19 May 1999. Link fixed to http://jya.com/mi6-rt.gz

JYA Op-Ed

## IS THE MI6 SPY LIST A TRUE LIST ?

Since we posted the lists of MI6 agents last week, we have had many enquiries about whether we think the list (http://jya.com/mi6-list.htm) of MI6 agents is genuine and came from the ex-British spy Richard Tomlinson. We have learnt the opinions of some of the best British journalists covering the story. This is what they think.

1. Was the list published by Executive Intelligence Review on its web site from Monday 10 May to Wednesday 12 May a list by Richard Tomlinson of SIS agents?

Yes, this is what they believe.

2. Why?

Most of the list is accurate. Many of the names in the list are from the Balkans, where Richard Tomlinson worked. Some of the names were known only to Richard Tomlinson and a very small number of other people. Every name that Richard Tomlinson has privately revealed in the past is included in the list. In one case (only) in the list, the officer is called a "wanker". This is not a technical term of MI6 espionage. It is a term English men frequently use to abuse other men. It literally means "masturbator". The person described as a "wanker" in the list is Tomothy Clayden. This is the person who sacked Richard Tomlinson from MI6. Mr Tomlinson has previously said that he dislikes Mr Clayden.

3. Could the list have been compiled from public sources, such as Lobster Magazine (UK), Covert Action Quarterly (US), Namebase (US) or from normal newspapers?

No. Less than 20 out of 115 names have been published in these sources. Also, if the list had been compiled from public and not private sources, it would not have omitted the names of MI6 agents who have been publicly exposed as spies in the last few years. For example, Mr Christopher Hurran, the British chief of station in Prague is not listed. Nor is Richard Tomlinson himself, although he is the most famous British MI6 spy to "out" himself (as a spy) in the last ten years.

4. Richard Tomlinson claims that since some of the names listed have jobs which started after he left MI6, he could not have prepared the list. Is this true?

No. For more than 25 years, people studying the CIA and MI6 have noted that when one spy leaves a "cover" job, s/he is often replaced by another spy. So they assume that this pattern is automatic. While this method of spotting spies is often correct, it is not 100% fullproof. Like anyone else, Richard Tomlinson could have used this method to predict (not always accurately) the names of new MI6 agents. This would also explain why the British government says that some of the list names are wrong.

5. Richard Tomlinson claims that he did not publish the list and that his website list contained only a small number of names. Is this true?

This could be true, event if the long list was Tomlinson's own database of SIS agent, and he had threatened to be about to publish it. Richard Tomlinson's website was different to EIR. It was at Geocities. After the row began, Tomlinson's lists (on Geocities) contained only 9 names. A zip of these files is available here (http://jya.com/mi6-rt.gz). But no-one has yet supplied a copy what these files looked like before Wednesday lunchtime, when Tomlinson was warned about government action in Britain. So it is not known whether Tomlinson ever did publish the "long" list of 115 names on his site.

6. Over the weekend, the British press published claims that Mohamed Al Fayed might have published the list. Is this true?

Mr Tomlinson denies giving the information to Mr Al Fayed or anyone else. Mr Al Fayed denies publishing the list on EIR. EIR refuse to say where they got the information from. Mr Tomlinson and Mr Fayed had known each other since Mr Tomlinson came out of prison in 1998.

Mr Al Fayed believes that MI6 had helped assassinate Princess Diana and his son Dodi Al Fayed. Mr All Fayed paid for Mr Tomlinson to visit him at St Tropez in France in 1998. After the visit, Mr Tomlinson told a French judge that he believed MI6 might have helped kill Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed.

Mr Al Fayed also knows and co-operates with EIR and its staff. On two previous occasions since 1989, he had obtained EIR's assistance to attack people whom he was angry with. On 6 May, four days before the list of 115 names was published by EIR, Mr Fayed was extremely angry because the British government had refused him permission to become a British citizen. Over the weekend, he was interviewed by British newspapers. He used a number of phrases about the British government such as referring to them as "Al Capone". On Monday 10 May, identical phrases were included in the EIR article which introduced and included the list of 115 names.

On Tuesday 11 May, Mr Al Fayed asked Mr Tomlinson to make a new legal statement to his lawyers claiming that MI6 had contributed to the alleged murder of Diana. On 12 May, Mr Tomlinson added this statement to his Geoctities web site.

So: Mr Al Fayed knew Mr Tomlinson. He had paid him money. After getting money, Mr Tomlinson had made statements which supported Mr Al Fayed's opinions about the death of his son and Princess Diana. Four days before the agents' names were published, Mr Al Fayed had been very angry. In the past, when Mr Al Fayed had been very angry, EIR had attacked the people he was angry with. This time, after Mr Al Fayed became angry, EIR published a list of names that was likely to have come from Richard Tomlinson. The publication of the list would have given Mr Al Fayed satisfaction because it damaged Britain and MI6.

Unless the British police get evidence from computers used by Mr Al Fayed or his assistants that he sent the list of names to EIR, we may never know the truth about who gave the names to EIR.

7. Several new lists have been published since the original list. Are these correct?

No. They are hoaxes, containing false information.

JYA Opinion:

We think that a key aspect of the MI6-Tomlinson affair is an attempt to further demonize the Internet (and justify increased regulation), because it is giving the global intel octopus and its benefactors a run for their luxuriant privileges and expenditures.

Even the intel folks are using the Net to up the value of their overpriced goods (i.e., the recent EuroParl report on COMINT, the Open Source Intelligence movement). What is frightening to them is that it may lead to their demise and the loss of power of those sweet whisperings and secret briefings to gullible government official and legislators who are mesmerized at being made a part of the top secret natsec racket.

The pathology of secrecy is a legacy the "free" world may not survive -- consider the hundreds of thousands who cannot talk about what they know, what harm has been caused to families of those sworn to secrecy who cannot be fully human, what that enforced duty of lifetime silence has denied those sufferers in the healthy growth of our culture: cultural madness by fiat for the sake of vainglorious, stupid foreign policy games of insane statesmen and spooks so stunted by inbred, insider, monocultural privilege they are incapable of an open life among uncontrollably diverse, surely better-informed, people.

To be sure, the "responsible" global media have a parallel stake in suppressing the uncontrollable diversity of the Internet, and that would account for the frothing, lockstep accusations of the many stories on Richard Tomlinson's "irresponsible" use of it. And the many since which brayed about having previously withheld his "irresponsible" entreaties for coverage.

JYA told several UK reporters who called that an important reason we published the list was in response to the craven coverage being given the issue by the UK press, predominantly aping HMG story lines with no balancing counterviews, though a few of those have appeared after the list was freed from craven "responsible" ISPs in the US.

In the midst of this, on May 13, the US House of Representatives voted more stringent and mandatory punishment for those convicted of revealing the names of current and former intelligence agents, demonstrating the enduring contagion of national security psychopathology which infects our increasingly weakened commonweal.

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