Passing this, he then ran a fake press agency to recruit spies in Russia, He helped Colonel Simakov, a rocket launch expert, defect, and also worked in Belgrade and Macedonia. Perhaps his most damaging revelation is about 'Orcada', a British spy inside the Bundesbank, who passed on economic secrets. [page 158]. On behalf of the CIA, MI6 ran a smear campaign against the UN Secretary General, Boutros Ghali, which failed.

Other important revelations include the claim that Henri Paul was an asset. MI6 were reportedly planning to kill Slobodan Milosevic in a Geneva road tunnel by firing a strobe light at his chauffeur. Another damaging claim is that about Serbians trying to fund the Conservative Party. One of the most interesting parts of this story is the Joyce Kiddie affair, where a plucky Cambridge businesswoman was being run as a conduit to supply chemical and equipment for a chemical warfare plant to the Iranians.

Shortly after this, Tomlinson was peremptorily sacked from MI6. This is where we see an implausible shift from expert in security to naivety. Tomlinson suffered years of persecution after he tried to get an employment tribunal up against them. After emailing about his book proposal to an Australian publisher, he was jailed, and then pursued through many countries by vindictive spooks. On 13th May 1999, a list of 115 alleged MI6 agents was published on the internet, Tomlinson claims (probably correctly) this was a spoiler operation by six. Shortly after this he was expelled from Switzerland, and to this day remains a fugitive.

This is one of those books everybody needs to read, to understand the spook mindset. As C G Jung said "the maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison, which alienates their possessor from the community". All this security stuff clearly damages their judgment, after Spycatcher, you'd think they'd take more care of their ex-employees, but no, they engage in a stupid and costly barrage of victimization and harassment.

On the other hand, we see a similar corrosion of Tomlinson's personality. We get to see inside the backstabbing and office politics infighting, for example the way Tomlinson could not trust his supervisor enough to tell him his girlfriend was dying of cancer. [p 187] As with the naivety about employment tribunals and contacting journalists, there is a kind of cognitive dissonance there. It was all jolly good spiffing fun for Tomlinson to spy on innocent houses in Gosport, or drop people like Albert Constantine when they were no further use to him. He should not be so surprised when MI6 did the same to him.

There are various theories about Tomlinson which are live. The one I think most plausible is that both Shayler and Tomlinson are really still working for their respective agencies. Their activities follow parallel agendae. Partly they are both about generating public support for MI5 / 6 by eventually creating an impression that the spooks are reforming, responding to criticism. Partly, they are both about capturing, distorting and manipulating our civil liberties campaigns.

– Steve Booth

Green Anarchist: Front Page Current Articles First 10 Issues See: uk.indymedia.org for more on the university expansion.

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