The sacked British agent Richard Tomlinson tells how his former masters at
MI6 pursued him relentlessly in a vindictive game of cat and mouse across
the globe

http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/

January 14 2001 FOCUS

A rebel spy on the run - Part One

Monday, April 24, 1995, dawned with spring rain. At the security doors to
MI6's headquarters on the south bank of the Thames at Vauxhall Cross, there
was a bedraggled queue. I slipped my swipe-card down the groove, typed in

my Pin code, and awaited the familiar green light. But it flashed red.

I tried again. Same result. At the third attempt, the intruder alarm went
off. A couple of guards hurried over. I showed my pass through the perspex,
and they unlocked the side-entrance.

"Are you a member of staff, sir?" I gave my staff number. A guard tapped it
into the computer and studied the screen.

"Sorry sir, but your pass has been cancelled. We've been told to take you
up to personnel department."

My mind raced desperately over what could be wrong. Ostensibly, personnel
was responsible for staffing decisions in MI6. But these were always
shrouded in intrigue, buried in a network of unofficial soundings and boozy
lunches. They operated like a mini secret service within the secret service
because they were career spies with no training in personnel management.

This secrecy gave a carte blanche for a personnel officer to make or break
a fellow officer's career.

My personnel officer was nicknamed Poison Dwarf. He had sent for me two
months earlier to ask why I had been "alone" on the terrace of the office
bar, drinking a beer - I had had some bad news about a close friend with
cancer - and to criticise my performance on an overseas operation.

Poison Dwarf was waiting now on the eighth floor. He led me to his room and
didn't mince his words.

"As you know, last time we met I gave you a warning that unless your
performance improved, you would not be able to stay in the office. It has
not improved, so you are fired."

"How can you make such an absurd claim?" I blurted out. I told him that the
head of my department had recently shown me a glowing assessment report.

Poison Dwarf made it plain that there was no point in arguing. "Go home and
don't come back until we contact you."

A couple of desperate days later, a secretary told me to come in for an
interview with the head of personnel, Julian Hooper, an ex-marine. The
office rumour was that he was after a job as personnel manager with one of
the banks that employed ex-MI6 officers in return for titbits of economic
intelligence.

"So what are your reasons for sacking me?" I asked when we met.
"Why on earth do you want any reasons?" he replied.
"Under UK law, you have to give reasons for a dismissal," I said. I had
spent an afternoon looking up employment law.

"Your personnel officer gave you the reasons for your dismissal at your
last meeting."

"No he didn't; he gave me none at all. Give me the reasons, right now."
Hooper thought for a moment. "You are motivated by challenge."
"What does that mean, and why is that bad?"

"You lack commitment."

"Oh yeah, sure, that's why you posted me to Bosnia."

He squirmed as he dreamt up more excuses.

"I want these reasons committed to writing, which is my right under
employment law," I demanded.

"You know we can't possibly give you anything on paper. It would break the
Official Secrets Act."

"I want them tomorrow."

"All right, I'll see what I can do," he meekly agreed.

"And I suggest you do it properly, because you've dismissed me illegally,
and I intend to take MI6 to an employment tribunal."

Hooper looked appalled: "What would be the point? Even if you won, we
wouldn't give you your job back. Nobody can tell the chief of MI6 what to do."

Like many other senior officers in MI6, he believed it was above the laws
of the land. There were mechanisms that conferred token accountability to
the foreign secretary and the prime minister, but to the likes of Hooper
these were bureaucratic formalities.

In his eyes, MI6 had no obligation to give any warning that my job was in
jeopardy or to provide any reasons justifying my dismissal.

"We'll get you a job in the City," he blustered.

"Keep your feeble ambitions to yourself," I shouted.

A few days later, personnel department allowed me a final appeal to the
chief himself, David Spedding.

Hooper assured me that Spedding had not been briefed about my case. This
was a lie. Spedding was already fully briefed. He dismissed me with a wave
of the hand, saying: "I understand personnel department have already found
you some interesting possibilities in the City."

The only way to put the episode behind me was to seek an independent
judgment of the legality of MI6's actions, and that meant going to an
employment tribunal. But MI6 issued a public interest immunity (PII)
certificate to stop my application for a hearing on the grounds of
"national security".

The intelligence services tribunal (IST), a panel of three senior judges,
reviewed my case. I was not allowed to read the huge pile of documents MI6
submitted to it, and I was not surprised when it found against me 11 months
after my sacking.

I needed money and went to job interviews, but my lack of enthusiasm must
have been plain. Patrick Jephson, private secretary to the Princess of
Wales, interviewed me to work in her office, but no offer materialised.

A career counseller, vetted by MI6, suggested: "Sign on the dole and get
your mortgage paid by the social security, then work as a minicab driver to
pay your groceries." I could end up in prison.
An MI6 "outplacement" officer told me: "I've just finished reading a book
which made me think of you. It was about a young chap who was desperate
like you - broke, no job, lost his home. He went off and joined the French
Foreign Legion, then wrote a book about his experience."

"Are you suggesting I join the Foreign Legion?"

"No, no. I was merely trying to say that things could turn out for you okay
in the end."

He confided, however: "Personnel department have obviously made some
serious errors of judgment here. But I have to be frank, I very much doubt
that they will do anything. They've taken their decision now, and it would
be too embarrassing to reverse it."

I reflected on his advice. Joining the Foreign Legion was not an option.
But how about writing a book?

This would be illegal. Even disclosing the colour of the carpets in MI6's
headquarters would be a breach of the Official Secrets Act (OSA). But the
urge to tell my side of the story welled up more firmly as MI6 attacked me
to justify my sacking. Its internal weekly newsletter claimed that I was a
"publicity seeker who would use the opportunity of an employment tribunal
to blacken the service".

I approached Kate Hoey, my MP. But she wrote to me that, over lunch,
Spedding had assured her that I had been fairly treated. She later
described me to a Sunday Times journalist as a "shit".

My ever-expanding overdraft forced me to let my flat, and I decided to
leave the country. I rode my Honda Africa Twin motorbike to Portsmouth,
glared over the pier at Fort Monckton - MI6's training headquarters - and
exited on a false passport that I had used on MI6 operations. I curled up
my real passport, driving licence and some money, stuck them in a shampoo
bottle, and slipped it into the bike's petrol tank.

I meandered down the back roads of France to Spain until the drive chain on
my bike jumped the sprocket in the Andalucian coastal town of Fuengirola. I
moved into a small bedsit, set up my old laptop and started typing.

I still hoped to persuade MI6 to negotiate. The only way to get it to the
table was to switch to terrorist tactics; some titbits in the newspapers
would wake it up.