The Big Breach (51 page)

`OK, have you ever been involved in any espionage or terrorism?' he eventually asked.

I hesitated for a moment. Under British law it was illegal to admit membership of MI6, but lying to the INS would be grounds for denying entry to the USA. `Yes, I used to work for British intelligence,' I admitted.

He looked round his PC at me sceptically. `OK, between what dates and where?' He grilled me for 20 minutes about my work and operations. I replied fully and cooperated completely. At the end of the interview, he picked up an ink stamp from his desk and stamped my passport. `Mr Tomlinson, you are a former intelligence officer, and under regulations 217.4(b), 212(a) and 212(c) of US immigration policy you are banned from entering the territory of the United States of America.'

He led me back to the holding-pen and manacled me to the bench, this time in a row of Chinese labourers wearing identical dark-blue `Chairman Mao' suits. `You'll be going back to Switzerland on the next available flight, in about seven hours. We'll get you a Big Mac and fries.'

`Great!' I replied with exaggerated enthusiasm. When it arrived, I gave it to my Chinese companions, who jabbered with excitement as they opened up the evil-smelling carton. He did not even allow me to ring the NBC producer who was waiting for me in the arrivals hall.

As the INS officer admitted, the CIA were behind my entry refusal, banning me for life from entering `the land of the free and the home of the brave', just for criticising a foreign intelligence service. MI6, however, unwittingly saved my life. If all had gone according to plan, I would have boarded Swissair flight SR-111 on Wednesday, 2 September to return to Geneva. The MD-11 took off as scheduled at 8.19 p.m. from JFK and crashed into the Atlantic ocean at 9.40 p.m, killing all 229 passengers and crew.

`I'd like to make it clear that you are not under arrest,' Commandant Jourdain assured me smoothly, `but we think that you may be able to help us safeguard the security of Switzerland.'

His colleague, Inspector Brandt, nodded enthusiastically in agreement. `We'd like you to tell us all about illegal British espionage operations against Switzerland,' he added.

Jourdain of the Swiss Federal police, and Brandt of the Geneva Cantonal Special Investigations department, sent me a
convoqu
‚ a compulsory interview request, a few days after my return from the USA, ordering me to report to the Geneva police headquarters on Monday, 21 September 1998. `The British asked us to put you under surveillance when you came to this country because you were a dangerous terrorist who could jeopardise Swiss security,' Jourdain explained, nudging a copy of MI6's letter towards me on the desk. `We watched you for the first couple of weeks. Did you spot anything?' Jourdain asked.

`No, nothing,' I replied truthfully. I hadn't been looking, but in any case I knew that Swiss surveillance was among the best in the world.

`Good,' replied Jourdain, pleased that his teams hadn't been compromised. `We saw you arrive at Zurich Hauptbahnhof at 1225 on 17 August, then you stayed at the Hotel Berne for the night.'

If they picked me up arriving at Zurich railway station, they must have been tipped off that I was arriving from Munich. MI6 must have put in a massive operation to follow me from New Zealand.

`We then followed you until 31 August, when you tried to go to New York,' continued Brandt. `But when we realised that you were not presenting any danger to Swiss interests, we decided to invite you here, to see if you could help us.'

Jourdain and Brandt were putting me into an awkward position. They wanted me to break the OSA by telling them about Britain's operations in Switzerland, which could lead to prosecution in Britain. On the other hand, since MI6's undeclared operations in Switzerland were illegal under Swiss law, refusal to help the police in a criminal investigation would be an offence for which I could potentially be imprisoned, and it would certainly scupper any chance of getting Swiss residency. Jourdain appeared to read my thoughts. `Failing to help us will not help your application for a residency permit,' he added menacingly.

I had to think of my long-term future. MI6 had used their influence to prevent me making a fresh start in New Zealand and Australia, despite Warren Templeton's and John Wadham's strenuous efforts to persuade them to negotiate an end to the pyrrhic dispute. I would have settled just for the return of my computer and for an Australian visa, but MI6 were set resolutely on a Thatcheresque, no-compromise, no-turning-back policy. Given their intransigence, I decided to pledge my future to Switzerland in the hope that I could get permanent residence status, a work permit, then find constructive and permanent employment.

`OK, how can I help?' I replied cautiously.

Over the next three months, the Swiss police
convoqu
‚'d me four times. Each time, I cooperated fully with their enquiries and I built up a good personal relationship with Jourdain and Brandt who even showed me MI6's increasingly irate requests to have me arrested and deported to Britain, or at least expelled from Switzerland. Jourdain assured me that they had ignored the letters, as I had done nothing against Swiss law.

`C'est vraiment vous?' laughed the French Douane incredulously, pointing out my description, which had flashed up on the screen in the border kiosk after he had tapped my passport details into the computer. In French, under my police mugshot, was written:

Name:
TOMLINSON Richard John Charles

Nationality:
British and New Zealand

Born:
Hamilton, New Zealand, 13/01/63

Resident:
No fixed abode

Details:
Subject is former member of British Special Forces and Special Services, trained in firearms, explosives, unarmed combat, scuba-diving, pilots licence, parachutist, expert in cryptography. Subject is a menace to the security of France.

`Ridiculous,' I laughed. `It's a joke. The British are pulling your leg.'

`Sit down there,' the Douane replied, ignoring my protests. `Wait until the police arrive.' He indicated a chair in the corner of the kiosk

For the sixth time in a year, I was being detained at the request of MI6. It was late on the evening of Wednesday 6 January, and I had just picked up my parents in a hire car from Geneva airport. We were heading to a rented chalet in the French Alps, an hour's drive over the border, for a week's skiing holiday. But MI6 had learnt about the arrangements through their tap on my parents' phone and decided to spoil our holiday. They alerted the DST of my intended movements and DST notified the Douanes to stop us at the Swiss-French border. I now had to wait until the DST turned up from their regional headquarters in Grenoble. It was a bitterly cold evening, and although I was warm enough in the customs kiosk, my parents were waiting outside in the freezing car.

Four DST officers turned up at 10.30 p.m. Although the French Douanes had been happy to leave me unattended in their kiosk, confident I was not a troublemaker, the DST slapped on handcuffs the moment they arrived. `Alors, we have some questions for you, Monsieur Tomlinson,' announced the senior officer. They escorted me out of the kiosk into the main police building at the frontier, sat me down in an office and interviewed me for 90 minutes. They asked no questions relating to any form of criminal activity and all they were interested in were details of an MI6 officer who owned a chalet in the Haut-Savoie, on their home turf around Grenoble. I refused to help, so at the end of the interview they served me with papers banning me for life from entering French territory. Just like the US immigration officials, the DST had to find a reason under their regulations to justify the ban. On the standard entry-refusal proforma, there were four possible justifications. He could not tick the `lack of correct papers' box because my British passport entitled me automatically to entry. I could demonstrate that I had the funds to support myself in France, so that option was denied. I was not the bearer of any infectious diseases, so he could not select that. All that remained was `threat to the security of France'. He ticked the box with a flourish, stamped the document and handed it over to me. `You must go back to Switzerland,' he ordered. `If we find you in France, we will imprison you immediately for six months, no questions asked.'

Back in the hire car, two stern-faced officers stood blocking the route south just to ensure that I didn't try to dash for it. There was no choice but to turn around and return to my digs. It was too late for my parents to go to the chalet that evening, so they had to stay in a hotel in Geneva.

The DST were in blatant breach of European law by stopping a British passport holder entering France. MI6 and the DST were gambling that I would not have the legal backing to mount a challenge via the European courts, and if I did try, that it would take many years for my appeal to be heard. Two days before the first stage of my appeal came before the Grenoble district court on 5 May 2000, already over a year after the illegal order was served on me, the DST served an injunction to delay the hearing. I cannot take my case to the European courts in Strasbourg until all domestic remedies have been pursued, so I have no alternative but to spend more money on lawyers and wait.

Although I was enjoying life in Switzerland, had made some good friends and was earning some money with casual work, getting a work permit and permanent job was difficult. I therefore mounted an appeal against the Australian ban, using a firm of lawyers in Canberra. I suspected that MI6 had used their influence with ASIO (Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation) to get me banned, though MI6 denied this, improbably claiming in a letter to me that they `would not interfere in the policies of another country'. A few months later, via the Australian Freedom of Information Act, my lawyers got proof that MI6 were lying. They obtained a copy of a telegram sent by MI6 to ASIO on 2 November 1998. Although many paragraphs were blacked out with the censor's ink, it was clear that it was a request for a ban, to which the Australians had complied limply. Moreover, the date of the request was two days after my arrest, but long before I was convicted of a crime; MI6 were not content to see me receive only the punishment deemed fit by British law and had decided to add to it by stopping me from emigrating to Australia. Getting an Australian visa became a major preoccupation but after spending thousands of dollars of my savings on legal fees, I realised that I was falling into the financial trap MI6 had laid for me.

Reasoning with MI6 was not working either, and the energetic efforts of Warren Templeton and John Wadham were futile. My only remedy was to use publicity again to bring them to the table. At the end of April, I bought some web-design software and learnt how to build internet pages. My first site was an amateurish and jokey affair and appeared on the Geocities server late on the evening of Saturday, 1 May. The pages contained nothing secret and were just a lighthearted poke at MI6. On the front page, there was a photograph of me in a silly hat superimposed against Vauxhall Cross, with the Monty Python theme tune playing in parody of MI6's absurd pursuit of me, and on the inside pages were copies of the documents served by the Australian, American and French authorities banning me from their countries at MI6's request. Nevertheless, on Monday morning the Geocities security officer, Mr Bruce Zanca, e-mailed me to say that they had received a complaint about my website from a `third party' and were therefore closing down the site. By late morning my pages had disappeared. I found another empty space on the Geocities server and re-posted them, including Zanca's e-mail. A few hours later I got another, more irate, e-mail from Zanca telling me they had removed my new pages, and ordering me not to post anything else onto their server. I copied this e-mail into my pages and posted everything back. That came down a few hours later and Zanca got badly annoyed and threatened legal action. Fortunately, I didn't need to put them up again because word spread around the internet of the preposterous way that MI6 and Geocities were censoring me, and numerous `mirrors' of my site sprang up.

On 13 May, another site about MI6 appeared on Lyndon Larouche's website, publishing a list of 115 names purporting to be of serving and former MI6 officers. This news exploded onto the front pages of newspapers worldwide. Because of the publicity about my first site, I was immediately assumed to be the author.

To this day, I do not know who published the famous list, but it was not me. I have my suspicions, however, that it was MI6 themselves. They had a motive - to incriminate and blacken me. They had the means to make the list and the knowledge to post it onto the internet without leaving a trace. And, despite their protestations to the contrary, the list was not particularly damaging to them. Later I got the chance to study it for myself. I did not recognise most of the names and so cannot comment as to whether they were from MI6 or from the FCO. Of the names that I did recognise, all were retired from the service or were already widely blown. 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.

The way the existence of the list was publicised to the world's press was also odd. The first announcement was made when the British government's official censor, Rear-Admiral David Pulvertaft, issued a `D-notice' to stop UK newspapers publishing the web address of the list or any of the names. There was no better way to generate publicity because immediately every journalist in Britain wanted to know what the D-notice was censoring, and foreign newspapers the world over, to whom the D-notice was irrelevant, published the web address and even the entire list. The next peculiarity was the manner in which the FCO announced the incident. If MI6 really wanted to limit the damage, they would have used a junior spokesperson to dismiss the list as a hoax. Instead, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook announced at a packed news conference that not only was the list accurate but, without presenting a shred of evidence, named me as the culprit. Both these tactics can only be explained by a plan to incriminate and discredit me.