The Big Breach (34 page)

I left Spedding's office frustrated and angry, realising that this last chance was just a sham. I waited in the corridor outside his office for the guards who were supposed to escort me out of the building, but after a few minutes I realised they had forgotten. My first instinct was to do my duty and make my way directly home. But rebellion was brewing inside me. `Bastards,' I thought. They hadn't even let me clear out my desk and say goodbye to Badger. `Sod 'em, I'll go and see him whatever.' Brazenly walking through the centre of the building to Badger's office was too risky - somebody might collar me. It was nearly 11 a.m., so Badger would be having his morning `breath of fresh air' on the fire escape. Down on the ground floor by the gym, I dodged into the fire-escape stairwells and made my way through the clammy connecting tunnel to the PTCP fire-escape.

Badger was there having a cigarette and, unusually, was alone. `Hey, how are you doing?' he greeted me enthusiastically. `I'm really sorry about what they did to you. As soon as I heard, I rushed up to personnel to persuade Dimmock he was making a mistake, but he wouldn't listen,' Badger explained angrily. `They've ruined BELLHOP,' Badger continued. `Without you, we've no choice but to abandon it. And we just had a big breakthrough. Kiddie phoned Fahd yesterday. He wanted you to go to Vienna to meet him.' Badger threw down his cigarette stub with annoyance. `And Dimmock said something very strange to me,' he added, `he said that they were very worried about having a potential Aldridge Ames in the service.'

`What?' I asked incredulously. `What the hell has Ames got to do with me?'

`I really don't know,' replied Badger sympathetically `he wouldn't elaborate.'

We spoke for a few more minutes, but I was struggling to hold back tears so I bade goodbye to Badger and checked out of the office for the last time.

Ames was a CIA officer who had recently been arrested in America and sentenced to life imprisonment for systematically betraying secrets to Russian intelligence over many years in return for millions of dollars. To this day I don't know whether Dimmock's comment was supposed to imply that I was some form of potential security risk, but it was a deeply unpleasant and unprofessional comment to make, and for which he had absolutely no justification.

Personnel department gave me three months' pay after the sacking. In that time they expected me to come to terms with my dismissal, identify a new career and find a suitable job. I had a mortgage to pay and other financial commitments, and no idea what to do for an alternative career. Even if I were to lamely accept their advice and work in the City, a prospect that appalled me, it would mean starting at the bottom of an unfamiliar and considerably less interesting career, with a much reduced salary. I would accept such misfortune without complaint if my dismissal was merited, but it wasn't.

I went to see Dimmock and made my feelings clear but, secure in the knowledge that his decision was unquestionable, Dimmock had little time for my complaints. `PD/PROSPECT has already lined up some interviews for you in the City,' he urged, `but if you really must insist on complaining, here's the Staff Counseller's details.' He handed over me the business card of Sir Christopher France with undisguised exasperation.

The Staff Counsellor was a vetted senior civil servant, supposedly independent, to whom members of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ could take complaints or concerns about the conduct of the services, which he was then empowered to `investigate'. The mechanism was supposed to allow members of the services to let off steam internally, thus removing the need to go to the courts. In reality, it was little more than window-dressing to fend off criticisms from legislators. Dimmock showed his exasperation because he knew that my complaint could not change the decision but would cause him extra paperwork. Nevertheless, I made an appointment to see France in his Whitehall office the next day, and he listened to my complaint patiently, concernedly noting details. I felt that at least I had a sympathetic ally.

France invited me back to his office a month later to give me the result of his investigation. `I went to see the Chief,' he announced loftily, `and Sir David Spedding assured me that his personnel department had done everything they possibly could for you.'

`But didn't you ask to see the papers I told you about? Personnel department's own minutes directly contradict that claim,' I replied with barely contained exasperation.

`Oh, I could not possibly ask to see the papers of the Secret Intelligence Service!' France replied with horrified surprise. `And in any case, to do so would be to doubt the word of Sir David,' he added loftily.

I left the meeting close to tears and with anger welling up inside me. It was not that the procedure had proved ineffective: that I had expected. It was just that France, who at the first meeting had appeared genuinely concerned at my mistreatment, had then dismissed my version of events after no more than a quick gin and tonic with the Chief, and had effectively branded me a liar. Unwittingly, France drove the wedge between me and MI6 deeper.

The only way now to seek an independent judgement of the legality of their actions was to go outside the service, and that meant going to an employment tribunal. A quick search of the telephone directory turned up a small law firm in north London, Bahsi and Partners, that specialised in employment disputes and advertised themselves with the banner `NO WIN, NO FEE'. This pledge was attractive because my small savings were not sufficient to pay lawyers. Satisfyingly, the partners all had Farsi names and I smiled at the thought of Dimmock receiving a disclosure demand from an Iranian lawyer. A quick phone call and we'd arranged a meeting. Two days later they had sent MI6 a preliminary notification letter, requesting copies of all my personnel papers.

My hunch was correct. Dimmock rang me at home. `We can't possibly have you taking us to court, we'd have the whole of Fleet Street outside the court building,' he whined. `Why don't you come in to see the outplacement officer, PD/PROSPECT? He's got you a really well-paid possibility in the City.'

`I've told you already I'm not the slightest bit interested in working in the bloody City, so please stop imposing your own career regrets on me,' I replied angrily. `You bastards sacked me illegally and it is my right to take you to an employment tribunal.' Dimmock rang off impatiently.

Dimmock wrote to me a few days later, now addressing me as `Mr Tomlinson' instead of `Richard'. They'd probably already started tapping my phone too, I thought to myself. Dimmock wanted me to change my law firm to something `more established' and offered to pay my legal fees. On the face of it, it was quite a generous offer but inevitably there was a hidden agenda behind personnel department's uncharacteristic platitude. Another search of the phone book, this time looking for expensive-looking companies with big adverts, turned up the prestigious city firm of Herbert Smiths. The efficient receptionist put me in touch with John Farr, their partner specialising in employment law. Over the next few weeks, we put together a detailed application to an employment tribunal and submitted it to the tribunal centre in Norwich. My last paycheque from the office, for the month of August, arrived a few days later. It would take three or four months for the application to come to courts, so my limited savings would have to support me in the interim. I was not too concerned - my case for unfair dismissal was straightforward and when I inevitably won MI6 would be forced to reinstate me with full back-pay.

My optimism was na‹ve and I underestimated the deviousness of personnel. Farr called me up at home and asked me to go into his offices near Liverpool Street station to see him.

`There's been an interesting development,' he said, from the other side of his designer desk. `They've used a Public Interest Immunity certificate to stop your application.'

`What?' I cried angrily. `How the hell can they justify that?' PII certificates are a legal mechanism - a sort of `get out of jail free' card - that MI6 occasionally use to get them out of difficult legal situations. They had last used one to cover up their failings in the Matrix Churchill and Astra scandals. The certificates, obtained from the Foreign Secretary via a submission, allow them to block the release to the courts of any documents that they assert could `damage national security'. Farr explained that he had been visited the previous day by three legal officers from SIS, who had served the PII certificate on him, gravely explaining that any discussion of my case in court, even in closed session with no access to the public gallery, would be `gravely prejudicial to national security' and that they had been `reluctantly forced to ask the Foreign Secretary, Malcolm Rifkind, to sign the PII certificate'.

This was a disgraceful and cowardly lie. My personnel papers contained no more secrets than the papers of an employee of the gas board. Discussion of the circumstances of my dismissal by responsible lawyers in a closed court with no journalists or members of the public present could not endanger national security in any way. The real reason MI6 had obtained the PII certificate was that they knew that they would lose their case. The ludicrous reasons that Dimmock had dreamt up for dismissing me, and which I had ambushed him into committing to paper, would have been roundly ridiculed in a court. Poison Dwarf would have been obliged to admit the dishonesty of his claim to have warned me that my job was under threat and MI6 would have been forced into an embarrassing climb down.

I left the meeting with Farr completely disgusted with MI6, my resolve to fight them undiminished but now tinged with growing anger. Moreover, MI6 told Farr that they would no longer pay his fees after he had presented a first interim bill for œ19,000, so I would have to find another lawyer.

On the IONEC, a guest-speaker from MI5's counter-subversives branch had lectured us sneeringly about the activities of `Liberty', a civil rights lobby group based in south-east London. Amongst other issues, they campaigned against excessive state secrecy, lack of accountability of the intelligence services and the misuse of PII certificates to cover up government cock-ups. Their principal lawyer, John Wadham, agreed to see me after a nervous call from a public phonebox. It was with some trepidation that I knocked on the door of their slightly dilapidated premises at 21 Tabard Street.

`There is no legal remedy available to you now except to appeal to the IST (Intelligence Services Tribunal),' Wadham explained over a cup of tea. `This is a panel of three senior judges who've got the power to examine the legality of actions by MI6.' The tribunal was set up shortly after the avowal process in 1992 in order to give MI6 token public accountability. In theory, any member of the public could make a complaint about illegal activities of MI6 and the tribunal was obliged to investigate. But there were many restrictions on its powers and loopholes that MI6 could exploit, and it was little more than a fig-leaf to give token respectability to the accountability supposedly conferred by avowal. `They might agree to investigate a case of unfair dismissal,' Wadham advised sceptically, `but your chances of winning would be nil whatever the merits of your case. They've never once found in favour of a plaintiff.'

It was my only remedy, so I gave it a go depsite Wadham's pessimism. Unusually, the IST requested to interview me personally and appointed a meeting in a committee-room at the Old Bailey towards the end of October. The panel, consisting of appeal court judge Lord Justice Simon Brown, a Scottish Sheriff and a senior solicitor, were seated imposingly at a heavy raised table, with thick dossiers in front of them, presumably the documents that MI6 had submitted to them about me. The court clerk bade me sit down at a desk a dignified distance from the panel. Lord Justice Brown, the chairman, spoke first, explaining their powers of investigation and outlining their understanding of my case. It was several minutes before I was invited to speak. `Can I be assured that you will take the decision only on papers that I have seen myself?' I asked, aware of Wadham's warning.

Lord Justice Simon Brown paused for reflection before replying. `There are indeed papers here that you have not seen and will not see,' he gravely admitted, indicating the thick pile of papers on which they were taking their decision. He was clearly uncomfortable with this basic betrayal of a fundamental legal principle. `I am sorry to say that we cannot be more transparent. We can only work within the terms of the Act.' The huge pile of papers that they were examining, far more than personnel department had ever shown to me, was not encouraging. Personnel had probably rewritten most it, knowing I could not contest its veracity. My prospects of success were non-existent.

In November, I took a short holiday in South Africa to visit my uncle and aunt and to follow some of the England cricket tour of the country. I could scarcely afford the trip but I'd made the commitment before my dismissal. Later I learned that my trip had cost MI6 far more. Concerned that in my disaffected state I might be vulnerable to recruitment by South African counter-intelligence, they pulled my friend Milton out of the country and cancelled the whole undercover operation. In fact, the South Africans made no approach and I wouldn't have cooperated if they had done. But rather than just interviewing me on my return, MI6 wrote off many thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money.

The tribunal were unable to give a date or even a time-frame for their decision. Over the coming months Dimmock wrote several letters urging me to accept help from PD/PROSPECT, but they went straight in the bin. Conceding to their help would be like accepting a set of false teeth from somebody who had just kicked my face in. Besides, even if they dragged me kicking and screaming into one of their tame companies in the City, my previous experience in management consultancy had been so disastrous and unpleasant that I would not last a week.