Hearing transcripts

26 February 2008 - Morning session
 
1 Tuesday, 26th February 2008
2 (9.30 am)
3 (Proceedings delayed)
4 (9.38 am)
5 (Jury present)
6 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Mr Burnett, bearing in mind that
7 we don't have the videolink, for reasons which we are
8 all aware of, to the annex today and on other occasions
9 this week, it would be very helpful if counsel could
10 introduce themselves when they get up to speak so that
11 it is apparent to anybody in the annex who it is.
12 I should add that I am the Coroner, in case anybody had
13 not appreciated that in the annex.
14 MR BURNETT: I hope they had not thought there was a coup
15 while we were out of sight.
16 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: I think it would be helpful then,
17 when somebody gets up, if they want to interrupt in
18 the course of evidence, that they indicate who they are.
19 MR BURNETT: Certainly, sir.
20 MR MANSFIELD: Sir, may I introduce myself as
21 Michael Mansfield to those downstairs?
22 May I raise very briefly -- and I apologise in
23 the presence of the witness just to delay it a fraction.
24 Last week you gave a very clear exhortation to the media
25 about the nature of reporting. I am not going to repeat

1

1 examples that have occurred since. I have handed two in
2 today.
3 We are deeply concerned that the media or some parts
4 of it are not exercising their usual restraint in
5 relation to judicial proceedings and there is a real
6 risk that serious prejudice to the environment in which
7 this inquest is taking place is being created. We would
8 ask that your exhortation is repeated and that, if there
9 are transgressions of any kind, that action is taken.
10 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Well, Mr Mansfield, I am not
11 going to repeat what I said, which is perfectly clearly
12 on the transcript last week.
13 MR MANSFIELD: Yes.
14 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: I am sure that the media ought,
15 by now, to be aware of their responsibilities.
16 MR MANSFIELD: I have handed in the two examples.
17 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: I have seen them. Thank you.
18 I call then X.
19 WITNESS X (affirmed)
20 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Please sit down if you would
21 prefer.
22 A. Many thanks.
23 Questions from MR BURNETT
24 MR BURNETT: Now, my name is Ian Burnett and I shall be
25 asking you questions first on behalf of the Coroner and

2

1 thereafter there will be questions addressed to you by
2 various of the interested persons in court.
3 You are not going to state your full name publicly
4 or for the record, but it is a name that is being made
5 available to the Coroner. That is right, isn't it?
6 A. Yes, that is correct.
7 Q. Although I shall feel uncomfortable calling you
8 "Miss X", I hope you will bear with me and understand
9 why I am doing so.
10 It is right, isn't it, that you joined the Secret
11 Intelligence Service or MI6, as it is more readily
12 known, in 1982?
13 A. Yes, I did, yes.
14 Q. And that you started life there as a PA, a personal
15 assistant, but you left that job behind you some time
16 ago and rose to what you describe as "middle
17 management"?
18 A. Yes, that is right.
19 Q. So you now have over 25 years' service.
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. Now, in connection with matters that may be of interest
22 to the jury in these inquests, is it right that you made
23 a statement on 20th December 2007?
24 A. Yes, that is correct.
25 Q. And a supplementary statement at the end of last week,

3

1 or even the beginning of this week, 25th February this
2 year?
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. Is it right that you have a good knowledge of the way
5 SIS/MI6 works and particularly records and information
6 handling?
7 A. Yes. That would be correct.
8 Q. And that extends both to retrieving material held in
9 the United Kingdom, but also overseas?
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. For completeness, is it right that you have worked both
12 overseas for MI6 as well as in head office in London?
13 A. Yes, that is right.
14 Q. Now, your involvement, Miss X, I think comes about in
15 this way: you were the contact point for Lord Stevens
16 and his officers to enable them to carry out such
17 searches as they thought appropriate of MI6 databases
18 and files; is that right?
19 A. Yes, that is right.
20 Q. Just winding back to when that involvement started, is
21 it right that Lord Stevens sent a letter in October 2004
22 seeking the assistance of MI6 and attached to it a very
23 lengthy list of questions and queries?
24 A. Yes, that is right.
25 Q. Were you assigned to look after Lord Stevens and his

4

1 officers and to provide assistance in respect of all
2 those matters?
3 A. Yes, I was.
4 Q. Had you, before your involvement beginning at the end of
5 2004, had any direct connection with or involvement in
6 investigating allegations made by Mr Tomlinson, from
7 whom we have heard?
8 A. Yes -- sorry, could you repeat the question?
9 Q. Of course I will. Before October 2004, when
10 Lord Stevens got in touch, had you had any involvement
11 in investigating allegations made by Richard Tomlinson?
12 A. Not in connection with Lord Stevens' inquiry -- you mean
13 prior altogether, nothing to do with the inquiry?
14 Q. Yes.
15 A. Sorry, just to clarify.
16 Q. Yes.
17 A. No, I had not.
18 Q. We will come in a moment to the answers that you provide
19 in respect of a number of Lord Stevens' queries and in
20 particular the detail that you provided to a number of
21 his officers. It is right, isn't it, that two police
22 officers attended SIS on a number of occasions to review
23 material?
24 A. Yes, that is right.
25 Q. And you assisted them by providing access to anything

5

1 that they wished to see?
2 A. Yes, absolutely.
3 Q. Is it right that they spent a total of 18 man days, as
4 you call them, in SIS head office?
5 A. Yes, they spent at least -- as I recall, it was 18 days,
6 yes.
7 Q. What I would like to do for us, with I hope my questions
8 providing a way through, is describe to the jury
9 a little bit about the way MI6 keeps its records and
10 thus how they might be searched and so forth. Are you
11 with me?
12 A. Yes, totally.
13 Q. For your assistance, Miss X, I am going to be using your
14 statement of 20th December 2007, beginning at
15 paragraph 5, as the template for my questions. I am
16 conscious that you provide one or two clarifications and
17 qualifications in your second statement, which no doubt
18 you can pick up as we go along.
19 A. Fine.
20 Q. We are looking in particular at two dates. One, as you
21 know, is 1997, the time of the crash, and the other is
22 a few years earlier, 2003, as witness A would have it --
23 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: 1993.
24 MR BURNETT: -- sorry, 1993, as witness A would have it,
25 1992 as Mr Tomlinson describes it, in connection with

6

1 a Balkan plot. So we have two quite separate times that
2 we need to consider.
3 Now, even 1997 is a long time ago and electronic and
4 computer capability I would imagine has come on a long
5 way, even within MI6.
6 A. Yes, it has moved on considerably.
7 Q. So we need to understand through you how it is possible
8 to search for material relating to a period when the
9 computerisation was less advanced. Are you with me?
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. Now you describe in your statement, at paragraph 5,
12 something called an "electronic carding system", which
13 was in place in 1997. You say that:
14 "This contains the details of all individuals and
15 organisations that the service has an interest in."
16 A. Yes, that is right.
17 Q. So what I would like to do is explore that first with
18 you, if I may.
19 A. Okay.
20 Q. Now the fact that by 1997 it was an electronic carding
21 system would lead me to infer that at some stage before
22 that it was a manual card system. Is that right?
23 A. It was semi-electronic, even some years previously. But
24 certainly in 1997, you were able to search on it in what
25 we would understand now to be electronically.

7

1 Q. I see. Now in describing a "carding system", I am
2 afraid in my mind that brings up an image of a little
3 box full of cards that we are all used to having, at
4 least in the old days. Is that essentially what it is,
5 albeit that it could be searched electronically?
6 A. No. Initially -- and quite a lot of years ago -- we did
7 have almost the sort of flip-books of cards and so on
8 and so forth, but then these were all -- if I am
9 a little bit careful in answering, sir, it is just that
10 I am aware I am not allowed to mention the names of the
11 systems, which makes it a little bit difficult. That is
12 why I am going a little bit slowly.
13 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: We are sympathetic.
14 MR BURNETT: Please take your time. It is very important
15 that we understand what is obviously second nature to
16 you, but alien to us.
17 A. Absolutely, and I will try to get it across.
18 Basically it is a big system of all the contacts
19 within our service, so that covers all the people and
20 all the organisations that we might be interested for
21 one reason or shape or form. So -- do stop me if I go
22 too far in my explanation.
23 Q. Can I tease that out then? People in whom MI6 might be
24 interested, and organisations, no doubt covers a wide
25 range.

8

1 A. Yes.
2 Q. So, again, without straying into particulars -- we will
3 come to some later -- if MI6 had a particular interest
4 in an individual because he was seen as a target, that
5 is someone in respect of whom intelligence was thought
6 desirable, would a card be created for that individual?
7 A. Absolutely.
8 Q. So again, to take a silly example going back 30 years or
9 more, President Brezhnev of the Soviet Union.
10 Presumably that is the sort of person there might have
11 been a card in respect of? I am not asking you to
12 confirm or deny that.
13 A. Yes, confirm that that particular person -- but
14 AN Other, of a particular interest, there would be
15 a card that existed for them.
16 Q. And similarly an organisation. So, again, take
17 a hypothetical example, suppose there were -- and I do
18 not think there is, but suppose there were -- an
19 Tasmanian separatist organisation and you were
20 interested in that, it would have a card?
21 A. Yes, the actual name of the organisation would be there,
22 yes.
23 Q. Similarly, no doubt -- again, no details -- there may be
24 commercial organisations in whom there is an interest
25 for one reason or another?

9

1 A. That would be possible also.
2 Q. So, again, there would also be a card?
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. Would a card be created in respect of anyone who was an
5 informant or source for MI6?
6 A. Anybody of interest or anybody that crosses the radar
7 would have a card.
8 Q. So it would include that?
9 A. Yes, it would.
10 Q. Again terminology we need to be a bit careful of,
11 I suspect. The word "agent" is flung around in the
12 media in all sorts of different regards. You have SIS
13 officers, people who work for SIS --
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. -- but if someone were not employed by SIS, but were
16 working for them informally or ad hoc abroad, similarly
17 a card would be created; is that right?
18 A. Yes, that is correct.
19 Q. So that is anyone in respect of whom there is an
20 interest for all those reasons, and no doubt there may
21 be many more?
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. Now that was electronic in 1997, partially electronic
24 before 1997. So taking ourselves back to those days,
25 the card has a title presumably which is the name of the

10

1 individual organisation or whatever?
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. In general terms -- and I do not want you to be more
4 specific than is appropriate -- but in general terms,
5 what type of information is stored or recorded on that
6 card?
7 A. Well obviously sometimes very little information.
8 A name will have cropped up and a card will be generated
9 for that person. So one of the things -- obviously
10 the name of the person will be on the card. Then there
11 will be also a unique serial number on the card that
12 relates directly to that person. Then there might be
13 the date and place of birth, for example, and just --
14 obviously as more information is found out about that
15 person, then the card would have more information on it.
16 But I should stress that that information is kept very
17 tightly and only certain people can access that
18 information.
19 Q. Would the card contain references to other papers held
20 by MI6, other files and so forth?
21 A. Yes. For example, you know, a letter may come in from
22 somewhere and that would also have a unique reference
23 number and that reference number would then be on that
24 card. It will not be absolutely every single reference,
25 but it will be enough references so that once you look

11

1 at that card, you are able to find out the next place to
2 go. So I have looked up so and so, that is great, and
3 now I want to find out more information about them,
4 I can go to it, but again, I should stress, only if
5 I have the correct accesses for that particular area and
6 that particular person.
7 Q. I will ask you to explain that in a moment. But just to
8 make sure we understand this: therefore we have the card
9 for the hypothetical AN Other, if you would prefer,
10 rather than anyone even with a well-known and deceased
11 name, and on that card would be details and entries will
12 be made which cross-refer to other information held by
13 the service?
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. So that if somebody goes to the card and is interested
16 in finding out all the detail of contacts or information
17 or intelligence, then the nuts and bolts of it are on
18 the card?
19 A. Yes, they are.
20 Q. Have I understood that correctly?
21 A. Absolutely.
22 Q. You mention that only if a person has the relevant
23 authorisation or clearance is it possible to go to
24 a card and then to go on to other information. That is
25 right, is it?

12

1 A. Yes. Can I elaborate a little on that?
2 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Please.
3 A. Fine. What we have is a system whereby you obviously
4 have the names and the organisations and so on. Now
5 that is now on desktop, because we have all gone a bit
6 more computerised, so that is on a desktop and I would
7 be able to search on a particular name. However, that
8 is sort of as far as it goes. If it was just AN Other,
9 I might be able to see, oh, AN Other is there. The top
10 of the card would have a name, but then there would be
11 a line and any information that I am not allowed to see
12 would be below the line. So all I would know is okay,
13 fine, there is a card for AN Other, I do not have access
14 to the relevant information. If I then need to get
15 access and am allowed access, then I will go to the desk
16 officer concerned with that and he will give me
17 the access.
18 MR BURNETT: Is that because even though everyone in MI6 has
19 developed vetting and is thus, one hopes, trustworthy,
20 information is only accessible if you need to know it?
21 A. Absolutely. We operate on a terribly important "need to
22 know" basis. So if I am in one area and somebody else
23 is in another, even socially or anything else, we just
24 don't discuss each other's work.
25 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: The more people who know

13

1 the information, the greater the risk there is --
2 A. Absolutely.
3 MR BURNETT: That there might just be an inadvertent slip of
4 some sort?
5 A. Absolutely.
6 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: And also the risks of perhaps
7 putting two and two together from different places?
8 A. Yes, precisely, sir.
9 MR BURNETT: Am I right in thinking that now, that is to say
10 when you have been looking for Paget from 2004 onwards,
11 it is possible electronically to search the cards?
12 A. Electronically to search the cards, that is correct.
13 Q. So that electronic search enables you to identify with
14 confidence, does it, whether any particular individual
15 or organisation was of interest to the service in any of
16 the senses that we have described and no doubt others?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. So that would include, just to go back to it, if
19 somebody had been working informally for the service or
20 providing information or whatever the case might be?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. As far as those cards are concerned, what is
23 the procedure that needs to be gone through to delete
24 them?
25 A. Basically, it is very unusual to delete a card. I can

14

1 only think of one example of why you would, if I may
2 give that as an example.
3 Q. Yes.
4 A. There might be four AN Others, okay -- that is the best
5 way of looking at it -- so when our records management
6 people are entering the information, it becomes
7 apparent, because of the same date and place of birth
8 and so on and so forth, that they have a duplicate card
9 in place. Under those circumstances, obviously it is
10 important for the duplicate to be deleted because
11 otherwise, when you are entering information on the
12 cards, you could find that you have two people, actually
13 they are both the same person, but you have different
14 information perhaps on each card. Then a card would be
15 deleted. But there are only two people in our records
16 management section, the boss and their deputy, who are
17 allowed to do that. That leaves an imprint on the
18 system and it is electronically -- you can tell, and
19 also they keep a note of that separately on paper.
20 Q. So would it be possible for somebody -- forgive my loose
21 language -- to slip into the section and delete a card?
22 A. That would not be possible.
23 Q. It is just not possible?
24 A. Just not possible.
25 Q. If a card were to be deleted using the official route by

15

1 one of the two people you have identified, there would
2 be both an electronic and a paper record that that had
3 happened?
4 A. Yes, and a written record as to why that card was being
5 deleted, even if the reason was duplicate card.
6 Q. So there would be an explanation?
7 A. There would be, yes.
8 Q. I have dwelt rather at length on the cards, but it is
9 important that everyone understands.
10 There is another category of document that you
11 mention in your statement at paragraph 6 and that is
12 service files. Now what were they in 1997 and in the
13 years before?
14 A. Okay, obviously when I first joined the service and for
15 a great many years, we worked from paper files, like
16 I would imagine quite a lot of organisations did. Then,
17 pre-1964 -- and I am afraid my knowledge on the pre-1964
18 is not expert in any way -- it was actually -- some of
19 the archive files were started to be put onto
20 microfiche. Then, in about the mid-1980s, I would say,
21 we started a process of putting a lot of our archived
22 files to begin with onto an optical -- onto a system
23 which you could read on a computer screen.
24 Q. If I ask you to pause there for a second. We will
25 certainly come to that. Just where we are at the

16

1 moment, service files, in general terms, what is on
2 these files? What are they for?
3 A. Okay, right. If you have a file on an individual -- and
4 I think it has been mentioned in this court before so
5 I think I am okay to say this -- then that individual
6 would have a unique reference number. In our language,
7 that is called a "P number". So, for example, AN Other
8 could potentially have a file of their own which would
9 be "P12345", for argument's sake.
10 Q. That P file and number presumably would be noted on the
11 card that we were talking about?
12 A. It would be. In fact on the card, the words would
13 actually be "P number allocated".
14 Q. So there might be files in respect of individuals and
15 they are called "P files"?
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. That is an accurate summary, is it?
18 A. That is correct.
19 Q. We are going to hear from you in a little while about
20 some files concerning an operation which was alluded to
21 by Mr Tomlinson. So would I be right in inferring that
22 any particular operation generates its own files as
23 well?
24 A. Yes, it does, but the actual sequence of numbers used
25 for that file would be slightly different. Rather than

17

1 being a P file, it would be a slightly lengthier file
2 number, depending upon the area relating and the subject
3 matter.
4 Q. So, again, the card dealing with an individual or an
5 organisation would refer to such files as were relevant
6 for that individual or organisation --
7 A. Or organisation, yes.
8 Q. Okay. No doubt you have personnel files and all the
9 usual sorts of things of that nature, but in other areas
10 presumably there are files dealing with topics, one
11 would imagine, if not an operation. Don't go further
12 than you feel safe, but that is probably rather obvious.
13 A. Can I just think about that for a moment? I am thinking
14 about -- yes, topics -- yes, different subjects -- yes,
15 different subjects would be.
16 Q. So those are examples of files that the service held,
17 and you have told us that in the mid-1990s those were
18 paper.
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. I think you have explained that the ancient ones, 1964
21 and before, had been put onto microfiche, no doubt to
22 save space --
23 A. Absolutely. That is one of the main reasons.
24 Q. -- and so could be brought up and read.
25 It must follow, I think, that in the mid-1990s

18

1 it was not possible to do a word search electronically
2 and access every file in the system or bunch of files
3 that you were allowed to go to.
4 A. No.
5 Q. So back in those days, just to take an example,
6 a hypothetical example, suppose there were an operation
7 of some sort and the people concerned wanted to look
8 back to related events 10/15/20 years before, how would
9 they go about finding the right files?
10 A. In 1997?
11 Q. In the mid-1990s, yes. I include 1997 as the mid-1990s
12 for these purposes.
13 A. Fine. As I said, the first starting point is our
14 carding system. Then we would go on -- and so now you
15 have established that there is a file on a particular
16 person or organisation, we would then pull -- ask for
17 those files. So we would go to the relevant registry
18 and say -- assuming I have the correct accesses to look
19 at them, and often you would find yourself stumbling
20 back with a great pile of files, yes.
21 Q. Now, another category of documents that we have heard
22 about is telegrams or messages between London on the one
23 hand and officers in embassies abroad. Okay?
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. I do not know whether it is correct to call them

19

1 telegrams, generally. Is that --
2 A. Telegraphic traffic is fine or telegrams.
3 Q. In the period we are concerned with, the mid-1990s, were
4 those stored electronically?
5 A. Yes -- gosh, it must sound very confusing to anybody.
6 The thing is that obviously anything that happens
7 overseas is recorded in London. So when you are
8 overseas, you don't work in isolation, you are sending
9 in your correspondence the whole time. At the beginning
10 of the 1990s, we started an automated telegram-handling
11 system, which basically means that all our telegraphic
12 traffic was electronic. So that whilst I say in the
13 mid-1990s on a file and stuff like that, you would have
14 your telegrams, your letters and everything else, but
15 post 1997 and what we have now, we have actually been
16 able to access all our telegraphic traffic
17 electronically since 1990. I just want to make that
18 clear because we tend to use that as our form of
19 communication from overseas, obviously because letters
20 take a lot longer.
21 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Is it telegraphic traffic or
22 email traffic now?
23 A. No, we don't use email on the whole because it is
24 subject to classifications and so on. We have email up
25 to a certain classification.

20

1 MR BURNETT: There are no doubt all sorts of precautions
2 that you need to take. But is it then that it comes to
3 this: that all the communications between SIS stations
4 and London that have gone telegraphically from 1990
5 onwards, so that covers the period we are concerned
6 with --
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. -- can be searched electronically?
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. That includes a word search?
11 A. That is a word search, yes.
12 Q. But it follows presumably that for paper files from that
13 period, it is not possible to do a word search on all of
14 the content?
15 A. No, only the content post 1990 which was telegraphic,
16 otherwise you would look at it in the same way that you
17 have looked at your paper files previously.
18 Q. All right. So, again, just so that we are clear and can
19 pull this all together, the cards can be searched
20 electronically, even those going back a long way?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. The telegraphic communications can all be searched
23 electronically, going back to 1990?
24 A. From 1990 onwards, yes.
25 Q. But other records or other files that exist from the

21

1 mid-1990s and before cannot be the subject of a word
2 search?
3 A. No.
4 Q. Is there a list of their titles, for example, that can
5 be searched?
6 A. Yes, that is held centrally.
7 Q. So what information goes into the titles?
8 A. Well, for example, if the subject was "Dogs", or -- I do
9 not know, there was a particular Chihuahua or something,
10 so your general area would be "Dogs", and then your
11 slightly more detailed would be -- an awful one to have
12 to spell, Chihuahua -- Labrador, then I would go to
13 a registry and say, "Look, the subject is dogs, it is
14 a particular dog. Can you put in a few word searches
15 into your centrally held system?", and they are
16 excellent, our records management people, very, very
17 talented, and they would say, "Okay, cannot be precise,
18 but try this place, this place and this place".
19 Q. But if you were looking for the word "Bonio" to extend
20 the metaphor for some time in the 1990s, you would not
21 simply be able to type in "Bonio" and up would come ...?
22 A. No.
23 Q. That has all changed more recently, am I right, in that
24 your documents since 2001 have been created and stored
25 electronically and thus, now, it is possible to do

22

1 a very much more thorough word search than was the case?
2 A. Yes, that is correct.
3 Q. Simply to bring this little section to an end, I think
4 you mentioned to us some time ago that rather than using
5 microfiche, old files have been scanned into your system
6 using optical discs of some sort.
7 A. Optical, that is correct.
8 Q. I do not think I need to get a clear explanation of
9 that, but the point is that those cannot be
10 word-searched. That is ease of reading and reviewing
11 and pulling up, rather than word searching?
12 A. That is correct.
13 Q. I think you were explaining, via the Labrador and
14 Chihuahua example, how the identifying details of the
15 subjects of the paper files have been stored
16 electronically. In terms of how full that is, can you
17 give us a sense?
18 A. Yes, I can. Obviously -- so I want to open a file on
19 dogs, okay, so I will go to our records management
20 people and I will say, "Grateful if you could open this
21 file for me". First of all, they would need to check
22 that there is a good reason to be opening a file on
23 dogs. It must fall in line with the restraints on us.
24 It has to be under a subject that -- I am not explaining
25 that very well, sorry.

23

1 Q. Don't worry. The records management people will not
2 allow you to open a file unless they are satisfied that
3 it is within one of the proper functions of MI6?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. We heard a little bit about those from Sir Richard
6 Dearlove, via the Intelligence Services Act.
7 A. That is correct, yes.
8 Q. So they act as a filter. If someone came forward to
9 open a file on something that was quite outside the
10 proper activities of SIS, they simply would not be
11 allowed --
12 A. No.
13 Q. -- is that how it works?
14 A. You asked for details of what would be held centrally.
15 That would be something along the lines of the subject
16 title, who wanted to open it, the reason for opening it,
17 and then obviously they would then open it with whatever
18 papers and references you had up until that time.
19 Q. Does the same process apply when a card is being created
20 in respect of an individual or organisation?
21 A. You mean the record section actually originating
22 the card?
23 Q. Yes.
24 A. Yes, it does. The only thing I would say is that
25 certainly in the old days and certainly now as well,

24

1 lots of names crop up in documents, and so sometimes you
2 would not necessarily have a total interest in that
3 name, it might be a name that is in association with
4 another name in a document. So our carding people would
5 just ensure that they had put all the names in
6 the system, but, yes, it is subject to all the same
7 restraints.
8 Q. There must be circumstances in which an individual in
9 whom MI6 has an interest, for one of the reasons we have
10 identified, is given a code word or a nickname or
11 whatever. I do not know what you call it.
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. How does that work and how would that affect the ability
14 of someone to search the cards for an individual? Are
15 you with me?
16 A. Absolutely. Obviously not -- just if I could think
17 about how to answer that a moment.
18 Not all operations obviously have code words, but
19 some do and it is another level of -- to keep safe the
20 information. So, for example, if you are working in
21 a section, you are not using the numbers, but you are
22 using the code word, and the code word is then allocated
23 by our records management people, who then hold all
24 the relevant details underneath that code word.
25 Q. So, again, just to try to bring it back into the

25

1 examples you were given. You have AN Other, we have
2 been talking about him --
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. -- he has a card and it will have various details on it
5 and cross-references to other files.
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. But suppose AN Other had a code word -- it does not
8 matter what it is; "Geronimo" -- would that make it
9 impossible for somebody to search for AN Other? In
10 other words, would it stop them from getting to his
11 name?
12 A. I see what you are saying. When you are searching on
13 the card, if the person that you are searching for is
14 perhaps a little bit more sensitive, then all you will
15 get up is literally the unique reference number.
16 The unique reference number will be whatever it is and
17 "phone this particular desk officer", at which point you
18 phone them and they will be able to tell you if a code
19 word exists. But in allocating a code word, the records
20 management still have the list of all the relevant
21 details. So if AN Other is particularly sensitive, they
22 have both paper records and electronic records that
23 AN Other is one and the same as Geronimo in
24 a cross-referenced -- so, for example, if somebody says
25 "Who is Geronimo?", that will lead to AN Other and vice

26

1 versa.
2 Q. The reason I ask is that you are going to tell the jury,
3 I think in a little while, about searches that were made
4 in respect of a number of individuals well known to us
5 now.
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. I just want to be clear that there is no question in
8 your mind that if those individuals had been given code
9 words or nicknames, that it would have defeated
10 the searching.
11 A. No, it would not have defeated the searching.
12 Q. All right. You tell us -- I am now looking at
13 paragraph 7 and I will take this quite quickly -- that
14 when a document is created, it is given a unique serial
15 number --
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. -- and it is allocated to a file.
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. So that presumably is supposed to make it foolproof to
20 confusion. If each document has one number, you cannot
21 get them mixed up.
22 A. No.
23 Q. The documents also, I think you tell us, record the date
24 of issue and the person to whom the file number was
25 issued. You explain that the records management system

27

1 is such that it is not possible for officers within SIS
2 to interfere and tamper with it; in other words, people
3 cannot go into it and start changing things. Is that --
4 A. No, they cannot.
5 Q. Again, without giving away any details, why are you
6 confident that that is so?
7 A. Well, one because there are only two people that can
8 actually -- I should say there are only two people that
9 can delete the information. There are more people in
10 fact that can enter the information. But we also
11 have -- we have our records management people, but then
12 we have systems administrators who audit system and
13 security audits. So if things were disappearing,
14 unusual activities would come to people's notice very
15 quickly.
16 Q. Now I would like to ask you a few questions which go
17 back to 1993 and A's minute. I will call it that and
18 you can tell me whether I am giving it the right
19 description. We have heard in evidence a reference to
20 "minutes", "minute boards", "tallies", all of which are
21 frankly quite confusing to the outsider. Now is
22 the same system in place in SIS now or is that ancient
23 history?
24 A. No, that is not the system in place anymore.
25 Q. We will hear from A and others about the events that

28

1 occurred, as he would say in 1993, but what I hope you
2 might be able to help us with is the system that was in
3 place and which might have been followed.
4 The background to these questions is really this: what A
5 says is -- and Sir Richard Dearlove confirmed this in
6 his evidence -- that the proposal was essentially
7 strangled at birth and all copies of the proposal were
8 destroyed and that the proposal never made it to
9 the records section.
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. That is essentially, I hope, an accurate summary of what
12 was said. What I hope you might be able to explain to
13 us is why not and at what stage in the process of
14 the creation of any sort of document proposing a plan of
15 any sort it gets to records management, as you call
16 them. All right?
17 A. Fine.
18 Q. First of all, we made a request -- and I am grateful to
19 you for looking something out for us -- whether you
20 could produce a blank minute form and tally board. Is
21 that what it was called?
22 A. We call it a "tally sheet".
23 Q. Even though we are looking at ancient history from your
24 point of view -- and you have managed to do that for us.
25 A. Yes.

29

1 Q. First of all, could we have, Mr Foley -- do you have
2 copies of these? Could we have the minute sheet?
3 This one is not very mysterious, but perhaps you can
4 talk us through it. In the top right-hand corner,
5 we see "File number", "Originator", "Originator's serial
6 number" and "Date".
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. Taking those one at a time, "File number", what is that?
9 A. In the case of -- shall we do it with AN Other?
10 Q. Yes please.
11 A. In the case of AN Other, that would be "P/12345".
12 Q. So that is an existing file. Suppose the minute is
13 a brand new idea of some sort, so it does not yet have
14 a particular file.
15 A. It might then appear on a more general file, like
16 the subject of dogs.
17 Q. I see. But that reference to "File number" is
18 a reference to where the minute is expected to end up,
19 is it?
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. So there might be more than one presumably?
22 A. More than one minute?
23 Q. More than one file.
24 A. Yes, you could copy it to other files for
25 cross-referencing purposes.

30

1 Q. Then "Originator", I guess that is pretty obvious, but
2 tell us anyway.
3 A. The originator would be the officer initiating
4 the minute.
5 Q. So whoever drafted or wrote the minute?
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. Then his serial number. Again that is pretty obvious,
8 but why is that there?
9 A. The serial number would be the serial number from
10 the tally sheet underneath.
11 Q. We will come to the tally sheet, but is that a numerical
12 identifier of the person concerned?
13 A. Not of the person, of the document.
14 Q. I see. Thank you. Then "Date", I do not need to worry
15 about that. Then the minute is a blank sheet of paper
16 on which you write your idea or proposal or thought,
17 whatever it is?
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. Addressees on the right-hand side?
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. Who decides who the addressees are?
22 A. Quite often obviously the officer, but also quite often
23 in conjunction with the personal assistant.
24 Q. Okay. Then if we could go down to the bottom of that
25 same column, we have, on the right-hand side,

31

1 "IMC/Registry".
2 Now, you have told us about the registry. What is
3 "IMC"?
4 A. Am I able to answer that, sir?
5 MR BURNETT: I think it is in your statement -- don't worry.
6 I will try not to --
7 A. No problem. "Information management centre".
8 Q. Is that different from the registry, and, if so --
9 A. "Registry" is the old-fashioned term and "IMC" was
10 the slightly more modern term. Both are on the
11 paperwork.
12 Q. Then "(to be completed by originator)"; what is that
13 referring to? What does he have to do there?
14 A. Meaning he should put which registry on it, so for
15 argument's sake, in this instance, if this is a subject
16 on dogs, there will be a particular registry that deals
17 with dogs and we will then put that registry number down
18 at the bottom.
19 Q. Then if we could look at the bottom on the other side
20 and just talk through it. Now "Instructions to
21 IMC/Registry (tick as appropriate)". That, I think,
22 speaks for itself. Then, under that, various things
23 that are available. Who fills that in?
24 A. What would happen here is that, say the officer
25 concerned -- there were two or three names in

32

1 the minute, then he would underline them -- this is
2 going back a few years -- he would underline them in red
3 pen and then tick this box, so that when it went to
4 registry, the relevant records management person would
5 ensure that that name was entered on the carding system.
6 Q. So for the sake of argument, we have four different
7 people named in the minute --
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. -- and each of those individual's cards would be updated
10 to make a reference to the minute; is that how it works?
11 A. Yes, or perhaps a card would be originated for them, if
12 there was not one already there.
13 Q. I am with you. Then "Copy to file ref". That is
14 the second one. What is that about?
15 A. That is simply copying it to other files that it might
16 have some relevance to.
17 Q. "Extract as marked"; which is it?
18 A. "Extract as marked", what that means is in this whole
19 document, if you had three paragraphs, for example, and
20 one paragraph only -- in the spirit of need to know,
21 only one of those paragraphs needed to be copied to
22 another file, it would mean that you would extract that
23 particular paragraph and copy it to the file, not
24 the whole document. So again you keep your need to know
25 within your need to know.

33

1 Q. So if there are four paragraphs, it may be that only
2 paragraph 3 needs to go to the file on Labradors or
3 whatever?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. Then the next one, left-hand side, "Transfer to file",
6 what is that about?
7 A. "Transfer to file" is if the officer has got the file
8 wrong entirely and said, "Okay, it should be on this
9 card", and when it gets to registry, registry say, "No,
10 actually, this file would be more appropriate".
11 Q. So that would be the registry dealing with that?
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. And "Section" is simply the bit within SIS that it has
14 come from?
15 A. Yes.
16 Q. And "Date". So that is a minute sheet and that is the
17 type of minute sheet that was in existence in 1993 or
18 thereabouts.
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. All right. We are likely to hear references to white
21 minutes and pink minutes. Does that mean anything to
22 you?
23 A. No, in fact white minutes are formal internal head
24 office correspondence, but they are used for formal
25 documents. Pink memos were A5 in size and used, as

34

1 would suggest, as memos, and they are ephemeral, not to
2 be filed.
3 Q. Not to be filed. Okay. We may hear a little more about
4 that from others, but that is helpful.
5 Could we have the second sheet up?
6 Maybe, Mr Foley, if you are able to zoom in, could
7 you zoom in on the top line first or perhaps just
8 the top two lines first. That will do us.
9 Now this is the tally sheet.
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. If I read the instructions:
12 "A movement tally should be completed and amended on
13 [something has come out] before passing this document to
14 the next officer on the distribution.
15 "Please use lower number tally remaining.
16 "If all tallies on this sheet have been used, please
17 complete a blank tally of the same colour."
18 Then something about entering a number.
19 On this sheet we are seeing tallies 9 to 12, but
20 there are in fact 12 tallies, is that right?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. Now could you just take us through the top two parts of
23 the form, "Examiners" and "Markers"?
24 A. Certainly. So now I have typed up my minute for
25 the officer concerned and -- sorry, I should go back one

35

1 step. There is a minute register held in every section,
2 so I would take the next tally card from the register
3 and I would fill in my details. Then I would take
4 the tally card with the minute and type up the minute.
5 If I was doing it entirely properly, I would then just
6 get this cardboard board, which is a minute board,
7 attach everything to it with a copy of the draft on the
8 back and hand it in to the officer concerned for
9 signature in terms of the top two things here.
10 Then the officer would hand it back to me, and
11 perhaps in some instances there might be further
12 amendments and so on. But if he was content that that
13 was ready to leave the section, this top right-hand
14 corner would be filled out, and that is with the file
15 number and the first addressee it should go to and any
16 copies to other files and the date. I would rip that
17 off, so this corner here (indicates) would rip off, and
18 I would put it in a little container, and registry, once
19 a day, would come and empty out those tallies,
20 the markers' tally. The rest of the minute would then
21 go on its way to the first addressee.
22 Q. All right. What is the purpose of registry collecting
23 up the markers' tally?
24 A. So that once it reaches the registry, the formal details
25 there can be entered onto the system.

36

1 Q. Now the tallies themselves, what are they for?
2 A. The rest of them are for moving -- it sounds so
3 old-fashioned now, but they were for moving the piece of
4 paper around. So in registry they have all the details
5 and then they can see that tally number 1 has gone.
6 That is fine, that has gone to one person. Then tally 2
7 turns up and it has gone to the next person on the list
8 and so on and so forth until all the tallies are used,
9 sometimes depending upon the amount of addressees.
10 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: So if a document disappears, you
11 can find out where the last tally was and hopefully find
12 the document?
13 A. Yes. It sounds very old-fashioned, but actually it was
14 an incredibly effective system.
15 MR BURNETT: It also provided a record in the registry of
16 everybody who had seen that document. That was also
17 part of its purpose?
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. We are told by A in his statements and a number of other
20 people -- and we will hear from some of them -- that
21 when he put forward his proposal, it was, as colourfully
22 put by Sir Richard Dearlove, I think strangled at birth
23 and all record of it was destroyed. How could that have
24 happened if the document started life as a minute with
25 a tally board behind it?

37

1 A. Yes. What would have happened is -- well, on the
2 information I know, what I am assuming happened was that
3 the markers tally was put in the little box and
4 the minute was probably handed onto -- the next
5 addressee could have been somebody sitting in the room
6 with witness A, the author, for example. So it would
7 have gone like that.
8 My understanding is, not surprisingly, the first
9 person will have looked at it and said, "Ugh" -- as XE
10 said, strangled at birth -- "God, what's this?", and
11 will have gone back and found out more about it, at
12 which stage the markers tally and everything to do with
13 it -- this is still in place, more or less, apart from
14 the corner which was taken out, but the corner is still
15 sitting in the box in the room. It has not gone
16 anywhere. It has not physically left to go to
17 a registry to be formally logged.
18 So at that point, if you are told, "Look, this is
19 absolute rubbish, get rid of it", that would not have
20 been entirely unusual. Sometimes drafting was
21 absolutely rubbish and we would have to start again. So
22 then we would destroy that, no problem, go to the box,
23 take back the little corner, staple it back on, Tippex
24 out the information -- now in reverse -- go back to
25 the minute register and put a line through and

38

1 "canceled", and then put the board back and then that
2 board would be reissued. But if you were to look at
3 the minute register, there would be a line through
4 saying "canceled" and then you would continue from
5 there.
6 Q. So that process could only happen if the marker corner
7 had not been collected and taken off to registry?
8 A. Yes. To be honest, those marker tallies could sit with
9 you for at least a day, but until -- we would not
10 consider something to be a formal piece of
11 correspondence until those details were entered into
12 the system.
13 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Would it make any difference if
14 the document had gone out of the room and into another
15 room, for example, where the line manager was?
16 A. No, it would not have made any difference, sir.
17 MR BURNETT: Have you personally ever known such a thing
18 happen? You mentioned shoddy drafting as an example,
19 but have you ever known it happen?
20 A. I am having to cast my mind back quite a long way here,
21 but I do recall times when I used to have to type these,
22 and I would type something on a Monday, but we were
23 still waiting for another pertinent piece of information
24 and then, when we got that information, it changed
25 the entire meaning of the piece of paper. So this made

39

1 no sense anymore and then I would originate a new
2 document, again Tippexing out the yellow markers copy
3 and re-using it for a new subject.
4 Q. So it is something that you have personal experience of
5 having seen?
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. I will move on if I may to one or two other questions
8 surrounding this. What would happen to a handwritten
9 draft of a document that was then typed up as a minute?
10 I do not know, did you use dictaphones in the mid-1990s
11 or did most officers scribble something out and it would
12 be typed up?
13 A. Most officers drafted on paper.
14 Q. So what would happen to their drafting notes?
15 A. Once you handed in the board, the draft would be put on
16 the back of the board with a line through it. Once the
17 minute was sent on its way, you would destroy the draft.
18 Q. How would you destroy it?
19 A. Normally by ripping it into four and putting it into
20 a bag which is used for classified waste.
21 Q. So there is a system in place for destroying such
22 material in SIS --
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. -- then as now?
25 A. Now -- we used our destruction bags a lot more then.

40

1 Nowadays it is shredders because it saves on all the --
2 Q. It may not matter whether things were ripped in four or
3 shredded. We are going to hear from others, including
4 the PA who typed it.
5 A. I should just say that some sections even then did have
6 shredders, but they were not as commonplace as now.
7 Q. And even the shreddings presumably needed to be disposed
8 of securely?
9 A. Yes, they did.
10 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: I think they have rather more
11 sophisticated shredders nowadays, haven't they?
12 A. Yes.
13 MR BURNETT: So by the mechanism that you have described, is
14 it your evidence that it would be possible for the
15 minute to be created, attached to a board in the way
16 that you have described and strangled at birth and,
17 thus, there be no official record of it?
18 A. Yes. It would not be that unusual.
19 Q. All right. Moving on if I may to the assistance that
20 you provided to Lord Stevens' team. I am looking, just
21 to assist you, at page 6, paragraph 9 of your main
22 statement.
23 Were Lord Stevens' officers denied access to
24 anything they wished to see?
25 A. No, they were not.

41

1 Q. You have described a system of access to documents which
2 is very tightly controlled. You have told us about the
3 two people who have unrestricted access in the records
4 management section.
5 A. Yes. There are in fact -- yes, probably more than two
6 people that are in the records management section, but
7 yes.
8 Q. But only two who would have unrestricted access. Is
9 that right?
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. Within SIS, did anyone else have unrestricted access to
12 the whole of the information, electronic and paper, that
13 is contained there?
14 A. Yes. Obviously -- am I able to answer this in terms
15 of -- I can say the three most senior members of our
16 organisation.
17 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Yes.
18 MR BURNETT: I am looking again -- I do not want to lead you
19 into error, as it were, but I am looking at the middle
20 of your paragraph 9, where you identify the chief -- and
21 we heard from an ex-chief last week -- and you identify
22 two other very senior people in MI6 who have such
23 access.
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. It is called what?

42

1 A. "God's access".
2 Q. So there is a very small number of people who have God's
3 access to information within SIS.
4 To enable proper searches to be made by you and by
5 Paget, what arrangements were made?
6 A. What happened was that obviously, when the Paget team
7 came in, it became very obvious to me very early on that
8 the amount of paperwork that they wanted to look at --
9 bearing in mind that for some of our documents, each
10 document has its own access, not even a whole file --
11 it is this document and this document -- it was very
12 important that we could show them documents quickly and
13 they could just get on with it. So, rather unusually --
14 and I do not think it happens very often -- my director
15 said, "Okay, fine, no problem, I will give you the
16 accesses and you just show them everything that they
17 would wish to look at".
18 Q. So essentially you got God's access too?
19 A. I got God's access and it bypassed the need to clear
20 individual documents.
21 Q. Which otherwise would have been a hugely time-consuming
22 exercise?
23 A. Very.
24 Q. You would still be at it probably?
25 A. I would still be at it actually, yes, I would.

43

1 Q. Can I turn then to some categories of document and
2 information that you were asked about. Again, if you
3 could just explain to the jury what happened.
4 Is it right that Lord Stevens asked questions about
5 the telegraphic traffic between London and Paris?
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. Did he identify in particular the period between
8 14th July 2007 and 14th September 2007 as being of
9 interest?
10 A. Yes, that is correct -- sorry, 1997.
11 Q. That is my fault, really, but it is also a typo in
12 the statement.
13 A. It is also my typo, I think.
14 Q. I will put the question again so there is no confusion.
15 Did they identify the period 14th July 1997 to
16 4th September 1997 --
17 A. Yes, they did.
18 Q. They explained, did they, that they wished to look at
19 this period because it took them back to the beginning
20 of Princess Diana's holiday in St Tropez and took them
21 beyond the crash?
22 A. That is correct.
23 Q. You tell us that there were 887 telegrams in all in that
24 period.
25 A. Yes, that is correct.

44

1 Q. And they were all extracted and put into numerical
2 order, is that right?
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. And they were gone through by Metropolitan Police
5 officers?
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. And they included a small number of personal emails?
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. And the officers went through them all, and so far as
10 you are aware, there was nothing relevant in them at
11 all?
12 A. No, and both the Coroner and the Paget team looked at
13 all of that telegraphic traffic.
14 Q. I see. So more recently you have made the same pile of
15 telegrams available to the Coroner to go through?
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. And there is nothing in them whatsoever as far as you
18 are concerned?
19 A. No, nothing whatsoever.
20 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: The question that the jury might
21 like to know the answer to -- I think they were all
22 numbered sequentially.
23 A. Yes.
24 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: -- but what is there to say that
25 everything that was shown to Paget and the Coroner might

45

1 not have included 493A, which was the really interesting
2 one, which did not appear between 493 and 494?
3 A. Yes. The telegram numbers are automatically generated
4 by the system, so that if somebody tried to insert an
5 "A" or -- well the "A" would not have been there to take
6 out. I am not explaining myself very well. It would be
7 enormously difficult because they are automatically
8 generated, therefore there would be the gap.
9 MR BURNETT: Does it follow that you are confident that both
10 the police officers and also the Coroner saw each and
11 every one?
12 A. I am absolutely certain that they saw each and every
13 one.
14 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: There were a lot of them.
15 A. There were a lot of them.
16 MR BURNETT: 887, I hope it was an interesting read, sir.
17 Did you also check whether Paris had any records
18 that were not available to you in London?
19 A. Yes. That was very much belt and braces. It would have
20 been highly unusual for them to have any records, but
21 just to be absolutely clear, I did speak to them and
22 they did not have any that we did not have in London.
23 Q. So that is the telegraphic traffic over the relevant
24 period.
25 A. Yes.

46

1 Q. I would like to ask you next about the Ritz Hotel. Now,
2 Lord Stevens said he was interested in references to
3 the Ritz Hotel, didn't he?
4 A. Yes.
5 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: The Ritz Hotel, Paris?
6 MR BURNETT: Yes, although I think it is right that your
7 search was wider in that you looked for the Ritz
8 Hotel --
9 A. The Ritz Hotel worldwide, yes.
10 Q. Lord Stevens' interest, as the Coroner indicates, was in
11 the Paris Ritz.
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. If there had been a particular interest in the hotel as
14 such, would it have had a card?
15 A. No, it would have been highly unusual for a hotel to
16 have a card because obviously the card would probably be
17 for an individual within the hotel rather than the hotel
18 itself.
19 Q. Now you tell us in paragraph 12 of your statement that
20 you searched the system for all the times the words
21 "Ritz Hotel" had appeared in a document.
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. You also explained that you did not in fact limit it to
24 Paris; you looked for "Ritz Hotel" and so threw up
25 references to Ritz Hotels --

47

1 A. Everywhere.
2 Q. -- all over the place.
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. You describe carrying out the widest possible search,
5 which is 99 years. What does that mean?
6 A. I think actually the way I have written that could be
7 quite confusing. I have just said that the system that
8 you can search on was only in place from 2001, so when
9 we say "the last 99 years", it is a default on the
10 system and it means that -- it ensures that you get
11 the widest possible search because, of course, you have
12 got telegrams in there from the 1990s and so on, but
13 the way it defaults when you want your widest possible
14 search is to 99 years. I am sorry if there was any
15 ambiguity over that.
16 Q. It is quite important then that we understand what it is
17 was actually searched for the words "Ritz Hotel".
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. Obviously any documents after 2001 because all of those
20 are electronically searchable.
21 A. Correct.
22 Q. But those are not, with respect, of much interest to us.
23 A. No.
24 Q. Otherwise electronically searchable, all telegrams from
25 1990?

48

1 A. Yes, all telegraphic traffic.
2 Q. All telegraphic traffic from 1990. Would your
3 electronic search have included the content of cards?
4 A. In this particular instance, no.
5 Q. So unless there were a card entitled "Ritz Hotel" or
6 that had "Ritz Hotel" in its title, you would not have
7 picked up an incidental reference to a Ritz Hotel in
8 a card?
9 A. No, I would not.
10 Q. All right. So for the period that we are concerned
11 with, the 1990s essentially, your electronic search was
12 really limited to telegraphic communications?
13 A. Yes, it was. I should just emphasise there that
14 the only real other paperwork that was not checkable,
15 was not word-searched, would have been the head office
16 correspondence. So, for example, in the mid-1990s, say
17 the minutes in connection with a subject; but for head
18 office to be dealing with a country, a capital overseas,
19 we would be using the telegraphic traffic system and
20 therefore any important -- and when I say "important",
21 even fairly unimportant work would have been covered by
22 the telegraphic traffic.
23 Q. Now I asked you about cards. I think you have told us
24 that you can electronically search the name of
25 individuals or organisations or companies, whatever, who

49

1 would have their own cards.
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. Although you say that it would be very unusual for
4 a hotel to have a card, can we be sure that there is no
5 such card therefore?
6 A. There is no such card there for the Ritz Hotel.
7 Q. I think you also told us a few minutes ago that
8 the titles of files can be searched electronically; even
9 those that go back a long way.
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. So does it follow that your electronic search also
12 included all file titles?
13 A. Yes, yes, it did.
14 Q. So the numbers we are going to speak of in a moment
15 might have been generated from file titles or from
16 telegraphic communication or generally from the files
17 after 2001?
18 A. Yes I need -- the hits don't actually refer to
19 the titles as such. For titles of files or titles of
20 papers?
21 Q. No -- well this is what I want to be clear about.
22 A. Precisely.
23 Q. What I am trying to explore with you is to understand
24 precisely what was searched and, thus, to be clear what
25 was not searched electronically, because it could not

50

1 be, for the words "Ritz Hotel". Are you with me?
2 A. Yes. Okay, in this instance I searched for separate
3 files. I went to the relevant registry -- sorry,
4 the records management people and said "I need to check
5 on all the files that might have hotels, hotels which
6 might contain the Ritz". That was my physical -- trying
7 to search the paperwork that we hold in London.
8 This research is on the electronic system, including
9 all the telegrams, and the 985 hits refer to everything
10 left, basically.
11 Q. Stripping that aside, the physical searches that you
12 made, you said you went to the registry and asked about
13 hotels and so forth. So you are giving a clear example
14 which is similar to the dog one you gave us a little bit
15 earlier. What happened? You set the parameters, did
16 you, and they went off looking? Is that how it worked?
17 A. Yes. It was terribly important to us that everything
18 possible was searched. Obviously, when you cannot
19 search electronically, you have to use a certain amount
20 of -- not imagination, that is the wrong word totally --
21 but I went to the records management and said "Let's
22 suppose there was a hotel, let's suppose it was in
23 Paris, let's suppose it was the Ritz", et cetera, and
24 tried for them to search on their file subject headings
25 for each of those sort of combinations.

51

1 Q. Did they produce anything following that research?
2 A. No, they did not.
3 Q. There was nothing they found.
4 A. So there was no place I could then take it to go and
5 look for a particular file. However, any piece of
6 paper -- and particularly I want to emphasise the
7 telegraphic paper -- I was able to search on the
8 electronic system, and that is why there is so many
9 hits, because if you put in "Ritz" and "hotel", you do
10 get -- well, 985 hits. It was a lot of pieces of paper.
11 Q. That is the telegraphic communications worldwide?
12 A. Yes, everything.
13 Q. So you have told us there were 985 hits worldwide where
14 the word "Ritz" appeared?
15 A. Yes.
16 Q. And you provided a list of those to the police officers?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. And the list showed dates of issue, reference number and
19 the location of the originator?
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. In other words, where the telegraphic communication had
22 come from?
23 A. Yes, and also the subject heading.
24 Q. Did any of those 985 hits come from Paris?
25 A. During the period in 1997 -- and obviously the team were

52

1 particularly interested in 1997 -- there were two hits
2 that originated in Paris.
3 Q. Which month in 1997 did they relate to?
4 A. Let me just check, but -- it was November.
5 Q. Were those documents then looked out and seen by
6 the police officers?
7 A. Yes, they were, and one has in fact been handed into
8 the court.
9 Q. The other one the officers were not interested in,
10 essentially?
11 A. No.
12 Q. We will just have a quick look at the one you have
13 provided to us.
14 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Mr Burnett, when we reach
15 a convenient moment, we will have to have our morning
16 break.
17 MR BURNETT: I had rather lost track of time. Forgive me,
18 sir.
19 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: We take a short break now to give
20 everyone a rest, including the shorthand writers.
21 (11.00 am)
22 (A short break)
23 (11.16 am)
24 (Jury present)
25 MR BURNETT: Sir, we were about to look at one of the

53

1 telegrams from November 1997. Mr Foley has the INQ
2 number and it is coming up now.
3 Perhaps I can just read it and ask you some
4 questions as we go along. I think it will be the first
5 and probably the only one of these that we will see.
6 It is described as a "in telegram", which we assume
7 means coming into London headquarters.
8 A. Coming in from Paris, yes.
9 Q. It is from Paris to London. The date we see is
10 5th November 1997.
11 If we could go down, those parts that have not been
12 redacted say this:
13 "Witness 7 spoke to DST [and we have heard who they
14 are] on 4th November and saw him the following morning.
15 The Ritz was still crawling with members of the
16 Brigade Criminelle of the Police Judiciaire
17 investigating the Princess of Wales' death."
18 Then there is a comment made, this presumably by
19 witness 7, who sent this.
20 A. Yes, that is correct.
21 Q. "Presumably, as head of security there, Henri Paul had
22 been a contact of DST and they would have such
23 a capacity again."
24 So this is a telegram, and it was your electronic
25 search of all telegrams that threw up the word "Ritz"

54

1 that we saw in paragraph 2?
2 A. That is correct. I should just say that it would
3 also -- you would pick it up on Henri Paul as well in
4 a different search.
5 Q. We will come to that in a few moments.
6 Now, as a result of the searches you made
7 electronically and also the inquiries that you made
8 through the records management people, what conclusion
9 do you draw about whether MI6 had any source or contact
10 employed at the Ritz in Paris in the mid-1990s and
11 particularly 1997?
12 A. With regards to the comment in the telegram?
13 Q. No, no. Leaving the telegram aside, just generally.
14 A. Sorry, I misunderstood.
15 Q. You have told us you have done the searches
16 electronically of all the telegraphic traffic and you
17 have also searched manually or had the records
18 management people search manually looking for relevant
19 material --
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. -- and nothing has been thrown up for the relevant
22 period. What does that lead you to conclude on
23 the question of whether MI6 had a contact or member of
24 staff working for it at the Ritz in 1997?
25 A. That we did not have a member of staff or contact or

55

1 anyone working at the Ritz in 1997.
2 Q. Moving on, you were asked also by Lord Stevens to search
3 for Diana, Princess of Wales, and Dodi Al Fayed. That
4 is right, isn't it?
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. This you deal with in paragraph 13 of the statement,
7 just to assist you.
8 A. Thank you.
9 Q. Did you search the carding system?
10 A. Yes, I did.
11 Q. So if either had been of interest to the service, there
12 would have been a card?
13 A. Yes, that is correct.
14 Q. Was there?
15 A. No, there were no cards.
16 Q. And what other searches did you carry out?
17 A. In respect of Diana, Princess of Wales, and
18 Dodi Al Fayed, obviously different searches on their
19 name, different combinations of their names. At one
20 point obviously Diana was "Diana Spencer", and so
21 I checked on all the relevant possible computations of
22 the names.
23 Q. Now in putting in "Diana", "Frances", which was her
24 middle name, "Spencer" and "Wales", no doubt that
25 produced various hits.

56

1 A. Yes, it did.
2 Q. But did any of them relate to Diana, Princess of Wales?
3 A. No, none of them did.
4 Q. And similarly for Dodi?
5 A. No, none at all.
6 Q. So no cards on either and no files on either?
7 A. No, absolutely correct.
8 Q. As far as Mr Mohamed Al Fayed is concerned, I think
9 it is right that Lord Stevens did not particularly ask
10 about Mr Al Fayed Senior, but you nonetheless ran
11 checks.
12 A. Yes. There was a question with regard to monitoring, so
13 I checked in so much as to whether or not there was any
14 monitoring and no, there was not.
15 Q. Did you also check to see if there was a file on him,
16 a P file?
17 A. Yes, I did.
18 Q. And was there?
19 A. No, there is not.
20 Q. Did you check to see whether there was a card relating
21 to him?
22 A. Yes, I did.
23 Q. Was there?
24 A. Yes, there is.
25 Q. When was it created?

57

1 A. May I just check back? It was in the 1980s.
2 Q. It is paragraph 14 of your statement. I am not trying
3 to catch you out.
4 A. Not at all. It was created in the 1980s.
5 Q. Did you check its content?
6 A. Yes, I checked the content and also the Paget team had
7 access to everything in relation to that card.
8 Q. Were there any entries at all for 1997?
9 A. No, not on the -- no, there were not.
10 Q. Such entries as there were before then, did any of them
11 relate to either Dodi Al Fayed or the Princess of Wales?
12 A. No, they did not.
13 Q. Did you show the Paget team the card and the related
14 documents?
15 A. Yes, I did.
16 Q. Did you also search your system for Mr Al Fayed's name
17 to see whether it appeared in other documents?
18 A. Yes, on our electronic filing system, yes I did.
19 Q. So, again, this would have been telegraphic material
20 going back to 19 --
21 A. Early 1990s and any other correspondence post 2001.
22 Q. Did his name crop up?
23 A. Yes, it did.
24 Q. Are you able to tell us when the earliest reference was
25 in that material?

58

1 A. Yes, I can. It was in July; July 1994.
2 Q. That is a date, just so that we are clear, that you have
3 corrected. Originally in your statement you had
4 indicated August 1998, but you have corrected that in
5 your later statement to July 1994.
6 A. Yes. Would there be any mileage in just explaining why
7 I have made that error, because it would take me a very
8 little bit of time, for the jury --
9 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Yes.
10 MR BURNETT: Please do.
11 A. Obviously I wrote this statement. I had help with it,
12 but it was mainly my statement. When the Paget team
13 came in to check everything, they saw everything going
14 back to July 1994 or had access to. On our electronic
15 system, when I went back to put in correct dates for my
16 statement, I put the details in, "Mr Mohamed Al Fayed",
17 et cetera, and the hits came up, but what I did not --
18 I probably did it in too much of a hurry, and
19 unfortunately, of course, I do not have my God's access
20 anymore, so I should have pressed a button and then it
21 would have shown me what the sort of potential hits were
22 above, and so I just read the one in the top line and
23 that was 12th August, but I think there were -- I cannot
24 be absolutely precise -- very few above, the first of
25 which was July 1994, hence the reason, but entirely my

59

1 mistake.
2 Q. So far as any hits were concerned in 1997, so we are
3 still looking at Mr Mohamed Al Fayed, did they post-date
4 the crash or pre-date the crash?
5 A. They post-dated the crash.
6 Q. Dealing with some general matters that Lord Stevens
7 asked you about and which may well be that the answers
8 flow from what you have told us -- let's just see
9 whether I am right -- if, for the sake of argument,
10 there had been any plan at all involving Diana,
11 Princess of Wales, and Dodi Al Fayed, would that have
12 been thrown up by your searches?
13 A. Yes, it would.
14 Q. Do you thus conclude that there was none?
15 A. There was absolutely no plan whatsoever.
16 Q. Similarly, had there been any monitoring of any sort or
17 surveillance of any sort, would that have shown up in
18 the records?
19 A. Yes, it would.
20 Q. And there was none?
21 A. There was none.
22 Q. Sir Richard Dearlove told us that he was confident that
23 SIS were not eavesdropping/monitoring anything at all,
24 surveillance to do with Diana and Dodi, and is that --
25 A. No, nothing whatsoever.

60

1 Q. And you can confirm that?
2 A. I can confirm that.
3 Q. Had there been any MI6 interest in the relationship
4 between Dodi and Diana, would that have shown up in the
5 records?
6 A. Yes, it would.
7 Q. And there was nothing?
8 A. It is not that I am trying to be rude in any way, there
9 was just no interest. It is not our sort of thing.
10 Q. Therefore, the records, do they or do they not confirm
11 Sir Richard Dearlove's evidence that SIS simply had no
12 interest whatsoever in Dodi or in Diana or in them
13 jointly?
14 A. No, we had no interest whatsoever.
15 Q. As far as Henri Paul is concerned -- again, perhaps
16 we can take this quite quickly -- did you check to see
17 whether there was a card for Henri Paul?
18 A. Yes, I did.
19 Q. Was there?
20 A. Yes, there was. The card was originated -- as you can
21 see from this telegram of 5th November, that has
22 the "Henri Paul" name in it and so the card was created
23 as a result of this entry on the telegram.
24 Q. So we looked at the telegram, and that was
25 5th November 1997?

61

1 A. Yes.
2 Q. The reference came about because of information picked
3 up by someone in Paris long after the crash?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. So that is an example, is it, of how a card might come
6 to be created --
7 A. Yes, exactly.
8 Q. -- and in this instance, even in respect of someone who
9 has sadly already died?
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. Does it follow, then, that there was no card in
12 existence for Henri Paul before 5th November?
13 A. No, there was not a card for him pre.
14 Q. Had he been of interest to SIS or in any way worked for
15 SIS, would there have been a card?
16 A. Yes, there definitely would have been a card.
17 Q. Similarly, did you look to see if there was a P file on
18 Henri Paul?
19 A. Yes, I did.
20 Q. And was there?
21 A. No, there was not.
22 Q. Did you carry out similar inquiries in respect of
23 James Andanson?
24 A. Yes, I did.
25 Q. With what result?

62

1 A. Nil results.
2 Q. So no card and --
3 A. I am so sorry, no card and no file.
4 Q. Thus, what is your conclusion in respect of a suggestion
5 that Andanson was in touch in some way with SIS?
6 A. He could not have been in touch with us without me
7 finding a reference to him within one of our databases.
8 Q. Did you also do a similar search in respect of His Royal
9 Highness, the Duke of Edinburgh?
10 A. I did.
11 Q. With what result?
12 A. No, result at all.
13 Q. So, similarly, he does not have a card nor does he have
14 a P file?
15 A. I would like to say at this stage, sir, that we don't
16 hold either cards or files on the Royal Family. I could
17 do a search on all of them.
18 Q. You have nothing?
19 A. No.
20 Q. So as far as the Duke of Edinburgh is concerned, you say
21 in your statement that you are aware that he
22 occasionally made official visits to the service --
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. -- but that that would not generate a card.
25 A. No, it would not, no.

63

1 Q. You made similar searches in respect of
2 Trevor Rees-Jones, as he was then known,
3 Alexander Wingfield who we know as "Kes Wingfield" and
4 Ben Murrell; all of those also negative?
5 A. All negative.
6 Q. I will not take you through the details.
7 Then you arranged for interviews to be carried out
8 by Paget of staff who were serving in Paris at the time.
9 That is right, isn't it?
10 A. Yes, correct.
11 Q. That was facilitated. Did you also do searches in
12 respect of all the paparazzi that we know of -- this is
13 paragraph 25 of your statement -- Serge Arnal,
14 Nikola Arsov, Serge Benhamou, Fabrice Chassery,
15 Stephane Darmon, Jacques Langevin, Christian Martinez,
16 David Odekerken, Romuald Rat and Laslo Veres?
17 A. Yes, I did.
18 Q. Similarly the result?
19 A. There was no result on any of those individuals.
20 Q. There was a suggestion running around at one stage that
21 SIS engaged or had in its pay a mystery paparazzo.
22 We have heard from the police, through
23 Inspector Carpenter, that the person was in fact called
24 "Colm Pierce", an Irish national rather than a British.
25 Did you, for good measure, run a search on him?

64

1 A. Yes I did.
2 Q. Was it positive or negative?
3 A. It was negative.
4 Q. There was one other name that you were asked to deal
5 with for Lord Stevens and it is a name that we have not
6 yet heard, but I will get your evidence if I may on the
7 result.
8 This is Jason John Fraser. It is in paragraph 26 of
9 your statement.
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. What was the position as far as he was concerned?
12 A. I was asked to put "Jason John Fraser" through our
13 system, and in fact, I did get one -- what I would call
14 one trace on him, but it was not in relation to him but
15 in relation to a relative of his. So it was just along
16 the lines of -- yes, relative of ... and that is how his
17 name cropped up.
18 Q. Without going into great detail, was it at one time
19 considered at least possible that a contact might be
20 made with his relative?
21 A. It was considered at one time, but in fact no contact
22 was ever made.
23 Q. And it had nothing to do with Mr Al Fayed or his family?
24 A. It had nothing to do with Mr Al Fayed and his family.
25 Q. Did you, for good measure, also run a check on Harrods?

65

1 A. Yes, I did.
2 Q. Was there any trace of SIS having sources or contacts or
3 others employed at Harrods?
4 A. No, there were not.
5 Q. I think you did have a number of hits.
6 A. Yes, I did, in relation to gift hampers.
7 Q. Yes. I suppose we can infer then that SIS bought
8 hampers from Harrods.
9 A. Where people had purchased Harrods gift hampers, yes.
10 Q. I do not know if that will give comfort to Mr Al Fayed
11 or not.
12 The inquiries extended also, didn't they, to
13 the question of whether the Paris station owned or hired
14 or used a white Fiat Uno in August 1997. Did you make
15 inquiries about that?
16 A. Yes, I did.
17 Q. What was the answer to that one?
18 A. There was no white Fiat Uno at the Paris station. They
19 did not have access to a vehicle of that kind.
20 Q. Were you also asked whether there was any communication
21 between SIS, that is MI6, and the Security Service or
22 MI5 relating to the crash?
23 A. Yes, I was asked that.
24 Q. Was there any?
25 A. No.

66

1 Q. Were you asked whether there was any communication with
2 other intelligence services concerning the crash; for
3 example the American intelligence services and
4 the French?
5 A. Yes, I was.
6 Q. What was the answer to that?
7 A. There was not anything before the crash.
8 Q. Next can I ask you about matters that arise from an
9 allegation that Mr Tomlinson has made and which the jury
10 has heard?
11 He referred to an operational file. He gave it
12 the name "battle", which we understand is not its
13 correct name, and he thought that he had read something
14 about a security manager or someone of that sort at
15 the Paris Ritz being in contact with SIS. That is
16 the context.
17 A. That is the context, yes.
18 Q. Now you have already told us that there is nothing about
19 Henri Paul and nothing about the Ritz at all. So we can
20 leave that evidence where it is. But did you identify,
21 through the description that Tomlinson gave, the
22 operation and the files to which he was referring?
23 A. Yes, I did.
24 Q. Were all those files looked out?
25 A. Yes, they were.

67

1 Q. Were they all provided to the Metropolitan Police?
2 A. Yes, they were.
3 Q. Am I right in thinking that they ran from October 1984
4 through to August 1994?
5 A. Yes, I wonder if I might just ask for the page number.
6 Q. It is page 13, paragraph 22(b).
7 A. Thank you very much. Yes, that is correct about
8 the dates.
9 Q. There was a total of 11,674 pages which the police
10 officers waded through?
11 A. Yes, they checked every single piece of paper.
12 Q. Did you have to do the same or did you cheerfully leave
13 it to them?
14 A. No, I did the same.
15 Q. Is it right that within those 11,674 pages, there were
16 two references to the Paris Ritz?
17 A. Yes, there were.
18 Q. Was either concerned with a security manager or security
19 officer?
20 A. No, neither of the two hits, no.
21 Q. What were they concerned with?
22 A. It was something to do with a telephone number.
23 Q. And that was it?
24 A. That was it.
25 Q. You will remember that Mr Tomlinson explained that he

68

1 had a recollection of a reference to flying and that
2 that caught his eye --
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. -- because he also, it appears, is a flyer. As a result
5 of that, did you conduct any other search?
6 A. Yes. In fact it was not one of the original questions
7 in Lord Stevens' letter, but different inquiries that
8 the Paget team made obviously prompted more inquiries.
9 One of the things they asked me to do was to try to put
10 in the words "French", "Ritz", "security" and "flying",
11 to see if there was any combination of those four words
12 that might crop up on a search. In fact there were 39
13 hits of some combination of that kind.
14 Q. So that is very similar to a sort of Google search that
15 any of us might do?
16 A. Absolutely.
17 Q. So there were 39 hits. Again, you are searching your
18 electronically searchable databases at this stage?
19 A. Yes, that is correct.
20 Q. Did any of them relate to anyone working at the Ritz?
21 A. No, they did not.
22 Q. Just two or three more topics.
23 Is it right that during the investigation by
24 the Metropolitan Police, you were also asked about
25 strobe lights?

69

1 A. Yes, I was.
2 Q. You are aware, I am sure, that one of Mr Tomlinson's
3 suggestions is that he saw a strobe light or bright
4 light of some sort when he was undergoing SIS training.
5 A. Yes, that is correct.
6 Q. Were you able to identify when Mr Tomlinson did his
7 training? I am looking at paragraph 33 of your
8 statement to jog your memory.
9 A. That is a matter of record. His course ran from
10 September to February.
11 Q. September 1991 to February 1992?
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. Was it then part of the training that those undergoing
14 it would spend a day with the Special Boat Service?
15 A. They would have various briefings, yes.
16 Q. And that would be one of them?
17 A. That would be one of them, yes.
18 Q. You have checked the records and they don't show
19 anything more detailed of what occurred?
20 A. No, I am afraid they don't, no.
21 Q. Had you undergone similar training or been involved in
22 training at about that time or just before?
23 A. I have been involved in training, yes.
24 Q. When were you involved in training?
25 A. Sort of intermittently over the years.

70

1 Q. But were you involved in training at the end of the
2 1980s, so just before Mr Tomlinson joined the service?
3 A. Yes, I was.
4 Q. Did you work on that initial training course?
5 A. I was involved with that, yes.
6 Q. In that capacity, did you attend the SBS briefing?
7 A. Yes, I did.
8 Q. On how many occasions?
9 A. Over the next two or three years, probably about three
10 or four times, something like that, at that stage, and
11 then also on other occasions.
12 Q. What you say in your statement, if I can remind you, is
13 that you went on two occasions in the late 1980s, which
14 we will come on to a bit later.
15 Were any strobe lights used or shown to you?
16 A. No, they were not.
17 Q. Was there anything of a bright flashing loud nature
18 shown?
19 A. Yes, the only thing that I could recall, when trying to
20 think "I wonder what Mr Tomlinson might have meant", was
21 that they do use sort of those pyrotechnic kind of --
22 I only know them as "flash bangs". You sort of chuck
23 them in a room to disorientate people and so on. They
24 are little fireworky things.
25 Q. You attended again later in the 1990s, did you?

71

1 A. Yes, I did.
2 Q. And were you shown strobe lights or flashing lights?
3 A. No, I was not, no.
4 Q. The last topic, if I may, which I think I can take
5 pretty quickly, concerns a document that was produced
6 last week, which was an account by witness A, who put
7 forward the memorandum in 1992/1993, which predated by
8 many years the witness statement that he gave to the
9 Metropolitan Police officers.
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. Now I think it is right that you were never asked to
12 produce any earlier accounts of witnesses to the
13 Metropolitan Police --
14 A. No, I was not.
15 Q. -- nor indeed to the inquests. But when did you first
16 become aware of that account?
17 A. It is quite difficult for me to remember. I was given
18 the job of running this desk at the end of end of 1993,
19 and at some point between the end of 1993 and prior to
20 the Paget team coming in, I was given that document.
21 Now I am a little bit hazy. I think it may be that it
22 would have been in a bundle of papers that might have
23 been of interest to me from a research point of view
24 while I was doing my researches, but I cannot say who
25 handed it to me or on what day or anything like that,

72

1 I am afraid. I was dealing with rather a large amount
2 of paperwork at the time.
3 Q. Where did you put it?
4 A. I have a sort of working file. I should stress this is
5 not a formal file, it is a running file -- I would
6 imagine a little similar to the one that counsel is
7 looking at at the moment -- and I put it on there.
8 Q. Now, that running file, from time to time did
9 Metropolitan Police officers ask to have a look at it to
10 look at particular documents?
11 A. Yes, they did.
12 Q. Although they did not ever, as far as you know, go
13 through it from beginning to end?
14 A. No, they would not have done that.
15 Q. But the document was there if anyone wanted to?
16 A. Yes, it was.
17 Q. Are you also able to help us with other documents that
18 might have existed or do exist arising out of
19 the service's reaction to Mr Tomlinson's activities?
20 A. I would be able to help you a small amount on that, but
21 it --
22 Q. We heard from Sir Richard Dearlove that an investigation
23 of some sort was carried out. Were there in fact damage
24 reviews or risk assessments done on the potential
25 damage --

73

1 A. Yes, obviously after some of the allegations that
2 Mr Tomlinson made and some of the things that happened,
3 there were -- I would have called it -- to be precise,
4 there were damage assessments that we carried out at the
5 time.
6 Q. Was there a damage assessment of which you were aware
7 and which we have now been provided with, dated
8 5th November 1996? Does that ring bells with you?
9 A. Yes, it does ring bells with me, certainly.
10 Q. Do you have a copy of that with you?
11 A. A copy of the ...?
12 Q. Of the damage assessment. It is not, I think, attached
13 to your latest statement.
14 A. No, I do not have a copy of that.
15 Q. It has been provided, attached to a statement from
16 the Treasury Solicitor. It is exhibit RJP2.
17 So we see that. That is the front page of it. Does
18 that ring a bell now?
19 A. It does ring a bell.
20 Q. So that is a document you have seen at some stage?
21 A. Yes, I have. I have to say it is a document I have seen
22 more recently, rather than during the Paget inquiry.
23 Q. So this was not something that you had looked out a long
24 time ago, but it is something that has been looked out
25 more recently?

74

1 A. Yes, that is correct.
2 Q. Perhaps we can have a look. We see the date is
3 5th November 1996. Perhaps we could go to the second
4 page, please, and to the bottom:
5 "Tomlinson has told The Sunday Times of an SIS
6 proposal in 1993 to assassinate Milosevic (sic). This
7 is probably an inaccurate recall of an ill-judged minute
8 written by a junior officer at the time, speculating
9 about the desirability of assassinating ... [someone who
10 appears to have a very long name]. The minute was
11 immediately dismissed and expunged from the record."
12 So that is a reference of which you are now aware?
13 A. I am now aware, yes.
14 MR BURNETT: Thank you very much. Those are my questions.
15 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Thank you.
16 Mr Mansfield?
17 Questions from MR MANSFIELD
18 MR MANSFIELD: Good morning. My name is Michael Mansfield.
19 I represent Mohamed Al Fayed and I do have a number of
20 areas to cover with you. I am sorry about the detail.
21 Can I first of all say, as I have to all of the
22 other Security Service witnesses, that I ask the
23 questions very carefully. There is no intention to
24 reveal any state secrets or embarrass anyone. Do you
25 follow?

75

1 A. Yes, I do.
2 Q. If there is any difficulty, please say so.
3 Occasionally, it may be a little difficult to draft it
4 exactly, and if it trespasses over the line, I have no
5 doubt you can say so.
6 I want, if I may, first of all, to examine really
7 the way in which records are kept because one of the
8 things that you are indicating is how tightly things are
9 monitored and so on within the service. Is that right?
10 A. Yes, that is correct.
11 Q. I want, if I may, so that you are clear about the first
12 area -- I am going to call it the "Milosevic minute", to
13 start with, because that is the way it is referred to by
14 a lot of people. You know what I am talking about?
15 A. Yes, I do.
16 Q. Now you were given the job of, it would appear, first
17 investigating this aspect of everything in
18 December 2003.
19 A. Yes, that is right.
20 Q. When did you start making your statement? You hinted
21 that other people have helped you with it.
22 A. Yes, I needed help with the legal terminology and so on
23 and things from a national security point of view.
24 Q. I understand all of that. You see, we have a copy of
25 this statement which is dated 20th December,

76

1 the December just gone by; in other words, it is
2 a statement you had made after the inquests began; is
3 that correct?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. When did you begin to sit down to, as it were, put
6 things together?
7 A. I cannot be totally precise, but I think it was probably
8 some time around December.
9 Q. So it was in that same month?
10 A. Yes, perhaps a little earlier, November/December if
11 I want to be totally precise.
12 Q. What may be important -- and you will see why in
13 a moment -- is, of course, when you were first given
14 the job of investigating the Milosevic minute. You have
15 pinned it to December 2003. Are there documents that
16 would indicate when you were first asked?
17 A. I was not actually given the job of investigating the
18 Milosevic minute; I was actually given the job of access
19 for the Paget inquiry team to come in and deal with
20 different allegations --
21 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: You were to be their point of
22 contact?
23 A. I was to be their point of contact, and in December 2003
24 I was not quite sure, because we had not had the formal
25 letter from Lord Stevens, what the areas would actually

77

1 be.
2 MR MANSFIELD: The letter comes much later, doesn't it?
3 A. Yes, it does.
4 Q. Are you saying that you were just to be a point of
5 contact -- that is how it was set up -- or were you
6 asked and given the job of researching the claims and
7 allegations particularly made by Mr Tomlinson?
8 A. In fact, what happened was yes, I was given the job, and
9 we did not really have any idea of quite how to go about
10 doing that, so --
11 Q. Well, that is what I want to ask you.
12 When were you given the job of researching -- and
13 I am specific here -- the Milosevic minute?
14 A. I was given the job in December 2003 of getting ready
15 for the police coming in. That could have been in
16 January, it could have been in February. It actually
17 was not until the end of year, and in the intervening
18 time I did look at the allegations that Tomlinson had
19 made, all of the allegations.
20 Q. Yes. One of them concerned what is called the
21 "Milosevic minute".
22 A. Absolutely, absolutely, yes.
23 Q. Now I will confess to being computer illiterate,
24 possibly with one other person in this room --
25 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Certainly me.

78

1 MR MANSFIELD: -- so you will appreciate, but when that
2 first came to light in the sense that it is 2003/2004,
3 did you, at that time, type in the word "Milosevic" at
4 any stage?
5 A. Yes, I did.
6 Q. You did?
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. What came up? Well, sorry, that is too broad a phrase.
9 Quite a lot of material presumably was produced?
10 A. May I just check that -- there were some -- the name
11 cropped up, yes.
12 Q. Yes. Well I do want this, if I may. I just want --
13 it is just a generic term. A lot of material was
14 generated in relation to that name, is that right?
15 A. A fair amount, yes.
16 Q. Amongst the material generated at that stage, did this
17 minute come up amongst it?
18 A. The idea that witness A put forward?
19 Q. Yes.
20 A. No, it did not.
21 Q. So it was not revealed by a search for Milosevic?
22 A. No, it was not.
23 Q. I just want to ask you this: did the Paget team ever
24 ask, as it were, or as far as you know ever type in
25 a similar word, "Milosevic"?

79

1 A. I do not recall if they actually typed it in, but
2 we certainly had that discussion.
3 Q. I am going to ask you this, and if there is an
4 objection, please take it. You will see why. When you
5 typed in "Milosevic" and you got a fair amount of
6 material, did any of the material relate to
7 assassination?
8 A. I honestly -- I hope this is not a difficult answer
9 here -- I honestly don't remember.
10 Q. Well, I am wanting your help about this.
11 A. Absolutely.
12 Q. So it is clear to you why I would like your help as to
13 what has and has not been done is that Tomlinson's
14 suggestion, in his evidence, is that what he saw related
15 to Milosevic in 1992. I think you are now aware that
16 that is what he is saying, aren't you?
17 A. Yes, I believe it is 1993, though, and not 1992.
18 Q. Don't assume anything. I am just putting to you what he
19 said; all right?
20 A. Yes, absolutely.
21 Q. You have made a number of assumptions about what has
22 happened in this case. That is what he says. You may
23 disagree; that is another point. He says it relates to
24 Milosevic. You did approach this with an open mind, did
25 you, this whole matter of research?

80

1 A. Yes, I did.
2 Q. Because all sorts of people may be telling taradiddles,
3 mightn't they?
4 A. I am sorry, may be telling ...?
5 Q. I am sorry, it is an old-fashioned phrase. Maybe
6 a phrase which I know is familiar in the service,
7 "economic with the truth". People may do that, may they
8 not?
9 A. Not to the best of my knowledge.
10 Q. Just in case Tomlinson was right -- because the object
11 here that I have is to find out in fact what the
12 document that he says he saw originally contained. You
13 do understand that?
14 A. Yes, totally.
15 Q. And not easy when documents are shredded, is it?
16 A. No, I mean if something ephemeral has been shredded,
17 then it would be difficult --
18 Q. You use the word "ephemeral". That is an assumption,
19 isn't it?
20 A. Not really. If we are still talking about witness A's
21 idea, that never became a formal document within the
22 service, so, to me, if it is not formal, it is
23 ephemeral.
24 Q. We will have to come to that, whether it is formal and
25 your assumption. But if Tomlinson did see something in

81

1 1992 that related to Milosevic and assassination,
2 the first thing you do is to look up "Milosevic" or, of
3 course, you could type in the word "assassination"
4 couldn't you?
5 A. You could, not into our carding system, but into another
6 system, yes.
7 Q. One of the problems about the system and the materials
8 is that unless it is a telegram from the early 1990s or
9 correspondence from 2000 onwards, you cannot do an
10 electronic word search, can you?
11 A. No, that is correct.
12 Q. So if you wanted to do proper research for the period
13 between 1990 and 2000 in relation to documents created
14 in that period, essentially you would have to do --
15 other than for telegrams and correspondence, but that
16 comes later, so we can leave out correspondence -- other
17 than for telegrams, you would have to do a manual
18 search, wouldn't you?
19 A. Yes, absolutely.
20 Q. Now typing in the word "Milosevic", which produces
21 a fair amount of material, may or may not give rise to
22 a document or the word "assassination"; correct?
23 A. Correct.
24 Q. You cannot now remember -- well, I will ask the question
25 specifically. Did you look, within the material headed

82

1 "Milosevic", for anything that could be associated with
2 the word "assassination"?
3 A. I do not believe I did, no.
4 Q. Why not?
5 A. Just speaking quite carefully here, but the -- it became
6 very apparent very early on that the name in question in
7 connection with this particular idea was not Milosevic.
8 So frankly I had an awful lot of other searches to do,
9 so I concentrated my searches on the area surrounding
10 not only the name of the person that did figure in
11 the idea, but the other researches that the Paget team
12 were going to need.
13 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: But did you look at the material
14 that was thrown up by the request "Milosevic"?
15 A. I looked at it as far as the carding of the name went
16 and any hits that brought up, but I did not take it any
17 further to carry out a file search, sir.
18 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: When did you look at it, to the
19 extent that you did, what were you actually looking for?
20 A. In that instance, yes, I was looking for anything which
21 might associate Milosevic with assassination or anything
22 like that or anything that might have been -- might have
23 thrown up any information about that idea, yes. But
24 I have to stress that that was a narrower search than it
25 would have been if I had done a very big, full research

83

1 job on it.
2 MR MANSFIELD: Did the Paget team ever engage in this
3 exercise that I am now asking about in relation to
4 the name "Milosevic" and any connection with
5 assassination of any kind? Did the Paget team, in your
6 presence, that you are aware of, ever do that?
7 A. Yes, we certainly discussed it.
8 Q. No. Sorry, the question was: did they ever do it, as
9 far as you are aware?
10 A. I am wanting to be absolutely precise. I do recall that
11 I had a card on that individual and I am pretty certain
12 that we may have checked something, but I might have got
13 that wrong. I definitely know that we had discussions
14 about it and the way of looking into it and so on.
15 Q. You see we have a report. I do not have every document
16 that they have. At the moment -- I will be corrected --
17 there does not appear to be a reference to a search
18 under the name "Milosevic" and whether it did or did not
19 produce anything. You see, I do not have a document to
20 that effect so I am having to ask you obviously for your
21 memory and I am sorry about that.
22 So is the position really that you now don't know
23 whether the search under the name "Milosevic" produced
24 any reference to assassination or not? Is that fair?
25 A. As far as the initial carding papers, the papers related

84

1 to the card that I searched, they had no reference to
2 assassination.
3 Q. You know that, do you?
4 A. Yes, because I looked at those.
5 Q. You did? Because I started off with this question. You
6 now say they did not. Is that what you are saying; that
7 the Milosevic material you looked at on the cards did
8 not have any reference to assassination?
9 A. No, it did not, but those are -- as I am just wanting to
10 absolutely make clear for the jury and you, sir, I did
11 not do the widest possible search on that. I did not
12 put them into our filing system, for example, and then
13 go and physically check any files we might hold.
14 I would not want anyone to think that it was that
15 detailed.
16 Q. I am going to move forward a bit. I think you have
17 indicated that you could not type in the word
18 "assassination" for that particular period. It would
19 have to be a card with his name on and that is how it
20 starts.
21 Now that was Tomlinson's evidence and original
22 suggestion. Now, A suggested it was a year later and
23 referred to somebody else. Did you ever type in that
24 other name, whatever it is? As you are "X", let's call
25 it "Y", if you don't mind. So did you type in "Y" at

85

1 any time, since you knew at some stage that that was
2 the other suggestion being made by A?
3 A. Yes, I did type in that name, yes.
4 Q. When did you do that?
5 A. Again, I cannot be absolutely precise, but I imagine
6 I did it at some point in 2003 and I am pretty certain
7 I did it in 2004, when the Paget team came in to carry
8 out their inquiries.
9 Q. When you did it, that is typing in the name of the
10 target suggested by A, did the material that was thrown
11 up by that, which again is material related to the card,
12 have any reference to A and any proposal by him?
13 A. It did not.
14 Q. It did not. Once again, in relation to this other
15 name -- that is Y, the other target -- were you able to
16 make any assessment or can you remember as to whether,
17 on the carded material, if I may call it that, there was
18 any reference if not to A, to any assassination or
19 the word "assassination"? You follow the question?
20 A. Yes, I do follow the question. No, there was not any
21 reference to that.
22 Q. So no reference to "A" and no reference to
23 "assassination" or "proposal" or whatever.
24 So can you help us? Did the Paget team do the same
25 exercise with the target name put forward by A?

86

1 A. The best I can offer you is I am pretty certain we did.
2 Yes.
3 Q. Just moving on -- and I am looking at your first
4 statement where you deal with the fact that you were
5 asked to do this research -- it is during this time, is
6 it, that you discover a statement? Well, I say
7 a "statement", I will call it, as you have, a "write-up"
8 by A. Is that right?
9 A. Yes, that is correct.
10 Q. Given how tight the documentation at the security
11 services is, no doubt you will be able to tell us where
12 you found it.
13 A. No, I cannot.
14 Q. Really?
15 A. No. I can tell you that it was at some point after
16 I joined the -- you know, took on the desk, which was in
17 2003, and I really have racked my brains over this.
18 I cannot remember if a colleague gave it to me or
19 whether or not it was amongst papers that were there
20 ready for my arrival to start carrying out some
21 research.
22 Q. You do appreciate the significance of this, don't you?
23 A. Not entirely at the moment, no.
24 Q. Don't you?
25 A. No.

87

1 Q. Because -- and I will have to ask you about it -- this
2 document only surfaced -- and I am not wishing to say
3 that the questions I ask are world-shattering, but it
4 only came to light last week when I started asking
5 the ex-head of MI6 about earlier documentation. Do you
6 follow? Then, very swiftly that day, although there was
7 a slight delay, this document was produced. So that is
8 why I want to just discover really how tight the
9 organisation is in relation to an explanation why
10 a member of SIS was even considering this proposal in,
11 he says, 1993; Tomlinson says 1992. Now you do follow
12 the significance?
13 A. I do. I could at this stage just clear up this date, if
14 you want me to, the 1992/1993 date.
15 Q. No I am --
16 A. You don't want me to, okay, fine.
17 Q. Tomlinson says it is 1992, you may disagree and say it
18 is 1993 because of what certain people say. So I am not
19 asking you for your observations --
20 A. It is based on correspondence that I checked that would
21 then clarify that it was 1993 and --
22 Q. Unless, of course, there was some other document as
23 well. Do you follow? You have got an open mind about
24 it all, haven't you?
25 A. Yes, I do have an open mind.

88

1 Q. Now I would like you to explain how it is that you have
2 no idea where the original explanation or copy of it,
3 called the "write-up" by A, undated, unsigned, where it
4 had been and where it was kept and which file it came
5 out of. The answer, of course, in short form, is you
6 don't know any of the answers to any of those. My
7 question is: how is it that you don't know?
8 A. Actually I cannot remember all counsel's questions
9 there, but I do recall -- I can answer some of those
10 questions.
11 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Yes.
12 A. If I could ask for them to be repeated one at a time
13 rather than --
14 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Yes.
15 MR MANSFIELD: I will do it one at a time. Which file did
16 they come out of?
17 A. I have now discovered -- at the end of 2007, when I was
18 looking for some papers to inform the inquest, get some
19 papers ready, I found it on a damage assessment file.
20 So I do know that there was a copy of it on a damage
21 assessment file.
22 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: That was not the one that you had
23 originally found?
24 A. No, but it did give me an idea of where -- whoever gave
25 it to me in the section had probably taken a copy from

89

1 that.
2 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: It sounds as if it was not just
3 running around the office; it was actually on a file
4 somewhere.
5 A. It was on a damage assessment file, yes; a working file,
6 yes .
7 MR MANSFIELD: That is the second one. The first one that
8 you came across, where was that?
9 A. The first one that I came across?
10 Q. That is right.
11 A. That I kept on my working file.
12 Q. Where had it come from?
13 A. Sorry, I am probably not allowed to assume, but having
14 later on seen that there was copy of it on the damage
15 assessment file, I am assuming somebody gave me a copy
16 of it from there. But that is a total assumption.
17 I cannot --
18 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Is it identical to the one that
19 was on the damage assessment file?
20 A. Yes, it is.
21 MR MANSFIELD: Is there material on the damage assessment
22 file copy that is not on the copy that you got?
23 A. No, there is not, no, not to the best of my knowledge.
24 I would need to have them both in front of me, but I am
25 pretty certain those two documents are the same.

90

1 Q. Any handwriting?
2 A. There is handwriting on one copy, but that would be
3 a third copy.
4 Q. A third copy?
5 A. Yes. I am sorry it sounds so confusing, but there are
6 three copies of this, one of which has handwriting in
7 the top right-hand corner and has actually been -- it
8 has a couple of stamps on it and also a couple of
9 redactions have been made on it.
10 Q. So they are not all identical?
11 A. No. Two of them are identical and the third one has
12 caveats on it and some writing.
13 Q. I follow that. But at the moment it is not possible for
14 you to do anything other than surmise that the copy that
15 you obtained early on is a copy of what was on a damage
16 assessment file?
17 A. Yes, that is correct.
18 Q. Now, just taking it a stage further, when you are
19 investigating prior to Paget even arriving, had you
20 discovered by then the damage assessment file as well,
21 by the time they start in 2004, or do you only discover
22 it later?
23 A. It was not a case of discovering the file. The damage
24 assessment file covered allegations made by Mr Tomlinson
25 and covered a wide variety of things, much wider than

91

1 the allegations that were being covered by this inquiry.
2 Therefore I had no need to go and check that damage
3 assessment file, and I did not, prior to the end of
4 2007.
5 Q. So that file was not part of your working papers when
6 Paget began in 2004?
7 A. I am sorry, could counsel repeat this question?
8 Q. Yes. The damage assessment file to which a copy of this
9 write-up was attached was not part of your working
10 papers by October 2004 when Paget began?
11 A. A copy of the actual write-up was on my working papers,
12 but I had not actually gone to the damage assessment
13 file, looked through it and seen the document and then
14 got the copies that way.
15 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: No, it came from somebody else?
16 A. It came from somebody else.
17 MR MANSFIELD: Now, I want to ask you this: is it right to
18 say -- it is a question I asked Sir Richard last week --
19 was there an investigation internally, by the security
20 services, not about damage limitation -- so I make
21 the distinction, not damage limitation -- was there any
22 investigation into how an officer had come to make
23 a proposal about something that was out of bounds, as it
24 were? Was there any investigation?
25 A. I could find no record of any investigation having taken

92

1 place.
2 Q. So when he said last week, fairly emphatically twice,
3 that there was one conducted by -- and then in the end
4 he wrote down the position of the person concerned -- he
5 is wrong about that; there was not an investigation. Is
6 that right? As far as you can tell, there is no record
7 of it?
8 A. I think he was probably thinking of the damage
9 assessments that were carried out at the time.
10 Q. That would be easy to say, "There was a damage
11 assessment", wouldn't it? Because I asked him
12 the specific question as to how this person could be
13 thinking about it, unless, of course, in fact there are
14 officers that not only have these thoughts but may take
15 them further. Do you follow? That is why I am asking
16 the questions.
17 A. I am sorry, would you like to repeat that question, that
18 officers have thoughts?
19 Q. Yes, I am giving you an explanation as to why I am
20 asking the question; in other words, it would be
21 important for the service to discover whether this was
22 a momentary lapse, whether it was excusable, whether it
23 in fact had authorisation at a higher level or
24 initiation at a life level. Those are the various
25 possibilities.

93

1 That would be the reason for investigating and, as
2 far as you can tell, nobody asked A first of all about
3 why it was that he was even considering this, did they,
4 that you can find?
5 A. Yes, I did find that -- I believe that his line
6 manager -- I would need to check -- but I believe it is
7 witness H did actually question him about this.
8 Q. Did he?
9 A. It is not the kind of thing we do.
10 Q. No.
11 A. The only reason I say that is because although it was
12 not something I -- well, I did look into it at the time.
13 I questioned whether or not there might be something
14 about it on witness A's confidential report.
15 Q. Right, and you discovered that there was something on
16 his report, did you?
17 A. No. In fact I did not discover there was anything on
18 his report. I checked with witness A and I said, "Well,
19 when this happened" -- words to the effect of "Did it
20 crop up on your confidential report? Was something
21 written on your report?", and he said there was going to
22 be something written on his report, but in fact he had
23 contested the point. By "contest", that does not mean
24 in an argumentative way. If you don't want something on
25 your report, you discuss it with your line manager, who

94

1 had agreed to remove it.
2 Q. To remove it?
3 A. Yes, well it just that you are dealing with a draft
4 document at the minute, so he will have written
5 something and handed it to witness A for reading, and
6 obviously it is much better in a line manager and
7 subordinate sort of chain that people agree their
8 reports rather than there being too much writing on it
9 sort of disagreeing.
10 Q. Did you go and look at the report?
11 A. No, I did not.
12 Q. So you don't know what is actually on the report then?
13 A. I did not know what was on the report in 2004 when
14 the Paget team came in, but I have subsequently now
15 seen -- I have not read the whole report, but I have
16 subsequently seen the report.
17 Q. Now did you tell Paget in October 2004 or whenever you
18 first met them that you had discovered a write-up by A,
19 that you had spoken to A about a confidential report,
20 et cetera, et cetera. Did you tell Paget about any of
21 that?
22 A. No, I did not. I did not mention the write-up. I do
23 remember at one point I think the question of the
24 confidential report cropped up, but I might be wrong on
25 that.

95

1 Q. We did not know about that until today, that is
2 the confidential report. Today, this morning, I was
3 shown it for the first time. So as for the write-up,
4 that is only last week that we saw that.
5 Now, why did you not tell Paget -- since they were
6 inquiring into allegations made by Mr Tomlinson about
7 a proposal, why didn't you say, "Oh, A has already
8 written this up"?
9 A. Actually, to be perfectly honest, there was a couple of
10 reasons for that. One, quite a lot of the documents on
11 my working file had sat there since December 2003 and
12 the team did not actually come in until the end of that
13 year. As I recall, when they did first come in, I was
14 rather over-enthusiastic and was sort of, you know, "You
15 can look at this and you can look at this", and this
16 sort of thing, and very nicely and very politely they
17 said that in fact it was them that were here to carry
18 out this investigation and it was not for me to sort
19 of -- I suppose what they did not want was me sort of
20 taking them in certain directions. So after that,
21 I tended to just obviously help them in every possible
22 way I could, but without chucking documents in their
23 direction.
24 Q. You see, I am going to suggest the problem about --
25 I mean interrogating in the general sense --

96

1 interrogating files and records is that unless you ask
2 precisely the right question, you tend not to get
3 the answer. You are appreciative of that problem, are
4 you not?
5 A. I believe we asked all the questions and interrogated
6 all the necessary paperwork.
7 Q. You see, unless the interrogator is informed about what
8 material might be available -- and it would appear that
9 you overlooked the fact, is that right, that you had
10 this particular document amongst your working papers?
11 A. It must be remembered that this was a write-up that had
12 been written at some stage and the Paget team were going
13 to be interviewing witness A and all of the witnesses in
14 connection with this. This is probably going to make me
15 sound really thick, but actually I thought that meant
16 that they would be getting a whole -- they would be
17 getting it first-hand from witness A. But I have to
18 recall it did not crop up in my head.
19 I did not think to myself, "Oh, I have that write-up
20 and I am not showing it to them". I do not think it
21 cropped up. Our investigations or the Paget
22 investigation was very much around whether there had
23 been a minute written about Milosevic or AN Other and
24 what I had done with it and had I come across it, rather
25 than investigations into the people, either witness A or

97

1 the section concerned.
2 Q. Well, I would like your help: have you read what
3 witness A was saying then in the write-up and is saying
4 at the moment -- he gives evidence later today -- about
5 the document that he had typed up and who it was
6 circulated to?
7 A. Who it was circulated to? I am not sure of the
8 question, sir.
9 Q. I will take it in stages. Are you aware of what A is
10 saying about the memo, its typing and its circulation?
11 A. Yes, I believe I am. I do not have any of that
12 documentation in front of me, but yes.
13 Q. I can read you the passage.
14 A. Lovely, thank you.
15 Q. We know it was headed, "Proposed plan to assassinate
16 [and then there is the name, X]".
17 A. Sorry, I am X.
18 Q. As you are X, you may be glad or relieved to know that
19 you will be leaving the witness box intact. I have
20 replaced it by "Y" for ease; "Proposal to assassinate
21 Y". He gave the manuscript to F, who typed it, and do
22 you know what A says happened to it?
23 A. I would be grateful if counsel could refresh my memory
24 on that.
25 Q. You made an assumption earlier on about what happened to

98

1 this document. Your assumption so far is that it stayed
2 in the same room and that was it, isn't it?
3 A. It may have gone next door to another room.
4 Q. Well, I just want to deal with this --
5 A. Certainly.
6 Q. -- as to whether it was a formal document or not, and
7 even in the case of formal documents, what can happen to
8 them. He says it was typed and forwarded to witness E.
9 Now, do you realise who witness E is?
10 A. I do have a little crib sheet. Can I have a look?
11 Q. Yes.
12 A. I understand who that is, yes.
13 Q. So he does not work in the same room, does he?
14 A. I honestly don't know if he works in the same room or
15 not. I did not check at the time.
16 Q. Given his position, there is no particular secret -- it
17 has been in public anyway -- that E at that time was
18 head of the controllerate for Eastern Europe; all right?
19 A. Right.
20 Q. So it is outside the Balkans section, although the
21 Balkans section is part of Eastern Europe; yes?
22 A. I think I am getting pretty close to where I do not want
23 to go in terms of where -- you know, where our
24 controllers cover and all the rest of it. It is
25 probably in the common domain, but I would just prefer

99

1 to ...
2 Q. I will do it the other way round.
3 A. Lovely. Thank you.
4 Q. If it has gone to the head of the controllerate, it has
5 left the section, hasn't it?
6 A. Physically left the room, potentially yes.
7 Q. Physically left the Balkans section, hasn't it?
8 A. The piece of paper will have, yes, but the tally that is
9 actually the -- is what records the paper, is what is
10 behind the paper, won't have, and that is the sort of --
11 Q. Well, we will deal with that. But once it starts
12 circulating, whatever else one says about it -- and
13 we have not even got to the document itself -- it is
14 certainly a formal document, isn't it? Once it is
15 headed towards E in a different -- as it were, at
16 a different location within the same building --
17 possibly -- I do not even want to know that. Do you
18 follow? It becomes a formal document, doesn't it?
19 A. I am so sorry to disagree in any way, but it does not
20 become a formal document until the tally is entered into
21 the electronic system. So it would be quite normal for
22 somebody to take a paper, be it in the same room or
23 along the corridor, and give it to somebody and they
24 would have a look at it and so on without it being --
25 I would not be able to say that is a formal document at

100

1 that stage, no.
2 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: So it might go to anybody --
3 A. Yes, but until that markers tally has been put onto the
4 system --
5 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: -- without actually becoming
6 a formal document?
7 A. It is not a formal ...
8 MR MANSFIELD: But when it gets to E -- let us look at
9 the tally system just for a moment -- he has to remove
10 a tally, hasn't he?
11 A. Yes. What would happen is the top right-hand corner
12 would have gone, that is that markers bit, and it would
13 go along and he would look at it, whatever. I do not
14 want to get into suggesting that I know things I do not
15 know. The bottom line is my understanding is that it
16 got to that stage and somebody said, "Cripes, this is
17 ridiculous, what is he doing here?"
18 Q. How do you know that, that it got to that stage with E
19 and he goes "Cripes"? How do you know that?
20 A. I do not know if it was E or H. There are other
21 witnesses that will be able to explain in more detail,
22 but I certainly imagine that if something like that
23 crosses somebody's desk, they would go "Yikes".
24 Q. Please don't imagine. In this case, even though you
25 have done the research, you don't actually know, do you,

101

1 what happened to this document? Because if you have
2 read all the statements, you will see that they give
3 very different versions of what actually happened, don't
4 they?
5 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: I think what you are saying is
6 you would expect anybody who saw it to say "cripes".
7 A. Yes.
8 MR MANSFIELD: I understand that point. But the question is
9 if the person to whom it went had been the person who
10 had encouraged it, he might not go "cripes"; do you
11 follow?
12 A. I cannot answer on that, but yes, that would make sense.
13 Q. That is what A is saying, especially in the write-up.
14 Not so much in his statement, but in the write-up that
15 you have obtained, that is what he was claiming. Did
16 you know that?
17 A. I would need to read it again to totally refresh my
18 memory.
19 Q. I am not going to waste time with you asking you to read
20 documents you may have read in the past.
21 Now, just for moment, hypothetically, in terms of
22 the system, if E were to get this document -- and you
23 distinguish between a white minute and a pink memo, is
24 that right?
25 A. Yes, I understand other counsel asked me about that.

102

1 Yes.
2 Q. So there is a distinction between the two?
3 A. Yes, there is.
4 Q. Now, there isn't coincidence even on this, but the
5 majority of the information from people at the time
6 suggests it was a white minute, which is the beginning
7 of a formal document, isn't it, as opposed to a pink
8 memo?
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. Now, would you ever -- and I ask you this because of
11 what A may say -- could you say to somebody, "Well
12 I want this white minute to be treated as a pink memo"?
13 A. Yes, you could. Can I just explain to the jury?
14 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Please.
15 A. The pink memo pieces of paper were only A5 in size and
16 the white minutes, as you can see, are A4. So sometimes
17 what people would do is type across the top of a white
18 minute "Please treat as a pink memo" because you did not
19 want three sides of A5. That would then be an ephemeral
20 document.
21 MR MANSFIELD: That would then be an ephemeral document.
22 The person who actually typed it says it was not a pink
23 memo, so that will have to be resolved. However, can we
24 pursue this one stage further?
25 Once this white sheet, the minute sheet, plus

103

1 the tally sheet ends up with E, what he is supposed to
2 do, assuming that that is where it has gone and assuming
3 he is the first one, he would remove tally 1 so that
4 people would know where the document was.
5 A. That is correct.
6 Q. Whatever he wanted done with it, he would have to remove
7 tally 1; is that right?
8 A. Once he wanted it to move on to the next addressee, that
9 is right.
10 Q. Or even to go back?
11 A. So sorry, to go back?
12 Q. Back to the originator. Once it moves away from him and
13 back again --
14 A. No, that sounds as though that makes perfect sense, but
15 no, that probably would not have been the case. If
16 somebody was reading something and felt, "God, I need to
17 discuss this further", it would not continue to move
18 around. He would simply get up out of his desk and walk
19 to see the person or somebody would and then you would
20 not waste a tally on it kind of thing, if that makes
21 sense.
22 Q. Pausing there for a moment, whether any of this ends up
23 registered and so forth obviously depends to a large
24 measure on when all of these things happened and whether
25 somebody comes and collects the tally sitting in the

104

1 box. I understand all of that. However, the first
2 thing that has to happen is the minute book, right, in
3 the section where it originates, and the minute book
4 would then not be deleted other than by a line going
5 through it, correct?
6 A. Yes, the entry in the minute book, yes.
7 Q. Now, where is the minute book with the entry in showing
8 that?
9 A. I did in fact -- if I may say, I did in fact look for --
10 to see how far our minute books went back, and
11 basically, because -- I know we have not got a lot of
12 time here, but the minute books no longer existed for
13 1997. The details -- I would need to check and revert
14 if this point is important, sir, but the minute books,
15 we did keep records of them for so many years, but
16 I think they only went up to -- they had only got them
17 from 1998, and so the previous -- there was no way of
18 checking is what I am trying to say, but I did try to
19 carry out those sorts of searches.
20 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Did you go back earlier than 1997
21 so that --
22 A. I am so sorry, 1993. I do apologise.
23 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: But it is not just the case that
24 that one year was missing?
25 A. No, no. We don't keep them anymore.

105

1 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Everything up to a certain point
2 was missing, was it?
3 A. Yes.
4 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: That point was what, 1998, was
5 it?
6 A. I would need to check. If you feel that is important,
7 I can get that information for you.
8 MR MANSFIELD: If you would not mind checking when
9 the minutes books, as it were, fade away; in other words
10 you don't have any beyond let us say 1997 or 1998.
11 A. Certainly.
12 Q. Of course, all of this would have been available in 1993
13 if it had been investigated, wouldn't it?
14 A. The minute register would have, yes, certainly.
15 Q. Somebody would be able to check all of that?
16 A. Absolutely.
17 Q. I asked you about an investigation of A. Of course,
18 there are other people concerned in this. Have you seen
19 any documentation relating to 1993 to suggest that E or
20 H were interviewed by anyone about this proposal?
21 A. I am just checking on my E and H ... no, I have seen
22 nothing.
23 Q. I want to just move on from the question of the
24 Milosevic minute and the records of that. It is
25 the final question on this area. Did the Paget

106

1 inquiry -- I use that in the general term -- in fact at
2 any stage ever ask you if there had been any research
3 done by the security services before they came on the
4 scene on this issue?
5 A. I am so sorry, on the issue of the Milosevic allegation?
6 Q. Yes, that is right.
7 A. Did they ask if anything had ever been done?
8 Q. Yes.
9 A. I do not recall them asking me, no.
10 Q. There is a reason for this question.
11 In 1998 the French investigation approached
12 the Paris Embassy because, again, Mr Tomlinson had
13 provided the French juge with information not dissimilar
14 to the information that had been in the public domain
15 and some of it in his book. Do you follow? That is
16 the background. A letter was written by a member of the
17 Embassy staff to the juge about the Milosevic minute.
18 It may not have been called precisely that.
19 Now, were you ever contacted or is there any
20 documentation that would help us as to whether anyone
21 was ever contacted about informing the French juge in
22 relation to this Milosevic minute? Have I made myself
23 clear in terms of the question?
24 A. I am terribly sorry, no. A little bit clearer would be
25 lovely, thank you.

107

1 Q. Was anybody in 1998 in the security services contacted
2 by the British Embassy in France in order to help
3 the French investigation over the Milosevic minute?
4 A. I believe that the -- and this was not the area that
5 I was dealing with per se, but I believe there was some
6 correspondence between the juge and the British Embassy,
7 yes.
8 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Would it be helpful to get that
9 up, do you think? It might remind the witness about it.
10 MR MANSFIELD: Certainly. Might I have one moment?
11 I am not sure whether it has been given an inquiry
12 number, but I can certainly indicate it. It is
13 [INQ0049253].
14 Just for the moment, I only need the first page.
15 This was a letter from the juge indicating, in fact,
16 a number of things that they wanted to know, all to do
17 with Mr Tomlinson, but in particular it starts in that
18 third paragraph:
19 "A plan to assassinate ..."
20 Do you see that?
21 A. Yes, I do.
22 Q. That is the letter that goes out in December. There is
23 a reply in the same month, if we could have that.
24 [INQ0008320], 16th December 1998. Now this is from
25 the person addressed -- you will see there:

108

1 "As we have said time and time again, there is not
2 an ounce of truth in any plot that he attributes to
3 the British Government to assassinate
4 President Milosevic."
5 What it does not say is there was a proposal that
6 did not go anywhere because that is what they are
7 looking at, the French, a proposal document. Did you
8 find any documentation indicating that the security
9 services in London had been contacted about a reply of
10 this kind to the French juge?
11 A. No, I did not. I could not be absolutely certain, but
12 not me personally, I didn't.
13 Q. Because the only person who would in fact know the
14 background to the proposal would be you in London,
15 rather than those in Paris. Is that right?
16 A. In terms of witness A's proposal?
17 Q. Yes.
18 A. This would have been in 1998?
19 Q. That is right. It is after it has gone to the juge.
20 After the book has been seen by you and he is --
21 A. I believe in December 1998 that probably even people on
22 the Paris station would probably have been aware of the
23 allegation because I think there was quite a lot of
24 press reporting that came out after Tomlinson's
25 statement to the juge.

109

1 Q. I follow all of that. The real question is: how would
2 they know how to reply to the juge in those terms
3 without having access to information in London?
4 A. I see your point. I do not believe they did contact.
5 Q. Right. Now, just on documentation generally and
6 shredding, if a document is to be destroyed or deleted,
7 there ought to be a record kept of the decision,
8 the decision-maker and so forth. Is that right?
9 A. Yes, absolutely.
10 Q. Therefore, in relation to a white minute with a tally
11 board and so forth, if that is going to be shredded for
12 whatever reason, there ought to be a record of that.
13 A. If a formal document of any kind is going to be deleted
14 or destroyed, then there would be a formal record of
15 that, yes.
16 Q. In this case is it right that there is no record of any
17 decision being taken that the document should be
18 shredded, let alone who took the decision? Is that
19 right?
20 A. Yes. As an ephemeral document, it would not need to
21 have that kind of explanation, sir.
22 Q. That is your assumption that it is an ephemeral
23 document. Do you follow? All right. That is your
24 assumption, that it is an ephemeral document?
25 A. I am not absolutely sure how to define "assumption"

110

1 exactly, but I do know, from what I have learned, that
2 it was an ephemeral document. But if that is my
3 assumption, that is my assumption, yes.
4 Q. It depends on whose version of what happened you
5 believe; A, H, D or F. Do you follow?
6 A. Yes, I think the thing is that all this happened a great
7 many years ago, and that, you know, people's
8 recollection of things when it is 10/15 years ago are
9 not always identical. In fact, in many respects, it is
10 probably good that they are not, otherwise it would look
11 rather --
12 Q. Yes, but that may be an avenue to the truth. Do you
13 follow?
14 A. I certainly follow.
15 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Mr Mansfield, we started at half
16 past nine this morning. I think I detect signs of the
17 shorthandwriters' fingers getting --
18 MR MANSFIELD: I have one question.
19 A suggests, and he may be wrong for a variety of
20 reasons -- this is the final question on this -- that
21 the document was copied and that he held on to his copy.
22 We don't know for how long. No doubt he will tell us.
23 Do you normally copy a white minute?
24 A. Yes, normally you would copy it and -- or there would be
25 copies, copies that are going to files and side copies

111

1 potentially to other people.
2 Q. Right. You would need to know how many were made,
3 wouldn't you?
4 A. Well, normally you would have your action addressees and
5 then in the final paragraph of the minute, you would
6 write:
7 "I am copying this minute to ..."
8 It would very clearly state who the copies were for.
9 MR MANSFIELD: Well, I will leave it at that for the moment.
10 Thank you very much.
11 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: We will resume then at quarter to
12 two.
13 (12.46 pm)
14 (The short adjournment)

112

<< Back