Record-Mail (UK) on "Monty Python Traitor" Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit source - John D Navin http://www.record-mail.co.uk/rm/stories/A1305905.html THE MI6 MONTY PYTHON TRAITOR Britain's undercover spies were named on the Internet yesterday - by one of their own. Traitor Richard Tomlinson listed the locations of six MI6 offices throughout Europe and identified spies working for the Secret Service. The site set up by the Geneva-based renegade played the theme to Monty Python's Flying Circus as the names of operatives flashed up on screen. The Government moved quickly yesterday to block access to the pages. Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who holds responsibility for MI6, immediately issued a gagging order banning anyone else naming the agents . Spy chiefs were last night trying to calculate the damage done to British undercover agents across the world - and feared their lives could be in danger. They were also poring over active case files to see if any of their secret operations had been compromised. At the same time they were desperately trying to find out who had accessed the web site and seen the information. It appeared just a week after 35-year-old Tomlinson had used the Internet to warn he was about to make his dangerous revelations. Since leaving MI6, Tomlinson has become a major threat to the security of his former colleagues still working under cover. Last year, he was jailed for six months after giving details of his career to an Australian publisher who was considering releasing his auto- biography. Futher claims that MI6 were involved in the deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed were also linked to him. After being released from jail, he fled to Geneva where he has evaded detection, maintaining contact with friends and associates using an untraceable mobile phone. Tomlinson remains wanted in Britain. Rear Admiral David Pulvertaft, the Defence Advisory Secretary, yesterday warned that a site containing details of MI6 officers had been discovered. Asked how many agents were identified on the site, he admitted: "It is a large number." Yesterday, agents' code names were hurriedly being changed. An intelligence source said: "This could lead to the most devastating damage the security services have ever suffered "It is like discovering one of your most trusted operatives was a double agent. "No one knows the amount of damage that has been done - it could be that lives are at stake." Cambridge graduate Tomlinson, known as Agent T, worked in Moscow gathering secrets on Russia's nuclear missilies. He also infiltrated a Middle Eastern arms buying network, seeking information on Saddam Hussein's forces. But he was sacked in August 1995 on his return from a spying mission to Bosnia. The reasons were never disclosed. The former agent claimed he was releasing the highly sensitive information because MI6 has restricted his personal freedom by preventing him from entering certain countries. The traitor was believed to have used a three-year-old internal MI6 directory to compile his web pages. Tomlinson had previously been foiled in his attempts to use the Internet to publish state secrets. Treasury solicitor Anthony Hammond, the chief Government law officer, obtained an injunction in Switzerland two weeks ago which closed down an earlier website. He also acted against the Internet site when it later started to be generated from America. Tomlinson's web pages, on a site run by Lausanne Internet service provider IPWorldcom, contained details of his background. In the document, he threatened to publish the rough draft of his book which he had shown to the Australian publisher and which he had been prosecuted for. Another page read: "The objective of MI6 is to steal the secrets of other countries. "Most of the secrets are stolen by MI6 officers working abroad under cover as British diplomats. "If you want to find out who is breaking the laws of your own country, just click on the map below to find your nearest MI6 office!" There was actually no map on the site, but those searching for it were told it would be "coming soon". On a further page, called "Directory of MI6 officers", Tomlinson said he intended to publish a detailed list of serving officers. Tomlinson's site also contained a picture of him wearing a hat, superimposed on a picture of MI6 headquarters in London. After the injunction closed down the site, Tomlinson moved the pages to California based Geo-cities. That was later closed after British authorities gave details of the Swiss injunction to the company. Tomlinson has said he will appeal against the injunction. Last week he said he had created the site because of the actions of MI6. He said: "They are trying to obstruct my freedom to travel and I have already been banned from entering France, the USA and Australia. "There would be no need to put up this web site if they stopped messing me about. " I have already lost one job by being prevented from entering France." And he warned: "I will eventually find a web site that will accept me, even if it has to be in China." TURMOIL WHEN MEN FROM THE SHADOWY WORLD OF DIRTY TRICKS SELL OUT AND SEEK THE SPOTLIGHT BRITAIN'S secret service has been humiliated before by the exposure of agents as drunken bunglers and boastful traitors. Traitors have been unwittingly recruited by both MI5 - Britain's counter-intelligence agency - and MI6, which operates abroad. And Government politicians have been forced into chaotic and usually doomed efforts to silence the double agents and whistle-blowers. Some, like the upper-crust turncoats of post-war Oxbridge, passed secrets to Moscow for ideological reasons. Others sought money, like Peter Wright, who spilled the beans after a long argument with MI5 over the size of his pension. The Government's legal battle to ban Wright's book Spycatcher 12 years ago descended into farce as the rest of the world read his best-selling secrets of espionage and political dirty tricks. Wright admitted "bugging and burgling his way across London" during his covert career. And his astonishing memoirs revealed how MI5, where he was once assistant director general, tried to plot the downfall of Prime Minister Harold Wilson. Ironically, Wright, who was condemned by politicians for selling his secrets, had been recruited by MI5 in 1954 to mount a purge of double agents. Wright, who died a multi-millionaire in 1995, started work soon after the British establishment was rocked by the defection of double agents Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean in 1951. Both were senior Foreign Office officials - and also Communist agents enlisted by the Soviets in the recruiting heartlands of Oxford and Cambridge Universities. Kim Philby, an MI6 agent and fellow Oxbridge graduate, was not exposed as a fellow member of the spy ring for another 12 years. He is widely suspected of passing nuclear secrets to the KGB while stationed in Washington in the 1940s. He continued spying for the Russians well into the 1960s when he worked as a journalist in Beirut. But only hours after being arrested as a spy, he escaped to Moscow where he was hailed as a hero and given the rank of KGB general. Professor Anthony Blunt, who later went on to become the Queen's art adviser, was not revealed as the notorious "Fourth Man" until 1979. He was stripped of his knighthood after his treachery while working for MI5 was exposed. MP Alan Clark MP was aghast at the he bungling spymasters. He condemned the spies as "a bunch of drunken, amoral, bisexually promiscuous, sneering intellectuals filled with a loathing of their own country and people." But the long list of Britain's Cold War traitors began before Burgess and Maclean when three Soviet agents including Klaus Fuchs were discovered in the Britain's secret atomic research laboratories. George Blake was another MI6 agent exposed as a KGB spy nearly 40 years ago. In the 1980s, Geoffrey Prime, an agent at the electronic surveillance centre at Cheltenham, and MI5's Michael Bettaney were caught trying to sell secrets to Moscow. The current crisis involving Richard Tomlinson and David Shayler, a fugitive MI5 agent also threatening to reveal his secrets, has again thrown the spymasters into turmoil. Shayler, like Tomlinson, was arrested after revealing secrets in newspaper articles and threatening to tell more. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytire-05.14.99-18:11:07-10924