Hearing transcripts

26 February 2008 - Afternoon session
 
15 (1.45 pm)
16 (Jury present)
17 MR MANSFIELD: Good afternoon. I just want to do some
18 follow-up questions. The write-up document -- the jury
19 have not seen it, but it is a document, so that it is
20 clear, that A wrote at some time, possibly 1998. Now
21 that document, is that a formal document?
22 A. It is not a formal document in the way I would consider
23 it, no, it is not.
24 Q. What is it then?
25 A. It is an ephemeral document.

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1 Q. Why is it classified as "ephemeral"?
2 A. The easiest way of saying it is that it is not attached
3 to a formal minute or a formal note for file; anything
4 like that.
5 Q. Why was it not though?
6 A. I am afraid I just cannot answer that question.
7 Q. You see, the question is the extent to which it is
8 possible to contain ideas that may not be acceptable
9 without trace; do you follow?
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. So even the write-up document, you cannot explain why
12 that was not regarded as a formal document and there
13 were two other copies. One was the first one, which you
14 have already dealt with. You don't remember where that
15 came from. You assume it was photocopied or copied,
16 anyway.
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. I now want to turn to the second one, which was attached
19 to a folder which had copies of damage assessments.
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. Now, putting it shortly, do you know how that came to be
22 attached -- in other words, the write-up -- to that
23 folder?
24 A. Yes, it was a working folder of the security officer at
25 the time, who was involved in the damage assessment for

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1 that particular -- those allegations.
2 Q. Well, I am just looking at your second witness statement
3 which we received very recently indeed; last night in
4 fact.
5 If you look at the second page, paragraph 5:
6 "The originals of the damage assessment were held on
7 a formal file."
8 So that is one item.
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. "There was nothing in the folder ...", which is
11 something different, all right. It is a working folder
12 containing copies of damage assessments. Do you follow?
13 A. Yes.
14 Q. "There was nothing in the folder to explain why and how
15 this copy of the write-up had been placed on it."
16 Is that right?
17 A. Yes, I am afraid there was not anything on the file to
18 suggest why it had been written. The only thing I can
19 add to that is previously back between the beginning of
20 2004 and when the Paget team came in, I did ask
21 witness A about the original write-up I had, and from
22 what he could remember, he was asked to write it in
23 connection with some newspaper articles that had come
24 out in, I believe, 1998, but I would need to check
25 something of that, but in 1998, I think, and also in

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1 response to some letters that had come in from
2 Tomlinson's lawyer to both the ISC and the Foreign
3 Office.
4 Q. That is very kind of you, but it is a different
5 question. The question is: this second copy, putting it
6 shortly, there is no explanation about why or how this
7 second copy became attached to this folder, is there?
8 A. Only that it is part of the damage assessment, but
9 nothing further than that, no.
10 Q. You don't know who put it there, you don't know who
11 copied it and you don't know why it is there; correct?
12 A. Simple answer: no, I do not.
13 Q. So that is the second copy. The third copy which you
14 have produced again, or we have seen again very
15 recently, this is the one that has handwriting on it,
16 written by somebody you have been able to identify,
17 indicating when the original write-up may have been
18 committed to paper, namely August 1998. It is this one
19 that has redactions and it is this one that has "Top
20 secret" all over it. Now, when was this particular
21 version generated?
22 A. Again, it would be a supposition for me to try to --
23 Q. I will put it shortly. Do you know? Is there any
24 documentation about this?
25 A. No, there is not.

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1 Q. You see, when it is necessary, I suggest, to keep things
2 very quiet, they can be kept very quiet, can't they?
3 A. Except that this document is in three separate places
4 so ...
5 Q. Oh yes. How would you have discovered these separate
6 places if you had come in from the outside? How would
7 you have discovered if attached to a folder were copies
8 of damage assessment and this third copy -- because
9 we don't know where the first one was -- how would you
10 locate the write-up?
11 A. Again, we would have to go back to the original way of
12 doing things, which is if you knew the subject matter of
13 the write-up, you would go to that file. Most things
14 are attached to formal minutes or notes for files, but
15 just occasionally things will appear on a file that --
16 Q. Well, where is the file relating to this, that is the
17 writer?
18 A. Sorry, where is the file relating to the author?
19 Q. The writer?
20 A. And this is any of these write-ups?
21 Q. Yes, any of them. Where is the file?
22 A. Other than the damage assessment file, that is it.
23 It is a working copy. It is not an official document so
24 it did not have to appear on an official file.
25 Q. You see, this third copy you found -- and I want to ask

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1 you how you found this -- this one with slightly
2 different additions to it and a caveat and so on, where
3 did you find that then?
4 A. Well, towards the end of 2007, when I was asked to put
5 together some papers and everything in connection with
6 this inquest, that was when I came across that copy of
7 that thing. In fact, I am pretty certain somebody said,
8 "Oh, there is a copy of that there".
9 Now, I had already got a copy in my working file,
10 and actually, to be honest, had not noticed the caveats,
11 top and bottom. I just thought it was the same
12 document, but it is a slightly different because of the
13 caveats.
14 Q. Where did it come from, this third copy?
15 A. It was in a folder, in a ring-binder, in one of the
16 cupboards in our section.
17 Q. Coming to the point, if you came in from outside, it
18 would be extremely difficult to locate the write-up,
19 wouldn't it?
20 A. Well, I suppose at least you would be in the right
21 section to find it, in that it would not be in another
22 section.
23 Q. Who is this person who says to you, "Oh, by the way,
24 I think there is this in this", as it were?
25 A. Like I say, I think I can recall that there was a folder

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1 there. I cannot remember whether I found it or whether
2 or not somebody in the section said, "Oh and I also have
3 this".
4 Q. And what was "this"?
5 A. The write-up with the two caveats on and the redactions.
6 Q. What is the file containing it?
7 A. It is a ring-binder.
8 Q. Yes. Sorry, we really do have to ask the precise
9 question. Did the file from which it came have a title?
10 A. Yes, it did.
11 Q. What was that?
12 A. On the side of the ring-binder it had "Special ephemeral
13 messages".
14 Q. I am not wishing to pry as to what else was in it, but
15 what is that meant to denote, "Special ephemeral
16 messages"?
17 A. Again it is just me supposing --
18 Q. Well, if you don't know --
19 A. I have a good idea. Is a good idea good enough or shall
20 I just be quiet?
21 Q. What is your good idea about this?
22 A. Well, the thing was there are so many files within our
23 section that sometimes, when someone is working there,
24 they will put some papers on a separate file for ease of
25 reference or something like that, and I imagine, at some

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1 point during the last -- since it must have been 1998,
2 that is what has happened.
3 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: You said a moment ago that you
4 think that somebody may have given it to you saying,
5 "Oh, I also have this".
6 A. The caveated --
7 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: It is the "also" that I am
8 interested in, as to what else that person had, if
9 anything, given you.
10 A. Yes, no, in fact, when I was putting together the
11 evidence at the end of 2007, that was when I found
12 the second copy on the damage assessment file.
13 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Yes.
14 A. Okay. As I say, before I had not realised it was there,
15 so then that was why I put two and two together, oh, my
16 copy must have come from there. Then the other copy,
17 which was on the red file, "Special ephemeral messages",
18 somebody had actually seen that in the file thing, "Oh,
19 have you seen this red folder? It has 'Special
20 ephemeral messages' on it", so handed it to me, and
21 I said, "Oh, that is another copy of that". Do you see
22 what I mean? It was not hidden away anywhere. It was
23 just on its side in the top of a cabinet.
24 MR MANSFIELD: It is, would you agree, a little haphazard,
25 isn't it?

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1 A. I would say we have quite a lot of working files in the
2 sort of section I am working in at the minute in
3 addition to our formal files.
4 Q. I am really not wishing to know about the other
5 messages, but what is special about this ephemeral
6 messages file?
7 A. I could not say what was special about it. Obviously
8 whoever wrote that on the file thought that they may be
9 papers that would come in useful or where they would
10 want to find them quite quickly.
11 Q. So once again we don't know who put it in there, when it
12 went in there, let alone when it was created, do we?
13 A. I am sorry, I did try to find out in relation to the
14 chief's evidence last week, but I cannot get to the
15 bottom of it.
16 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Was the "Special ephemeral
17 messages" file a file, as it were, that had been made up
18 by one individual and kept for his or her benefit or was
19 it simply a file that had been given that label and
20 anybody was using it?
21 A. Anybody could have used it. It did not even have, to be
22 perfectly honest, dividers or anything, and there were
23 only about, I think, three pieces of paper on it. Yes,
24 just three pieces of paper.
25 MR MANSFIELD: I suppose the other pieces of paper don't

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1 relate to this inquiry at all?
2 A. Actually, no, they don't.
3 Q. I am not asking what they are.
4 I am going to leave that topic as a whole and turn
5 to another one. I want to ask you at this time about
6 the person I represent, Mohamed Al Fayed. All right?
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. I appreciate the questions that you were asked by
9 the Paget team did not include a file on him as such --
10 A. No.
11 Q. -- but you did a search. I am going to preface this by
12 asking you about a letter which was read out to
13 Sir Richard last week. It is one part of it. I am not
14 asking for it to go on screen. It is only one issue
15 here. I will read it twice, just the bit of it. It is
16 written on 12th October by the Treasury Solicitor to
17 the Coroner because questions have been asked on this
18 topic. Do you follow?
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. The specific question in the end that was posed to
21 the security services was this question. If you just
22 listen to the question that was posed:
23 "Are there any documents within the power,
24 possession or control of the Security Service or
25 the Secret Intelligence Service dated 1997 which show

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1 either organisation considering ..."
2 So I will repeat that bit of it:
3 "Are there any documents within the power,
4 possession or control of the Security Service or the
5 Secret Intelligence Service dated 1997 which show either
6 organisation considering ..."
7 So that is a fairly clear question, isn't it?
8 A. Considering what? Are you going to --
9 Q. That is the first part. I am coming to this. There are
10 two bits of this. I am only concerned with one part.
11 "... considering Mr Mohamed Al Fayed or
12 Mr Dodi Al Fayed?"
13 That is pretty clear, isn't it, any documents within
14 the power or possession dated 1997?
15 Now, in relation to those two persons,
16 Mohamed Al Fayed or Dodi Al Fayed, the answer as read
17 out last week was this:
18 "Mr Dodi Al Fayed [so dealing with him first], no;
19 Mr Mohamed Al Fayed, no; in respect of the Secret
20 Intelligence Service, no; in respect of the Security
21 Service, yes."
22 So the answer was that there were no documents dated
23 1997 -- and I am only dealing with the Secret
24 Intelligence Service -- relating to either Dodi Al Fayed
25 or Mohamed Al Fayed. They only existed in relation to

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1 the Security Service, all right, your brother or sister
2 service. Have you understood that was the reply? Do
3 you understand the reply?
4 A. Yes. I totally understand the reply, yes.
5 Q. Everyone understands the reply, but I want to suggest to
6 you that it is economic with the truth, isn't it?
7 A. It is not possible just to have a look at that, is it,
8 so that I can ...
9 Q. Yes, certainly. You can see my copy. It is marked up,
10 but it will be quicker if you would look at that.
11 A. Thank you. I find it easier to answer that question
12 now, if I may, sir?
13 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Yes.
14 A. If you were asking -- if there was a question about were
15 there were any documents at all in 1997, yes, there
16 were.
17 MR MANSFIELD: Yes.
18 A. If the question is whether any documents in 1997 related
19 to Princess Diana or Dodi Al Fayed, which goes on in the
20 next two paragraphs, then no, there were not.
21 Q. I am going to be very focused. There were questions
22 asking about other people. The question in relation to
23 Mohamed Al Fayed was: were there any documents in
24 the possession of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6,
25 dated 1997 vis a vis Mohamed Al Fayed? All right, that

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1 is the question --
2 MR TAM: Sir, with respect, that is not the question that
3 was asked. The question that was asked is quite plain
4 on the piece of paper that the witness now has. It has
5 the word "considering", which is a word which my learned
6 friend has avoided putting in the questions that he has
7 put.
8 MR MANSFIELD: Sir, that is just not right. I have just
9 read it out. I am trying to shorten it. I have given
10 the witness the letter, so that is absolutely not right.
11 A. I think in answer to the question, "Were the ..." --
12 well, I can speak -- "Were the Secret Intelligence
13 Service considering Dodi Al Fayed or Mohamed Al Fayed?",
14 my understanding of the word "considering" there is were
15 they of operational interest, and my answer to that
16 would be no, they were not of operational interest.
17 Q. I have not got to your answer yet. This is the answer
18 that we were provided with; in other words, once again,
19 unless the precise words are, the fact of the matter is,
20 in 1997, the Secret Intelligence Service did have
21 documents within their power and possession or control
22 which did consider Mohamed Al Fayed, didn't they?
23 A. There are two documents I am thinking of in 1997, and if
24 I was able to tell you what they were, it would really
25 make it plain that they are not what you would consider

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1 to be intelligency kind of documents. The bottom line
2 is they are both incredibly insignificant documents.
3 Q. I do not mean what was created after the crash, do you
4 follow?
5 What was in the possession of the Secret
6 Intelligence Service in 1997, but not dated 1997, were
7 documents relating to Mohamed Al Fayed; correct?
8 A. Were there any documents at all? Yes, there are
9 documents.
10 Q. Yes. You see no one was told that in the letter, that
11 "Sorry, we don't have any dated 1997, but we do have
12 documents", and I will come to them now because you have
13 been kind enough to indicate. In fact, first of all
14 there was a card created for him, is that right, in
15 1980, or somewhere around then?
16 A. Yes, that was in my original statement.
17 Q. As you have already indicated a card is created when
18 somebody is of interest to the Secret Intelligence
19 Service; also correct?
20 A. Yes, to a certain degree, sir.
21 What I also said was that often names will be
22 carded, and, if you remember, just going back to my
23 original showing you of the minute, where you get
24 the index, names are underlined in red and that is still
25 the case, although in a different form. You will find

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1 that we have a lot of names on the system. It does not
2 mean that we are actively doing anything about it sort
3 of thing.
4 Q. But the card was in existence in 1997?
5 A. The card was certainly in existence in 1997.
6 Q. And there were a number of entries on it, were there
7 not?
8 A. There were a number of entries, all of which were shown
9 to the Paget team.
10 Q. I dare say. Roughly how many, can you remember?
11 A. I hope I can remember roughly right. I think there were
12 about 14.
13 Q. Were those spread over the years between 1980 and 1996?
14 A. I would not like to answer that entirely. I know that
15 the card originated in 1980, but I could not tell you
16 exactly what that last entry is on the card.
17 Q. I am going to ask you a very particular question. Were
18 these 14 entries the result of focused or specific
19 intelligence-gathering?
20 MR TAM: Sir, no. With respect, that is asking about
21 specific SIS operations and that is too sensitive and
22 should not be asked.
23 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Do you have any observations
24 about this, Mr Burnett?
25 MR BURNETT: Sir, there are two observations I would make.

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1 I am sure the witness is very conscious of the
2 importance of neither confirming nor denying nor
3 answering questions that give away any detailed
4 operational matters, any sensitive matters or any detail
5 of intelligence that might be held on any individual and
6 it may be that the witness can say something.
7 But, sir, a question that asks for the quality
8 ornate of what is on the card would seem to me, with
9 respect, to take us straight into the "neither confirm
10 nor deny" territory, which Sir Richard Dearlove sought
11 to explain to the jury last week. But it may be that
12 the witness feels she can go a little way without
13 transgressing any of where she knows where
14 the boundaries are.
15 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Yes.
16 A. I think, if I can try to explain because I would really
17 like to try to be helpful is that in relation to the
18 references on the card, they were not in relation to
19 what I would call directly looking at somebody, but were
20 perhaps more insignificant, indirect references, but
21 I do not think I can be any more helpful than that, I am
22 afraid.
23 Does that answer the question?
24 MR MANSFIELD: I am not going to trespass into areas that
25 are forbidden, so I do not. But could you help us in

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1 this way? Can you give us the date of the last entry
2 now or not?
3 A. I can't unless you can find the spot in my statement
4 where I have written that.
5 Q. It does not say.
6 A. Sorry, no, I can't off the top of my head.
7 Q. What you recall in the statement is that you showed the
8 card and all of the documents to the Paget inquiry.
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. I am not going to trespass into areas that may be too
11 difficult, but "related documents" means that there were
12 documents relating to the 14 entries or some of them?
13 A. No, all of the entries. Each of the references on the
14 card refers to a different piece of correspondence, and
15 so each of those pieces of correspondence were attached
16 to the back of the card and that was shown to the Paget
17 inquiry when they came in.
18 Q. That was one -- I do not know whether you call it
19 a "database", but let's call it a database for
20 the moment. That is one database, but then you also
21 searched a file system. Did you search the file system
22 electronically or did you have to do it by hand because
23 of the restrictions you have already indicated?
24 A. No, I did it electronically because I believed that
25 anything substantive would have been written

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1 telegraphically and therefore would have covered the
2 period 1997, going back to the start of 1990.
3 Q. That is the restriction. It may be that you make
4 assumptions and beliefs, and it is entirely
5 understandable that you might do that, but of course
6 there may be materials that are not telegraphically
7 communicated. Is that right?
8 A. Yes, certainly we have letters, things like that.
9 Q. So they would not appear on the search that you did?
10 A. Not on the electronic search pre 2001.
11 Q. No. So, in fact, what you have come up with, which
12 although you don't in fact identify the number -- I have
13 gleaned it from another source -- it appears that on
14 this search there were six entries of his name in the
15 file search; two of them relate to 1997 and post crash,
16 but the other four don't. But again, would there be
17 documents relating to those other four?
18 A. To the other four, yes, there would be, yes.
19 Q. So whether or not there was other information on
20 Mohamed Al Fayed that was not thrown up by this search,
21 you are unable to help us. Is that right?
22 A. I would only be able to help you in as much as that our
23 substantive way of communicating is by telegram, and
24 that it would be highly unlikely that there would be
25 a great deal of letters on a subject. Letters are used

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1 very much for something like "I attach a brochure",
2 "I attach something", something like that.
3 Q. I want to move to another topic, but it is the same
4 approach that I want to ask you about. That is an
5 informant at the Ritz Hotel in Paris.
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. Now you can have informants at all kinds of grades,
8 can't you? There is somebody who, as it were, has been
9 employed for a very long time, is an authoritative
10 reliable source; you may have somebody who does not do
11 it often, but sometimes; and then you have ones further
12 down. There is a sort of league table of different
13 informants. If that is something that you cannot
14 answer, please say, but is that right?
15 A. In fact, we are probably a bit fussier than that. All
16 the people that we deal with are subject to the same
17 stringent looking at them and traces and stuff. It
18 would not matter whether you worked with us for a day or
19 really longer. They are very strict.
20 Q. I understand that. That is at the formal level, and of
21 course it would need somebody to report back that they
22 are using somebody. You would not know unless it was
23 reported back, would you?
24 A. Unless they had actually appeared in our system, you
25 mean, in terms of being carded and so on?

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1 Q. Let's deal with it this way. First of all, there is no
2 card on the Ritz, is there?
3 A. No, there is not.
4 Q. Therefore, if there was somebody at the Ritz providing
5 information, at whatever level, but you did not have
6 a name, how would you go about finding out through the
7 system that you have described?
8 A. It would be inconceivable that we would have somebody
9 reporting on any matters of intelligence or any nature
10 that were not in some way put forward. I want to be
11 absolutely clear here. Somebody comes across somebody
12 and they think that they might be interesting. You have
13 to find out about them as much as possible before you --
14 you don't, in our world, just bowl up to anybody and
15 say, "Hello, you look like a good chap" or anything like
16 that. We would have to put them through a certain
17 amount of tracing, and by "tracing" I mean -- I might be
18 going beyond the bounds -- but, you know, finding out as
19 much as possible about them.
20 Q. But if there was an informant at the Ritz who had
21 a description but not a name, how would you discover
22 that manually because you cannot do it through a card
23 for the Ritz, can you?
24 A. This is going to sound as if I am being rude and I am
25 really not meaning to be, but if you did not have

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1 a name -- I am sorry, I would not know where to start if
2 he did not have a name.
3 Q. If he had a code name?
4 A. If he had a code name, that would be a different matter
5 because then I would have somewhere to start, by going
6 back through the systems that I was explaining to
7 the previous counsel.
8 Q. You see, the reason I am asking you these questions is
9 the Ritz in Paris plainly is a very well-known hotel, is
10 it not?
11 A. Yes, yes.
12 Q. It has been at the centre of all sorts of intrigue over
13 at least 99 years, hasn't it?
14 A. Probably. I do not know how long the Ritz in Paris has
15 been going. I think the 99 years is probably with
16 reference to our searches on it and, as I explained,
17 those are a default system. I did not actually
18 physically check over 99 years. That is a default on
19 the system.
20 Q. I appreciate. In other words, it is just indicating
21 the ambit but not necessarily every year.
22 I come straight to the point: before the war, during
23 the war and after the war, the Ritz became a centre of
24 information networks, didn't it?
25 A. I was not aware of that.

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1 Q. All right. Because it was under German occupation
2 during the war, wasn't it?
3 A. Sorry, I was nodding. Yes.
4 Q. That is what I was asking about. The Ritz may not have
5 a card, but the Ritz Hotel was of interest to the Secret
6 Intelligence Service in Paris, was it not?
7 A. Certainly my searches, et cetera, did not go back to
8 checking, well, that far back, archival material, as to
9 whether there would have been any archival material
10 about the Ritz Hotel.
11 Q. The reason I ask you the question is it comes from
12 certain observations by Mr Tomlinson in the witness box
13 here that basically he would have been surprised if
14 the Secret Intelligence Service did not have an interest
15 in the Ritz, considering who stayed there from time to
16 time. Can you help?
17 A. I cannot on that matter, I am afraid.
18 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Well, I think Sir Richard
19 Dearlove's evidence was rather different on that, was it
20 not?
21 MR MANSFIELD: Yes, it was.
22 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: The French might have had an
23 interest, but not the British.
24 MR MANSFIELD: If I may put it to you -- I appreciate you
25 are not in a position of policy-making --

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1 A. Thank goodness.
2 Q. You are not in a position to decide who is of interest
3 to the Security Service or the Secret Intelligence
4 Service, are you?
5 A. Who is of interest?
6 Q. Yes.
7 A. From time to time it is my responsibility to think about
8 who is of interest, yes.
9 Q. And you make suggestions?
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. And are they minuted?
12 A. On the whole, yes.
13 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: So they are not like witness A's?
14 A. No. You know, I would not necessarily write down every
15 idea I have, no.
16 MR MANSFIELD: I appreciate that. But in relation to
17 the Ritz in Paris, it is not beyond the bounds of
18 imagination that somebody, not the French but
19 the British, would recognise that it would be of
20 interest to have somebody there providing information;
21 that really is not an outrageous thought, is it?
22 A. I think it would be more usual sort of elsewhere rather
23 than necessarily there, but I do not think I can answer
24 the question completely. I think people of that kind
25 are very interesting people, yes.

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1 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Supposing there was somebody from
2 MI6 who had an interest in somebody at the Ritz and this
3 was a genuinely useful contact, would you expect to find
4 that completely undocumented in your paperwork, because,
5 I mean, what, for example, would happen if the person
6 who had the contact got run over by a bus or
7 disappeared?
8 A. It just would be highly unlikely, almost impossible,
9 because we would just have to go through some certain
10 checks and so on. It would not just be, say, me, if
11 I was working there, saying that somebody is a good guy.
12 It really would not. They would appreciate, they would
13 say "That is great, that is interesting, you are putting
14 forward that person, now please put them through
15 the relevant checks". Sometimes it can be very boring
16 and very bureaucratic, but unfortunately we have to
17 follow those rules.
18 MR MANSFIELD: But if somebody does not want it known, do
19 you say it is impossible for that to be, as it were,
20 secreted away?
21 A. I cannot really think of an occasion why the people
22 working overseas would not want somebody in London to
23 know about it. We just don't have those kind of working
24 relationships.
25 Q. I do not know whether you can help -- a case that came

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1 up last week, I am not going to take any time on it --
2 but if an agent abroad considers destroying documents,
3 you would be surprised, would you?
4 A. I think I would want to know rather more about the area
5 surrounding the question or the case in question to be
6 able to comment properly.
7 Q. But would that surprise you if somebody abroad, working
8 for MI6, destroyed documents?
9 A. I do not think you are talking about a member of
10 the service there, are you, as a member of staff? You
11 are talking about a contact of the service, and I would
12 not be necessarily surprised about a contact of the
13 service because what people do in their own time is what
14 they do in their own time.
15 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Mr Mansfield, is it really fair
16 to ask this witness these questions when you have
17 already had the opportunity and had quite detailed
18 answers from Sir Richard Dearlove?
19 MR MANSFIELD: I quite accept that and I was not intending
20 to take a lot of time on the detail of it because it has
21 been gone over already. However, as the witness said
22 that she did on occasion have input into policy, I felt
23 it was proper to pursue it. But I will not take it
24 further.
25 Two other areas to ask you about please. You have

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1 said there is no file or card -- I do not know what
2 the right word is -- in relation to any member of the
3 Royal Family.
4 A. That is correct.
5 Q. I want to ask you this: threat assessments, even on that
6 level, are provided on members of the Royal Family when
7 required by MI6, are they not?
8 A. No usually threat assessments are carried out by
9 the Security Service, but certainly -- and it has been
10 my experience through being overseas -- in a more
11 informal way, somebody might say in the Embassy or
12 the High Commission, "Oh, there is going to be
13 a forthcoming visit. Is there anything ..." --
14 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: "... is there anything about this
15 particular place that we ought to be aware of?"
16 A. Yes.
17 MR MANSFIELD: I appreciate that it may be done on a very
18 informal basis, but nevertheless there may be important
19 information. Are you aware that members of MI6 attend
20 Cabinet Office meetings from time to time in relation to
21 foreign visits by members of the Royal Family?
22 A. I am sorry, I do not know anything about that. It is
23 out of my area of expertise, I am afraid.
24 Q. So as far as you are concerned, there are no records of
25 any such meetings or the provision of advice, even on an

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1 informal basis?
2 A. No more than what I have already said in connection with
3 being overseas and things like that.
4 Q. Finally this, training. We have had some questions, but
5 I am asking you since you have been asked about
6 training. In 1997 and going back to 1993 and 1992,
7 the time when Mr Tomlinson, as you have indicated, had
8 his original training, was there a training manual?
9 A. We did not tend to have a composite manual as such, but
10 we had lots of sort of -- I do not know what you would
11 call them, but just things on subjects. Do you know
12 what I mean? So different lectures would be given and
13 different booklets would be handed out, papers and so
14 on.
15 Q. Was there one on the use of force or the threat of force
16 abroad in pursuit of certain objectives?
17 A. I have never come across anything like that.
18 Q. No. So nothing was ever said in a document to anyone
19 about the use of force?
20 A. No. Certainly to the best of my knowledge that is
21 something we have always kind of soaked up as a kind
22 of -- I cannot think of the word I am looking for now,
23 but, you know -- I do not recall there being a lecture,
24 "You will not go around killing people", but at the same
25 time there were always discussions about that from a

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1 kind of morality/ethics point of view.
2 Q. So there were discussions about that between the person
3 giving the lecture or the training session and those on
4 the course?
5 A. Yes, and I think anybody else that students would care
6 to ask. They come across a great many senior and junior
7 people and anybody -- they are quite at liberty to ask
8 what people's views are on that.
9 Q. Were the views actually rather blurred -- do you follow
10 what I am putting -- in other words there was not any
11 clear line being put out on this issue?
12 A. You mean other than those laid down by Parliament and
13 everything like that?
14 Q. Oh yes. I am talking about the soaking up. It is not
15 in any written training document; you said that you soak
16 it up. What did you soak up in these sessions?
17 A. Well, just the fact that we don't go around killing
18 people. It is simply not done.
19 Q. It is simply not done?
20 A. No.
21 Q. So if somebody starts to think about it and suggests
22 that it goes to the controllerate, that really would be
23 exceptional, would it?
24 A. You know, it has never happened in my time, other than
25 hearing about this. It is an unusual way of doing

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1 things -- you know, putting something forward like that
2 would be unusual, highly, highly unusual, within the
3 service. However, people are taught to think a little
4 bit outside the box rather than --
5 Q. Right. "Thinking laterally" it has been called.
6 A. Thinking laterally, okay.
7 Q. I want to end finally on this, that Sir Richard -- I was
8 just asked a moment ago about what had already been
9 asked of him -- Sir Richard was very clear about
10 the fact that there had been an investigation into
11 the Milosevic note. Can you explain how he could
12 possibly have thought that there had been an
13 investigation into how that note had been written when
14 there is not one?
15 A. I cannot obviously speak for Sir Richard but, as I said
16 earlier, the fact of the thing is that there were these
17 damage assessments, and I think after this amount of
18 time after the event, it would be very easy to get that
19 mixed up, but I am pretty certain if I were to sit down
20 with him and have a chat about it, we would probably
21 agree that there was no formal investigation as such;
22 it was all part of the damage assessment in connection
23 with the Tomlinson allegations.
24 MR MANSFIELD: Yes. Thank you.
25 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Mr Keen?

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1 Questions from MR KEEN
2 MR KEEN: Good afternoon, Miss X. My name is Richard Keen
3 and I appear as counsel on behalf of the parents of
4 the late Henri Paul.
5 Coming back to the evidence you gave this morning,
6 do I understand your evidence to be that if an officer
7 of MI6 wants something erased, they reach not for a
8 Walther PPK, but a bottle of Tippex?
9 A. Not exactly, no. The Tippexing out is actually
10 referring to the Tippexing out on the tally sheet here
11 in order really not to waste them. That sounds
12 ridiculous, but, one, not to waste them, and, two,
13 because, as you can see, it is a very clearly numbered
14 document, and so rather than -- there would be a gap.
15 If I did not Tippex it out, there would be a gap, so
16 therefore Tippex it out and use it again.
17 Q. When you say "Tippex it out", what you are doing in
18 a sense is corrupting the traceability of material in as
19 much as the existence of material is destroyed by this
20 process.
21 A. If something is just an idea that never comes to
22 fruition, yes, it will not remain necessarily on the
23 record.
24 Q. But it does because it ends up in a file which is headed
25 "The special ephemeral messages file".

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1 A. I think what was found in the special ephemeral document
2 file was actually an account of somebody writing
3 something or an account of a sort of -- in answer to an
4 allegation, somebody had obviously asked him what
5 happened there and he wrote it. But that was not
6 a formal -- if he had been asked formally perhaps to do
7 it, it would have appeared in a more formal way, sir.
8 Q. If something is ephemeral, it is deletable?
9 A. Yes, it is, yes.
10 Q. If something is deletable, it is therefore deniable?
11 A. It would depend on what you were talking about -- I am
12 sorry, it would depend on what counsel was talking
13 about.
14 Q. What I am talking about, Miss X, is the fact that
15 "ephemeral" is a synonym for "deniability" within the
16 Secret Intelligence Service.
17 A. The fact of the matter is that no plan, and certainly no
18 plan of the sort of enormity that we are talking about
19 here, could possibly have taken place within our service
20 without there being a piece of paper on it. It would
21 not be on an ephemeral document.
22 Q. It would not be on an ephemeral document?
23 A. No.
24 Q. So if it was not an ephemeral document, it would clearly
25 be deniable, wouldn't it?

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1 A. What I am saying is that it would be -- we would have to
2 plan it in some way. I can give you a small example.
3 This will sound ludicrous, but even from a financial
4 point of view there would have to be an audit trail of
5 different things.
6 Q. Was there an audit trail for Mr A's plan which has been
7 referred to as the "assassination of Milosevic"?
8 A. No, because it never got past the idea stage in any way.
9 It was absolutely considered a ridiculous idea.
10 Q. So "ephemeral" is a synonym for "deniability", isn't it?
11 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Mr Keen, we did have evidence
12 last week from Sir Richard Dearlove, and he
13 distinguished quite clearly between deniability outside
14 and deniability within the service, which was very
15 firmly not something that was ever countenanced.
16 MR KEEN: With respect, sir, he did not tell us anything
17 about a "Special ephemeral messages" file that contained
18 documentation pertaining to Mr A's plan for the
19 assassination of Milosevic or some other Yugoslavian
20 leader, so we don't know what his position would have
21 been on that. Had he told us about it, we could have
22 examined him about it.
23 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: I thought he had covered
24 the position.
25 MR KEEN: What you have told us so far, Miss X, if

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1 I understand your evidence, is that the Secret
2 Intelligence Service really do have documents containing
3 proposals for, amongst other things, an assassination
4 circulating around their offices without any record of
5 their existence, the most obvious example being Mr A's
6 proposal.
7 A. Yes, as I have said, but I am happy to say again, it did
8 not circulate around the office because it did not
9 actually become a formal document.
10 Q. So if it does not become a formal document, as you
11 describe it, no record of its existence can be found; is
12 that your evidence?
13 A. Yes, I think it is.
14 Q. All right. Now we know, of course, that
15 Richard Tomlinson was an agent of the Secret
16 Intelligence Service between 1991 and 1995.
17 A. He was an officer of the Secret Intelligence Service
18 within that period, yes.
19 Q. We also know that after he left and in 1996, in breach
20 of all obligations that he held and of the Official
21 Secrets Act, he made certain disclosures and put certain
22 matters into the public domain --
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. -- including reference to a proposal he had seen or
25 alleged he had seen while working in the Balkans section

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1 of the SIS pertaining to an assassination proposal.
2 We also know, of course, that following these
3 disclosures, he was convicted of breaches of the
4 Official Secrets Act and imprisoned in Belmarsh Prison
5 for some time.
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. Thereafter he went to France and we have heard that
8 again. In July 1998, it was he who contacted the then
9 French investigating magistrate to point out that
10 the details which had now been disclosed regarding
11 the crash in the Alma Tunnel bore, as he put it,
12 a remarkable similarity to a plan which he had seen
13 while in the Balkans section of the SIS.
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. So, just to be clear, the provenance of this allegation
16 regarding the Secret Intelligence Service was not
17 Mohamed Al Fayed or anyone connected to him, but in fact
18 someone who was connected to and had been for many years
19 an officer of the Secret Intelligence Service.
20 A. I am so sorry, I wonder if just that last bit --
21 I wonder if counsel would mind repeating the question at
22 the end there.
23 Q. Not at all.
24 A. Many thanks.
25 Q. The provenance of the allegation regarding the

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1 involvement of the Secret Intelligence Service was not
2 Mohamed Al Fayed or anyone connected to him, but in fact
3 someone who was connected to and had been for many years
4 an officer of the Secret Intelligence Service.
5 A. This is according to Tomlinson, yes.
6 Q. Indeed so.
7 A. Yes, absolutely.
8 Q. I am trying to find the fountain, the originating
9 source, if you like, of this allegation, and it comes
10 from a former officer of the Secret Intelligence
11 Service, does it not?
12 A. From a former member, yes.
13 Q. Now, Mr Tomlinson, when he described this plan,
14 explained that it referred to an individual who was of
15 interest to the Secret Intelligence Service. He said
16 it was Milosevic. The Secret Intelligence Service have
17 countered that by saying that it was in fact another
18 person in the then Yugoslavia.
19 A. Yes, it is referring to another person anyway, yes.
20 Q. Has that other person since been assassinated, Miss X?
21 A. I think that is probably edging closer to the area --
22 MR TAM: Sir, I have thought about that for a moment because
23 the "neither confirm nor deny" principle would apply
24 there as well.
25 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Yes.

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1 MR TAM: The name itself is sensitive. I think everyone
2 here recognises that. If questions are asked about what
3 has happened to that individual since, it could tend to
4 identify him.
5 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Yes.
6 MR KEEN: Well, pause before you answer this question,
7 Miss X, lest Mr Tam wishes to make a further objection.
8 I do not want you to come in with an answer that might
9 be under the auspices of "confirm or deny" or "not
10 confirm or deny".
11 Q. Given that the person who may or may not now be deceased
12 was apparently of interest to the Secret Intelligence
13 Service, it would be the case that there would be
14 a P file for that person, would it not?
15 A. Not necessarily, no.
16 Q. You say "not necessarily". According to the system that
17 you described, if the individual was already of interest
18 to the Secret Intelligence Service, there would be
19 a P file for them already, would there not?
20 A. The way the system works, until the person becomes of
21 specific interest -- so, for example, if I go back to
22 AN Other, AN Other is on a general file until they
23 become of particular interest, until we are actually
24 happy that they have passed all our tracing and all
25 the rest of it and we want to move on and then we would

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1 open -- when they are -- sorry, I am getting a little
2 tired -- of substantive interest, if they --
3 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Not everybody who is doing bad
4 things would necessarily have a P file on them?
5 A. No. No.
6 MR KEEN: Let me put it this way, Miss X: presumably Mr A,
7 an officer of the Secret Intelligence Service, would not
8 have put together a plan to assassinate somebody who was
9 not of interest to the Secret Intelligence Service,
10 would he?
11 A. I think it would depend on that word "interest".
12 Q. In general, he would not have done so, would he?
13 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: You might do better asking A
14 these questions.
15 MR KEEN: Possibly, sir, but we are concerned here with
16 record-keeping.
17 If I can come back to that point, Miss X. My point
18 is that according to what A has told us, the person who
19 was the intended victim of this proposal was of interest
20 to the Balkans section of the SIS. Now assuming that to
21 be the case, in all probability there would have been
22 a P file for that person if they were, as an individual,
23 of interest to SIS, would there not?
24 A. If they were of substantive interest, yes; intelligence
25 interest, yes.

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1 Q. Now, if in fact this proposal for assassination was not
2 strangled at birth, as suggested, and we see that there
3 are at least three copies --
4 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: You would expect to find it on
5 the P file.
6 MR KEEN: -- you would expected to find it on the P file.
7 Thank you, sir.
8 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: That is all right. That is your
9 question. I was just trying to get there a bit quicker.
10 MR KEEN: Therefore, as I move slowly in this gentle breeze
11 towards the conclusion, can I suggest that one obvious
12 place that should have been searched is the P file for
13 the intended victim of this assassination proposal?
14 A. Absolutely.
15 Q. We have not seen it yet, have we?
16 A. As I was saying earlier in the day, I am a little bit
17 hazy on this, but I do recall looking at both cards for
18 the individuals that we are talking about here. I would
19 need to go back and check again if there was a P file
20 for that person. Had there been a P file for that
21 person, I would have looked for the proposal on it.
22 Those were the kind of searches I was carrying out at
23 the time.
24 Q. If, in fact, the proposal had found itself referred to
25 on the P file of that individual, then it is a proposal

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1 that must have gone beyond the one room in which Mr A
2 was sitting. Would you agree?
3 A. If it now appears on that P file, yes, yes I do.
4 Q. Thank you.
5 Now, Mr Tomlinson also claimed that there had been
6 proposals for the assassination of other individuals put
7 forward within the Secret Intelligence Service. Again,
8 if that was right, you would expect --
9 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: I am trying to scratch my brain
10 to see whether I can remember this. I do not
11 immediately remember this. I see that Mr Burnett is
12 showing signs of surprise as well.
13 MR KEEN: He did make express reference to one leader. I do
14 not want to repeat the name until there is clear
15 confirmation, but I can bring it up. There is no
16 question of that in his evidence.
17 MR BURNETT: Sir, Mr Tomlinson's evidence is that whilst he
18 was in SIS, the proposal from A was the only one he ever
19 saw mooting assassination. He referred to another
20 instance which was alleged in newspapers after he left
21 SIS.
22 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: I think also Sir Richard dealt
23 with that --
24 MR BURNETT: He did, yes.
25 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: -- and it did not seem to have

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1 been the subject of any challenge.
2 MR BURNETT: It did not appear to be, but certainly
3 Mr Tomlinson was not suggesting that he had seen
4 anything other than this document whilst in SIS, so far
5 as my recollection is concerned anyway, which may not be
6 perfect.
7 MR KEEN: It is Day 69, sir, at page 24. He expressly
8 referred to an alleged plot to assassinate
9 Colonel Gaddafi.
10 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Yes, that is what I remember.
11 MR KEEN: He then went on to say that he read about this
12 after he left the service.
13 MR BURNETT: He read about it in the newspaper, didn't he
14 say?
15 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Yes.
16 MR KEEN: Miss X, all I wanted to ask is if there was
17 a P file for that individual and a proposal for an
18 assassination, presumably the P file would contain
19 a record of that proposal?
20 A. If something like that had ever existed, yes, it would
21 be on that file.
22 Q. So, again, that would be a simple way of checking
23 whether or not, in fact, at the relevant time,
24 the Secret Intelligence Service did advance such
25 proposals beyond the wild imaginings of Mr A?

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1 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: This is not an issue in these
2 inquests. We are not looking into newspaper reports
3 into what might or might not be going to happen to
4 Colonel Gaddafi, and we also have Sir Richard's evidence
5 on this.
6 MR KEEN: With respect, sir, Sir Richard's evidence was
7 that, as a matter of principle, the Secret Intelligence
8 Service would never contemplate such an action or
9 operation, and that was challenged by my learned friend,
10 Mr Mansfield, and the issue that arises is whether there
11 is in fact evidence to show that that in fact is
12 the case and that there have been occasions where such
13 operations have been contemplated by the Secret
14 Intelligence Service.
15 MR BURNETT: Maybe I shall waste time -- I am sorry if
16 I do -- but my recollection of Sir Richard's evidence,
17 which I do not have up in front of me at the moment, was
18 that he explained to the jury that following those
19 public allegations made in newspapers -- and I think he
20 attributed them to a former MI5 officer, there was a
21 police investigation --
22 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: I think we know who he was.
23 MR BURNETT: I am sure he named him.
24 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Yes.
25 MR BURNETT: -- there was a police investigation, and

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1 the police then consulted the CPS and the conclusions
2 were negative. I have a fairly vivid recollection of
3 Sir Richard indicating that he always knew that they
4 would be because he was the head of operations at the
5 time alleged and he knew there was nothing in it. So it
6 may well be that this witness cannot add anything to
7 that.
8 A. I cannot add anything to what you have already said
9 there.
10 MR BURNETT: It is at Day 73, pages 64 and 65.
11 MR KEEN: Given that there was an investigation of that
12 alleged conspiracy to murder, have you any explanation
13 as to why there wasn't a similar investigation in
14 respect of Mr A's proposal?
15 A. Only that Mr A's proposal, I do not think, ever really
16 got beyond being just an idea.
17 Q. Is an idea not sufficient?
18 A. An idea that does not become in any way substantive is
19 not recorded formally anywhere or anything like that and
20 is quashed right from the word go, no.
21 Q. And Tippexed out of the record?
22 A. That was a normal way of treating correspondence.
23 MR KEEN: Thank you, Miss X.
24 A. Thank you.
25 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Mr Croxford?

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1 Questions from MR CROXFORD
2 MR CROXFORD: Just a few questions on a single subject,
3 please, Miss X. My name is Ian Croxford. I am counsel
4 for the Ritz.
5 You gave some evidence when Mr Burnett was asking
6 you questions about training, and training involving
7 briefing with the special forces and, in particular,
8 about strobe lights or a sort of firework. I am not
9 going to ask you anything about the firework. Strobe
10 light, that would be pulses of lights from some light
11 source. I am not going to ask you anything about them.
12 I want to ask you about other devices. At that
13 time, when you were involved in the late 1980s and early
14 1990s, what about a device based upon a laser?
15 A. I am afraid I do not know anything about lasers at all.
16 Q. Let me put some suggestions to you. They will be very
17 quick --
18 MR TAM: Sir, if the witness has already indicated she does
19 not know anything about it, then it is really badgering
20 her to be trying to put specific examples.
21 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: We had better hear what they are
22 first, the questions.
23 MR CROXFORD: In my most avuncular fashion, I doubt I could
24 badger this witness.
25 Something called an "Outfit DEC", does it ring

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1 a bell?
2 A. Terribly sorry, it does not, no.
3 Q. Or a "Dazzle-sight LDS"?
4 A. No, sorry.
5 Q. A red laser or a green laser?
6 A. I am going to sound very thick again. I have heard of
7 the word "laser".
8 Q. Very well. We are going to be in competition, you, me,
9 the Coroner and Mr Mansfield before long, for being
10 antediluvian. I am not going to go any further down
11 lasers.
12 What about flashlights using xenon? Have you come
13 across those in the training?
14 A. I have certainly come across flashlights before.
15 I do not know the word that counsel is associating
16 with the ...
17 Q. Particularly bright xenon flashlights to obscure vision?
18 A. I certainly never came across anything like that, no.
19 MR CROXFORD: Sir, I do not think I can and I hope I have
20 not badgered the witness.
21 A. Thank you.
22 MR HORWELL: No, thank you.
23 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Mr Tam, any questions?
24 MR TAM: Just a few.
25 Questions from MR TAM

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1 MR TAM: I am Robin Tam and I am asking some questions on
2 behalf of SIS, and you will be pleased to know,
3 mercifully few at this end of the afternoon.
4 The first one I want to deal with with you is the
5 question of police investigation. You were asked by
6 Mr Keen about a police investigation into something
7 else. Is this something with which you deal in your
8 recent statement, your second statement? Do you have
9 that with you?
10 A. I certainly do.
11 Q. If you go to paragraph 12 on page 5 of that --
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. -- do you deal there with the question of an
14 investigation into the so-called Milosevic proposal?
15 A. Yes.
16 Q. Was that information that the Paget team had given you?
17 A. Yes. What happened was the Paget team actually asked
18 us -- in connection with the Milosevic proposal, they
19 decided that they thought it would probably be better to
20 contact the Crown Prosecution Service to see that --
21 even though this was only an idea, would there be
22 anything to -- should that person be prosecuted? In
23 fact, that was fine. We did not have to produce any
24 extra additional material for the CPS and they came back
25 and advised that there would be no further action. They

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1 could see no need for prosecution whatsoever.
2 Q. Thank you. The next thing I want to deal with with you
3 is the Paget team itself, just to get the chronology
4 right.
5 You were asked to start doing this job of
6 researching and then look looking after the Paget team
7 at the end of 2003. Is that right?
8 A. That is right.
9 Q. Because I think that at one stage you may have said
10 "1993" by accident; it was definitely 2003. Is that
11 right?
12 A. Yes. I am so sorry, it was at the end of December 2003,
13 to be absolutely precise.
14 Q. Just so that the jury can get a sense of how long it was
15 before the Paget team came in, can you remember how long
16 that was?
17 A. I cannot remember the exact day they came in, but
18 the letter was written in October 2004 --
19 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: You said end of 2004.
20 A. I think it was probably December.
21 MR TAM: So it was about a year later?
22 A. Yes, it was.
23 Q. By that stage, had you done a significant amount of work
24 already in preparation?
25 A. Yes, I had done a certain amount. To be perfectly

157

1 honest, although I had the allegations to go on, I had
2 never done this kind of thing before, so I was just
3 trying to do as much research as I possibly could that
4 might be of assistance when the police came in.
5 Q. The next thing I want to ask you about is this: you were
6 asked about there being a record of destruction of
7 a minute, if that were to take place.
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. Is a record kept of the destruction of any piece of
10 paper that is headed "Minute" or does it apply only to
11 a limited selection of them?
12 A. No, any substantive document -- and a minute would be
13 considered a substantive document unless it had "Please
14 treat as pink memo" written across the top of it -- then
15 there would be a record of that and there would be
16 a record of that destruction and there would be a reason
17 given for that destruction.
18 Q. Can you just clarify? What is the exact point at which
19 a minute becomes a substantive document that has to be
20 treated like that?
21 A. Once the registry or information management centre have
22 entered those details onto our central information
23 database.
24 Q. So if the minute is never entered onto the central
25 database by registry, is it necessary to have a record

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1 of the destruction of the document?
2 A. If it has never been entered, no. There is no need.
3 Q. Now I want to turn to a slightly different area of
4 record-keeping. That is the employment or personnel
5 records. There was one specific thing that you were
6 talking about in your evidence this morning. That is
7 personnel reports or annual reports on personnel. Now
8 can you recall the system that was in place in 1993 and
9 1994?
10 A. Pretty much, yes. It is the same system that we are
11 all ... that we all have within the service, yes.
12 Q. Is this supposed to happen every year, that a report is
13 done every year?
14 A. A substantive report every year, yes.
15 Q. Back in 1993/1994, can you tell us -- obviously I do not
16 want the details of contents of these things -- but what
17 was the process for it? How would the reporting system
18 start?
19 A. Well, hopefully you would have had a few meetings during
20 the year with your line manager, so that he could point
21 you in the right direction if you were not coming up to
22 scratch. Then, at the end of the year -- it depends.
23 Different people have a different way of doing it, but
24 mainly that person would sort of draft a report and then
25 hopefully hand it to you so that can you have a look at

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1 it and then you would be able to go back to your line
2 manager and comment on it with him. So that if you were
3 absolutely stupendous, there would not be much of
4 a problem, you would both sign it. If there were some
5 areas of conflict, then there are certain ways of
6 dealing with that.
7 Q. Now if there was something in the draft report that
8 the member of staff did not like and did not want in
9 their report, what could he do about that?
10 A. He could contest that with the line manager, and if he
11 came up with a good enough reason or -- between the two
12 of them -- hopefully between the two of them they would
13 decide, "Okay, fine, I am happy to leave that out".
14 Q. Is RJP1 available? Could we just have that up on the
15 screen, please?
16 We see there the front of a report which is for
17 the reporting year 1993 and then the annual review, very
18 top right-hand corner, 1994.
19 We can see, can we not -- I am not sure if it is
20 clear enough on the screen. What has happened is
21 someone has taken a printed copy where the printing said
22 "1992" and "1993" and they have written "1993" and
23 "1994" on it, so as not to waste the paper no doubt.
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. We can see there are spaces there for name and details

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1 of the member of staff. Then, further down, there are
2 details about the period to be covered and then there is
3 reference to the reporting officer and the
4 countersigning officer; is that right?
5 A. Yes, correct.
6 Q. The "reporting officer", is that the line manager?
7 A. Yes, the "reporting officer" is your immediate line
8 manager.
9 Q. Now, as it happens, we know that this is the report for
10 witness A for the reporting year 1993 and the precise
11 dates in fact we can see at the bottom of that page.
12 Now, the next few pages have a lot of redaction, but
13 just going to the second page, we can see there is space
14 there to describe the work plan, the job description,
15 the job purpose --
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. That sort of thing you can probably see in personnel
18 files of just about every company in the country, can
19 you not? Then the next page there is a space for job
20 analysis, and then, to the next page, "Objectives", and
21 then, at the bottom of that page, we can see, can we
22 not, that there is a part to be completed by
23 the reporting officer, in this case, witness H?
24 On the next page, there is guidance. Then the next
25 one, "Assessment of professional qualifications and

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1 skills". Then there are two more pages that are
2 completely redacted. I am sorry to go through this page
3 by page, but otherwise we will lose track of where we
4 are.
5 Then, at the top of the next page, there is
6 "Outstanding contributions", "Overall performance", and
7 then, on the next page, top of the next page, "Summary".
8 A. They are rather lengthy.
9 Q. We see the summary there. All of that page is redacted
10 and the top half of the next page as well. "Fitness for
11 promotion" and so on, and then, at the bottom of that
12 page, "To be completed by member of staff reported on".
13 Is that an opportunity for the employee to comment on
14 the report so far?
15 A. Yes.
16 Q. Then, at the bottom of the page, there is a place for
17 the member of staff to sign. We see "[witness A]"
18 there.
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. And then the date which we see is at the end of 1993.
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. Up to this point, with the system that was in place at
23 that time, would the employee have been able to see
24 everything that was on the report up to there?
25 A. Yes, as far as -- so now you have the reporting officer

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1 and the witness A's opportunity to comment on it. Yes,
2 they would.
3 Q. Let's go over to the top of the next page. Where it
4 says "Sections K and L for reporting and countersigning,
5 officers' use only", with the system that was in place
6 at the time, was the rest of the report from here
7 onwards shown to the employee or would that have been
8 kept confidential?
9 A. No, that could have been kept confidential.
10 Q. We see that the first item there is "Special factors",
11 and I do not know if you are able to read it from this
12 copy. There is the printed words "Did subject contest
13 any part of the report? If so, please elaborate".
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. Now who would that be completed by?
16 A. That bit could have been completed by either the
17 reporting officer or the countersigning officer, and in
18 this instance I believe that this was the reporting
19 officer who wrote this, I think, in which case that
20 would be witness H.
21 Q. The handwriting is a bit difficult to read there. Can
22 we go to the next page in the exhibit which, if it is
23 the same as mine, I hope is a typed version of that.
24 We see there K2, "Did the subject contest any part
25 of the report? If so, please elaborate". The typed-up

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1 version of the handwriting says:
2 "Yes, he contested a passage in my original summary
3 questioning his judgment in submitting what I regarded
4 as an unethical and impractical proposal to C/CEE.
5 He maintains he was encouraged to do so. I have
6 discussed this with C/CEE, whose guidance to [witness A]
7 was designed simply to establish what exactly he was
8 driving at. The proposal was rejected summarily. Being
9 very generous with the benefit of the doubt, I have
10 removed the passage in my original summary."
11 Do you see that?
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. If we go over to the next page, can we see at the very
14 bottom there is some information there?
15 "This officer has served under me for the past one
16 year and five months."
17 The signature there is witness H and the date is
18 13th January 1994, which is presumably the date on which
19 he wrote that.
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. If you go over then to the next page, do we see that
22 that says "Countersigning officer's report"?
23 A. Yes. I cannot quite read it, but yes.
24 Q. Can you read it?
25 A. Just about.

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1 Q. Let me just identify that. This is for the next person
2 up in the chain, isn't it?
3 A. Yes, it is.
4 Q. We will see what is in the italics when we go back to
5 the typed version. But we can see that that officer has
6 written something in handwriting, some of which is
7 redacted, but some of which is not. If we go to the
8 next page, please, can we see there in the middle of the
9 page that -- again there is printed stuff:
10 "This officer has served under for the past one year
11 and [something] months."
12 Then there is the signature of witness E and
13 the post C/CEE there and the date of 21st January 1994.
14 Can we go back two pages or three pages, back to
15 that typed page?
16 Do you see, "Countersigning officer's report
17 comments", and now we can see this typed out more
18 clearly:
19 "Indicate how well you know the subject of this
20 report, how much you see of the person's work and how
21 far you can confirm the comments and ratings given.
22 Record any areas of disagreement that may remain,
23 perhaps after discussion with the reporting officer.
24 Add any further comments."
25 The typed up version of the manuscript that is not

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1 redacted says:
2 "Witness A brought to the job [the designation was
3 given] an operational mind bristling with ideas, some
4 brilliant, some preposterous."
5 Then there is a reference to "K2", which was
6 the line manager's comments that we saw earlier. Is
7 that right?
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. So these parts of the report, would they have been seen
10 by witness A at the time under the system that was then
11 in force?
12 A. Is it possible to move that up a little? I do not think
13 actually he would have seen either of these comments at
14 all.
15 Q. That is what I wanted to establish. Thank you.
16 A. I would like to just add we have changed that. We no
17 longer use that system. Everybody gets to see --
18 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: It is all open now.
19 A. It is all open now, thank goodness.
20 MR TAM: Yes, and I am sure that there will probably be
21 members of the jury who are familiar with how things are
22 generally done nowadays.
23 I just want to move to one last topic. You have
24 been asked a lot of questions, this morning and this
25 afternoon, which were intended to see whether

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1 information could be hidden within SIS so that it
2 couldn't be found --
3 A. I am sorry to be really rude and interrupt, but is there
4 any chance of a little bit of quiet down in this corner
5 because I cannot really concentrate on the question.
6 MR KEEN: I apologise.
7 A. I am so sorry. Thank you very much indeed.
8 MR TAM: Let me start again. You were asked a lot of
9 questions this morning and this afternoon which were
10 designed to see whether or not information could be
11 hidden inside SIS so that it could not be found.
12 Now, the vast majority of SIS's work -- I do not
13 think it is any secret -- is to collect intelligence,
14 isn't it?
15 A. That is correct.
16 Q. "Intelligence" is just a fancy word really for
17 information, getting information from all sorts of
18 different sources?
19 A. Yes, that is one way of putting it, yes.
20 Q. Of course the information that SIS gets, sometimes
21 a piece of information on its own might not make very
22 much sense; would that be fair?
23 A. Often that is the case, yes.
24 Q. Then, to adopt respectfully the Coroner's phrase from
25 this morning, sometimes you have to put two and two

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1 together to try to find out what is going on?
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. Is that part of SIS's function as well?
4 A. Trying to put the pieces together, yes, certainly it is.
5 Q. Now the systems for handling information within SIS,
6 have they been designed to try to help SIS's work?
7 A. Sometimes it might not come across that way when you are
8 trying to do this, but yes, certainly they were designed
9 to help officers, both in the field and both in London.
10 Q. And back at head office?
11 A. Back at head office, yes.
12 Q. If it is difficult to find out what information SIS
13 already has, does that make the intelligence officer's
14 job more difficult?
15 A. Is the question: if the information is quite hard to
16 find --
17 Q. Yes.
18 A. -- does that make it -- oh God, absolutely. The whole
19 thing is that -- that is why, for example, when you are
20 looking for dogs and Labradors, you know, the system in
21 place makes it as easy as possible to find as much as
22 possible on that subject. Where I mean it makes it
23 difficult is it just gives you a heck of a lot more to
24 read, but yes, they are very wide searches and they are
25 set up in that way to facilitate our work.

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1 Q. When you were looking to see whether or not SIS had any
2 information about the individuals whose names have been
3 gone through about the Ritz Hotel and so on and so
4 forth, were you simply accessing the normal systems that
5 SIS has, albeit with God's access so that you could get
6 everything?
7 A. Yes, I was, yes.
8 Q. Do you have any doubt yourself about whether there is
9 information lurking in SIS's systems that you have just
10 overlooked despite the fact that you have done all of
11 these searches?
12 A. I am sure I am able to say this: I am absolutely
13 100 per cent certain that there is nothing, absolutely
14 nothing.
15 MR TAM: Thank you very much, Miss X. That is all I have to
16 ask.
17 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Mr Burnett?
18 MR BURNETT: No, thank you, sir.
19 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Thank you very much. That is all
20 we require of you. We are very grateful to you. You
21 have spent a long time giving evidence and I dare say
22 that giving evidence in court is not one of the things
23 in your job description that you were expected to have
24 to do. We are very grateful to you.
25 A. Thank you very much.

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1 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: We will have our break now. We
2 have two witnesses to come, one of whom has to get away
3 this evening.
4 MR BURNETT: Yes, sir, we have A and F.
5 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: It is F that has to get away.
6 MR BURNETT: F cannot be here beyond today. So, sir,
7 subject to everyone's indulgence, it is, I hope,
8 feasible to think that we can go as swiftly as is
9 consistent with doing justice to their evidence --
10 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Logically A should come before F.
11 MR BURNETT: Well, yes, sir, because F is A's secretary and
12 her evidence is simply what happened to the documents,
13 but it would be logical to have A first.
14 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: I am going to make some inquiries
15 as to how late the jury can sit today.
16 Mr Mansfield, are you going to be long with A?
17 MR MANSFIELD: Nothing like as long as this morning, but
18 there are some obvious questions. I have already
19 indicated to my friend 40 minutes maximum I hope.
20 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: We should finish them both this
21 afternoon without undue difficulty, providing we can sit
22 a little bit longer than 4.30.
23 (3.12 pm)
24 (A short break)
25 (3.28 pm)

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1 (Jury present)
2 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: I call next witness A.
3 WITNESS A (sworn)
4 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Would you prefer to sit down?
5 A. Thank you.
6 Questions from MR BURNETT
7 MR BURNETT: My name is Ian Burnett. I shall ask you
8 questions first on behalf of the Coroner and thereafter
9 you will be asked questions by others representing
10 interested persons here.
11 You are witness A and your real name has been made
12 available to the Coroner. That is right, isn't it?
13 A. Yes, thank you.
14 Q. Witness A, we have heard quite a lot about you over
15 the last few days because it is right, isn't it, that
16 you were the author of a proposal in the early 1990s
17 which mooted the possibility of an assassination?
18 A. I wrote a contingency proposal.
19 Q. Now we will come back to the detail of that in a moment,
20 if we may, but can I please start with one or two
21 background matters?
22 Is it right that between 1991 and 1993 you were
23 the head of what was known as the "Balkan target team"?
24 A. It was not officially known as that, but that was my
25 job, yes.

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1 Q. The use of the word "target" might be thought ambiguous.
2 What, in fact, did that team do?
3 A. What it did, it did research on areas where we believed
4 we needed to know more and particularly possible sources
5 of intelligence that we would like to obtain.
6 Q. That was in the context of the Balkan crisis which had
7 really blown up in the summer of 1991, I think.
8 A. Exactly.
9 Q. The Balkan crisis engulfed what had been the Republic of
10 Yugoslavia?
11 A. That is right.
12 Q. I am sure, as everyone here will know, there were
13 various wars, massacres and other outrages that spread
14 over a number of years and involved Bosnia, Serbia and
15 Kosovo, as well as other parts of what was the Republic
16 of Yugoslavia.
17 A. My recollection of the history is that Croatia and
18 Slovenia went separate from the Republic of Yugoslavia
19 in 1991, and when Bosnia thought about doing the same,
20 then it started getting violent. That was in 1992,
21 I think.
22 Q. It is right, isn't it, that Mr Milosevic, Slobodan
23 Milosevic, was the President of Serbia at that time.
24 A. That is my recollection.
25 Q. Now the group in which you worked was concerned not only

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1 with Serbia, is that right?
2 A. It was concerned with all of the original Yugoslav
3 Federation, including Croatia and Slovenia and so on.
4 Q. Did a time come, in the second part of 1992, when, as
5 a result of two other officers joining your group, you
6 were able to devote more time and concentrate on Serbian
7 issues?
8 A. That is right, sir. When those two people arrived, it
9 gave me more time to specialise on Serbia, which was
10 considered the prime target at that time.
11 Q. Within your group or the Balkans section, did you also
12 have Richard Tomlinson?
13 A. No. Mr Tomlinson was what you could call a "UK
14 operations officer", so he belonged to a different
15 section within the same regional command, the same
16 larger regional command, but he had a different line
17 manager from my line manager and I had no line
18 management relationship with him. But I did work very
19 closely with him, yes.
20 Q. It is right, isn't it, if I can take you forward some
21 years, that you became aware, after a draft of
22 Mr Tomlinson's book had been delivered up to the Foreign
23 Office, that he had named you in his draft and, in
24 particular, in connection with a proposal for
25 assassination?

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1 A. That is right, sir. I was serving abroad at the time,
2 so this came as a complete surprise to me, but
3 I received a message to the effect that there had been
4 some issue concerning an officer who was disclosing
5 information and then I think I received a written
6 request for me to give some kind of damage assessment,
7 provisional damage assessment, which I did from
8 the place where I was then posted.
9 Q. Now when his book was finally published, which was a few
10 years later, he gives an account of his recollection of
11 events, but he uses a pseudonym to describe you. That
12 is right, isn't it?
13 A. That is my understanding, yes.
14 Q. Now, in connection with these events, you made
15 a statement to Metropolitan Police officers on
16 10th January 2005. Is that right?
17 A. That is right.
18 Q. A three-page statement which I think you have in front
19 of you?
20 A. I do, sir.
21 Q. In addition, did you write a four-page minute or
22 memorandum setting out your recollections of events some
23 years before, that is to say in 1998, after matters went
24 into the public domain through newspaper articles both
25 here and in France?

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1 A. That is right, sir. I have it in front of me as well,
2 if that is okay.
3 Q. So you have both accounts?
4 A. I have both here.
5 Q. The proposal that was made is located by Mr Tomlinson in
6 the summer of 1992, but I think you are fairly confident
7 that it was later; that is to say, in the spring of
8 1993.
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. Is that right?
11 A. Yes, that is right.
12 Q. You explain that there are two particular reasons for
13 that. Looking particularly at page 2 of the statement
14 you made to the Metropolitan Police officers, the first
15 is that you visited Belgrade in February 1993 and you
16 believe it came thereafter. Is that right?
17 A. That is right. I remember making the trip to Belgrade
18 because it was at the time when sanctions had bit in.
19 You could not actually fly direct into Belgrade anymore.
20 So I remember arriving I think in Budapest and driving
21 from there. So that kind of helps date it.
22 Q. The second thing is that the context of the proposal
23 that you made included what had happened in elections at
24 the end of 1992 in Serbia. Is that right?
25 A. Yes, I cannot remember the exact time of the elections,

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1 but I know it was in connection with the elections that
2 the idea of writing this proposal came to my mind.
3 Q. I am not sure whether you were in court when Miss X gave
4 her evidence --
5 A. I was not.
6 Q. -- but we looked at your annual report, two extracts
7 from it, written right at the end of 1993 and the
8 beginning of 1994, which makes reference to these
9 events. So is that something else which helps confirm
10 your memory that it was indeed 1993?
11 A. I believe in that instance the report covered the period
12 between December 1992 and August or September 1993. So
13 that would date it almost certainly in the spring of
14 1993.
15 Q. As I say, we will look in detail at the proposal that
16 you made, but can I ask you a fairly straightforward but
17 important question? Other than the proposal that you
18 are going to describe to us, have you ever in your time
19 with SIS made any other proposal to assassinate anyone?
20 A. Absolutely no.
21 Q. Mr Tomlinson links you to this proposal explicitly in
22 his text and, as you know, he links it to Mr Milosevic.
23 Does it follow that you have never made any proposal to
24 assassinate Mr Milosevic?
25 A. It does follow because, as I am sure we are going to go

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1 into, the proposal that I put forward related to an
2 individual other than Mr Milosevic.
3 Q. All right. Now let me take you to some of the detail
4 about it. I am going to do so primarily by reference to
5 the four-page minute or memorandum that you wrote in
6 1998. You called that "The 'Milosevic assassination
7 plot', the real story".
8 A. Yes, I did.
9 Q. This was written for internal consumption in SIS/MI6?
10 A. It was, sir.
11 Q. You did not write it ever thinking that it would see
12 the light of day, still less be the subject of debate
13 and questioning in a court of law?
14 A. It never occurred to me, sir, no.
15 Q. The language you use is, if I may say so, not
16 necessarily the language of court statements, but it is
17 none the worse for that.
18 At the time you wrote it, in the autumn of 1998, are
19 you relatively confident that your recollection was as
20 good as we are ever going to have it?
21 A. On most. There are always details about which you are
22 never clear because it is remembering something that
23 took place some time ago. If you want me to highlight
24 areas where in fact I am uncertain, I am happy to do so
25 now if that would help.

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1 Q. Shall we do so as we go through it? I will start with
2 a bit of background, if I may.
3 You say that in the early part of 1993 you were
4 becoming seriously worried about the situation in
5 the former Republic of Yugoslavia and you mention, in
6 particular, mass killings in Bosnia and some political
7 disarray in Serbia and the ascendancy or the increasing
8 prominence of paramilitary and extreme nationalist
9 politicians like -- and you mention someone called,
10 Arkan. So that was the background.
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. Are we right in thinking then that the massacres and
13 mass killings, which of course became notorious as
14 the 1990s continued, were already on your radar at SIS
15 and no doubt on other radar elsewhere?
16 A. Absolutely they were, yes.
17 Q. And a paramilitary leader like Arkan you mention. Who
18 was he and what was he about?
19 A. As I remember, he was a criminal who was an extreme
20 right-wing terrorist. So I think he was a kind of
21 racketeer, but also was exploiting radical Serb
22 nationalist feeling and I am pretty sure was involved in
23 atrocities and war crimes and so on.
24 Q. The massacres which were going on and which you feared,
25 were these massacres, by people who would describe

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1 themselves as "Serbian", of the Muslim population?
2 A. Unfortunately, there were -- well, there were killings
3 by all sides because it was unfortunately inter-ethnic
4 violence, but certainly the worst of the violence was
5 being perpetrated, as I recall, by Serbian nationalists.
6 Q. One of the extreme nationalist leaders was the object of
7 your proposal, is that right?
8 A. That is correct.
9 Q. Did you consider that there was a danger that Milosevic
10 would be swept aside and more extreme people come to
11 power and prominence in Serbia? Was that your concern?
12 A. That was my concern, that Milosevic might be overthrown
13 by violence or by the elections that I mentioned were
14 around that time.
15 Q. What was the particular fear that you had that would
16 result in the event that that type of political
17 development occurred?
18 A. From what I could see, sir, the extreme Serbian radical
19 nationalists were advocating what was at the time called
20 "ethnic cleansing", which in fact was approximating to
21 genocide in effect, if not in theory. Therefore there
22 would be mass killings and violence primarily
23 perpetrated against the Bosnian Muslim communities.
24 Q. As a result of that fear, what thought occurred to you?
25 A. The thought occurred to me that there could be

179

1 a responsibility on us to explore whether we should have
2 a plan in place in the event of this radical person,
3 this leader, coming to power in Serbia; in fact, in
4 the FRY, former Republic of Yugoslavia.
5 Q. Did your thinking then extend to your possibility of
6 a contingency plan to assassinate the extreme
7 nationalist politician to whom you have referred, but
8 whose name we don't have?
9 A. That is right, sir. That is what my proposal was about.
10 Q. Before committing your proposal to writing, did you
11 raise it informally face to face with anybody?
12 A. I did, sir. I did not know at the time what to do with
13 this idea that I had had, so I thought the best thing
14 was to approach witness E, who was head of the overall
15 regional command, and seek his advice on what to do.
16 Q. Did you do that after a meeting of the controllerate
17 that took place you think in March or April?
18 A. That is what I did, sir, yes.
19 Q. In your memorandum written in 1998, you suggest that you
20 had a private word with him and you describe that as
21 a couple of minutes, "two minutes, outlining my plan" in
22 your more recent statement. Is that the sense of what
23 occurred?
24 A. It was a very brief conversation after the end of a more
25 general meeting that witness E had hosted.

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1 Q. What was his immediate reaction?
2 A. He said "Put it down on a piece of paper", and it seemed
3 to me that his reaction was possibly puzzled, possibly
4 non-committal, possibly curious. That is how I read
5 a very brief exchange, but he did tell me to put it down
6 on a piece of paper.
7 Q. You are aware, are you not, that witness E does not
8 appear to have any recollection of the events at all.
9 A. Right.
10 Q. But nonetheless you have a clear memory of talking to
11 him in that sense?
12 A. I am absolutely sure that I did have a conversation with
13 him, yes.
14 Q. Is it as a result of that that you committed your idea
15 to paper?
16 A. I did, sir, yes.
17 Q. Now we have spent quite a lot of time and I suspect
18 we could spend a lifetime exploring precisely what type
19 of bit of paper it eventually was written on. But can
20 I leave aside the technical descriptions with you and
21 simply get from you exactly what happened? First of
22 all, did you write out the document in draft first, by
23 hand?
24 A. I am pretty sure that that was always the procedure,
25 that I would write it in my terrible handwriting and

181

1 then my PA would type it up.
2 Q. Now, your PA we know as witness F, from whom we are
3 going to be hearing. Do you remember that she did type
4 it up?
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. You say in your memorandum:
7 "This I did I think on a white treat-as-pink
8 document."
9 What does that mean?
10 A. There were two types of document which I am sure you
11 have heard a lot about already. One is a pink document
12 which is called a "memorandum", which if I remember
13 correctly is a temporary document and had something on
14 it saying "not to be filed".
15 A white minute is a more formal document. And
16 I have to say that this is a point where my recollection
17 has changed because I was convinced for years that
18 it was a pink document that I had authored and I can
19 explain why I thought that if you want. But having seen
20 witness F's statement, I am now pretty sure I was wrong,
21 and if she remembers it as being a white document,
22 a minute, then she was correct.
23 Q. All right. Well others may explore that further with
24 you. It was addressed to E, was it?
25 A. Yes.

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1 Q. Now E was not your immediate line manager. Your
2 immediate line manager was H, was it not?
3 A. He was.
4 Q. Was it also addressed to him as well?
5 A. It was not.
6 Q. Any reason for that?
7 A. I am afraid I had a high opinion of H as a manager and
8 as a budget manager and as an administrator and he was
9 a good leader on those sides; he was not a good leader
10 in the operational sense. That was my belief at the
11 time. I believed that therefore I would get a more
12 positive response if I went to witness E. Also
13 witness E was more senior.
14 Q. So it was addressed to witness E. Now in both your
15 statement and also the memorandum that you wrote, you
16 suggest that you believe that it might have been or
17 it is possible that it was copied to someone we know as
18 witness G, but you cannot recall for sure.
19 A. That is correct. I have two certainties: one is that
20 it was definitely addressed for action to witness E.
21 Two is that I definitely excluded witness H. I think
22 that I might have included witness G as a copy
23 addressee.
24 Q. But you are not certain about that and you don't appear
25 to have been sure about it, even in 1998?

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1 A. No, I have never been sure about that.
2 Q. Because, again, I am sure you know that witness G has no
3 recollection of seeing it and thinks he would remember
4 if he had seen it, given its rather striking nature.
5 A. Indeed so.
6 Q. The memorandum end up being more than a page long, you
7 believe. Is that right?
8 A. Yes. My memory has always been that it went on to two
9 sides and went about halfway down the second side.
10 Q. You summarised your anxieties about the political
11 position in the former Republic of Yugoslavia and you
12 drew an analogy with Germany before the Second World
13 War, I believe. Is that right?
14 A. Yes, I think -- as you see in paragraph 3 here,
15 the analogy was the year before Hitler came to power,
16 which of course is 1933. As it seemed to me that
17 we might be in the months running up to this extreme
18 radical nationalist politician taking power, it seemed
19 to me there might be an analogy with 1932 in Germany.
20 So the question I was posing is whether we should have
21 a plan to take action before the Hitler option actually
22 took place.
23 Q. Did you, within the plan, which you describe as
24 a "contingency plan", outline in any way how the plan
25 might be put into effect?

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1 A. No, sir, and I need to clarify that it was a proposal
2 that there be a contingency plan. I did outline
3 the bare bones of what might be in any contingency plan,
4 but since I do not have any military or other special
5 knowledge and had none whatsoever in 1993, I only
6 outlined what might be options to be considered in
7 a contingency plan. What I wrote was a proposal for
8 a contingency plan, sir.
9 Q. The options that you adverted to were what?
10 A. As I remember, they were either using dissidents who
11 were opposed to these radical Serbian groups inside
12 the Republic of Yugoslavia to take action against this
13 nationalist leader or to use UK options.
14 Q. Which would be --
15 A. Military.
16 Q. Special forces of some sort?
17 A. Military options.
18 Q. Yes. The thing was typed up by F and then, physically,
19 what happened to it as best as you can remember? I am
20 sure that nobody will expect you to remember the precise
21 detail, but was E in the same room as you or another
22 room? How would it have got to E?
23 A. First of all, F was in a different room from me, just
24 over the corridor, so she typed it over there in her own
25 room. She would have -- I don't have a clear

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1 recollection of this, but she would have shown the typed
2 version of the memo or minute for me to sign and
3 indicate that it was correct, which I would have done
4 so.
5 Then what happened after that I do not know because
6 she would have either walked it to the bosses, that is
7 witness E, who was in a third separate room, I believe,
8 on the same corridor. But I do not know how it
9 physically got to witness E in his own office.
10 Q. Now, having got to E, what then happened?
11 A. Well, what I recollect is witness H coming to see me in
12 my room and saying that he had understood that I had
13 written a minute or memorandum I think behind his back
14 and asked what I thought I was doing and that it had
15 caused a stir and that an order had gone out for the
16 document to be destroyed.
17 Q. Did you have any direct discussion with E about it after
18 E had seen it?
19 A. No, and I actually never -- I recollect never having
20 a conversation with E about it apart from that precursor
21 two-minute conversation that took place before I wrote
22 it.
23 Q. Was your understanding of what happened to the document,
24 what steps were to be taken I mean in respect of it,
25 entirely derived from conversations with H?

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1 A. That is correct, sir.
2 Q. Do you know from your own knowledge then whether
3 the content of your proposal had gained a wider
4 circulation within SIS?
5 A. I do not know. I think I gained the impression from
6 when I spoke to witness H that it had -- the minute or
7 knowledge of the minute had spread to the 10th floor,
8 which was the policy floor of the building.
9 Q. So that was something you think H told you or led you to
10 believe?
11 A. I think I got that from H, yes.
12 Q. So H now tells you that the proposal is out of the
13 question or whatever phrase he used -- perhaps more
14 colourful -- and that the thing is to be destroyed?
15 A. That is right.
16 Q. Now do you know what happened to the copy that had gone
17 to E? Do you actually know what happened or do you just
18 assume it was destroyed?
19 A. I will tell you my knowledge of copies of this document
20 since it is so important. There was a master copy.
21 Whether it was a memorandum or a minute, there was
22 a master copy that would have gone to witness E. I took
23 my own copy of it, which I kept. Those are the only two
24 copies that I am aware of.
25 I was given to understand, I think from witness H,

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1 that the master copy that was sent to witness E was
2 destroyed and expunged from the record, and I think, as
3 I state here, I held onto a copy for my own purposes for
4 a few weeks after that.
5 Q. Now we have heard detailed evidence about how documents
6 become formally registered within SIS. There is
7 certainly a suggestion that because this was walked to E
8 and then was squashed pretty much immediately, that it
9 never got as far as being formally registered in the
10 documents management section. Are you able to help with
11 that or not?
12 A. Unfortunately I am not, no. I did not deal with that.
13 Q. You simply don't know?
14 A. No.
15 Q. So E's copy, as far as you are aware, has been
16 destroyed. What did you do with your copy?
17 A. I kept it in an envelope in my cupboard for a few weeks,
18 which of course was a secure locked cupboard.
19 Q. Why did you keep it, knowing that the decision had been
20 made to destroy it, to get rid of it?
21 A. Because it seemed to me that it was an important
22 proposal. It was something that I cared about, and it
23 seemed to me that the context in which I had written it
24 was this guy coming to power in Yugoslavia, and
25 I thought if what I had feared did take place and this

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1 guy did come to power, then there might be a need for
2 this thing.
3 Q. Now the question arises and it is really a very simple
4 one: if the whole ethos of SIS was against using
5 assassination, how on earth did you come to make the
6 proposal in the first place?
7 A. It is true that the ethos of the service was against
8 assassination, it is true that whenever you spoke to an
9 experienced officer, then they would say that that is
10 against the service's policy. The reason why
11 I considered it was because I had been brought up and
12 trained in a service that dealt with peaceful cold war,
13 if I can use the phrase, spy games.
14 Suddenly here I am confronted by a situation where
15 we are dealing with a bloody civil war in the centre of
16 Europe, where tens of thousands of innocent people are
17 being killed. So it seemed to me appropriate that
18 we should at least revisit that dictum of the services
19 and see if we felt obliged to revise it in an
20 exceptional case.
21 Q. The time came when you did destroy your document. Do
22 you actually remember doing that?
23 A. I remember doing it. I don't remember exactly when, but
24 it would have been later in 1993 because I left the
25 section in the summer of 1993, sir.

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1 Q. In the meantime, did you show it to Mr Tomlinson?
2 A. My recollection is that I showed it to Mr Tomlinson very
3 shortly after I had written it and after I had had my
4 chastening conversation with witness H.
5 Q. What was Mr Tomlinson's reaction at the time?
6 A. As I recall, he read it, he did not say a lot. He was
7 interested, he seemed non-committally sympathetic.
8 I want to make sure that is not considered too strong.
9 He did not dismiss it. He thought it was an interesting
10 proposal.
11 Q. You are aware, are you not, of the account that
12 Mr Tomlinson gives of the content of the proposal?
13 I would like to ask you to comment on a number of those,
14 if I may.
15 It may be helpful if you have in front of you your
16 1998 memorandum and particularly the bottom of page 2
17 and picking it up over to page 3. It might be helpful
18 to have some of this up on the screen. Do you have it
19 available, Mr Foley?
20 You have a section in this headed "Now to deal with
21 specific lies in Tomlinson's paper". The first one is
22 simply "Milosevic" and you said this:
23 "Anyone can make a mistake? I wonder. It seems to
24 me unlikely that Tomlinson could have paid such close
25 attention to the memo and yet confused the targets. It

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1 seems to me far more likely that he is being mischievous
2 as there is far more mileage in an SIS plot to kill
3 a president than in a possible contingency plan to kill
4 someone who might become more powerful but in 1993 was,
5 and remains, unknown to the public at large."
6 Did your paper, memorandum, whatever we call it,
7 refer to Milosevic at all?
8 A. It may have done in the opening bit about the politics
9 of Yugoslavia at that time. Obviously the title did not
10 refer to him and the proposal itself dealt very fairly
11 and squarely with one individual who was not
12 Mr Milosevic.
13 Q. Did the title of the document refer to the person to
14 whom you were referring?
15 A. I am afraid I cannot remember that, sir.
16 Q. Can you think of any possible explanation for how one
17 might mistake the object of the proposal and mix up
18 the man you are describing and Mr Milosevic?
19 A. Well, I do not want to speculate about why it was that
20 Mr Tomlinson made the mistake and I am sure he has been
21 asked that. It is not for me to say. But they were
22 very different people and it would seem to me very odd
23 for anybody working on Yugoslavia in 1993, for Her
24 Majesty's Government, not to know that at that time
25 Mr Milosevic was central to the British Government's

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1 attempts to bring peace to the former Republic of
2 Yugoslavia. So it would have been a bizarre proposal
3 from me and it would have been a strange mistake for
4 Mr Tomlinson to have made, but he may have made it.
5 I do not know.
6 Q. Was Milosevic central not only to British policy, but
7 also to American policy, in trying to bring peace to
8 that region?
9 A. To be honest, sir, I do not remember very much about US
10 policy. I think they were, at that point, standing back
11 and letting the European Union see if they could sort it
12 out. But I think a senior American diplomat, Mr Vance,
13 was involved in the attempt to get a settlement for
14 Bosnia. So that would have been the US interest in it.
15 But the US did not have a forward policy on Yugoslavia
16 at that point in time.
17 Q. I am trying to dredge my memory of the people of the
18 day. I think Cyrus Vance was the Secretary of State,
19 wasn't he?
20 A. I think he had been the Secretary of State under
21 President Carter, and this would have been Mr Clinton or
22 the first Mr Bush's time.
23 Q. So he was an American representative involved?
24 A. Yes, he was a senior representative and he was working
25 with Lord Owen.

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1 Q. The way you put it in the paper is:
2 "Only a complete idiot would have thought it somehow
3 in his country's interest to assassinate a leader during
4 peace talks sponsored by one's country, ie I would have
5 had to get a submission through the FCO suggesting that
6 we kill a leader identified at that time by FCO, Owen
7 [that is Lord Owen], Vance [that is Cyrus Vance] as the
8 only man in the Balkans with the smack to deliver
9 a possible peace deal."
10 So is the point that you are making that it would
11 have been completely irrational to contemplate doing
12 anything adverse to Milosevic given the hopes that
13 people had invested in him at the time?
14 A. Yes, it would have just been completely absurd.
15 The whole policy of HMG at that time -- and this can be
16 checked from looking at the diplomatic negotiations at
17 the time -- was to try to work with Milosevic. There
18 was a belief, which may well have been misfounded, but
19 it was a genuine belief underpinning British philosophy
20 that Milosevic could secure a peace deal in Yugoslavia
21 by using his influence over Karadzic, who was the guy
22 that was in charge of the Bosnian Serbs who were behind
23 a lot of the trouble there. So to take Milosevic out of
24 the equation in 1993 would be absolutely absurd.
25 Q. You mention in paragraph B, which we have up on the

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1 screen at the moment, the third suggested proposal that
2 Mr Tomlinson attributes to you, that is to say
3 the staged car crash in a tunnel during the peace talks.
4 N