Richard Tomlinson
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Richard Tomlinson (born 13 January 1963) is a New Zealand-born British former MI6 officer, who was notoriously imprisoned in 1997 for breaking the 1989 Official Secrets Act[1] by giving a synopsis of a proposed book detailing his career in the SIS to an Australian publisher[2] [3].
He was born in Ngaruawahia, New Zealand and grew up in Penrith, England, then was educated at Barnard Castle School where he was a contemporary of England Rugby Internationals Rory Underwood and Rob Andrew. He excelled at mathematics and received double-stars in A and S-level mathematics and physics[citation needed], and then won an entrance scholarship to Cambridge University. He was first approached by MI6 in 1984 after graduating from Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, with a Double First Class Honours Degree in aeronautical engineering, where he was a contemporary of Gideon Rachman and Andrew Roberts. He also completed flying training with Cambridge University Air Squadron, won a Cambridge Blue for Modern Pentathlon, and on graduation he was accepted to join the Royal Navy as a Fleet Air Arm Officer.
However he instead applied for and won a Kennedy Scholarship to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the U.S.. He worked briefly in the summer of 1986 as an Intern at the World Bank and then subsequent to graduation from MIT, won a further prize from the Rotary Foundation, allowing him to study in the country of his choice for a year.
He enrolled in a political science course at the University of Buenos Aires, where he became a fluent Spanish speaker. [4] He continued to pursue his aeronautical interests and qualified as a glider pilot with the Fuerza Aerea Argentina.
In 1987 Tomlinson then returned to the United Kingdom and served for five years in the Territorial Army's 21 SAS and in 23 SAS, qualifying as a military parachutist and radio operator, before joining MI6 in 1991. He completed his training with MI6 as the best recruit on his course, being awarded the rarely given "Box 1" attribute, by his instructing officers including Nicholas Langman. He then served in the elite "SOV/OPS" department, working during the closing phases of the Cold War against the Soviet Union, before being posted to Sarajevo as the MI6 representative in Bosnia during the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. His next posting was to work as an undercover officer against Iran, where he succeeded in penetrating the Iranian Intelligence Service. MI6 sacked him for still unexplained reasons in 1995.[1]
Tomlinson disputed the reasons for his dismissal but MI6 blocked his appeal to an employment tribunal by using a Public Interest Immunity Certificate. Having no further legal recourse to pursue his appeal against MI6, Tomlinson left the United Kingdom and pursued his arguments against MI6 publicly, by publishing articles in the international press.[5].
On returning to the United Kingdom in 1997, he was arrested and remanded in custody on suspicion of breaking the Official Secrets Act, althougth MI6 have never claimed that he revealed any secret information. Nevertheless, realising that by default he potentially faced a long prison sentence, he pleaded guilty to breaking the Official Secrets Act and received a twelve month custodial sentence. He served six months as a Category A prisoner in HMP Belmarsh before being released early for good behaviour on 1 May 1998. On completion of his three months probationary licence, Tomlinson fled the United Kingdom in August 1998 to live in exile abroad, where he has since remained in fear of arrest should he return to the United Kingdom. Since 1998, foreign police services, including those of Switzerland, Germany, Italy, France and Monaco have arrested and detained him at the request of MI6, but he has never been subsequently charged with an offence. He is still denied entry visas by the governments of the USA and Australia.
He now lives near Cannes in France where he works as an author, commercial pilot and yacht broker.[citation needed]
Contents |
[edit] "The Big Breach"
The book was finally published, in Moscow, in 2001[6]. After the Court of Appeal of England and Wales subsequently ruled in his favour it was made available in the UK.
The Big Breach: From Top Secret to Maximum Security. Coauthor Nick Fielding, Mainstream Publishing (February 1, 2001) ISBN 1-903813-01-8
The book may be downloaded free in zipped .doc, .txt and .pdf formats from here
[edit] "The Golden Chain"
In September 2006, Tomlinson announced on his blog that he had been working on a novel The Golden Chain.
[edit] The list
It is alleged that he published a list of 116 alleged MI6 agents on one of Lyndon LaRouche's web sites. Tomlinson has always denied his responsibility for its publication. In the book he states "If MI6 had set out to produce a list that caused me the maximum incrimination, but caused them the minimum damage, they could not have done a better job."
Tomlinson had his own website at the time, hosted by GeoCities, which apparently contained nine names. The site was subsequently taken down by the host due to a complaint by a "third party". A copy of this website in a zipped format is available for download here.
No definitive proof has ever been provided to link him with the original list. Although for a time he openly carried a link to a copy of the list on his own website, upon which he commented on the accuracy of individual entries, he made clear that he did this in order to demonstrate the inaccuracy of the list, and thereby to show that he could not have been its author.
[edit] Death of Princess Diana
Tomlinson was requested by the Coroner as a witness into the inquest into the deaths of the Princess of Wales and Dodi al Fayed. He had suggested that Britain's Secret Intelligence Service was monitoring Princess Diana before her death and that her driver on the night she died, Henri Paul, may have been an MI6 informant, and that her death mirrored plans he saw in 1992 for the assassination of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, using a bright light to cause a traffic accident.
Tomlinson was apprehended by French Authorities in July 2006 after a European Arrest Warrant, requested by the United Kingdom, was issued. The warrant claimed Tomlinson was involved in the publication of two lists containing the names of MI6 officers in 2005. The police seized computers, personal papers and other items from his home in Cannes. He was subsequently cleared entirely of any involvements in the lists. It was reported in some quarters that this arrest was linked to the inquiries into the death of Princess Diana.
At the Coroner's Inquest into the death of the Princess, on 13 February 2008, speaking by video-link from France, Tomlinson conceded that, after the interval of 16 or 17 years, he "could not remember specifically" whether the document he had seen in 1992 had in fact proposed the use of a strobe light to cause a traffic accident as a means of assassinating Milosevic, although use of lights for this purpose had been covered in his MI6 training. On being told that no MI6 file on Henri Paul had been found, Tomlinson said that it "would be absurd after 17 years to say I can positively disagree with it, but...I do not think the fact that they did not manage to find a file rules out anything either". He said he believed MI6 had an informant at the Paris Ritz but he could not be certain, and had never claimed, that that person was necessarily Henri Paul.[7]
[edit] See also
- David Shayler, former MI5 employee who was prosecuted for passing documents to the media.
[edit] References
- ^ a b Former spy Richard Tomlinson quizzed BBC
- ^ Ex-MI6 man jailed over memoirs BBC
- ^ Leaks feared as sacked MI6 spy launches blog Observer
- ^ Tomlinson, Richard: The Big Breach: From Top Secret to Maximum Security. Mainstream Publishing 2001 ISBN 1-903813-01-8
- ^ Tomlinson, Richard: The Big Breach: From Top Secret to Maximum Security. Mainstream Publishing 2001 ISBN 1-903813-01-8
- ^ Moscow to publish the memoirs of MI6 renegade - Telegraph
- ^ Hearing transcripts: 13 February 2008 - Morning session
[edit] External links
- Tomlinson v MI6, mirror of Tomlinson's old (April-Aug 2006) blog (access to original blocked by Typepad on August 4, 2006)
- MI6 v Tomlinson (it's back!)(originally called "Tomlinson v MI6 (it's back!)"), Tomlinson's blog between August 2006 and March 2007 (now defunct).
- MI6 v Tomlinson (it's back!), mirror of Tomlinson's blog between August 2006 and March 2007.
- MI6 v Tomlinson, Tomlinson's blog April-May 2007, defunct as of July 2007. Its mirror is still up.
- Tomlinson v MI6 (blogs are forever), reserve blog
- 2008 Diana Inquest transcript - morning session
- 2008 Diana Inquest transcript - afternoon session
- Exhibit from 2008 Diana Inquest
- Second exhibit
