By Kieren McCarthy for The Register. This article has
been reproduced with permission.
The ex-MI6 officer was fired in 1995 after four years in the
foreign arm of British secret intelligence and spent a year in a
maximum security prison for publishing a book about his time in the
organisation. But he has fought back against what he claims is
intimidation by his old employees with the publication of chapter
one of The Golden Chain on his blog.
Tomlinson had his house and boat in France raided earlier this
year after MI6 claimed he was responsible for releasing a list of
alleged active MI6 agents on the internet. Even though Tomlinson
now links to the list from his blog, he swears he wasn't behind the
list. Since the raid, he has fought with the UK government,
including MI6 and Special Branch, for the return of his
possessions, publishing copies of emails and letters sent to him
over the matter online.
Recently, the UK authorities confirmed that they were retaining
ownership of his possessions because he had "made a number of
references to writing a novel or book to be based in whole or in
part on information falling within the terms of the Order". That
order was the terms of Tomlinson's release and he was effectively
accused of breaking the Official Secrets Act a second time.
Tomlinson's response has been to publish the first chapter of his
book on his blog, presumably with the threat of releasing further
chapters until his possessions are returned.
The online battle has been going on since March this year, when
Tomlinson discovered blogging and set about trying to force MI6 to
respond to his endless requests for his sacking to be reviewed by a
tribunal.
He soon gained the ire of MI6 chief John Scarlett by accusing
him of having blood on his hands thanks to his part in the
production of the now-discredited Iraq war dossiers. Tomlinson also
threatened to expose what he knew, including the names of MI6
agents, online. His house was raided and in August his Typepad blog
was shut down at the request of Special Branch. Tomlinson opened up
a Blogger account immediately afterwards with the title "Tomlinson
v MI6 (it's back!)".
Tomlinson gained some notoriety in 1998 when he published
The Big Breach, an account of his time with MI6. He made
the book available online from a server in Russia, and then used
the defence created by another famous SIS book,
Spycatcher, by Peter Wright, to argue that the book should
be published in the UK since all the harm that could be done by its
publication had already happened. The book is now readily
available. Tomlinson also found notoriety, if not credibility, in
his claim that MI6 may have been behind the death of Princess
Diana.
© The Register
2006
