By Gordon Thomas
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Richard Tomlinson, the former MI6 spy, had told the Stevens inquiry into the death of Princess Diana and Dodi al-Fayed: "Their deaths are a carbon copy of the assassination plan I saw when I worked for the Secret Intelligence Service".
But following the publication of the Stevens Report in London, Tomlinson, in an exclusive interview, claimed: "The report is a fabrication about many things. In my case it put words in my mouth I never used to the detectives who interviewed me. The language they attribute to me is not what I used. I gave them detailed information about the Milosevic plan for an assassination. They told me in a subsequent interview they had checked and found the document outlining the plan exactly where I said it was. They confirmed it was accurate. However, in the Stevens Report it is claimed I admitted that the plan did not refer to Milosevic but to someone else. This is a crude attempt by the secret intelligence service to cover up the truth. It really sickens me and is one of the many reasons why I gave up what was a high-flying job".
Tomlinson's evidence is likely to figure largely in the forthcoming inquest in the New Year.
Tomlinson revealed that two senior Scotland Yard detectives, accompanied by a high-ranking French gendarme, had conducted two lengthy interviews with him in 2005 - the only person the inquiry has spoken to on two separate occasions.
The two detectives who questioned Tomlinson over two days were able to tell him that his "bombshell evidence" had been substantiated in the MI6 files Lord Stevens, the former Scotland Yard chief who headed the unprecedented investigation, had, in Tomlinson's words, "forced MI6 to hand over".
Tomlinson is among new witnesses, Lord Stevens had said, who provided "new evidence and important forensic details".
Tomlinson is the first to speak publicly about his testimony. It provides an intriguing insight into how the investigation had focussed on the role of MI6.
Before her death Diana had said, in her famous BBC Panorama interview, that she was under surveillance by MI6. at the time she was heavily engaged in her campaign to abolish landmines.
Tomlinson told the Yard detectives this had attracted the attention of MI6.
"at the end of my interview it was made clear to me by the detectives my evidence could be the tipping point that showed how Diana died, and why".
The moment I saw the Stevens Report on the Internet, I knew there had been a cover up", Tomlinson said. "So much of it just does not match what I know to be the truth. I realise that by speaking out I'm going to face the real anger of my former employers and possibly Lord Stevens. But what the hell: I deal only in the truth as I know it. and I just know that this report doesn't get to the real core truth. Henri Paul was surrounded by a circle of intelligence people. They included the CIa and the National Security agency (NSa), who right up to the night of Diana's death, were still bugging her".
Tomlinson added: "In the first interview the detectives took me step-by-step through all I knew on MI6 files about the deaths. I told them the plot to get rid of Diana was modelled on the one that MI6 had created to assassinate the late President Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade in 1992.
"I gave the Yard detectives the name of the senior MI6 officer who had written the minute of the Milosevic plan which was then placed in the Diana file. It had a 'yellow mark' category. This meant it could only be seen at the highest level within MI6. When I downloaded the Stevens Report from the Internet, there was no reference to the Milosevic document except to say that I had referred to another document. This is simply not true. I categorically insist that the file I referred to was the plot to assassinate Slobodan Milosevic. I say again: that plan involved using a bright halogen lamp in a tunnel. The lamp would be controlled by a passenger on the back of a motorcycle. None of this is included in the Stevens Report from which I can only conclude that the three weeks he claims his detectives spent in MI6 headquarters did not include having access to the Milosevic document. The Stevens Report citing my statement does not include what I told the detectives and what they told me they had found. It is obvious to anyone who knows the way intel works that the Milosevic document had been removed before the Stevens detectives could have sight of it".
after their initial interview with Tomlinson, the Stevens detectives flew to London and then returned to re-interview Tomlinson in the south of France. Lord Stevens, when asked about Tomlinson's interviews, said yesterday as he launched his report: "I would direct you to read the second interview by Tomlinson".
It is that interview which Richard Tomlinson bitterly complained to me "had been fabricated in many places. It is designed to discredit me as a credible witness, but the facts I know of speak otherwise".
Tomlinson continued: "I must say I felt uneasy when they stood on my doorstep. I thought 'oh my God what have I done now?' But they were very reassuring. They said they had used my information to get hold of the MI6 files on Diana's death. One detective confirmed that everything I had said was 'absolutely true'. His colleague said, 'this is quite remarkable. It's all confirmed in the MI6 files'."
Tomlinson then revealed what he had told the detectives.
"I said I had seen the MI6 file that confirms Henri Paul, the driver of the Mercedes in which Diana and Dodi died, had been blinded as he drove through the Paris underpass by a high-powered flashlight. This was a technique which is consistent with MI6 methods used in other assassinations.
"More important, it is the same method described in the MI6 minute that deals with the proposed assassination of Slobodan Milosevic".
Standing against the sparkling blue of the Mediterranean after engine-testing one of the luxury yachts he now rents to rich holidaymakers, Tomlinson accepted his revelations were guaranteed to infuriate his former spymasters.
He said: "When the two Stevens detectives had finished they said that in their own inquiries at MI6, a number of my former colleagues admitted I should never have been fired. More important, the detectives made it very clear that what I had told them, and which they had confirmed in the MI6 files, would have an important influence on how the Stevens inquiry finally reported. There is no doubt at all there was a major intelligence presence in events leading up to the death of Princess Diana and her lover".
Separate confirmation of this came recently from a senior French intelligence officer in Paris. He said: "We know that Tomlinson has told the truth. It is going to be very embarrassing for MI6 when this all comes out".
Lord Stevens publicly admitted before the report's completion: "The inquiry is far more complex than we had originally thought".
So why has Richard Tomlinson decided to speak out now?
"I have decided to do so because the published Report in no way reflects what I said. all I had hoped for was that I could return to England when this was over. I don't want money for all that has happened to me. I just want the right to live my life in my own country".
Was he going about it the right way - taking on one of the most powerful intelligence services in the world - by running a one-man campaign on the internet: "Tomlinson v MI6"?
"I just want to force Scarlett (Sir John Scarlett, the current head of MI6) to recognise what the service has done in the name of 'defence of the realm'."
In what he admitted is a "somewhat novel attempt to force MI6 to meet me and clear up matters once and for all", the tall, gangly Tomlinson revealed that to bring "John Scarlett and his not-so-merry-men to the table", he has started to reveal details of secret operations he was sent on during his time at MI6.
"On one operation I was sent to Moscow to obtain two notebooks containing what I was told was most important technical data a Russian rocket scientist who we had brought out of Moscow had left behind", he said.
an MI6 source confirmed that the defector is still employed in Britain's defence industry.
Until Tomlinson posted it on his website, the operational details of how the notebooks were recovered have remained secret. Tomlinson's website includes a picture of a forged document identifying him as "alex Huntley", his mother's maiden name. It also provides details of how his cover - his "legend" - was created.
"On the Moscow operation I went to see the scientist's mother-in-law where the two notebooks were hidden", Tomlinson recalled. "While she was making me a cup of tea in her kitchen, I delved into a sewing box where I had been told the documents were hidden. I slipped the notebooks into my pocket, drank the cup of tea and bid the old lady farewell. I caught the British airways flight to London and handed over the documents".
Later Tomlinson served a year in jail for breaking the Official Secrets act. He claimed, "I was stitched up. That's the bottom line. Stitched up".
Since released from prison in 1998, Tomlinson has led a will-o-the-wisp life to wage a relentless campaign to expose what he has called "the machinations of MI6".
From Internet cafs around Europe he has regularly posted embarrassing details about MI6. They included naming a "high level mole" in Germany's Central Bank.
"The man was code-named Orcadia in MI6 files - and showed he had betrayed his country's economic secrets to Britain," Tomlinson claimed.
On several occasions Britain's Treasury Solicitor - who acts for the government when there are breaches of the Official Secrets act - has written to Tomlinson demanding he must remove all such details.
"I wrote back and said 'why don't MI6 meet me and thrash things out?' There was no reply".
asked to comment on Tomlinson's detailed revelations about the death of Princess Diana, a spokesman for the Treasury Solicitor said: "It is not appropriate for us to comment".
But behind the bomb-proof windows of the wedding-cake shape of MI6 headquarters overlooking the River Thames, there were some very harsh words being said about the spy who has insisted on speaking out.
"For a man who wants a peaceful and quiet life, he has chosen a very strange way to go about it," said a French intelligence officer in Paris. "But then if you are going to tell the truth, you can't expect a quiet life. and from all we know, Tomlinson is telling the truth".
Gordon Thomas 2006
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