As this writer has long suspected the names of the British Intelligence operatives posted on the internet were not posted by Richard Tomlinson, as MI6 claimed. In fact they were posted by MI6 itself in an effort to discredit Tomlinson, as the following extract from Tomlinson's bombshell book, The Big Breach, reveals:

"I'd like to make it clear that you are not under arrest," Commandant Jourdain of the federal police assured me at Geneva police headquarters, "but we think that you may be able to help
us safeguard the security of Switzerland."

Inspector Brandt of the Geneva cantonal special investigations department nodded enthusiastically. "We'd like you to tell us all about illegal British espionage operations against Switzerland."

"The British asked us to put you under surveillance when you came to this country because you were a dangerous terrorist who could jeopardise Swiss security," Jourdain explained, nudging a copy of MI6's letter towards me.

"We watched you for the first couple of weeks. Did you spot anything?"
"No, nothing." Swiss surveillance was among the best in the world.
"When we realised that you were not presenting any danger to Swiss interests, we decided to invite you here, to see if you could help us."

I was again in an awkward position. Telling them about MI6 operations could lead to prosecution in Britain. On the other hand, since MI6's undeclared operations in Switzerland were illegal under Swiss law, refusal to help the police would also be an offence for which I could be imprisoned. "Failing to help us will not help your application for a residency permit," Jourdain said menacingly.

I had to think of my long-term future. MI6 had used its influence to prevent me making a fresh start in New Zealand and Australia. I decided to pledge my future to Switzerland, in the hope that I could get permanent residence status and a work permit.

"Okay, how can I help?"

Over the next three months, the Swiss police interviewed me four times. I co-operated fully and built a good personal relationship with Jourdain and Brandt. They showed me MI6's increasingly irate re-quests to have me deported to Britain, or at minimum ex-pelled from Switzerland.

MI6 did not give up. Late on the evening of Wednesday, January 6, 1999, I picked up my parents in a hire car from Geneva airport and headed for a rented chalet in the French Alps for a week's skiing.

MI6 decided to spoil our holiday. They alerted the DST, who notified customs officers to stop us at the Swiss-French border. For the sixth time in a year, I was detained at the re-quest of MI6.

"C'est vraiment vous?" laughed a French customs officer incredulously, pointing out the description that flashed up on the screen in the border kiosk after he tapped my passport details into the computer.

Under my police mugshot, was written:
Name: TOMLINSON Richard John Charles Nationality: British and New Zealand
Born: Hamilton, New Zealand, 13/01/63
Resident: No fixed abode
Details: Subject is former member of British special forces and special services, trained in firearms, explosives, unarmed combat, scuba-diving, pilot's licence, parachutist, expert in
cryptography. Subject is a menace to the security of France.

"Ridiculous," I laughed.

Four DST officers arrived at 10:30pm, slapped handcuffs on me unnecessarily and interviewed me for 90 minutes. All they were interested in was details of an MI6 officer who owned a chalet near Grenoble. I refused to help, so at the end of the interview, they served me with papers banning me for life from French territory.

Worse was to come. On May l3, a list purporting to be the names of 115 serving and former MI6 officers appeared on the internet website of the right-wing American, Lyndon LaRouche. I was immediately assumed to be the author.

It was not me. I suspect the author was MI6 itself. It had a motive: to incriminate me. It had the means to make the list and the knowledge to post it onto the internet without leaving a trace. Furthermore, the list was not particularly damaging to MI6. I did not recognise most of the names, and so cannot comment as to whether they were from MI6 or from the Foreign Office, but of the names that I did recognise, all were retired from the service or were already widely blown.

If MI6 had set out to produce a list that caused me the maximum incrimination, but caused it the minimum damage, it could not have done a better job. The way the list was publicised was also odd.Rear Admiral David Pulvertaft, the secretary of the D-notice committee, advised newspapers not to publish any of the names. Yet the foreign secretary, Robin Cook, then announced at a news conference that the list was accurate, and, without a shred of evidence, named me as the culprit.

If MI6 really had wanted to protect its agents, it would have used a junior spokesman to dismiss the list as a hoax.

Until then, the press had been fairly sympathetic. After Cook's accusation, it turned on me with vitriol. One newspaper, edited by a man known to his contacts in intelligence circles as Smallbrow, accused me of being a traitor.

The publication of the list had all the hallmarks of a classic operation to winkle me out of fortress Switzerland, an objective that was accomplished three weeks later. On June 7, Inspector Brandt summoned me to Geneva police headquarters. The Swiss were expelling me for the publication of the list without any evidence that I was the culprit.

A stone-faced Commandant Jourdain told me: "You are banned from entering Swiss territory until June 7, 2004 . . . and we don't want any publicity in the press. If you talk to the newspapers, we will increase the ban to 10 years."

I rang Geneva station and asked for a rail ticket to the nearest town not in France or Switzerland. I arrived at Konstanz in southern Germany late in the evening.

"Herr Tomlinson?" The voice behind me was friendly, but I was angry. I had arrived in a strange town in a country I hardly knew and whose language I hardly spoke, it was raining, I had nowhere to stay, and I had only struggled a few yards off the station platform with my two heavy suitcases.

A stoney-faced uniformed police officer and two civilians, one male in his mid-forties, one a blonde female, stood before me. "Ausweis, bitte," ordered the policeman.

"Oh f*** off," I replied. The Swiss must have tipped of the Germans and I presumed I was about to be arrested.

"We just want to talk to you, Richard," said the female, smiling sweetly.

"I am Herr Kugel, from the BfV [Bundesamt fur Verfassungsschutz, the German federal police]," said the male civilian, "and this is my colleague, Fr?ulein Gajabski."

"We guess you must be tired after your journey, and as it's so late, we've booked you into a hotel for the night," Gajabski said in flawless English. "Don't worry, you are not in any trouble. We'll just have a quick drink tonight, then if it is okay with you, we'll have lunch tomorrow."

They escorted me in the drizzle to the hotel opposite the station and checked me in, paying the bill in advance. Once three glasses of Becks had been served, Kugel explained: "Our duty is to protect the German constitution, particularly against the activities of foreign intelligence services. We've read about your case in the newspapers, and we think that you may be able to help us with our investigations into British and American operations against Germany."

The Swiss federal police must have tipped them off. Jourdain had previously questioned me about Orcada, an MI6 spy in the German ministry of finance, even offering me money for his identity.

Next day in a restaurant overlooking Lake Constance, Kugel and Gajabski (who was wearing a very short skirt) used on me all the cultivation tricks that I had learnt in MI6. They were sympathetic, flattering and reassuring and they offered me help in settling in Germany. As the long lunch was ending, Kugel asked: "So, have you decided if you are going to help us?"

I refused. "I could go to jail for 40 years in Britain under their secrets act, and it is just not worth it."

"But we can assure you, Richard, that your identity will never go beyond the two of us at the table," Gajabski argued. It was just what we had been trained to say to potential informers, and I knew that it was not true.

Even so, I decided to stay in Germany. By October my German was fairly fluent and I found a job as a mathematics coach for a wealthy German family in Bavaria. Things were starting to look up, and MI6 appeared to be leaving me alone. I had avoided talking to journalists, and there had been scarcely an article about me in the British press.

Warren Templeton, a New Zealand lawyer, was energetically seeking to open dialogue with MI6 to put an end to the dispute through mediation. But MI6 was still determined to cause me as much hassle as it could.

In February 2000, a friend invited me to Chamonix for a fortnight of skiing and snowboarding. I gambled that the DST would not realise I was on its patch.

I'd not been there long when my landlord in Bavaria rang me. "What have you done?" he asked.

At 6am, he had been awoken by a knock on the door. On opening it, he had been bowled over by four uniformed police and my friends Kugel and Gajabski. They had a warrant to confiscate my computer.
© Richard Tomlinson 2001