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Richard Tomlinson (born 13 January 1963) is a New Zealand-born British former MI6 officer who was imprisoned in 1997 for breaking the 1989 Official Secrets Act by giving the synopsis of a proposed book detailing his career in the Secret Intelligence Service to an Australian publisher. The book, called The Big Breach, was published in Moscow in 2001.

Education and military training

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, 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. 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., where he obtained an S.M. in Technology policy.

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. He continued to pursue his aeronautical interests and qualified as a glider pilot with the Fuerza Aerea Argentina.

Military and MI6 service

In 1987 Tomlinson 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 "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, presumably SAVAMA. MI6 sacked him without warning and for unexplained reasons in 1995. MI6 failed to follow British legal procedures intended to protect employees from abusive employers - giving him no written warning, or reasons for the dismissal, and refusing to allow Tomlinson access to a Union representative. Tomlinson disputed the reasons for and legality of his dismissal and attempted to take MI6 before an employment tribunal, but this was blocked by MI6 using a Public Interest Immunity Certificate. Having no further legal recourse, Tomlinson left the United Kingdom and pursued his arguments against MI6 publicly, by publishing articles in the international press about his treatment, and began work on a book (which later became The Big Breach). As a result of Tomlinson's campaign, in 1998 the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee recommended that MI6 follow legal employment procedures. However, MI6 refused to allow this to be applied retrospectively to Tomlinson's case.

The Big Breach

On returning to the United Kingdom in 1997, Tomlinson was arrested on suspicion of breaking the Official Secrets Act by giving a four-page synopsis of his proposed book to an Australian publisher - though MI6 have never claimed that he revealed any secret information. Unusually, for someone with no prior criminal record, and for a non-violent offence, Tomlinson was remanded in custody at HMP Belmarsh as a Category A prisoner - a category normally reserved only for dangerous offenders. When it was announced that the trial would be held in a High Court, meaning that Tomlinson would be held on remand for up to two years, longer than any likely sentence, he pleaded guilty to breaking the Official Secrets Act. At the sentencing hearing, John Scarlett, the chief prosecution witness, claimed that Tomlinson "had gravely damaged national security" and "had put agents' lives at risk". Since he pleaded guilty, Tomlinson was not allowed to call any defence witnesses. Tomlinson received a twelve month custodial sentence. He served six months in HMP Belmarsh before being released early for good behaviour on 1 May 1998. Since 1998, foreign police services, including those of Switzerland, Germany, Italy, France and Monaco have all arrested and detained him at the request of MI6, but he has not been subsequently charged with an offence.

On completion of his three months probationary licence on 31 August 1998, Tomlinson left the United Kingdom to live in exile. He set about completing The Big Breach, which was published in 2001 in Russia. After the Court of Appeal of England and Wales subsequently ruled in his favour it was made available in the UK. However, immediately after publication, the British Government obtained a High Court Order to confiscate proceeds from the book and any newspaper serialisation rights, on the grounds that the government owned the copyright to anything written by Tomlinson. Finally, in September 2008, MI6 dropped all legal objection to the publication of The Big Breach, released the proceeds from the publication to Tomlinson, and admitted that their previous legal actions against him were disproportionate. However, they still refused to reinstate Tomlinson in MI6, or compensate Tomlinson for the loss of his career and pension. Tomlinson can now travel freely to the UK.

In September 2006, Tomlinson announced on his blog that he had been working on a novel called The Golden Chain.

Other alleged breaches and assertions

MI6 agents

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 this publication. In The Big Breach 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". However, 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 it 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.

Princess Diana

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, and from his place of employment, leading to the loss of this employment. He was subsequently cleared entirely of any involvements in the lists, though was never compensated for the damage to his career caused by the allegations. It was reported in some quarters that this arrest was linked to the inquiries into the death of Princess Diana.

In 2008, Tomlinson was 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.

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.

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The Increment

Tomlinson has alleged that there is a secret Paramilitary unit called "The Increment" which carries out covert operations on behalf of Her Majesty's Government, claiming that operators are selected from the 'cream of the crop' of the SAS and SBS, and work on Security Service and Secret Intelligence Service supervised missions.

References

1. ^ Former spy Richard Tomlinson quizzed BBC
2. "Ex-MI6 man jailed over memoirs", BBC
3. "Leaks feared as sacked MI6 spy launches blog", Observer
4. "Moscow to publish the memoirs of MI6 renegade" Telegraph
5. ^ Richard Tomlinson, The Big Breach: From Top Secret to Maximum Security. Foreward by Nick Fielding. Mainstream Publishing 2001 ISBN 1-903813-01-8
6. 'MI6 tempts rebel ex-spy back home', The Sunday Times, May 31 2009
7. A copy of this website in a zipped format is available for download here.
8. copy
9. website
10. Hearing transcripts: 13 February 2008 - Morning session
11. Daily Telegraph. 13 February 2008
12. The Guardian, January 26, 2001

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
• Listing of Tomlinson-related websites and documents
• The Big Breach download

Further reading

• The Increment (2004), Chris Ryan, Century Publishing (UK). ISBN 1-84413-383-4
• Spooks: Behind the Scenes (2006), Orion Books (London). ISBN 0-75287-610-4

• Alumni of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge
• People from Penrith
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni
• MI6 personnel
• Special Air Service soldiers
• Artists' Rifles soldiers
• British whistleblowers
• Black British people
• University of Buenos Aires alumni
• 1963 births
• Living people