Hearing transcripts

20 February 2008 - Afternoon session

5 (The short adjournment)
6 (2.00 pm)
7 (Jury present)
8 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Yes, Mr Mansfield.
9 MR MANSFIELD: Yes.
10 Good afternoon. Can I as a precursor ask, because
11 I really do not want to waste time asking questions that
12 can be answered via another route, have there been
13 inquiries into an investigation at an earlier date and
14 is the report available? Is the product --
15 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Mr Tam?
16 MR TAM: Sir, we are making inquiries, but without results
17 so far. That is to say, I cannot say tell you what the
18 outcome of those inquiries will be.
19 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: When will we get the answer, do
20 you think?
21 MR TAM: As soon as possible, hopefully during the course of
22 the afternoon, but at the moment I cannot promise one
23 way or the other.
24 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: It is not much use if it does not
25 come this afternoon, is it?

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1 MR MANSFIELD: No, is the short answer. Well, it may be of
2 some use, but obviously not without this witness being
3 able to comment on it or not.
4 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: We will have to see what happens.
5 MR MANSFIELD: Just on that, I do not know whether you can
6 help. Assuming there was one and there was a report --
7 and I am suggesting to you that somebody must have
8 investigated it -- can you help, was this ever presented
9 to Lord Stevens who sits here today as part of his
10 inquiry? Can you help about that?
11 A. I cannot help about that.
12 Q. One final point on that. Again you may not be able to
13 help. The learned Coroner attended the security
14 services on a number of occasions, was he provided with
15 it ever or even told of its existence?
16 A. I cannot answer that question either. I think it would
17 have been after I retired.
18 Q. I appreciate that, but I just thought that if you were
19 able to help, since you had help with your statement, as
20 to whether you had ever been told that.
21 I would certainly ask for disclosure of the answer
22 to those questions: whether the report, one, exists; its
23 existence provided to Lord Stevens or of course to your
24 good self.
25 Going back to this question of the plan and

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1 shredding and so forth -- and what I am going to do so
2 that you can follow it -- could please the witness
3 have -- and I am not for obvious reasons asking for it
4 to be screened -- a copy of A's statement -- it will be
5 easier for you to follow it -- A being the man,
6 the person who, as it were, started the ball rolling on
7 the plan. Is there a copy of the statement? (Pause)
8 Do you have a copy?
9 A. I do.
10 Q. I wonder if the witness would kindly have it. If you
11 look at the first page of this statement, dated
12 10th January 2005, I think there is no objection to me
13 indicating because he, I think, will be indicating it in
14 public, that between 1991 and 1993 he was head of the
15 Balkan target team. Is that right?
16 A. That is correct.
17 Q. I am not asking for the name of A, but did you know this
18 person at the time?
19 A. I know of him, yes.
20 Q. You know of him. In that context, we are not dealing
21 with a novice in the security services in 1993, are we?
22 A. Not a novice, no.
23 Q. Has he ever explained how he came to make a proposal
24 that was apparently against Government policy when he
25 was head of the target team for the Balkans?

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1 A. He has not explained that to me personally.
2 Q. Has he explained to anybody?
3 A. I think he would have been asked for an explanation
4 during the investigation.
5 Q. Yes, well, since you were concerned, as operational head
6 at that time, you must have been concerned to know how
7 it was that such a man with this experience could come
8 to write such a proposal. So did you find out?
9 A. Did I find out what?
10 Q. How he came to do it; in other words, why somebody with
11 this experience -- if the policy is so clearly, as it
12 were, described orally, "no assassination or
13 consideration of it save in extraordinary
14 circumstances" --
15 A. I think this is really a question which is more
16 appropriate for him, rather than for me. I mean I can
17 speculate.
18 Q. I am not asking you to do that.
19 A. Well, there we go.
20 Q. This is not a question, I would suggest, that is more
21 appropriate for him. I am certainly going to ask him
22 how he came to do it, but it is in the context of you
23 being called today, for the first time ever possibly
24 historically, to talk about accountability and
25 responsibility. I am really testing the extent to which

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1 there was real accountability, even in 1993; in other
2 words, the one thing you would want to know from
3 somebody in 1993/1994/1995/1996, how on earth does A,
4 with his experience, vetting, et cetera, come to even
5 commit himself to paper?
6 A. We are talking about an idea, not an action, and as
7 I have said before, this was an idea which was quickly
8 rejected.
9 Q. Yes, I appreciate. The point I want to put to you is
10 that of course if somebody does not commit it to paper,
11 it is a different matter. Here we have somebody
12 committing it to paper and circulating it, as I will
13 come to in a moment. That is quite serious, isn't it?
14 A. I remind you of the political context, which was the
15 ethnic cleansing and Serbian atrocities of quite
16 significant ferocity.
17 Q. Therefore, there are circumstances. Was it regarded by
18 you, in that period, that it might be acceptable to
19 assassinate?
20 A. No, it absolutely was not. As I have already said, this
21 was a misplaced suggestion --
22 Q. So --
23 A. -- and it was treated as such.
24 Q. I appreciate how it was treated. I want to know how
25 much control and knowledge you had.

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1 Is the answer now that you have no idea how he came
2 to do this, knowing that it was not acceptable?
3 A. I do not see how I can answer that question. We are
4 talking about this man's thought processes.
5 Q. No, he has been asked, you see. I suggest that if this
6 was all being taken seriously and there was control from
7 the top, the one thing that you would want to know --
8 A. There clearly was control from the top because this was
9 rejected out of hand. I just don't think that is in
10 question.
11 Q. You see, what we are coming to is it may be rejected,
12 but in fact all trace of it was destroyed, was it not?
13 Is that right?
14 A. Clearly not because we are talking about it.
15 Q. No, what has happened is that a man -- without
16 Mr Tomlinson going public, this would never have seen
17 the light of day, would it, this proposal?
18 A. Most of the things that happen inside the Secret
19 Intelligence Service don't see the light of day.
20 Q. I just want to ask you these questions: first of all,
21 was he approached and disciplined, Mr A?
22 A. I do not recall what specifically happened to him, but
23 he certainly would have been interviewed and
24 displeasure, significant displeasure, would have been
25 expressed at his action.

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1 Q. Was he disciplined?
2 A. I do not know.
3 Q. Was it referred to the police?
4 A. At the time, it was not referred to the police.
5 Q. When was it referred to the police?
6 A. I am not sure. I think it was referred to the police
7 after Tomlinson's -- that I am not sure about, but
8 I think after the publication of Tomlinson's book it was
9 looked into.
10 Q. Oh, right. Well, then, that is another stage.
11 A. I am not sure of my facts on that, so I think we need to
12 be careful.
13 Q. I will be very careful. There is a possibility that
14 after the publication of the book, then something might
15 have been done vis a vis the police.
16 More importantly, was any of the oversight
17 authorities that you have talked about today, the
18 commissioner, tribunal -- were any of them informed of
19 this so that they could put it in their report?
20 A. No, it was not because it was not an action. It was not
21 even a proposal. It was an idea expressed by an
22 individual officer. I do wish to emphasise that, you
23 know, we are dealing with something which is
24 qualitatively different. It was the thoughts of
25 a single officer.

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1 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: And I dare say that your officers
2 are encouraged to think and sometimes to think laterally
3 and to produce ideas.
4 A. Intelligence officers are expected to be creative
5 operationally. They have a very difficult job to do.
6 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: And if it goes beyond the line,
7 they are told so.
8 A. They are told so, and this is clearly what happened in
9 this particular case.
10 MR MANSFIELD: So there would be no problem keeping all
11 the lateral thinking, would there? If it is just a bit
12 of lateral thinking by an officer in a difficult
13 situation --
14 A. There was nothing sinister about the destruction of this
15 piece of paper.
16 Q. If you look at page 2 of A's statement, you will see
17 that he heads a document "Proposed plan to assassinate
18 [and the name is redacted]". He gives it to his
19 secretary, who forwards it to the head of the
20 controllerate. Right? Do you see that?
21 A. Yes, of course I do.
22 Q. So it has gone outside the section, hasn't it?
23 A. The section is -- we are going to get into, here,
24 details of SIS's organisation, which I would actually
25 prefer not to discuss in the court.

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1 Q. All I am trying to establish -- we will get to the
2 shredding bit further down this page -- it has gone
3 outside the section, hasn't it?
4 A. But I should point out that there is disagreement,
5 I think, amongst the witnesses as to whether this was
6 a memo or whether it was, as you have described, a white
7 minute.
8 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: I think maybe the question that
9 could be asked here is whether, on witness A's account,
10 the document should, under the SIS procedures, have been
11 retained rather than destroyed, on A's account.
12 A. My interpretation is that it was quite legitimate for it
13 to be destroyed. I agree that is an interpretation of
14 the facts, as presented by the witnesses, but there is
15 a possibility that described as a "memo", it could have
16 been not a formally tallied piece of paper and,
17 therefore, it would have had an ephemeral existence.
18 Q. That is one of the reasons, of course, we are asking for
19 the original investigation to find out.
20 The person who actually did it, F, is quite clear
21 that it was a white minute.
22 A. Yes, I agree, I accept that. Yes, absolutely.
23 Q. You accept that. So does H, another person.
24 "It was on a white minute because controller E
25 specifically instructed that all copies ...", and so on.

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1 So it looks as though the balance --
2 A. I think the balance is that it was a white minute and
3 I am quite happy to agree with that. As I explained to
4 you, if it had not been tallied -- and what you have to
5 bear in mind is that the controller is possibly sitting
6 within 5 metres of the originator of the minute --
7 the minute could have been walked between people working
8 together without the tallies being started because that
9 indicates a proper dissemination through the
10 organisation as a document on which action is going to
11 be taken. That clearly never happened in this instance.
12 The action aspects of this document were never
13 initiated.
14 Q. Was there any step taken, whenever it was originally
15 investigated, to interrogate the computer to see if
16 there was a trace of this document on the hard drive?
17 A. That is easily answered because these were not computed
18 movements in those days.
19 Q. How was it done, this document, then?
20 A. How was what done?
21 Q. How was the document created?
22 A. It was typed.
23 Q. And ...?
24 A. Fixed to a tally board.
25 Q. And ...?

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1 A. Well, fixed to a minute board with a tally sheet, to be
2 precise.
3 Q. So as far as you are concerned, in this instance no
4 computer was used; is that what you say?
5 A. I am almost certain. I have to get my dates absolutely
6 accurate, but I am pretty sure that this was before --
7 this particular type of document, which was an
8 internally produced document, was not -- had no computer
9 or electronic existence.
10 Q. Page 2 of F, who created it, says:
11 "I deleted it from my computer system."
12 A. That would have been not a central -- it would have been
13 on a typewritten -- I mean from the typewriter.
14 Q. Can you just explain what it would have been on?
15 A. Probably an electronic typewriter at the time.
16 Q. So that is what it meant, is it?
17 A. I think probably -- I mean, this is speculation by me,
18 using my knowledge of the service at the time -- I think
19 it would have been typed on an electronic typewriter,
20 and we are probably talking about the memory of the
21 electronic typewriter.
22 Q. So just going back to this paragraph about E, of course
23 the problem here is that E himself says he never saw it.
24 So that is another problem, isn't it, which may be
25 resolved next week?

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1 A. You will have to ask the person concerned.
2 Q. Well, he does not remember seeing it.
3 A. It was 15 years ago. Let's be clear about this.
4 Q. It was not at the time, you see. That is why I have
5 asked for the report. At the time it would not have
6 been 15 years ago, and if this was just a matter of
7 lateral thinking, nobody would be worried.
8 Can we come down further on this page? You will see
9 a paragraph he writes:
10 "Shortly after the memo was sent, he was approached
11 by his line manager, H, who confronted him about
12 the contents and why he had sent it out without
13 consultation. He informed me that those above him
14 wanted all copies of the memo destroyed ..."
15 How many copies of the memo were made, do you know?
16 A. I am puzzled by that statement because normally there
17 would have been only one copy.
18 Q. Quite, just the white minute board with the tally card
19 attached to the back. That is all it should have been,
20 correct?
21 A. This is where we get into the uncertainty of people's
22 memories. It is possible, if it was a memo, that there
23 would have been a copy. If it was a white minute, there
24 would not have been a copy; at this stage there would
25 not have been a copy.

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1 Q. That is why I suggest that getting to the route of what
2 really happened here in terms of who saw it and how far
3 it got is really extremely important and asking
4 witnesses in 2005 what happened is, of course, a recipe
5 for disaster. May I just go on?
6 "He was informed that all copies of it had to be
7 destroyed."
8 Then he says:
9 "I believe the chief's policy staff ..."
10 Does that indicate that it is the chief of SIS?
11 A. That is -- certainly "the chief" is only used in one
12 context.
13 Q. There is a policy staff. I am not asking for any names,
14 but there was a policy staff?
15 A. Actually "policy staff" is not the correct phrase, but
16 there is a central staff.
17 Q. All right, central staff. He is not suggesting they had
18 actually had it, but had heard about it, probably
19 through E, a further problem, and this is what he
20 indicates:
21 "... and had made it clear [this is the chief's
22 central staff, however described] that we cannot even be
23 seen to be considering this proposal."
24 Is that the reason it was shredded?
25 A. It was shredded because it was not a -- I think I have

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1 explained this before. We are going round in circles.
2 It was shredded because it was a stillborn document that
3 had no relevance.
4 Q. I will obviously have to deal with others as to whether
5 your recollection of a stillborn document is right or
6 not because obviously, if it is not a stillborn
7 document, then it cannot be shredded and there should be
8 a record; correct?
9 A. That is correct, but it clearly was destroyed in this
10 case.
11 Q. Am I right, as I put to you at the beginning of this
12 afternoon's section on this, that there is in fact not
13 a single document now that actually indicates its
14 existence at any time?
15 A. I think that is the result of the inquiries that have
16 been made. But I mean that is not surprising, given
17 the background that I have tried to describe.
18 Q. At this time, the action of shredding documents, was
19 this, as you have put I think, "not uncommon"? Is that
20 what you are saying?
21 A. There was a certain amount of material that has to be
22 shredded: drafts, memos. They were either shredded or
23 put in secret waste bags to be macerated or incinerated.
24 Q. I want to ask you about what he indicates he had in
25 mind, A, and I want to ask you about this aspect: in

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1 the middle of the page he talks about them as "vague
2 options". Do you see that paragraph?
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. "... special agents or special forces or internal
5 Serbian elements"; do you see that?
6 A. Yes.
7 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Well, just before that, there is
8 reference to the focus of the memo and why he thought
9 a contingency plan was needed.
10 MR MANSFIELD: Shall I read that?
11 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: That certainly puts it in
12 context.
13 MR MANSFIELD: Certainly. I am sorry, Sir Richard, I am
14 doing this so that the jury may follow the full context
15 of this part. So this is a paragraph after dealing with
16 E and its circulation:
17 "The focus of the memo explained why I thought
18 a contingency plan was needed [and then the name of the
19 person] that [that person, X] would destabilise the
20 region with his actions, withdraw from peace talks with
21 Lord Owen and increase the likelihood of genocide
22 occurring. I used a specific analogy with Adolf Hitler
23 in the 1930s whereby many lives would have been saved
24 had he been assassinated. My memo included possible
25 ways of implementing this plan, but they were very vague

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1 because I have no background knowledge of how to carry
2 out such an operation. My vague options were to use our
3 special agents or special forces or internal Serbian
4 elements. There was no more detail because of my lack
5 of knowledge and it would have been inappropriate in
6 that memo and premature at that stage."
7 Of course, one of the people to whom it is sent,
8 witness G, is concerned with operational matters, is he
9 not? Did you know that?
10 A. I am assuming. I am not sure who G is for the moment.
11 Q. Well, G -- there is no particular secret about at least
12 this much, that he is the security branch officer,
13 SBO --
14 A. I know exactly who he is now.
15 Q. I want to ask you in the context of discussions --
16 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Reading the passage that you have
17 just read, I suppose it is possible that the author
18 thought that these were extraordinary circumstances that
19 he was dealing with, but we will maybe hear from him.
20 MR MANSFIELD: Yes, of course, and if he had been
21 interviewed and if he had given that explanation and if
22 Sir Richard had that explanation to give, no doubt we
23 could hear it today. You see, nowhere in any of the
24 documents that we have is there any suggestion that he
25 could be excused for doing this because it was an

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1 extraordinary situation and there was a war going on in
2 the Balkans. Do you follow? We have not been told that
3 at all.
4 A. I did mention it earlier.
5 Q. Yes, I know you did. The question is whether this was
6 given consideration at the time and how much control was
7 had over what was being said and what was really
8 discussed on the ground.
9 A. I am sure this was covered in the investigation.
10 Q. Yes, I am sure it was, and we will be delighted to see
11 how it was, if that report is forthcoming. What I want
12 to ask you about is a document allied to this aspect; in
13 other words, the use of special agents or special
14 forces.
15 I want to be clear. Would people have been, within
16 security services, in the mid-1990s, with the
17 Balkanisation, as it is sometimes called,
18 the disintegration of Yugoslavia and so on in that
19 period of time -- was MI6 considering the possibility of
20 having to use fatal force, in other words, assassinate
21 leaders in the Balkans as a bit of lateral thinking?
22 A. I think I have answered that question.
23 Q. I would like a "yes" or "no". Were they or were they
24 not?
25 A. We have one case where an officer has this idea, but

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1 the service was not.
2 Q. So it is not as though it was, as you would put it,
3 current lateral thinking within the Security Service at
4 that time.
5 Could we have on screen, please -- and the sensitive
6 parts are redacted -- so that it is clear what it is,
7 it is [RJCT6]. It was a letter written to Mr Wadham.
8 It was brought up last week. I would like it on screen
9 because I want to ask you -- it links into those
10 paragraphs that we have just read in a statement.
11 Now, this is Mr Tomlinson -- so it is clear; I do
12 not want you misled -- indicating what his recollection
13 was of the remainder of the document. It is that
14 paragraph, do you see? First of all there was
15 the justification and then there was the methods:
16 " ... propose three methods to assassinate
17 Milosevic. The first was to train and equip a Serbian
18 paramilitary opposition group to assassinate Milosevic
19 in Serbia."
20 I pause. Is that something which the security
21 services would ever consider, in terms of that period,
22 even discussing it?
23 A. This is Tomlinson, I think, in my view, elaborating on
24 something else that he had learned, and I really don't
25 see why I should speculate on things that Tomlinson has

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1 written which I personally believe to be invented by
2 him. I think he made this up after the event.
3 Let's be quite clear about this. He almost
4 certainly made this up. Now, he made it up on the basis
5 of knowledge he had gained as an officer in SIS, but my
6 belief is he made this up.
7 Q. Yes. That may be your belief and I understand it. Of
8 course, if we had the original document, we could then
9 discover whether he made this up. That is my point.
10 You believe it is made up --
11 A. I think the writer of the document is pretty clear that
12 none of this was originally in it. Tomlinson produced
13 this material very, very long after the event. Let's be
14 clear about that too. When he originally wrote this, he
15 did not include these details. He put them in
16 significantly afterwards. It is strange that he
17 remembered this so late in the day.
18 Q. Well, he has explained that so I am not going into how
19 he has explained it. I am asking for your explanations
20 in relation to how it is that witness A is considering
21 special agents or special forces or internal Serbian
22 elements, which is precisely what Tomlinson is
23 describing here as the first option:
24 "A Serbian paramilitary opposition group to
25 assassinate Milosevic in Serbia ..."

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1 Then it is the name of the person.
2 "... argued that this method would have the
3 advantage of deniability but the disadvantage that
4 the control of the operation would be low and the
5 chances of success unpredictable."
6 Those concepts, "deniablity", they are not culled
7 out of the blue, are they, deniability?
8 A. Deniability of an operation carried out by SIS is
9 a common concept which Tomlinson would have learned
10 about on his training.
11 Q. What that involves -- and he has given evidence about
12 this last week -- is this not right -- is that if -- the
13 SIS themselves, as it were, don't dirty their own hands
14 with tasks abroad. They employ an increment, do they
15 not?
16 A. Can I cut to the quick, Mr Mansfield? I am not going to
17 speculate on SIS's various operational capabilities.
18 They are many and they are different and the court does
19 not need to know about them. What the court does need
20 to know is that all of these capabilities, every single
21 one of them, were under my personal control as the chief
22 of operations and subject to class 7 authorisations
23 under the Act.
24 So there are not any little offshore liars here that
25 somehow do not fit into this pattern; they do not exist.

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1 Anything that is referred to, whether you have heard of
2 it before or whether you have not heard of it before,
3 whether it has a strange name or whether it has not got
4 a strange name, was under the control of the director of
5 operations. Let's be absolutely crystal clear about
6 that and I think it is important that the jury
7 understands that fact.
8 Q. Now, just going back to the question of deniablity,
9 the concept --
10 A. Some of these capabilities are, of course, deniable, but
11 they are still under legal control. They still come
12 under the Intelligence Services Act.
13 Q. This concept -- it is not particularly difficult to
14 ascertain it -- whether it is under control or whether
15 this whole business was under your control in 1993 --
16 A. There was no business. There was a piece of paper that
17 was destroyed. I think it is important that we get
18 these points across. You are insinuating in your
19 questioning that there was an action. There was no
20 action. There was an idea that was suppressed. Let us
21 be clear about that too.
22 Q. Sir Richard, I think you may be failing to understand
23 the point of the questions. They are not that
24 difficult. I am not suggesting there was an action --
25 A. A lot of the questions are tending towards misleading --

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1 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: I do not think the witness is
2 failing to understand the point, Mr Mansfield --
3 A. I understand very precisely what you are saying.
4 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: -- and you are building this on
5 an edifice of what Mr Tomlinson is saying --
6 A. This is a Tomlinson construct that we are talking about.
7 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: The witness has given you a very
8 clear answer --
9 A. I have given you an extremely clear answer.
10 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: -- as to what was or was not
11 happening or permissible in SIS at the time.
12 MR MANSFIELD: It is not so much what was permissible
13 officially. I have already explained. I am not
14 suggesting that this was an exercise in Paris carried
15 out with official recognition by the head of SIS at that
16 point. What I am examining, as Mr Tomlinson himself
17 said in his evidence, was the capability independently
18 of officers to become involved.
19 May I indicate the particular passage where he deals
20 with this? In my submission, it is extremely important.
21 It is evidence before this jury and I shall be asking
22 you, sir, and the jury to consider this. May I just, so
23 the witness sees why I am asking these questions -- they
24 are not out of the blue and they are not based on
25 nothing.

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1 Mr Tomlinson's construct, as you put it, as he
2 firmly pointed out last week on a number of occasions --
3 at the end of the day, he was saying to the jury, "I am
4 vindicated. There was a proposal to target --
5 a proposal to target -- somebody in the Balkans". Up
6 until then, last week, he had been derided of bringing
7 that forward. I will come to what has been officially
8 said to the French investigation and whether it was on
9 your behalf. This is what he said in relation to being
10 carried out independently and not by the service as a
11 whole. He said:
12 "By the service ... very difficult ...", and so
13 forth.
14 Then he says:
15 "I think nowadays", would you please listen to the
16 answer if you haven't heard it, "that would not be the
17 case [in other words, it would not be possible, even
18 independently], but I think in the olden days there
19 could potentially -- there was -- the intelligence
20 services were not as tightly controlled as I have no
21 doubt they are nowadays. I think that that has been
22 controlled a lot more deeply. There were -- as in the
23 public domain, there was, at the time of the Harold
24 Wilson Government -- I think it was quite well
25 established now -- there was a cabal of MI5 officers who

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1 were interested in -- or were talking loosely about a
2 plot and there have been other incidences where MI5 and
3 MI6 officers have done things independently well outside
4 of the control of the organisation. I don't think it is
5 something that happens regularly and I don't think it
6 could ever happen nowadays."
7 Now, that is what he said last week. Do you
8 disagree with that?
9 A. I fundamentally disagree with that.
10 Q. But now you see why I am asking the questions about what
11 discussions even take place at an official level. That
12 is all I am asking, whether in fact -- before we even
13 get to unofficial levels, whether in 1993 there were
14 discussions which involved the concept of deniablity.
15 What I wanted to put to you is deniability means this,
16 doesn't it: it means there will be a secret operation
17 abroad, carried out by an increment, not SIS officers
18 but SAS officers or SBS officers --
19 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: But under the approval of SIS?
20 MR MANSFIELD: Well, yes.
21 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: The whole point is that this plan
22 is not one officer on a frolic of his own going to carry
23 it out on his own. It has been put up through the
24 system for approval.
25 MR MANSFIELD: Oh yes, this one is, yes.

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1 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: So I do not really see why we are
2 spending so long on this, on a matter which really must
3 be speculation.
4 MR MANSFIELD: Sir, it is not speculation because I submit
5 that Tomlinson obviously regarded it -- and I would
6 submit to you and to the jury -- that it was of some
7 importance that what he remembered -- obviously
8 Sir Richard has his own views about it -- but what he
9 remembered bore a resemblance to what happened in Paris,
10 which is why he went to the French juge. As it happens,
11 his construct is not, as it were, totally ephemeral.
12 There is a substantial basis to the main thrust of
13 it, namely that there was a proposal. Now if a proposal
14 can be put forward in writing, the real question is: can
15 there be proposals which are kept to a cabal, as he has
16 put it, in relation to the Harold Wilson example?
17 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: I think we need to focus on what
18 happened in the tunnel, not on other ephemeral matters.
19 MR MANSFIELD: May I come straight to that?
20 What do you know about strobe lights?
21 A. No more than the average, I believe.
22 Q. Training in MI6 -- SIS at that time -- was there
23 training which involved them seeing and watching the use
24 of strobe lights for disorientating --
25 A. I can say, I think with confidence, that no there were

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1 not. I was pretty familiar with the service's training
2 programmes and I think that that also is a Tomlinson
3 construction. Under oath, I think I am very confident
4 in saying that, although I am judging from my knowledge
5 of the training. This is not part of SIS's training.
6 Q. Yes. What I wanted to ask you is: have any inquiries
7 that you are aware of been made in relation to those
8 charged with training at that time? I can give you
9 roughly the date and roughly the place where he says he
10 was trained and saw something of this nature. Have any
11 inquiries been made in relation to that?
12 A. I do not know the reply to that because I think, as
13 I have said to you, it was believed in the services that
14 it is not part of SIS's training.
15 Q. Believed --
16 A. Mr Tomlinson made many, many allegations and statements.
17 He used bits of knowledge on which he elaborated with
18 a very clear intention, of causing mischief for the
19 service and the greatest possible difficulty. I think
20 that the strobe light allegation is, in my view,
21 spurious. It does not apply to SIS.
22 Q. Of course, do you know what the eye witnesses in
23 the tunnel actually saw, two of them, just before the
24 crash?
25 A. I am aware of that, yes.

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1 Q. What did they see?
2 A. They say they saw a bright flash.
3 Q. I was not actually going to deal with that side of it.
4 The jury have heard the bright flash. But actually how
5 the car, the Mercedes with Diana and Dodi in it, how
6 the car -- I am sorry, can you speak up? Apparently
7 there is difficulty in hearing what you say from behind
8 me.
9 A. Okay.
10 Q. Do you know what the physical circumstances were as seen
11 by witnesses just before the car crash?
12 A. I don't.
13 Q. You don't. So you have not been told or informed or
14 been made aware of the issue of a blocking car just in
15 front and a motorcycle right behind? You don't know
16 anything about that?
17 A. I have heard talk that there were other vehicles
18 involved.
19 Q. I am not talking about a white Fiat. I am talking about
20 a dark vehicle right in front and a motorcycle right
21 behind that then disappeared.
22 A. I really cannot throw any light on that.
23 Q. Neither could the French police. That is why I am
24 asking the question, starting in the tunnel, as to who
25 was capable of causing a crash in the tunnel and then

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1 denying they had anything to do with it, which is why
2 I am wanting to ask you about deniablity.
3 I want to ask this question, not at the official
4 level but at any level; "deniablity" means you can get
5 in and out and deny what has happened, effectively?
6 A. But deniability is a basic concept of SIS activity --
7 Q. Yes.
8 A. -- but under operational control and authorisation.
9 It is just like secrecy, clandestinity. I do not think
10 I can explain it any more than that.
11 Q. Just going back to the letter, please. It is on screen.
12 You see, these are all methods, I suggest, which were
13 being talked about.
14 "The second method was to use the increment, a small
15 cell of SAS and SBS ..."
16 I want to suggest to you straightaway that
17 the strobe light that he was shown related to the SBS.
18 Do you know what implements or equipment that SBS were
19 demonstrating to SIS in 1993?
20 A. I think the service, even if I was not personally aware,
21 would have been aware of all the details of what SBS
22 might have shown to the officers of my service.
23 Q. Then:
24 "... a small cell [naming those two] which is
25 especially selected and trained to carry out operations

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1 exclusively for MI5 and MI6."
2 He is right about that, isn't he?
3 A. I am not going to speculate or comment.
4 Q. If it is going to be suggested that this is a construct
5 of some kind that he fabricated out of nowhere, I want
6 to put to you very clearly that there was a small cell
7 called the "increment" that was employed by the security
8 services, SIS and SBS, abroad; correct?
9 A. Mr Mansfield, I have told --
10 MR TAM: I have been very --
11 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: I think the witness is looking
12 after himself at the moment, Mr Tam.
13 MR TAM: I do want to say that this is the point at which my
14 learned friend is getting into operational details and
15 methods which are sensitive and should not be asked
16 about.
17 A. I am happy to comment as I commented before,
18 Mr Mansfield. There are a number of capabilities that
19 SIS has. I am not going to confirm or deny whether
20 the ones you are mentioning are part of the service's
21 capabilities, but what I am going to say -- and I am
22 going to repeat this because I do find your line of
23 questioning on this rather tedious -- that there is no
24 part of SIS, whether it is deniable or not, which does
25 not come under the terms of the Official Secrets Act

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1 which is not fully under the control of the operational
2 director of SIS. There is not a bit of SIS that acts
3 independently or goes off and does its own thing. This
4 does not exist, whatever it may be called, however it is
5 composed, however it is trained, wherever it is found in
6 the world.
7 I do not know how many times I am going to have to
8 emphasise this -- I have said it four or five times
9 already -- so I would be grateful if we moved on to
10 a different line of questioning because it is
11 unproductive to go on banging on about this point.
12 Q. Well, I am sorry to be tedious and ask you questions
13 about policy and also observations about the capability
14 because one of the points that the jury will have to
15 consider is whether members of SIS, acting without
16 authority, would be aware of the capability. Can I just
17 explain the context?
18 Mohamed Al Fayed believes, as you have heard many
19 times, that there was a conspiracy to cause this crash.
20 One of the questions that Lord Stevens had to consider
21 is motive, opportunity and capability. These are the
22 features that this jury will have to look at. Are you
23 following me?
24 A. I am.
25 Q. So, therefore, capability is important. Do you

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1 understand that?
2 A. The service's capability is the service's capability,
3 but I do not think that has anything to do with this
4 inquest into the death of Princess Diana.
5 Q. Well, I am not going to persist if that is your answer,
6 that "the service's capability is the service's
7 capability". I will leave the jury to decide what that
8 means and I am going to ask you about another topic.
9 In 1997, in January, Princess Diana went to Angola.
10 Did you know that?
11 A. Yes, I did.
12 Q. Were there MI6 agents in Angola at the time?
13 A. I am not prepared to divulge details of SIS's
14 involvement or positioning in Angola, but what I can
15 say, because we might as well push forward, is that
16 SIS -- and I state this categorically -- was not
17 involved in the supply of weapons to either side in
18 the Angolan civil war in 1997 and had no involvement in
19 specifically the supply of landmines to either side.
20 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: I think what Mr Mansfield is
21 ultimately getting at, if we can try to shorten this, is
22 that Princess Diana expressed a very considerable
23 interest in landmines and their elimination and the
24 elimination of their supply. We know that the
25 Government changed in May 1997, and the incoming

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1 Government's policy, which I think may be part of the
2 ethical foreign policy, if I remember rightly at the
3 time, was different from the Conservative Party's
4 previous policy when they were in Government. But can
5 you throw any light at all on the suggestion that the
6 security services may have killed Diana and Dodi because
7 of her interest in landmines?
8 A. None whatsoever. SIS had no involvement in the
9 manufacturing or supply of landmines. I might also
10 point out that the job of SIS is to support the
11 Government policy. The Prime Minister announced the end
12 of manufacture and use of landmines, as my Lord has
13 mentioned --
14 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Then at some point we signed up
15 to the Ottawa Convention, but I cannot remember the
16 date --
17 A. In May 1997. I can make no attachment between these two
18 issues whatsoever; none.
19 MR MANSFIELD: Perhaps I can just prepare the ground so you
20 can see what the suggested link is.
21 There had been, in Angola, a civil war going on for
22 a number of years.
23 A. Correct.
24 Q. The best part of 20 years by 1997.
25 A. Correct.

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1 Q. Is it also right that the war basically was fought
2 between two factions, UNITA and MPLA?
3 A. That is correct.
4 Q. And that MPLA was basically an organisation backed by
5 the Soviet Russians at that point and UNITA was another
6 organisation that was given support by the United States
7 and the United Kingdom; correct?
8 A. You have to be very careful. You are throwing around
9 dates here and I am not sure. I cannot recall now.
10 I do not think the British Government were ever
11 particularly supportive of UNITA.
12 Q. No, not officially, but unofficially.
13 A. Well, that is your statement.
14 Q. What is the answer?
15 A. I am not going to speculate on British policy towards
16 UNITA of that period because, frankly, I just cannot
17 remember.
18 Q. I can obviously just put the bold statement and I know
19 the answer. I want, if I may, just to put the bricks in
20 the wall to you.
21 So you know why I am asking these questions, it is
22 because there was some evidence that Diana was compiling
23 a dossier and that the dossier was capable of exposing
24 historically British involvement in Angola because of
25 who manufactured the weaponry, how it was got in there.

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1 Please understand that there is no suggestion that
2 the SIS themselves would manufacture anything or would
3 themselves, as it were, take weaponry into Angola, but
4 that MI6, along with parish companies and British
5 mercenaries, were playing a role in that war. Can you
6 answer that?
7 A. I do not recall, as I said, that the SIS was involved in
8 the supply of weaponry to either side.
9 Q. Yes. That was not the suggestion, that MI6 was involved
10 in the supply, but that British companies were involved.
11 I can give you the TK7 as an example. Do you know what
12 the TK7 is?
13 A. No, I am waiting for elucidation.
14 Q. It is a mine that, in the first place, is put down to
15 disable vehicles, in particular tanks, but of course
16 it is a landmine. Does that help you?
17 A. Well, you have explained to me what a TK7 is.
18 Q. You asked for the explanation.
19 A. I am not sure it helps me.
20 Q. The question remains -- I hope you are following
21 the question -- that if Princess Diana in 1997 -- were
22 you aware that in the week before she died, there was an
23 interview published in a French newspaper called
24 "Le Monde" in which she was highly critical, it was
25 reported -- she denied part of it, but it was reported

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1 in the interview that she was highly critical,
2 28th August, of landmines policy that had been pursued
3 over the years. I will come to the change of Government
4 in a moment. Did you know about that article?
5 A. No, I did not.
6 Q. Can I ask you this question, and if there is
7 objection ...
8 When MI6 decides to officially or unofficially --
9 I will do it officially for the moment -- if you are
10 going to target an individual and, as it were, open
11 a file on somebody, is that of your own initiative or
12 because a Government agent, by which I mean
13 a representative of the Government, Foreign Office,
14 directs you to, as it were, do so?
15 A. I do not think I would want to go into detail about how
16 my former service organises its filing. There is
17 a procedure for the opening on files on individuals, of
18 course.
19 Q. On that very topic then, relevant, I suggest, to this
20 case, Mr Tomlinson said he saw a file relating to
21 Mohamed Al Fayed. Was there one?
22 A. I do not think so, but I think this was probably
23 established by the Paget inquiry, as far as I recall.
24 I do not think there was, personally.
25 Q. You see, I am asking you because he said he saw one.

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1 Was there a MI5 file?
2 A. You cannot ask that question of me.
3 Q. Well, do files that MI5 have ever get, as it were, or
4 their contents, communicated to you? I do not mean you
5 personally, but members of the service.
6 A. Of course there are circumstances in which the contents
7 of files in both services get communicated to the other
8 service. That just seems to me a matter of common
9 sense.
10 Q. Now the basis for these questions is Mr Tomlinson said
11 he saw a file. We have been told that there was a file
12 in MI5 relating to Mohamed Al Fayed dated 1997. Are you
13 saying that you did not know about that?
14 A. I did not know about that.
15 Q. Right. Really the question, you see, is: somebody
16 plainly had their eye -- and I am coming back to Diana
17 in a moment -- on Mohamed Al Fayed as a potential threat
18 in 1997. Would that appear to be right?
19 A. That is a leap of imagination. I fear the truth is we
20 were not very interested in him.
21 Q. Really? Well, I hear people laughing about it. You
22 were not have interested in him?
23 He was regarded as persona non grata in 1997: no
24 passport, cash for questions, Tory Government in trouble
25 over sleaze. He was persona non grata and you were

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1 interested, weren't you?
2 A. Not in SIS.
3 Q. Where then?
4 A. That is for others to say.
5 Q. These questions are, so that again it can be understood,
6 to establish, I suggest, that there were two targets in
7 the summer of 1997: Mohamed Al Fayed because of the
8 background and Diana because she was getting close in
9 relation to an area which certainly some vested
10 interests were unhappy about. She goes to Bosnia. Did
11 you know she was going to Cambodia?
12 A. I certainly did not.
13 Q. Did you know she had gone to Bosnia?
14 A. I probably read it in the press after she had been
15 there.
16 Q. The reason I was asking you about Angola is, through one
17 source or another, did you become aware that she was
18 asking a lot of questions?
19 A. Frankly, we did not take any interest --
20 Q. Really.
21 A. -- in what she was doing. It is not a national security
22 issue. My job was to contribute to national security.
23 Q. But, of course, if it was thought that Diana was going
24 to expose a great deal of what was going on and had been
25 going on in Angola and was teaming up -- I am going to

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1 put it so that it is clear -- with a family who were
2 certainly persona non grata in the plural and, worse
3 than that, actually by some loathed, that might become
4 an issue of security, mightn't it?
5 A. That is your speculation. I do not think this was an
6 issue of any security concern whatsoever. I think that
7 is very -- it is fanciful.
8 Q. You think it is fanciful?
9 A. Yes, it was entirely fanciful. It was of no concern to
10 my service whatsoever.
11 Q. Were you aware, at least on some of the evidence, that
12 a phone call was being made to stop the initial holiday
13 in the first place, in other words, Diana going to
14 the South of France because Al Fayed was under
15 investigation? Did you know anything about that?
16 A. Of course not. You are taking me into areas about which
17 I know absolutely nothing.
18 Q. Going back to the Angolan situation for a moment -- that
19 is why I want to ask you this question or is it
20 a question of deniability -- MI6 had a role in Angola
21 during the war between UNITA and MPLA, did they not?
22 A. We mentioned the JIC earlier. There would have been
23 intelligence requirements on the situation in Angola.
24 Q. Did it go beyond that?
25 A. No.

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1 Q. Nothing more --
2 A. Not that I can recall and I really don't think it went
3 beyond that.
4 Q. There would have been, at that time, a desk, or whatever
5 you may call it, responsible for that part of Africa?
6 A. Inevitably.
7 Q. So your position is: no interest in Al Fayed, no
8 interest in Diana; is that the position?
9 A. Correct.
10 Q. You are unaware of anyone else within the service
11 unofficially being remotely concerned about what was
12 going on between the two of them?
13 A. I am sorry to disappoint you, but no interest
14 whatsoever.
15 Q. I want to ask you about a particular aspect that
16 concerns Henri Paul. Do you know that name?
17 A. I do.
18 Q. He was head of security in the summer of 1997 at
19 the Ritz Hotel.
20 A. Yes.
21 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Acting head of security, I think.
22 MR MANSFIELD: Yes. Acting head, at that time. So he is
23 acting head in 1997, but he has been at the hotel a very
24 long time.
25 Do you agree that somebody in that position is

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1 certainly somebody who would be capable of giving
2 information and of interest to the security services?
3 A. He would have been of interest to the French police and
4 to the French Security Service primarily.
5 Q. Yes, primarily, and also to the British security
6 services?
7 A. I am not prepared to speculate on what people in certain
8 positions may or may not be of interest to us.
9 Q. Can you help me about this? Was there something called
10 a "P file" in that period, 1997/1998 --
11 MR TAM: Sir, just so I know how far this question is going,
12 I am not sure whether the question is whether there are
13 P files generally or whether there was a specific P file
14 on a specific person.
15 A. I will answer the question because Mr Mansfield clearly
16 has picked up something from Tomlinson and confused it.
17 There are thousands of P files, thousands of them.
18 MR MANSFIELD: Yes. If, in fact, Henri Paul was providing
19 information about movements of people -- and, again,
20 I am not trying to elicit something which is a state
21 secret -- what kind of file would be opened on him and
22 where would it be opened?
23 A. We do get into procedure. I will answer it because I do
24 not think -- I mean, a file would be opened in London,
25 would be opened in London, and it would be referred to

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1 as a "P file".
2 Q. Right. It may be that you cannot help, but I am asking
3 you since we have had the evidence recently, can you
4 help first of all on a straight question: was there
5 a P file relating to Henri Paul?
6 A. Absolutely not.
7 Q. Was there a P file relating to someone who was either
8 acting head or head of security at the Ritz Hotel who
9 was French, who had an English second name and who was
10 interested in flying?
11 A. Absolutely not.
12 Q. Is this said because you have done a check personally or
13 have asked for a check to be done?
14 A. At the time, when this name first came up, extremely
15 thorough checks were done, of which I was cognisant and
16 of which I know the results and I remember the results.
17 Q. When you say "at the time", do you mean at the time of
18 the crash or later?
19 A. No, at the time that Tomlinson produced the name in his
20 book.
21 Q. So it is 1996 onwards that -- it is after that date, is
22 that right, that the question is asked?
23 A. Yes. I mean no one has heard of the name until it is
24 produced in the Tomlinson manuscript.
25 Q. Yes, that is in relation to the name, but in relation to

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1 the place and the role, you say there is no file in
2 relation to the Ritz, do you?
3 A. I say there is no file in relation to the Ritz.
4 Q. Mr Tomlinson said this, that he would be surprised if
5 there was absolutely no file of one kind or another
6 relating to one of the most -- I am not saying the
7 most -- one of the important hotels in Paris which has
8 plainly seen, from time to time, all sorts of
9 significant personalities staying there, all sorts of
10 meetings occurring there, but if there was no file at
11 all in relation to obtaining information and gaining
12 access to the Ritz.
13 A. There was no file.
14 Q. I see.
15 A. Don't get carried away by the frequency with which
16 the name might have been mentioned by the media in
17 a variety of contexts. We can all recall some of them.
18 Q. So that again just doesn't happen; is that the position
19 that you are saying?
20 A. What does not happen?
21 Q. The use of hotel security to provide information on
22 meetings and personalities?
23 A. I am not going to speculate. I am afraid that is
24 a neither confirm nor deny question.
25 Q. The reason I ask it is, although it might be neither

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1 confirm nor deny, plainly if there were, there would
2 have to be a record, wouldn't there?
3 A. There would have to be a record, and I have told you in
4 the case of the Ritz there was no a record. So I am, as
5 it were, breaking out of the no -- to help the inquest
6 understand this crucial point, because it is rather
7 crucial. But there are, I can say quite categorically,
8 no SIS papers of the type that you are referring to at
9 all. I am sorry to disappoint you, but there are none,
10 none, none.
11 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: I think you have said that
12 the head of security would be of interest to the French
13 rather than the British.
14 A. Well, he would naturally be of interest to the French
15 authorities, and I would imagine that every head of
16 security in every hotel in Paris is in touch with the
17 French police and the French Security Service, as
18 a matter of routine, not as a matter of secrecy.
19 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Again, speaking entirely
20 generally at the moment, would the position be that if
21 the French threw up anything that might be of interest
22 to MI6, that they would then let you know and a file
23 might be opened at this end?
24 A. That would be the sort of procedure that would be
25 communicated officially through liaison channels to

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1 London.
2 MR MANSFIELD: Well, I anticipate -- this is another topic
3 but it is not unrelated, and again it is based on
4 something Mr Tomlinson said, but it is not only him:
5 the British security services abroad used paparazzi as
6 a cover for gaining information about the movement of
7 people they are interested in. There is a group -- and
8 I am going to give it, since it has been given in
9 public -- UK/N, to which such people are attached from
10 time to time. Is there any truth in that?
11 A. There is no truth in the allegation that SIS use
12 paparazzi and I have -- that is, I am afraid, Tomlinson
13 again elaborating.
14 I am not going to talk to the court about what you
15 refer to as "UK/N". It is another one of the
16 capabilities to which I have made a general reference
17 and, as I said, all of those capabilities come firmly
18 under section 7 authorisations of the ISA. As it
19 happens, in the context of this court, I am quite happy
20 to say categorically that there is no link with
21 paparazzi and that is an invention.
22 Q. But as far as UK/N is concerned, the group itself, are
23 you prepared to say this -- we have had it from another
24 witness -- that group does exist?
25 A. I am not going to confirm its existence or not. That is

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1 going down a route which I am not prepared to go down,
2 but I have said to you that there are a variety of
3 capabilities of different types, some of which you have
4 vague references to, some of which you do not know
5 about, and as I have said, all of these come under the
6 control of the operational director.
7 Q. I want to ask you about two letters that you may not
8 have seen -- I do not know whether you have -- before.
9 [INQ0049253], please. This is a letter from
10 the juge in France or on his behalf to Mr Paul Johnston,
11 the Second Secretary for Political Affairs.
12 First of all, have you seen this letter before?
13 A. I do not recall having seen it before.
14 Q. You will see that it is dated 1st December 1998.
15 A. I cannot see the date, but I will take it that it is.
16 Q. There we are.
17 It is to Mr Paul Johnston who, in the
18 Diplomatic List, is listed as a Private Secretary. Do
19 you know Mr Johnston?
20 A. No, I do not.
21 Q. This is because Mr Tomlinson has gone to the French
22 magistrate in the first place -- it will have been in
23 August of that year, all right, 1998, so that is the
24 context -- and he has put to the magistrate a number of
25 points that he feels may be relevant to the

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1 investigation in France. That is the context. You will
2 see on this first page it says:
3 "Further to our telephone conversation, we confirm
4 that as part of the investigation into the accident in
5 the Alma Tunnel on 31st August, we have had occasion to
6 interview, at his request, one Richard Tomlinson.
7 "In his interview, the person concerned, who claims
8 to be a former British intelligence officer, supplied
9 the following information of his own accord.
10 "In 1992, in the course of his work, he claims to
11 have become aware of a plan to assassinate the Serbian
12 President Milosevic, whereby Milosevic's driver was to
13 be blinded by a flash in a tunnel. Having seen a
14 television programme in which a witness claimed to have
15 seen a flash in the tunnel at the time of the accident
16 on 31st March 1997, Mr Tomlinson thought that there may
17 be a connection, without however drawing any further
18 conclusions."
19 That is what it says on the first page. I ask
20 before that there is care about the second page because
21 of names that appear there. It may not perhaps matter.
22 [INQ0049254].
23 It is just so you know that in fact it is in this
24 letter that he not only refers to the proposal, he also
25 refers to the P question, which I have just asked you

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1 about, which is there, and he also refers to
2 a photojournalist and so on. Then there is another
3 paragraph about names I am not going to put into
4 the public domain at this point.
5 That is the letter. You did not, it would appear,
6 see that letter. Is that right?
7 A. I think that is right, yes. I do not recall seeing it.
8 Q. Now, there were one or two letters going back and forth,
9 but there appears to be the letter that relates to this
10 one, dated 16th December, [INQ0008320]. This is
11 written by Mr Johnston on 16th December.
12 The first thing is this: did Mr Johnston have any
13 recourse to you, either through your Paris station or to
14 your headquarters in London, before he starts making
15 observations about Mr Tomlinson's suggestions?
16 A. I really don't know. I cannot answer that question
17 accurately.
18 Q. Let's see what it says:
19 "Thank you for your letter of 1st December regarding
20 the evidence that you received from Richard Tomlinson
21 and the accident which claimed the life of the Princess
22 of Wales. As we said time and again, there is not an
23 ounce of truth in any plot that he attributes to the
24 British Government to assassinate President Milosevic."
25 Now, of course, at one level, that is accurate. Do

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1 you follow? I will go on to the rest of it in a moment,
2 but of course the real position is that there is a grain
3 of truth; there was a proposal.
4 You appreciate, the French are trying to assess
5 Richard Tomlinson at that point, at least what he is
6 telling them. The real position was that there is
7 a proposal which did not go anywhere.
8 So why were the French not told, "Well, there was
9 a proposal but it did not go anywhere", so that they
10 could assess whether Richard Tomlinson's material could
11 be investigated further. Can you help?
12 A. As the letter said, there was no plot. There was, you
13 know, a brief idea which had no existence, so I think
14 it is quite reasonable in those circumstances that the
15 matter was dealt with in the way that it was dealt with.
16 Anyway, it did not even refer to Milosevic so
17 the statement is absolutely accurate.
18 Q. Yes, or is that the way it is dealt with; in other
19 words, the full picture, whether action or not -- I know
20 you have said it many times -- the full picture that
21 actually Richard Tomlinson had remembered a proposal was
22 right; a proposal.
23 Can you explain why the French juge, in
24 December 1998, was not given by the British Embassy,
25 whoever Mr Johnston is, a full picture.

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1 A. Because I think it was believed at the time -- and
2 certainly believed now -- that these are two completely
3 disconnected incidents that do not throw light on each
4 other. This is Mr Tomlinson again causing mischief.
5 Q. Yes, I appreciate. Did you give instructions, through
6 MI6, that Mr Tomlinson should be -- and he has
7 catalogued the number of times that he has been arrested
8 abroad, in France, New Zealand, America, not because he
9 had transgressed any laws in those countries, but
10 because, he says, he was pursued by MI6, with his
11 computers being -- what was left of them -- confiscated
12 on each occasion. First of all, did you know anything
13 about that?
14 A. I certainly knew about it.
15 Q. Did you give instructions that that should happen?
16 A. He was pursued by the law. He was not pursued by SIS.
17 This man did go to prison. He was pursued by law
18 enforcement and police. He was not pursued by SIS.
19 This may be what he feels, but he was pursued through
20 the law, through legal process. It is important to make
21 that point. This man broke the law, was arrested and
22 was sent to prison.
23 Q. And after he came out, having served his sentence --
24 A. He continued to offend and was pursued by the law.
25 Q. How did he continue to offend?

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1 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Apart from anything else, he
2 broke his licence and went to France.
3 MR MANSFIELD: Yes, by two days. He made that very clear.
4 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Without a passport.
5 MR MANSFIELD: Then the French would no doubt have arrested
6 him for no passport.
7 The point I want to ask you about is: did you give
8 instructions that his computers should be confiscated
9 and returned to the British authorities?
10 A. These were legal measures that were taken against
11 Tomlinson at the time.
12 Q. Did you give those instructions?
13 A. I did not give those instructions. I certainly
14 discussed it with lawyers and so did the legal team, but
15 he was pursued through the law, full stop.
16 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: You said he was in continuing
17 breach of the law after he was released from prison.
18 Would you just like to enlarge briefly on that?
19 A. I cannot remember the exact chronology and details, but
20 there was continued evidence of disclosure of classified
21 information which risked causing serious damage to
22 national security. I mean, this was one of the reasons
23 why there was legal and Governmental concern about his
24 continued activities. In practice, he was conducting
25 a vendetta against Her Majesty's Government.

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1 MR MANSFIELD: But Her Majesty's Government was not
2 conducting a vendetta against him in any shape or form?
3 A. No. It was pursuing him through the law. He had
4 certain undertakings, he had signed the Official Secrets
5 Act and he was pursued legally.
6 Q. What were the official secrets, after he had served his
7 sentence, that he was broadcasting to the world?
8 A. I think there was a continued risk of disclosure of
9 details and the identity of SIS personnel which was
10 still in his possession.
11 Q. What details had he leaked to the world after his
12 release?
13 A. I would have to go back and look at the chronology.
14 I do not recall precisely what happened, what happened
15 before and what happened afterwards, but he was still
16 presented, at that point in time, as a serious
17 security -- or a potentially serious security problem.
18 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Shall we break off for our
19 afternoon break at this stage?
20 (3.17 pm)
21 (A short break)
22 (3.32 pm)
23 (Jury present)
24 MR MANSFIELD: Sir, I wonder if I could make a short
25 proposal. I have a couple more topics, but I gather

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1 I am about to be told something and what I --
2 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Ah.
3 MR BURNETT: You looked at me.
4 MR MANSFIELD: It may be not what I am expecting to hear.
5 If I may defer it for a little while that is sorted out?
6 I know others have questions. I am not asking for
7 Sir Richard to come back. I will complete it today, but
8 if I could just be given a few moments while we see what
9 there is.
10 I am told it is 15 minutes. I think others may have
11 questions that would fill 15 minutes.
12 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: You want me to go on with others
13 then?
14 MR MANSFIELD: Yes, sir.
15 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Mr Keen?
16 MR KEEN: I have just a few questions, sir, if I may. I do
17 not know if I will be 15 minutes, but perhaps having
18 saved a few minutes yesterday, I could claim them back
19 today.
20 Questions from MR KEEN
21 MR KEEN: Sir Richard, my name is Richard Keen and I am
22 counsel appearing for the parents of the late
23 Henri Paul. It is somewhat difficult with me examining
24 you in such close proximity, but feel free to address
25 the jury because it is they who obviously have to hear

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1 your evidence.
2 It is clear I think from your evidence already that
3 the Secret Intelligence Service is one of the guardians
4 of our national interest. Would you agree with that?
5 A. National security.
6 Q. But clearly they cannot be arbiters of our national
7 security, can they?
8 A. No. SIS is not a policy body.
9 Q. Has the behaviour of the SIS evolved over the 38 years
10 or did it evolve over the 38 years that you were with
11 the service?
12 A. Can you be precise as to what you mean? What, exactly,
13 has evolved during the 38 years?
14 Q. Can I put it this way: can I take it that by the time
15 you were with the service, it had moved on from what one
16 historian referred to as "a bunch of meddlers with
17 a public school education and a free supply of plastic
18 explosives"?
19 A. Well, I find that description entirely foreign to my
20 experience. Obviously the service has developed and
21 changed in all manner of ways over the 38 years and my
22 career, but I would not like you to believe that it
23 started from the point that you have just described.
24 Q. I think the comment was made in the context of certain
25 Albanian adventures and certain post-Suez adventures

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1 which you may know are now in the public domain.
2 A. Well, there are certain things in the public domain
3 which even, from that period, are extremely misleading.
4 I take it we will not get into discussion of
5 the service's history.
6 Q. One difficulty that we have, Sir Richard, is that some
7 individuals have breached the Official Secrets Act, have
8 breached their contractual obligations, have betrayed
9 the service, have betrayed their country indeed, and
10 have consequently disclosed details of their service
11 with the SIS and indeed the Security Service.
12 A. Of course they have. That is the nature of human
13 nature.
14 Q. One of the difficulties that we have is that very often
15 their disclosures are the only window we have upon
16 the conduct of the Secret Intelligence Service. Would
17 you agree?
18 A. It is certainly true that a lot of the material that is
19 in the public domain is highly partial and misleading.
20 Q. But not all of it, Sir Richard?
21 A. Not all of it.
22 Q. Which is why, from time to time, some of these
23 individuals are prosecuted and imprisoned under
24 the Official Secrets Act?
25 A. Correct.

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1 Q. You don't get prosecuted and imprisoned under
2 the Official Secrets Act for disclosing that which is
3 not a secret?
4 A. You don't.
5 Q. Sir Richard, has the Secret Intelligence Service, to
6 your knowledge, been involved in the destruction of
7 evidence or the manufacture of evidence for the purpose
8 of misleading any form of judicial process?
9 A. Not that I am aware.
10 Q. You are familiar, are you not, with the case of R v
11 Stewart, otherwise referred to as the "Eurobank case",
12 with a judgment from the Chief Justice of the Cayman
13 Islands in December 2002?
14 A. I think you are going to have to remind me about what
15 this is about, if I do know about it.
16 Q. Do you recall that, in December 2002, a criminal trial
17 in the Cayman Islands collapsed following disclosure of
18 the activities of what was termed "a United Kingdom
19 Government agency" and what was termed "their London
20 plan"?
21 A. I recall something. I recall -- now you have mentioned,
22 I recall the existence of this case, but I really don't
23 think I can comment on the details.
24 Q. Perhaps I can assist you a little. It was reported in
25 January 2003 that the UK Government agency being

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1 referred to was one of the intelligence agencies. That
2 was disclosed by a minister from the Foreign and
3 Commonwealth Office. It was then disclosed by
4 a newspaper that that agency was the Secret Intelligence
5 Service, of which you would then have been chief, would
6 you not, Sir Richard?
7 A. Yes, I would have been.
8 Q. And the Chief Justice of Cayman said this about the UK
9 Government agency London plan:
10 "In its very conception I find and has been
11 submitted by the defence that the London plan had
12 committed the prosecution to a course of action that was
13 inherently misleading and required counsel to represent
14 to the court and to defence counsel a falsehood.
15 Mr Mitchell's further assurance that had it appeared to
16 him during the trial that there had been
17 misrepresentation which had become material, he would
18 have corrected it, is hardly an answer to this concern.
19 The concern is that there should not have been a plan
20 conceived in the first place which depended upon
21 the court being misled."
22 Now do you recall that, following that judgment, so
23 seriously was it taken that there was a statement in
24 the house by a minister regarding that conclusion by
25 the Chief Justice?

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1 A. Remind me of the statement if that is --
2 Q. It was a statement by Baroness Amos, the Overseas
3 Territories Minister at that time, made on 20th January
4 2003, in which she expressed her concern at the collapse
5 of the Eurobank trial and the subsequent press and
6 political reaction to that. Does that remind you of
7 events, Sir Richard?
8 A. I can vaguely remember this case, but I certainly don't
9 recall the details of it.
10 Q. If I can perhaps assist you a little further, it
11 involved a person who was apparently an agent and
12 I shall use letters rather than names. The Chief
13 Justice recorded this:
14 "It then came to light, as informed by G, that G,
15 acting upon the direction of an agency of the United
16 Kingdom Government, had destroyed certain records
17 relating to his contact with W, which were among
18 documents which could reveal any connection between G
19 and the particular agency of the UK Government agency.
20 The reason given for this course of conduct will be
21 examined below."
22 Then there is a reference to what is termed
23 "the London plan". We are then told by
24 the Chief Justice:
25 "G has since testified that he destroyed the

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1 material on the instructions of his controlling agent of
2 the UK Government agency when, on 2nd July 2002, he was
3 telephoned and told by that agent that a search warrant
4 was to be executed at the FRU and at his home by
5 the Commissioner of Police. This search was to be in
6 relation to an investigation arising from suspicions of
7 interference with the judiciary's telecommunications.
8 G's account of those instructions on which he acted so
9 completely and unquestioningly has been supported by
10 the agent of the UK Government who also testified upon
11 voir dire under the name of John Doe."
12 Not entirely original, perhaps, Sir Richard. But
13 the thrust of the conclusions of the Chief Justice is
14 that someone by the name or the identification of G was
15 instructed by his controlling agent to destroy material,
16 that a London plan was then conceived with regard to
17 that material, and that, as a consequence of
18 the implementation of that plan, material that was
19 inherently misleading was placed before the court with
20 the result that the court was in danger of being misled;
21 or, to put it shortly, Sir Richard, there was what
22 appears, upon an objective reading of the Chief
23 Justice's opinion, a conspiracy to pervert the course of
24 justice. Now that was as recent as --
25 MR TAM: Sir, my learned friend puts it like that, but that

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1 is not consistent with the findings of the Chief
2 Justice, which are summarised at the end of the
3 judgment, as to the state of mind of the agent, as it is
4 described, of the UK agency, who was involved in that
5 and to whom my learned friend has just referred.
6 MR KEEN: I take issue with Mr Tam's characterisation, sir,
7 and I can hand up a copy of the Chief Justice's opinion
8 if you wish to see it. It is available.
9 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: I think it would be helpful to
10 have the conclusions to which Mr Tam refers read out.
11 MR KEEN: I am perfectly happy to do that, sir.
12 MR BURNETT: Before my learned friend goes on, Mr Mansfield
13 was good enough to give me a copy of the 79-page
14 judgment at three minutes past 1. I do not know whether
15 Sir Richard has one. I know one was given to Mr Tam,
16 but it may not have been either possible or appropriate
17 for Mr Tam to pass it on. It does seem, with respect to
18 my learned friend, a little hard to question Sir Richard
19 about the contents of a judgment he may never have seen
20 and a copy of which he does not have in front of him.
21 Speaking for myself at least, trying over lunch to read
22 and assimilate all those pages was not very easy and it
23 may be that we would all benefit from some idea of
24 a little bit of context.
25 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Yes.

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1 MR KEEN: Well, I understood that Sir Richard was chief of
2 the SIS at the time and that he did purport to say that
3 matters of materiality would have come across his desk.
4 But I am perfectly content that he too should have
5 a copy of the Chief Justice's opinion. (Handed)
6 A. Many thanks.
7 Q. I am sure he does not want to read it in its entirety.
8 I simply want to try and put it into context as well, as
9 Mr Tam, my learned friend, will do in his
10 cross-examination if he wishes.
11 Further copies were passed to Mr Burnett earlier
12 today and I don't know how far they have been
13 disseminated --
14 MR HORWELL: We have not even seen it, sir.
15 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Nor have I.
16 MR KEEN: It is a well-known decision --
17 MR BURNETT: Can I plead my ignorance about the Grand Cayman
18 court?
19 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: It may be for those who practice
20 regularly in the Cayman Islands.
21 MR CROXFORD: Or those who read The Sunday Times.
22 MR KEEN: If a copy could be passed to Mr Horwell?
23 Sir Richard, I do not want to take this out of
24 context. We are told that there was an agent who came
25 from London who was identified as John Doe, and

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1 the person I have identified as G was in turn an agent
2 of John Doe.
3 Now, if you turn to page 72, first of all, the Chief
4 Justice observed:
5 "In its very conception I find, and as has been
6 submitted by the defence, that the London plan had
7 committed the prosecution to a course of action that was
8 inherently misleading and required counsel to represent
9 to the court and to defence counsel a falsehood."
10 At the foot of that paragraph -- I do not want to
11 take it out of context -- the Chief Justice adds:
12 "The concern is that there should not have been
13 a plan conceived in the first place which depended upon
14 the court being misled."
15 Can you see that?
16 A. I see that, yes.
17 Q. There were various attempts to justify the plan. Then
18 if we go to the final conclusions of the Chief Justice
19 at page 76, there is a heading, "Summary of main
20 conclusions". If we go to the second, we see that his
21 conclusion there is:
22 "G deliberately failed to disclose and knowingly
23 destroyed that evidence which he was aware was highly
24 relevant to this trial."
25 Do you see that? G was an agent in Cayman acting on

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1 the instructions from London of John Doe.
2 At paragraph 3, the Chief Justice observes --
3 A. I think it is fair to point out that I do not think G
4 was an employee. I mean he is not a staff member of the
5 Secret Intelligence Service.
6 Q. He may not have been an employee, a staff member, but he
7 was acting as an agent of the Secret Intelligence
8 Service with regard to his functioning in the Cayman
9 Islands, according to this judgment, and that is why he
10 was receiving instructions from London and passing
11 material back to London which London then preserved and
12 then reconstituted and told him to destroy in part and
13 in part to place upon the records of the financial
14 investigating unit which did actually employ him,
15 Sir Richard.
16 So that is the background. If we go to
17 conclusion 3, the Chief Justice said:
18 "As to the intentions of John Doe, the agent who
19 instructed him to destroy the material, the distinction
20 between his and G's state of mind at the time was as
21 between a deliberate intention to destroy relevant
22 evidence and recklessness as to whether that would
23 follow from his instructions. I conclude that Doe was
24 at least reckless as to whether the material he ordered
25 to be destroyed was still relevant material required for

158

1 this trial."
2 Pausing there -- and I appreciate you may say you
3 want to read this entire opinion; I have no objection to
4 that -- but trying to put this into context, that
5 appears to be an instance only a few years ago in which
6 material was destroyed on the instructions of a UK
7 Government agency in London with the result that there
8 was put before a court material that was significantly
9 misleading and liable to mislead the court in the form
10 of its discharge of a judicial process.
11 Now is that something that the Secret Intelligence
12 Service does on a regular basis or are you going to
13 claim that this was a one-off of some kind?
14 A. I think it is definitely a one-off. I think this is
15 a very rare occurrence. I do vaguely recall this case
16 and the collapse of the prosecution in it, but I think
17 if you dig deep enough in everything that is known about
18 the service, you will find one or two instances
19 inevitably of errors, of human errors, and this looks to
20 me like a human error for which the price paid clearly
21 was quite high. These things are embarrassing if they
22 happen to the service because it indicates a standard of
23 behaviour which is not acceptable.
24 But, fine, you have dug and you have found this and
25 that is what it appears to be. I would like to have had

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1 a chance -- this is quite a complicated legal issue, as
2 I recall, and I would have liked a little warning. To
3 have this plonked on top of me when it happened I do not
4 know how many years ago is a surprise --
5 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Absolutely, and have you any
6 recollection of what happened to John Doe afterwards?
7 A. I do not. I believe he may have moved to another part
8 of Government, but I cannot recall exactly who it was.
9 MR KEEN: Is that what is termed "promotion", Sir Richard?
10 A. I am not actually sure of my facts on that.
11 Q. If I can put this in context, my learned friend,
12 Mr Mansfield, has sought to explore with you the
13 existence or otherwise of material germane to
14 Mr Tomlinson's various claims, and there seems to be
15 considerable doubt, to put it no higher, as to whether
16 or not that material has been destroyed.
17 A. I do not think there is any doubt about the destruction
18 of the piece of paper, if we are going back. I think
19 there is clear evidence that that paper was destroyed.
20 Q. But we see a further instance in 2002 where, because
21 it was perceived to suit the aims of the Special
22 Intelligence Service, material was destroyed,
23 reconstituted, and still, in a reconstituted form,
24 submitted to a court in circumstances where that court
25 determined that it was being misled.

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1 A. Well, I do not think you should interpret from this
2 particular incident that this is a generic problem
3 inside the service. That is really stretching a point.
4 If you take one rather abstruse event happening in
5 a distant court and extrapolate from that that this is
6 typical of the service's behaviour, I think that is
7 rather far-fetched, if I may say so.
8 Q. Does the distant to the court really matter?
9 A. Of course it does not. I was using that as a phrase.
10 Any event like this is, of course, regrettable and of
11 concern, but it certainly is not indicative of a culture
12 of this type of thing inside the service. You only have
13 to look at what the commissioners of the various Acts
14 have said about the standards of the staff inside the
15 service to know that this would be a very, very rare
16 occurrence.
17 Q. Was this matter reported to the Commissioner?
18 A. I do not recall.
19 Q. Well, if it was not, he could hardly comment upon it,
20 could he?
21 A. I am sure the Commissioner would have been aware of it
22 because it was a public legal judgment.
23 Q. Finally, Sir Richard, it was a former member of the
24 Secret Intelligence Service, not anyone else, who drew
25 the parallel between the circumstances of the crash in

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1 the Alma Tunnel in August 1997 and a plan which he
2 claimed had been shown to him while he was a member of
3 the Secret Intelligence Service.
4 A. That is correct, yes.
5 Q. Could that revelation have prompted the further
6 destruction of documents, Sir Richard?
7 A. No, not at all.
8 MR KEEN: Very well. No further questions.
9 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Well, it is somewhat inconsistent
10 with it causing the further destruction of documents and
11 yet to have been openly admitted that the document
12 existed.
13 MR KEEN: Sir, Tomlinson had disclosed that the document
14 existed. As Sir Richard said, there is the issue of
15 deniability. Sometimes things are not capable of
16 denial.
17 A. Deniability is not practised inside SIS or in SIS in
18 relation to the Government, never, ever. That is
19 a fundamental point of integrity. It is only practised
20 in relation to its operations outside the Governmental
21 context.
22 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Mr Croxford?
23 MR CROXFORD: No, sir. Mr Keen has asked those questions
24 about Eurobank, and the late Michael Hill will no doubt
25 have heard them from somewhere.

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1 MR HORWELL: Sir, I have questions, but if there is material
2 that is about to be disclosed, it may well be better to
3 see it first.
4 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: What is the state of play?
5 MR BURNETT: Sir, you are looking at me, but I am not sure
6 I can answer.
7 MR TAM: Sir, I am told that we are struggling simply with
8 practicalities that somebody has had to go back to
9 chambers with the redacted copy to make photocopies. So
10 as soon as they can be back here, then there should be
11 documents that we can distribute.
12 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: How long is that going to be?
13 MR TAM: Well, it takes five minutes to walk there and five
14 minutes to walk back and then however long it takes to
15 make a couple of dozen photocopies. So 10 or
16 15 minutes, something like that.
17 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Do you need to wait until they
18 come back, Mr Horwell?
19 MR HORWELL: If this is to be disclosure, as we expect, in
20 relation to witness A and the internal investigation,
21 I was seeking to ask Sir Richard about that and it must
22 be better to wait, in my submission.
23 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Yes. This is not a document that
24 has ever been disclosed to Paget --
25 MR HORWELL: That is right, sir.

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1 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: -- nor to me when I went and
2 audited the Paget review, yes.
3 It rather looks as if we had better wait until this
4 comes back, Mr Mansfield, or can you continue?
5 MR MANSFIELD: I would rather wait. It is new ground.
6 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: It is not your fault.
7 It looks, members of the jury, as though it is
8 another break, but we obviously want to resolve this.
9 (3.56 pm)
10 (A short break )
11 (4.20 pm)
12 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Yes. You now have the document?
13 MR MANSFIELD: Yes. May I be permitted a little time?
14 I will not ask too many questions. I do not know
15 whether the witness has seen it yet.
16 A. I am just trying to look at it now. I have just been
17 given it a minute ago.
18 Q. Shall I give you a minute to finish reading? (Pause)
19 MR MANSFIELD: Sir, may I establish what this probably is
20 not?
21 First of all, have you seen this document before
22 today?
23 A. I may have done, but I cannot give you an absolutely
24 clear answer about this.
25 Q. You see, the reason I want to ask you the general

164

1 questions is --
2 A. I probably saw this document back in 1996, presumably.
3 It does not have a date on it, but --
4 Q. The first thing is it certainly is not a report on an
5 investigation, is it, by any senior officer in MI6?
6 A. No, it is an account from the particular officer
7 concerned.
8 Q. So I still ask that we see, please, assuming there
9 was -- and if there was not, I want to ask you why there
10 was not -- any report by a senior investigating officer
11 in relation to the original incident which was,
12 according to A, in 1993.
13 Also can you help where this document would have
14 come from? Is there a file in relation to this whole
15 incident and, if there is, can we have it? Do you
16 follow? Where has this come from? Do you know or not?
17 A. Well, I imagine that this is part -- the main part of
18 the report of the investigation as to what
19 Tomlinson's -- what lay behind Tomlinson's allegations.
20 Q. I appreciate.
21 A. That is clearly what it is.
22 Q. Yes, of course that is what it is, but I want, if you
23 don't mind -- you say "clearly"; we will have to deal
24 with "clearly" in a moment -- part of the file. Can you
25 help us, where is the rest of the file? Also can you

165

1 help as to why it was not shown to anyone before
2 I started asking questions today? Can you help about
3 that?
4 A. No, I cannot help about that because both of these
5 things would have taken place after I retired.
6 Q. No, no, the original report would not have taken place
7 after you retired.
8 A. No, the original report would not, but showing it to
9 the Paget team and to the Coroner.
10 Q. I understand that. Well, we do ask for explanations
11 from whoever is responsible as to why these have only
12 surfaced now. You think it is part of the original
13 file. That is why I was wanting you to write down
14 the name of the officer probably who undertook the
15 original investigation lest we get a document like this.
16 It has no name on it, does it?
17 A. SIS documents do not have names on them.
18 Q. Well, it is very convenient that they don't.
19 I appreciate -- you agree -- it does not have a name on
20 it, so we can infer it might be A, but it might not be
21 A; it might be somebody else who has written it down at
22 his dictation. We just don't know, do we?
23 A. In the legal sense we don't, no.
24 Q. Well, in any sense. There is no date on there, is
25 there?

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1 A. It is unlikely that the service, if asked to produce
2 a document, would produce something that was not what it
3 purported to be.
4 Q. Is that not the whole point of the Cayman case, that
5 documents are produced by the service that are not what
6 they purport to be?
7 A. No, it is not.
8 Q. Do you remember you gave an answer just before the
9 break:
10 "Deniability is not practised inside SIS or in SIS
11 in relation to the Government, never, ever ... It is
12 only practised in relation to its operations outside the
13 Governmental context."
14 What that means is you will deny it to everybody
15 save members of your own service and the Government; is
16 that right?
17 A. No, that is not true.
18 Q. I see.
19 A. But -- absolutely not. You may occasionally have, as we
20 have discussed in the Cayman case, an errant action by
21 an individual. That is not a generic indicator of
22 something that is going on in the whole service.
23 Q. That is precisely what I am suggesting may have happened
24 in this case; not happening all the time, an errant
25 officer in the security services may have done. It does

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1 not matter that it is the Cayman Islands, as you pointed
2 out, does it? You operate throughout the world, don't
3 you, in the SIS?
4 A. We operate globally, yes.
5 Q. You are not suggesting that just because it is a long
6 way away, we can say it does not matter, are you?
7 A. The same rules apply everywhere.
8 Q. Exactly.
9 So just coming back to this document, I appreciate
10 that you have not produced it, but why is there no date
11 on it?
12 A. I imagine because it is an attachment.
13 Q. To ...?
14 A. Maybe to just a covering minute or something, which says
15 "Here is the account provided by this particular
16 individual".
17 Q. With a date?
18 A. That would have a date, yes.
19 Q. That would have a date. So I ask for that please.
20 Would it be described as a minute card for those
21 purposes? If this is an attachment, is the thing to
22 which it is attached a minute card or is it something
23 else?
24 A. This might be an attachment to a minute.
25 Q. So there ought to be a minute in relation to this

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1 particular thing. Looking at the first paragraph --
2 don't worry, I am not going to ask you a lot of
3 questions as to how it differs from what A says in his
4 statements; that will be for A -- but it looks as though
5 in fact it is well after 1996. It says "... and when
6 Tomlinson's story was first brought to my attention in
7 [there is a question mark] 1996 ...", so it appears that
8 the author was not sure that it was then, "... and then
9 again between then [whatever it is in 1996] and
10 the latest round of publicity ...", can you help us as
11 to what may be referred to there?
12 A. No, I cannot. To situate the chronology without
13 reference to other bits of paper is --
14 Q. You see, what it does make clear is that the
15 encouragement to write the proposal came from the head
16 of controllerate, E, doesn't it, paragraph 3?
17 "I had a private word with the then ..."
18 It is blotted out, but it is E, isn't it, the head
19 of the controllerate?
20 A. I do not think it is an encouragement because it says
21 clearly further on in the paper, you know, that when he
22 heard what the idea was, he absolutely rejected it. So
23 you are cherry picking something from earlier.
24 Q. No, I am afraid not. Paragraph 4:
25 "I cannot recollect clearly what happened next.

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1 I think that [E] on seeing the memo realised that he
2 should never have encouraged me to produce it."
3 So whoever wrote this, that is his words or her
4 words, isn't it?
5 A. I think that is pretty clear.
6 Q. Can you explain how the head of the controllerate was
7 even considering encouraging somebody to do something
8 which is totally against Government policy?
9 A. If it was not written down on a piece of paper, he
10 probably did not know precisely what the proposal was
11 going to be. When it was written down, he clearly saw
12 it was something to be rejected, which he did. I do not
13 see what the problem about this is, frankly.
14 Q. No, I am sure you don't see what the problem is. I want
15 to ask you, was E interviewed as A appears to have
16 provided this at some unspecified date, if it is A --
17 was E interviewed about all of this?
18 A. I am sure he would have been at the time.
19 Q. Right. Thank you.
20 Well, I am not going to waste more time on it. I am
21 going to ask for full disclosure of what happened in
22 relation to this, the investigation, E's documents and
23 an explanation as to why they have not been produced
24 before today and thank you for your patience.
25 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Mr Horwell?

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1 Questions from MR HORWELL
2 MR HORWELL: I am Richard Horwell and I appear on behalf of
3 the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. We can see
4 from the document that has just been disclosed that it
5 takes the position a little further forward.
6 We can see from the first paragraph that -- and I do
7 not think we are being too reckless in assuming that
8 this must be witness A --
9 A. I think it must be witness A.
10 Q. "... I would have to point out that I gave it scarcely
11 a moment's thought between when I left [the section] in
12 1993 and when Tomlinson's story was first brought to my
13 attention ..."
14 Whether the question mark is for the year or the
15 month of the year we will find out from witness A. But
16 to remind ourselves of the evidence that we heard from
17 Tomlinson, his draft was of course seized in 1996.
18 A. Yes, it was.
19 Q. Second page, paragraph 5, witness A describes this idea
20 in these terms, as a "slightly whacky proposal". Then,
21 over the page, he deals with the detail that was
22 included in Tomlinson's book. He says that:
23 "Only a complete idiot would have thought it somehow
24 in his country's interest to assassinate a leader during
25 peace talks sponsored by one's country."

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1 It is the peace talks that gets Milosevic into
2 Geneva where there is a tunnel at which it is said by
3 Tomlinson that the assassination was considered to take
4 place. He goes on in that same paragraph:
5 "... if Tomlinson had been honest about the real
6 possible target [in other words, not Milosevic], he
7 could never have come up with the baloney about ICFY
8 talks [those are the peace talks] in Geneva and tunnels
9 and strobe lights ...", et cetera.
10 He goes on to say:
11 "For the record, I had never heard of blinding
12 strobe lights until I saw some conspiracy theory
13 television programme this year about the death of
14 the Princess of Wales."
15 Now, you have been asked many questions about A's
16 motivation for this idea, and "idea" is probably the
17 best way of describing this process, is it not?
18 A. It certainly is, I think.
19 Q. It is not a plan?
20 A. Certainly it is not a plan.
21 Q. It is an idea that witness A had, and it is clear, is it
22 not -- of course witness A will speak for himself next
23 week -- but it is clear from the documents that we have
24 that witness A was obviously very concerned about
25 genocide which had been taking place in Kosovo?

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1 A. I understand that is true, yes.
2 Q. Any one of us who saw those images of the hundreds if
3 not thousands of bodies that were found in trenches in
4 Kosovo will [not] forget them.
5 It is clear from his statement that A was concerned
6 that the particular individual was even more extreme
7 than Milosevic and that this individual had already been
8 involved in genocide, and A was concerned that this
9 particular individual would increase the number of
10 deaths. His idea behind this assassination was to
11 either stop or at the very least inhibit genocide in
12 Kosovo. As he says in his statement:
13 "This is my own self-generated idea."
14 Whatever one may say about witness A and this idea,
15 his concern about genocide is obviously laudable,
16 Sir Richard. As you have told us on many occasions
17 throughout the course of the day, it is a plan that got
18 nowhere and a plan that was very quickly rejected. So
19 these appear to be the factual issues that you have been
20 asked about.
21 The mere idea to assassinate a man suspected of
22 genocide, with comparisons to Adolf Hitler, an
23 assassination which might have saved countless lives,
24 was quickly rejected by SIS the moment that idea was put
25 on paper --

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1 A. That is correct.
2 Q. -- but a plan to murder a group of people because
3 the Duke of Edinburgh did not like the man whom
4 the Princess of Wales was having a relationship with,
5 a relationship of four to five weeks' standing, that
6 plan goes all of the way to murder; a plan that was
7 executed either within days or possibly within an hour,
8 Sir Richard, on one analysis of the evidence. Those are
9 the differences that have been placed before you.
10 Is it your evidence that it is impossible that
11 the second of those two proposals could have been
12 executed in the manner suggested?
13 A. It is quite impossible. It is completely fanciful.
14 Q. Reference has been made -- and I have not looked at
15 the transcript of the judgment in the Cayman Islands;
16 I am simply basing these questions on what has been said
17 in court -- but attempts, it appears, are being made to
18 draw a similarity between an errant officer who ordered
19 the destruction of some documents and the errant officer
20 who ordered the murder of up to four people; that is
21 the similarity and the comparison that is being made.
22 Well, I do not know why I am even bothering to ask you
23 the question, Sir Richard, but I will. Is that
24 a ridiculous comparison to make?
25 A. I just say, simply, yes.

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1 Q. The idea that the Duke of Edinburgh had a hotline to SIS
2 to order murder, equally absurd?
3 A. Completely absurd.
4 Q. You have been asked about another potential motive,
5 landmines, and you have been asked about a dossier.
6 I believe there are only two people in the world that
7 call these documents a "dossier"; one is Simone Simmons
8 and the other is Mr Mansfield.
9 The dossier, as those two people describe it, is
10 a collection of documents and information that Diana
11 compiled. No one knows from where, but Simone Simmons
12 accepted the suggestions that it was likely to come from
13 the British Landmines Trust and the Red Cross and they
14 were kept in an envelope. There is no evidence that
15 that evidence contained highly secret or confidential
16 information.
17 The suggestion appears to be that because
18 Princess Diana was compiling information of that nature,
19 that she would have been a target for assassination.
20 Again I do not know why I am asking the question, but
21 I will do so: what is your response, Sir Richard?
22 A. I am outraged that it should even be suggested. It is
23 just again -- "ridiculous" is the only word that I can
24 use, and, you know, personally to me and to my senior
25 staff in SIS, you know, really deeply offensive.