agents' who supply the service with facilities such
as safe houses and bank accounts.
The latest crisis follows a series of official and internal reports,
consistently damning, which have regularly been followed by assurances of
reforms. So far, little appears to have changed.
Tomlinson has described a regime of petty corruption, excessive waste and
lax financial control which rivals that of the 'rotten boroughs'.
The Oxbridge elite which still dominates the higher reaches of MI6 may make
good intelligence officers, but they have made a hash of management. Adept
at working the corridors of Whitehall, directors of public affairs, such as
John Gerson, and his assistant, Iain Mathewson, have devoted considerable
time and resources to nurturing the carefully cultivated air of mystique
that surrounds MI6.
Attempts to bring in outsiders with fresh ideas and proven management
skills have always been stymied by Whitehall, or dismissed by internal
reports (the authors being too close to the regime to recommend
root-and-branch reforms). Cabinet Ministers - more often Labour than Tory -
tend to be seduced by the aura of secrecy and privileged access to special
sources in the CX reports delivered to them daily in yellow boxes. Unlike
their Conservative counterparts, few Labour politicians have had any
hands-on experience of the secret world or have relatives who have served
in MI6.
Robin Cook is the classic example of the Opposition spokesman who calls for
reform but who, on gaining office, suddenly discovers the 'Friends' across
the river are indispensable.
Whitehall has systematically misled Ministers, while intelligence chiefs
raise the smokescreen of 'operational security' to deny a fully detailed
audit of expenditure. MI6's budget is bigger than the official figure of
pounds 150 million - a great deal of expenditure is hidden in other
government departments.
Most politicians would be hard pressed to tell the difference between an
agent and an officer, MI5 and MI6, or provide a description of what GCHQ
actually does.
Yet a conservative estimate suggests that these agencies swallow pounds 1
billion of public funds. Are they cost-effective? Do they produce anything
which a good A-Z cannot? What, exactly, is a spy in the age of the Internet
and the information explosion? In some senses spying is what it has always
been, and stealing information remains part of it. In the Dreyfus affair,
the French secret service depended on a cleaner who emptied the wastepaper
basket in the German Embassy.
China has modernised its missile force with secrets purloined by its spy in
Los Alamos.
Yet the gung-ho world of James Bond, if it ever existed, is receding. The
modern spy is a glorified archivist who must depend on his ability to make
sense of a blizzard of information in the public domain and whose triumphs
will be analytical rather than amatory.
Most officers at the Vauxhall Bridge headquarters in London - dubbed
'Ceausescu Towers' by its occupants - will beaver away at computer screens,
transferring information, creating intelligence files, building up profiles
of key individuals and writing endless reports.
The main problem is increasingly one of overload. There has been an
unfortunate tendency for secret agencies to react against the flow of open
information by making a virtue of secret, covert intelligence. This is
despite numerous complaints from Ministers about the poor quality of
reports they receive - 'cornflakes in the wind' was former Foreign
Secretary Geoffrey Howe's memorable description. There is little point in
spending money on gathering intelligence when the same information can be
found in a newspaper.
Would not the large sums spent on the intelligence services be used more
productively in creating an open-source intelligence service? This would
employ academics, journalists and even former intelligence officers to
exploit today's explosion of information. It is true that the combating of
criminal gangs, drug traffickers and terrorist groups will continue to
require some covert element. With the ending of the Cold War, MI6 was
perhaps slower off the mark than the Security Services (MI5) in resetting
its agenda.
The new agenda includes counter-narcotics, the surveillance of
international gangs and money-laundering - including the use of hacking
teams to break into the computers of financial institutions and companies.
Such tasks certainly provide the service with plenty of work and has
curtailed any large staff cuts. It has been, however, an ad hoc exercise
lacking in coherence.
MI6 officers are not suited, or trained, for criminal work and problems
have already arisen over the questioning of MI6 officers in court.
Despite the PR exercises selling the change of direction, there is too much
overlap between different agencies, with reports of infighting and turf
disputes still a feature. Communication between the agencies remains poor.
Largely criminal matters are best dealt with by specialised police units,
fully accountable to the law and Parliament.
The use of satellites and the availability of photographs over the counter
are another indication that the traditional way of viewing
intelligence-gathering is no longer applicable. It is unfortunate that Tony
Blair's enthusiasm for Europe does not extend to the intelligence field,
where we have missed an opportunity to join France and Germany in their
satellite project.
The naming of MI6 officers on the Internet also illustrates that
traditional notions of official secrecy have little validity. We have
almost reached the point where there are no secrets any more, only delayed
disclosures.
The real problem for any intelligence service in the future is being
swamped by 'noise'. Ninety-nine per cent of the information may be rubbish,
but somewhere in among it all are real gems. It is analysis which will be
the key to the future success of MI6, however it is organised.
* Stephen Dorril's 'MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations' is to be
published by Fourth Estate in September.
(unknown by-line, the Guardian).
Sunday Times, Sunday 16/05/1999
(website)
Tomlinson affair
by FOCUS TEAM
Privileged backgrounds unite many of those named, write
Chris Hastings, Gareth Walsh and David Leppard
Unmasked agents recruited
from a league of gentlemen
Tinker, tailor, soldier . . . viscount. Raymond Benedict
Bartholomew Michael Asquith, scion of one of Britain's most
famous political dynasties, found himself apparently "outed" as
a spy last week after his name appeared alongside 115 others
on the list of alleged MI6 officers released on the Internet.
It is not the first time that the Ampleforth and Oxford-educated
viscount, great-grandson of Herbert Asquith, the Liberal prime
minister, has been linked to the world of espionage. In 1985, at
age of 33, he was among up to 30 diplomats expelled from
Moscow by the Soviet government in a tit-for-tat spy row.
Known to his American friends in Moscow as "Vi", he was
made an OBE seven years later. Intrigued commentators
noted that it was an unusual award for a humble first secretary
in the Foreign Office who had not yet turned 40. "It probably
indicates some act of courage or enterprise outside the normal
diplomatic routine," said one.
But is he really a spy? This weekend his father, the Earl of
Oxford and Asquith, said he could not say if the claims were
accurate. "I would have to see the wording of the document,"
he said. "I can't comment on any of my sons, all of whom have
behaved totally honourably."
Whether or not he is a genuine spy, Asquith is certainly among
good company. The espionage aristocracy is said to include a
former cavalry officer born into one of Britain's most
prominent and wealthy Roman Catholic families.
In his late thirties, he was said to be a key player in the
arms-to-Iraq Matrix Churchill scandal acting as desk officer
for Iraq during the sale of British machine tools to Saddam
Hussein. His family has close ties to the royal family which go
back to the 1930s. His father, a retired senior army officer,
owns a large farm.
A public school background and Oxbridge education is a
typical characteristic of many of those on the list. Michael
Prichard, a Cambridge don named by the Internet mole as a
leading recruiter for MI6 agents, said last week he had "very
probably" written a reference for Richard Tomlinson, the
renegade former spy who studied there. But Prichard said he
had never been paid by MI6.
The 72-year-old retired tutor lives in a suburb of Cambridge.
He spends his time proofreading university texts. He is not an
MI6 officer. Asked if the allegation that he was an MI6
recruiter were true, he said: "It depends what you mean by that
- I simply cannot say - but I am not and was not a recruiter in
the sense of going round actively recruiting people."
An analysis of the social and educational backgrounds of those
on the list, based on their entries in the HM Diplomatic List
(available at Her Majesty's Stationery office for £27.50),
Who's Who and Debrett's Peerage, shows that some are
members of the Athenaeum, one of London's most exclusive clubs.
Intellectuals are also prominent. Among the multiple-linguists
and the polymaths is one officer, said to be based in Germany,
who is a fellow of the Royal Society. He obtained a PhD at
Cambridge and spent a year studying astrophysics in Munich.
He has published a string of articles in learned journals across
the world. Like some of his colleagues, he is a member of the
United Oxford and Cambridge club.
Another, a senior MI6 director, is a Cambridge graduate and a
visiting fellow of Princeton University in America. A third, now
retired, is a respected naval historian. He writes book reviews
and opinion pieces for the broadsheet newspapers - under a
pseudonym, of course.
Among others on the list are the son of a well-known former
Conservative cabinet minister, and a vicar's son who studied at
Glasgow University.
Like Asquith, some of those on the list have already been
named in earlier newspaper articles. John Scarlett, another
former Moscow man, was a victim of the first post-cold war
Anglo-Russian tit-for-tat expulsions when he was identified in
March 1994 as head of MI6 in Moscow. Since leaving Russia
he has worked in a Whitehall post for the Foreign Office.
Also listed was Norman MacSween. In 1996 MacSween, a
political officer at the British embassy in Moscow, was named
by the Russians as MI6 station chief.
Geoffrey Tantum is named. He is alleged to have had a series
of meetings with Jonathan Aitken, the former Conservative
cabinet minister, while the MI6 man was station chief in Saudi
Arabia in the early 1990s.
Then there are the usual suspects. Sir David Spedding, the
outgoing MI6 boss, is one of the first to appear. So, too, is his
successor, Richard Dearlove, who will have the unhappy task of dealing
with the fallout when he takes control at the end of August.
Despite an average age of 47, almost a quarter of those named
have received some form of honour - mainly, like Asquith,
being made an OBE. Few have military service, but one
officer boasts a Military Cross.
Out of the 116 names just seven are female, suggesting a bias
- at least in this cross-section of staff - against women; a
contrast with MI5, the domestic intelligence agency, which
boasts nearly 50% women agents. The shortage of women
probably reflects the fact that, until 1972, women who married
were forced to leave the diplomatic service.
One of the Foreign Office's rising female stars is on the list.
Now in her mid-thirties, she had two years of language training
after graduating from University College, Oxford. She has
previously stated that her aim is to secure a senior post in
Washington or a European capital.
The list is as significant for its omissions as it is for those it
claims to identify. For example, there is no mention of
Rosemary Sharpe, the MI6 officer who unceremoniously
returned to London three years ago after her cover was blown
in a corruption scandal involving one of her contacts. She had
worked in the mission in Berlin and was said to have paid more
than £20,000 to an agent assigned to buy Soviet weapons from
disaffected Russian soldiers. There was no suggestion she was
involved in any wrongdoing.
Neither does it mention Christopher Hurran, the MI6 chief in
Prague in the Czech Republic, who was outed last February on
the country's television. Hurran, openly homosexual, was
named by disgruntled Czech intelligence officers involved in a
dispute with their boss.
Both cases were widely reported in the British press. The fact
that neither is named on the Internet list may indicate that its
compiler did not rely on publicly available information such as
newspaper cuttings.
But is the list accurate? Or are many of the names simply
plucked at random from the Foreign Office diplomatic list,
designed to frighten MI6 rather than really wound?
Stephen Dorril, co-author of a list of British intelligence
officers published in 1989, believes that any dedicated student
of the subject would be capable of drawing up such list,
without inside help.
Dorril said that he was able to identify at least 100 MI6
officers. His [ex-]colleague Robin Ramsay said 13 of the names on
last week's list were originally identified by Dorril 10 years ago.
Dorril said: "I do this kind of thing all the time. If you know
what you're doing, it's fairly easy." By analysing the diplomatic
list, he said, a pattern can be seen that points to a diplomat
working for MI6.
"You would be looking for where people we definitely knew as
MI6 officers had been stationed. Then look at the person who
was in that post before them, then ask where they are
stationed. Once you've got a few you can extend that
network."
But one former MI6 officer disagreed that it would be simple
for an outsider to draw up such a list. He said he personally
knew 80% of those on the list and confirmed they worked for
the spy agency.
As the list was read out, he said: "Oh Christ, I know him. He's
a pompous Old Etonian, quite bright, though. The other one
was my course tutor; and he came to my wedding.
"He was my boss; that one served on the Syrian desk. And
that one, I took over from him.
"It's as if someone has hacked into the office personnel
computer. It's definitely someone who worked inside MI6."
The former official said that one or two names had been
misspelt and that, in two cases, the list named the same person
as two different officers.
"All of these people are still serving and many of these people
are now quite senior," he said. "I just can't see the point of it.
It's just a gratuitous naming of names."
(FOCUS TEAM, Sunday Times)
The Guardian, Weds 19/05/1999
(website)
Tomlinson affair
by Francis Wheen
Wheen's World
Francis Wheen on: conspiracy theories, Blair and Clinton vs Slobodan,
and Labour's lucky escape
Spies, lies, old school-ties
What is to be done with Richard Tomlinson, the renegade intelligence
officer? 'My old employer, the KGB, would simply have kidnapped him,
executed him, or locked him up forever after his first offence or put him
in a lunatic asylum,' Oleg Gordievsky commented last weekend. 'This
must be one of those occasions when it is very frustrating for MI6 not to
have the KGB's powers.'
Most frustrating, I'm sure. But the Secret Intelligence Service has only
itself to blame. If Tomlinson really is a marzipan-encrusted fruitcake as
countless security experts now assure us how did he ever get through the
well-guarded portals of Vauxhall Cross? The answer has been
provided by the historian Andrew Roberts, who knew Tomlinson at Cambridge
University and was himself nearly recruited by SIS.
'I sat a series of extremely testing exams,' Roberts reveals in the Sunday
Telegraph. 'Some were straightforward written questions: my spirits rose
when I was asked to place in order of precedence, Viscount, Duke, Marquess,
Earl and Baron (this one in particular would have played on
Richard's social chippiness).' It may also explain why the list of SIS
officers published last week includes one Viscount plus umpteen chaps with
names like Peregrine Plantagenet Wykehamist-Twytte.
Having sailed through these exacting tests, Roberts was summoned for an
interview with SIS's doctor. 'Homosexual, are you?' he inquired.
When I said I wasn't he almost apologised for being so personal. 'We have
to ask. Silly, really, as of course no one says Yes. With Oxford it's
drugs, with Cambridge it's boys.' What it is with Lampeter or Bangor we
shall never know and nor will the chieftains of SIS, since their
procedures are carefully designed to exclude provincial oiks and encourage
public-school fantasists. As Roberts confirms, the only serious
qualifications for a job in British intelligence are an Oxbridge degree and
boundless self-confidence, both of which Richard Tomlinson had.
Now that Tomlinson has turned against his former employers, it is no
surprise that his cause should be taken up by Lyndon LaRouche, the
veteran American conspiracy theorist, and our own dear Mohamed Al Fayed. A
year ago, I revealed on this page that Fayed's sidekick Michael
Cole had advised TV producers who were investigating the death of the
Princess of Wales that they should interview one Jeffrey Steinberg, a
'senior reporter' on the magazine Executive Intelligence Review. Steinberg
duly appeared in several Diana-related television programmes, but
viewers were not told that Executive Intelligence Review is in fact the
weekly propaganda sheet for Lyndon LaRouche.
Like Fayed, LaRouche has some interesting theories about the British
establishment. He believes that the Queen runs an international
cocaine-smuggling cartel and that Lord Rees-Mogg was responsible for the
Oklahoma massacre in 1995. 'The mouth of Lord William
Rees-Mogg,' he wrote recently, 'has become the world's largest open
sewer-pipe of demented ravings... the guiding hand behind the deployment
of the new terrorist wave.' Fair enough - though I was slightly peeved when
LaRouche wrote to me a few years ago alleging that Rees-Mogg
was also the secret author of the Wheen's world column. During the 1996
presidential campaign, Executive Intelligence Review carried the
splendid headline: 'US Election is also a Referendum on Britain's Lord
Rees-Mogg.'
But the villainous Rees-Mogg is no more than an accomplice to the real
Napoleon of Crime, otherwise known as Prince Philip. According to
LaRouche, the royal family wants to terrorise the United States into
becoming a British colony again, thus giving the House of Windsor a
monopoly in the American cocaine market. The only person powerful enough
to foil this plot was the Princess of Wales, which is why she had
to be eliminated.
After the bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi last summer, LaRouche
instantly detected the Duke of Edinburgh's fingerprints. 'If Satan
considered his darling, Adolf Hitler, to be relatively a wimp, Satan must
be gloating over his selection of Prince Philip as Hitler's successor. As I
shall demonstrate, this view of Prince Philip as quite literally a satanic
figure is no hyperbole... ' LaRouche's latest pamphlet, The Pure Evil of Al
Gore, adds that the American vice-president is a secret agent of the
Windsors, committed to 'the British monarchy's longer-range strategic
policy for the planet as a whole'.
This may seem barmy but no barmier than many of the 'intelligence
assessments' provided by MI6 over the years. Lyndon LaRouche thinks that
the Italian banker Roberto Calvi was murdered by the Duke of Kent; those
fine public servants at Vauxhall Cross are convinced that only
someone who knows the difference between an Earl and a Marquess is fit to
be initiated into the mysteries of trade-craft. Which is the more
eccentric?
(Francis Wheen, Guardian)
BBC interview online
BBC Online News, "Net will be death of MI6 - Tomlinson," Wednesday,
May 19, 1999. Published at 18:06 GMT 19:06 UK
Tomlinson lives in Switzerland and communicates over the Net
By Internet Correspondent Chris Nuttall
Former MI6 intelligence officer, Richard Tomlinson, who has threatened
to publish state secrets on the World Wide Web, says the Internet
spells the end for the world's intelligence services.
His prediction came in an e-mail interview with BBC News Online. "I
think the Net will eventually make intelligence agencies defunct as
there will be a lot less secrets around the world that they can
steal," he said.
Mr Tomlinson criticised the government's attempts to suppress the
publication of a list of more than a hundred alleged MI6 operatives on
the Internet last week, describing it as "foolish".
Already more than 100 copies of the list have been put up on Internet
bulletin boards. A Website reproducing the list has recorded more than
27,000 views of the page. Hoax lists have appeared and there is even
chain e-mail carrying the names.
Mr Tomlinson says in his e-mail that he has received both supportive
messages and hostile ones blaming him for the publication - some
amounting to death threats have been referred to his lawyer.
He continues to deny that he sent the list to Executive Intelligence
Review magazine, where they were first published online, and says many
of the names are unknown to him.
The e-mail exchange in full:
What kind and amount of e-mail have you been receiving?
When The Sun first published my address alongside a very hostile and
one-sided article, I got quite a lot of threatening e-mail. But I got
even more supportive e-mail from people who thought that MI6 should be
exposed anyway. I am writing back to everybody who e-mailed me to
explain to them that it wasn't me who was responsible for the leak.
Virtually everybody who was hostile has written back and apologised.
Some have responded with even more hostile and threatening e-mail, and
I am forwarding those that amount to death-threats to my solicitor.
How important has the Internet become to you?
I use e-mail a great deal. Phone calls where I live are very
expensive, so I cannot spend much time online, which is a shame. I do
occasionally e-mail David [Shayler], but not for a few months. We
always use PGP [Pretty Good Privacy] encryption to stop the French
intelligence service from eavesdropping.
What are your thoughts on whether Executive Intelligence Review should
have published the anonymous e-mail with the names?
I think that they have the right to publish whatever they want.
Governments and intelligence services should learn to live with the
Internet and not try to censor it.
Who could have sent it if it was not you, how accurate is it?
I don't know who could have sent it. After examining the list, I don't
think it is particularly accurate. All the names that I recognise are
retired or resigned from MI6, or are widely accepted as being "blown".
Most names I just do not know, so I cannot say whether or not they are
from MI6. I don't think the publication of the list was in itself
damaging to MI6. HMG [Her Majesty's Government] made it damaging by
announcing to the world that it existed and that it was accurate. I
can't explain why they did this.
How many sites have you had? How skilled have you become in
constructing them?
I am really only a beginner, but I use Front Page so learning really
was not at all difficult. I really enjoyed the process.
What was the timeline of them being opened and closed?
My Swiss site was up for about a day before MI6 obtained an
injunction. My first Geocities site lasted about a weekend before MI6
found it. My second Geocities site lasted about a week. None of these
sites contained the list that is causing all the fuss.
How supportive have Internet Service Providers (ISPs) been and other
hosts? Why did you obey the injunctions when they were aimed at the
ISPs or were without jurisdiction?
In general, none of the ISPs I have used have been very supportive or
robust. They have all folded to government censorship without a
whimper. I think that is disappointing.
What are your thoughts on the power of the Internet to overcome any
attempts to censor you and the reaction on the Net to all this?
I think it very foolish for MI6 to try to censor the Net. They should
accept that this sort of freedom of information is here to stay. I
think the Net will eventually make intelligence agencies defunct as
there will be a lot less secrets around the world that they can steal.
Given the government's commitment to a Freedom of Information bill,
what are your thoughts on its behaviour in this affair?
Rather hypocritical - but that is to be expected of any government in
power. But I have no doubt that this incident has got the public
talking and thinking about the power of the Internet, and eventually
that public opinion will filter its way into legislation.
Two articles by DUNCAN CAMPBELL
officers' names all over the world
Thursday May 20, 1999
The Guardian
(website)
The night before last week's intelligence fiasco broke, Britain's most
senior security adviser went to an address in the Strand. Edna Chivers,
head of protective security in the cabinet office, is a former MI5 high
flyer. She was addressing a Kings College seminar of academics and
intelligence specialists about 'information warfare' and the threat it
allegedly poses to our 'critical national infrastructure' (CNI).
Infowar and CNI are big buzzwords in America. Top military officials
repeatedly warn of a coming 'electronic Pearl Harbor'. They fear that, any
day now, a distant aggressor will use electronic expertise and the internet
to cripple computers and communications, turning off power and transport
and paralysing military forces.
Early this year, US assistant defense secretary John Hamre proclaimed that
'cyberwar' had already begun. In Britain, Ms Chivers and Margaret Beckett,
leader of the Commons, hosted a closed conference for industrialists and
intelligence officials to warn about the growing risk of electronic attack
on Britain's own 'CNI'. Last month, Dr Ralph Benjamin, former chief
scientist of electronic spy agency GCHQ, joined in: 'There is a problem...
it could affect various aspects of the fabric of the nation.'
Subsequently, Reuters reported the Skynet satellite had been put out of
action. 'Hackers have reportedly seized control of one of Britain's
military communication satellites and issued blackmail threats,' the agency
said. The news went round the world. The Telegraph confirmed the attack had
triggered a ' "frenetic" security alert'. That story was garbage, part of a
cycle of paranoia about the internet that spawns new fiction every month.
Yet soon a real electronic Pearl Harbor was under way, at least from MI6's
point of view.
It was Monday May 10, when the eccentric US-based Executive Intelligence
Review placed its latest report, 'The MI6 factor', on the internet. This
contained the famous list of 115 MI6 officers, now so widely disseminated
following a government D-notice drawing attention to it, that all foreign
powers know who they are.
MI6 says the list came from their renegade ex-officer Richard Tomlinson. Or
it might have been posted at the behest of one of his contacts, Mohamed Al
Fayed, aggrieved at his recent refusal of UK citizenship. (Both men deny
these suggestions.) Yet as MI5's Ms Chivers travelled home from her infowar
security seminar on Tuesday May 11, the worst was yet to come. Half a world
away, a Canadian malcontent also had his finger on the trigger.
Raymond Amundsen (32) was born a Canadian but so hated it as a 'British
colony' that he prefers to live in Point Roberts, a tiny piece of the US
joined to land only by an isthmus from British Columbia. From his web pages
on the internet, he confesses to being a 'trenchcoat mafia' person, who
hates faggots, had planted bombs in his school, and planned poison attacks
'to neutralise my tormentors at the age of 15'.
Visiting the EIR website, he saw the article about MI6, and said : 'This is
incredible'. Mr Amundsen hit the send button on his personal computer. The
command 220.0 article copied the MI6 list to thousands of 'Usenet'
computers all over the world. I have confirmed with several sites in London
that it arrived in Britain, unimpeded, at 7.59pm. By 8.15pm, the MI6 names
were stored in Yugoslavian, Chinese and Russian computers.
The list also went to computers run by the Ministry of Defence Evaluation
and Research Agency (DERA) in Malvern and to GCHQ in Cheltenham. Both run
'open source' intelligence operations to spot valuable data in the sea of
rubbish that is most of Usenet. The names also went to a computer in
Norwich, where the government runs a news server computer:
news.gtnet.giv.uk. for the government's own internet service.
MI6 were alerted to the original EIR website. But not to the other
worldwide postings. The D-notice secretary, Rear Admiral David Pulvertaft,
circulated a warning to the British media, while MI6 had the list removed
from the EIR site (which they did somehow a few hours later).
Did Whitehall know that the list had already been broadcast worldwide,
including to themselves? 'That particular detail wasn't known to this
office,' Pulvertaft's deputy, Thomas Ponsonby, said last week. He said he
had 'never heard of Usenet' [!!].
After two weeks, Amundson's excited message would have been automatically
wiped by almost all the world's news computers, in order to make space for
new rubbish.
Had MI6 kept quiet, Amundson's message would have sunk in the swamp within
days. To any casual and sensible observer, it would have appeared to be the
deranged talking only to the deranged.
The folly of that decision to issue a D-notice warning is now clear. When
the real electronic Pearl Harbor hit, nobody in British intelligence saw it
coming. They didn't even notice when it arrived.
• Duncan Campbell specialises in electronic intelligence matters.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Here is DC's previous Guardian piece on this story:
Reading this open book of British spies
I can now scroll through the 115 senior names on the MI6 staff list
By Duncan Campbell
Friday May 14, 1999
The Guardian
(website)
By late last night, it was clear the British government had got itself into
another war with a clever adversary who wasn't going to give up without a
fight. Richard Tomlinson, the ex MI6 man who has now revealed the names of
top intelligence officers to Internet sites all over the world, had already
been locked in battle with Whitehall for five years, threatening to use his
personal computer and the Internet to create another Spycatcher battle that
would be over before the Cabinet Secretary could even blink, let alone
dissemble.
Now, it has happened. Many MI6 staff holding key and dangerous posts in the
Balkans are on the list of 115 names I found on the Internet yesterday
morning, together with a shorter list of nine MI6 names which I had seen
before. Both lists had been already distributed automatically to hundreds
of thousands of computer 'news servers' around the world. The long list was
also sent to everyone who had subscribed to a particular channel on Usenet,
which is the Internet's discussion area. There are more than 20,000 such
groups, catering for every subject under the sun. Once a message is sent to
Usenet, it automatically copies itself around the planet.
D-Notice secretary Admiral Pulvertaft's warning to the British media about
the existence of a single web site was out of date before it was written.
As the row blew up, Richard Tomlinson told me in an e-mail that 'People are
jumping to the wrong conclusion. My web-site 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.
Only the short list went on to his web site. The long list was launched in
a different way and took a different route round the world. Tomlinson's
principal grievance is that he was peremptorily sacked and then denied the
right to compensation at an industrial tribunal. In a series of e-mails to
me over the last few months, and on his now departed web site, he described
how his life since being a secret agent has been a saga of arrest, jail,
and expulsion from a series of countries.
The secret battle of computers between Mr Tomlinson and MI6 went red hot
late last month. In an e-mail from Switzerland three weeks ago, he told me
of his mounting anger that what he saw as harassment continued unabated. On
19 April, he wrote 'I just threatened the bastards to publish my database
of MI6 officers on the Internet if they didn't stop harassing me (illegally
getting foreign intelligence services to ban me from
their countries - eg France, Australia, USA, Canada, even though there is
no warrant out for my arrest).'
A week later, he wrote to say that his computer files had been wiped. He
believed that that this had been caused by a hidden computer virus put
there months before, when his computer was held by the French secret
service. He wrote 'I can only return fire using the same tactics. I am
currently therefore about to publish my database of MI6 officers, which I
know will upset them. I suspect that this threat was the cause of my
computer crash - a last ditch but futile attempt to destroy this database.'
Four days later, he revealed the shorter list of names.
Tomlinson's now peripatetic MI6 website started up in Switzerland
subsequently, 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 the shorter list and by the time it had been closed
down last night, a well-known and highly regarded US site specialising in
intelligence, called www.jya.com, contained replicas of all Tomlinson's
'Paris Jardin' files. It is now ubiquitous.
Other re-publishers used the Usenet system to replicate the MI6 short list
on a number of widely read channels. The distribution has now gone so far
that the position is irrecoverable so as the government is concerned. In
this short file alone, Tomlinson names the Head of Balkan Intelligence,
previously well-known to journalists in Brussels; his deputy and head of
planning, (who he says developed a plan to assassinate Serbian leader
Slobodan Milosevic), and the controller of Eastern European activity. Also
named on the Internet is SIS chief Sir Colin McColl's personal assistant.
Those officers have had six months warning of what might be coming, since
Tomlinson first included their names in statements he then made about MI6's
alleged involvement in the death of the Princess of Wales. Others including
a senior official in a sensitive position in the Balkans, might also have
expected to be on the list because they were well known to Tomlinson. On
Tuesday night, he and a hundred others were not disappointed. That is the
damage that SIS now has to cope with . In the first bloodless war of the
information age, Britain has lost to a deadly first strike.
© Copyright Guardian Media Group plc. 1999
ENDS.