Hearing transcripts

29 February 2008 - Morning session

1 Friday, 29th February 2008
2 (9.30 am)
3 (Jury present)
4 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: I call Witness E.
5 MR BURNETT: Sir, I apologise for the slight delay. There
6 were one or two logistical matters that I was sorting
7 out with my learned friends.
8 WITNESS E (sworn)
9 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: If you would prefer to give your
10 evidence seated, you are very welcome to do so.
11 Questions from MR BURNETT
12 MR BURNETT: Now, Witness E, my name is Ian Burnett and
13 I shall be asking you questions first on behalf of the
14 Coroner and, thereafter, others of my learned friends
15 representing interested persons are likely to ask you
16 some questions as well.
17 We know you as "Witness E", but your real name has
18 been provided to the Coroner. That is right, isn't it?
19 A. I believe so.
20 Q. Now, Witness E, is it right that from October 1992 until
21 some time at the end of 994, you were the controller
22 within SIS of the Central and Eastern European
23 Controllerate?
24 A. That is correct.
25 Q. In that capacity as controller of Central and Eastern

1

1 Europe, did you have approximately 100 SIS officers --
2 that is to say employees of MI6 -- under your overall
3 responsibility?
4 A. Yes, I believe it was just over 100.
5 Q. It may be obvious from the description "Central and
6 Eastern Europe", but is it right that your
7 responsibilities and that of the officers covered
8 a geographical area which encompassed Russia, Poland,
9 the Baltic States and the Balkans?
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. And no doubt other parts --
12 A. Other parts of Central Europe, like Hungary,
13 Czech Republic, et cetera.
14 Q. Other parts of what had been the Soviet Union?
15 A. Correct.
16 Q. Now we need, Witness E, to wind ourselves back to the
17 early 1990s because the political situation in
18 Eastern Europe was rather different from the position in
19 which it now is; is that right?
20 A. Indeed.
21 Q. To put it in context, the Berlin Wall had come down in
22 1989, is that right?
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. Eastern Europe generally was something of a melting pot,
25 would that be fair?

2

1 A. I think that is a fair description.
2 Q. And the Balkans, particularly the Former Republic of
3 Yugoslavia, in those years, was the subject of
4 disintegration and conflict which led to the most
5 appalling massacres, amongst much else.
6 A. Indeed.
7 Q. But we, for reasons you understand, have been focusing
8 on the Balkans and a small part of the Balkans and just
9 a very small political aspect of a small part of the
10 Balkans. But in overall terms, looking at the general
11 activities of your controllerate, were the Balkans
12 a very substantial part of what was under your
13 responsibility or a small part?
14 A. I would describe it as a small part. It was an
15 extremely busy time with Russia and the disintegration
16 of the former Soviet Union and the rebuilding of
17 democracies in countries like Poland and Hungary, and
18 it was extremely busy.
19 The Balkans, as you rightly say, was also of great
20 interest to Her Majesty's Government at the time, but in
21 terms of overall spread of work within the
22 controllerate, it was a comparatively small part, yes.
23 Q. Now the jury has already heard from two witnesses who
24 worked within your controllerate, albeit in the Balkan
25 section. That is to say Witness A and Witness H. Do

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1 you know Witness A?
2 A. I knew him in the period when I was controller and he
3 was working in the area, but I have not seen him since
4 then.
5 Q. And similarly Witness H.
6 A. Similarly Witness H.
7 Q. Now, you are aware, aren't you, that the inquests'
8 interest in the controllerate and the Balkans aspect of
9 it stems from a proposal made by Witness A, which he has
10 explained to us, and taken up by Mr Tomlinson, albeit in
11 respects which Witness A and Witness H and Witness F
12 have told us are inaccurate.
13 Now do you in fact have any recollection at all of
14 a proposal coming to you from Witness A suggesting
15 the creation of a contingency plan to assassinate
16 a Serbian leader, should he come to power?
17 A. I do not recall seeing anything of that nature at that
18 time.
19 Q. Now can I take you, in the light of that answer,
20 immediately to some contemporaneous documents which
21 I hope you can comment on and which at least might jog
22 your memory. This will be Witness A's annual
23 confidential report for 1993 [INQ0061257]. Is this a document that
24 you have had a chance to look at before today?
25 A. I was availed of the opportunity a couple of days ago.

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1 Q. Good. This is a document that the jury has seen now on
2 a number of occasions and so I hope it is not necessary
3 to trawl through it. Could we go straight to
4 the typewritten comments, one of which, as I think you
5 will readily agree, was entered by Witness H, and
6 the second of which, we understand, but I would be
7 grateful for your confirmation, was entered by you.
8 Just to put it in context for everybody -- as I say,
9 we have seen this before -- Witness H wrote:
10 "He contested a passage in my original summary
11 questioning his judgment in submitting what I regard as
12 an unethical and impractical proposal to C/CEE."
13 That is you, isn't it?
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. "He maintains that he was encouraged to do so. I have
16 discussed this with E, whose guidance to A was designed
17 simply to establish what exactly he was driving at.
18 The proposal was rejected summarily. Being very
19 generous with the benefit of the doubt, I have removed
20 the passage in my original summary."
21 So that was what H wrote. Is it right that you
22 wrote this:
23 "[Witness A] brought to the job an operational mind,
24 bristling with ideas, some brilliant, some proposterous,
25 (cf K2)."

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1 Which is a reference back to the incident described
2 by H.
3 Having seen a document signed off in January 1994,
4 does that jog your memory or bring back any current
5 recollection of these events at all?
6 A. Well, it jogged my memory to the extent that I saw in
7 the non-typed version of this that it was in my own
8 handwriting, so I clearly wrote that and obviously meant
9 it at the time. My memory clearly had failed me, I did
10 not recall having done that, but the evidence is there
11 that I did make that comment.
12 Q. Now have you had an opportunity to look at the
13 transcript of the evidence of Witness A in these
14 proceedings?
15 A. I have seen some pieces of it, yes. I have not had
16 the chance to read the whole thing.
17 Q. It may be that your answer to all of my questions will
18 be, "Well, I simply don't remember", and you will have
19 nothing to add, but you are aware, aren't you, that what
20 Witness A says is that he had a very brief conversation
21 with you at the end of one of the team meetings, if
22 I can put it like that, where he raised his idea, and
23 you, in essence, said, "Well, go away and write it
24 down". Is that the sort of thing that you think might
25 have happened?

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1 A. It could well have happened. I was in and out of the
2 office a great deal at the time, very busy. Younger
3 officers would quite often stop me in the corridor,
4 outside the loo, outside my room, and say, "Here is
5 something I want to talk about", and I could very well
6 have said, "I have not got time at the moment, stick it
7 down on a piece of paper", but again I repeat, I do not
8 recall that, but it is very possible that that is how it
9 happened.
10 Q. It is fair to say that Witness A, as one would expect,
11 has no precise recollection of what he said to you or
12 the extent to which he outlined his idea, but can I ask
13 this question: if Witness A had said to you orally, face
14 to face, that he had a plan that involved assassinating
15 somebody, would you have asked him to write it down?
16 A. If the word "assassination" had been used to me in those
17 terms, absolutely not.
18 Q. Now the evidence of A is that he sent the proposal to
19 you, bypassing H, for reasons he explained and we don't
20 need to go into. He thinks he may have sent it also to
21 Witness G, but, again, I do not need to trouble you
22 about that.
23 The evidence, as I am sure you know, of Witness H is
24 that when you got the minute, you instructed Witness H
25 to ensure that all copies of it were destroyed. Now,

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1 again, you have no recollection of this --
2 A. I have no recollection of that, but as in my previous
3 answer, that is almost certainly how I would have
4 responded had the situation arisen.
5 Q. And that is because ...?
6 A. Because the whole idea of SIS being involved in targeted
7 assassinations is repugnant to the ethos of the service
8 and certainly repugnant to me personally.
9 Q. Thus, if any piece of paper crossed your desk proposing
10 that, you would have rejected it out of hand?
11 A. Yes, absolutely. It would have gone no further, other
12 than back where it came from.
13 Q. Have you any reason to doubt, in general terms, that
14 the accounts of Witness A as to how the minute came to
15 be written in the first place and Witness H in your
16 emphatic instruction that it be destroyed and expunged
17 are correct?
18 A. It seems to me, having heard from both of them who were
19 directly involved in it, that I would not hesitate to
20 dispute any of what they said.
21 Q. Now you have said that assassination is no part of the
22 ethos of SIS and we have heard that from others. When
23 did you join SIS, E?
24 A. 1968.
25 Q. In the time that you have been there, so, however long

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1 your service was -- I do not need to ask you whether you
2 are still there or not -- but during your time there,
3 are you aware of any assassination having been carried
4 out?
5 A. Categorically no.
6 Q. Or any proposal that there be an assassination?
7 A. Categorically no.
8 Q. That being the case, it might be thought surprising that
9 you have no memory of such a unique proposal having
10 crossed your desk.
11 A. I cannot give an answer to that, other than to say it is
12 probably surprising, but the fact is that I do not --
13 I did not recall this. When I gave the statement to
14 Lord Stevens' police inquiry, I did not recall the
15 incident having happened then and I still don't.
16 Of course, subsequently, all these different pieces
17 of testimony have arrived, which puts in doubt the
18 calibre of my memory, but it would be untruthful to say
19 that what I have said on the record is anything other
20 than the whole truth.
21 Q. So the long and short of it is you simply don't
22 remember, despite now having seen the confidential
23 report and having reviewed the evidence of others who
24 have spoken of it?
25 A. That is the case.

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1 MR BURNETT: Thank you. Those are my questions, sir.
2 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Mr Mansfield?
3 Questions from MR MANSFIELD
4 MR MANSFIELD: Good morning. My name is Michael Mansfield.
5 I represent Mohamed Al Fayed. I have some questions.
6 I think the position is that were it not for other
7 people, you would be saying, would you not, that you
8 have never seen a proposal like this in the whole of
9 your career?
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. Because that is how you put it originally to the police.
12 Would you have a look at your statement, please? Do you
13 have it there?
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. 26th January, second paragraph:
16 "Furthermore, I can say that I have never seen any
17 proposal relating to any targeted assassination."
18 That is put in very clear terms, isn't it?
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. And it is wrong.
21 A. In what way is it wrong?
22 Q. Well, I think it is a simple question. I am sorry if
23 you find it difficult. Is there anything about the
24 question that you don't understand?
25 A. Your question is that my statement, "Furthermore, I can

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1 say that I have never seen any proposal relating to any
2 targeted assassination", is wrong. That is my
3 recollection. I have never seen a proposal. I may have
4 erred in -- but in terms of my remembrance of that
5 time --
6 Q. It is one thing to say "I do not remember"; it is quite
7 another to say "I have never seen". There is
8 a difference, you will appreciate, isn't there?
9 A. Yes, but I have -- I still have never seen -- this was
10 in relation to the time of the inquiry and I have not
11 seen anything put in front of me related to flashing
12 lights and everything of that nature.
13 Q. Well, I want to come to how it was that you were
14 interviewed.
15 The date on the statement is 26th January. Now,
16 were you approached -- presumably you were -- by
17 officers before 26th January in order to make
18 a statement?
19 A. I must have been alerted to the fact that I was coming
20 to see them. I was called from --
21 Q. Did they say what they wanted to see you about?
22 A. I cannot recall that. It was to do with Mr Tomlinson
23 and allegations, as I recall. I had left the service
24 for some time by then and ...
25 Q. Yes. Were you aware of what it was all about other than

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1 it is about Tomlinson and allegations?
2 A. Well, it was about Tomlinson and allegations about what
3 allegedly happened in Paris in 1997.
4 Q. Were you shown anything before you made this statement?
5 Were you shown any documentation before you made this
6 statement?
7 A. I do not recall being shown any documentation. I was
8 asked a number of questions, but I was not shown any.
9 Q. We don't have -- sorry, I will pause. If I do have it,
10 I have overlooked it -- we don't have any what we call
11 "pre-Paget material", in other words, in your case, any
12 sort of notes of interview with you. Did somebody come
13 and have a noted interview with you?
14 A. No I had one interview with two officers from the Paget.
15 Q. Was that at the same time as you eventually made this
16 statement or --
17 A. I made the statement on the afternoon at which this
18 interview took place.
19 Q. So your recollection is that you were not shown any
20 documents. The question of flashes, where did that
21 detail come from that you have just mentioned?
22 A. I was asked, during the interview, had I ever seen
23 a proposal utilising bright flashing lights in a tunnel
24 and I said I had not.
25 Q. Yes, you see that is not reflected in this. So I want

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1 to know what else you were asked --
2 MR BURNETT: It is.
3 MR MANSFIELD: Yes, I am so sorry. That is. I am so sorry,
4 that is my fault. What else were you asked about
5 the proposal?
6 A. I think I was asked, (a), had I recollected any proposal
7 relating to an assassination, and then they went into
8 some details about flashing lights and the rest.
9 I cannot recall the whole breadth of that interview.
10 Q. No, I understand that. I apologise to you if it is
11 taking you back many years. We all have difficulties
12 about remembering last week, never mind five years ago,
13 so it is a problem, I appreciate.
14 Did any officer say to you that there was a proposal
15 that involved the possibility of using Serbian
16 dissidents? Were you asked about that?
17 A. Not to my recollection.
18 Q. Have you ever seen since -- I will come back to at the
19 time -- have you ever seen since -- either at the time
20 of this statement or since this statement, before
21 today -- have you ever seen what A says his proposal
22 comprised?
23 A. I have seen details of it now, as contained in A's
24 testimony.
25 Q. Yes, all right. As you will see, A's testimony did

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1 reveal that he did have some detail about the proposal,
2 didn't it?
3 A. It did, yes.
4 Q. The question really is how much detail did the original
5 proposal have. So it is clear, there is a disagreement
6 between A and Tomlinson about all the detail.
7 Two-thirds of it seems to be agreed; in other words,
8 there were two methods he outlined -- that is A -- which
9 Tomlinson remembered and, in fact, as he has given
10 evidence, A suggested in fact his memory, A's memory,
11 was jogged by seeing what Tomlinson was saying about it.
12 You have read all that, have you?
13 A. Yes.
14 Q. Right. The question my learned friend put to you
15 a minute ago was that people might wonder how it is,
16 since it is unique, this proposal, that you are either
17 saying you have never seen it or you are saying "I do
18 not recollect ever seeing such a proposal". This would
19 have been, from your point of view, to use one of your
20 words, "preposterous"; yes?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. And it would stand out in your memory; it is not
23 something you could overlook, is it?
24 A. One could argue that way, but equally I was dealing with
25 a whole raft of things and if it was something that

14

1 lasted only a short time and was over with and, as
2 Witness H has said, I dismissed summarily, it is perhaps
3 not surprising that it went from my memory.
4 Q. Well, except that it did not, as it were. I will ask
5 you just to look at this passage in the report,
6 the typed-up part of the report on this particular
7 witness, A.
8 I just want to ask you -- because this is 1994, so
9 even if you had forgotten about it momentarily in 1993,
10 the whole matter comes up again in 1994.
11 Now, do you recollect this, that H talked to you
12 about this because it was part of obviously an appraisal
13 of A, and I want particularly to ask you about this,
14 what H says you said to him, or words to this effect.
15 He, that is A, maintains he was encouraged to do so. In
16 fact, he maintains he was encouraged to do so by you.
17 "I have discussed this with ... [you, that is] whose
18 guidance to [witness A] was designed simply to establish
19 what exactly he was driving at ..."
20 Now, is that right, you gave guidance?
21 A. In the terms of -- bearing in mind that I do not recall
22 this until I have seen it written down here, I cannot
23 recall having given guidance. In that sense, if --
24 I may have said "Put it on paper and let's talk about
25 it". I would therefore not classify that as guidance.

15

1 Q. How does that come about as being written down? This is
2 report that you saw in 1994 and you have countersigned.
3 Presumably, in 1994, you would have said, "Wait
4 a minute, I did not give any guidance, I simply said
5 write it down". I mean, you did see this in 1994, did
6 you?
7 A. I must have done because I countersigned it and used
8 the word "preposterous". Had somebody -- had a guardian
9 angel appeared and said, "You had better remember this
10 forever because in five years' time somebody is going to
11 raise this subject", I might have done. I am sorry,
12 I have to say my memory is not --
13 Q. One perfectly understands minor details in a busy life,
14 years ago -- you are out of it now -- perfectly
15 understandable that you would forget, but we are being
16 told this is unique, this one. It would not have been
17 allowed; it had never happened before or since. Of
18 course, what I am really after is what was on the
19 original proposal because it has been shredded. You
20 know that now, don't you?
21 A. I understand that there is no part of the document.
22 Such as it was is extant, yes.
23 Q. What was the policy or the practice about shredding?
24 A. Any -- well, I have to say I never shredded anything in
25 my life. Other people did and they would probably chide

16

1 me for it, but I think there is a very strict policy
2 within SIS that anything other than ephemeral minuting,
3 which was called "pink minuting", was then registered in
4 a registry and that was it. You did not shred documents
5 like that.
6 Q. You see, the reason why -- again I presume it is really
7 pointless me asking you any questions. The evidence
8 tends to suggest that you are the one who ordered
9 the shredding. Of course, if you were the one who
10 ordered the shredding, the question is: where is
11 the record of you ordering it with the reasons and all
12 the rest of it? Do you follow the questions that follow
13 from that?
14 A. Yes, I think I do. But if it was not an official
15 document, there would be no issue, if you see what
16 I mean.
17 Q. I do, if it was.
18 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Sir Richard Dearlove's
19 description was "stifling it at birth", was it not?
20 MR MANSFIELD: Yes, it was. It is not the question of
21 whether you stifle it, if you don't mind me saying. The
22 question really is, stifling or not, if you have an
23 official document with a stifled idea and you want to
24 shred it, that is perfectly all right provided that you
25 record who decides to shred it, why they decide to shred

17

1 it, when it was shredded and how many copies were
2 shredded. That is what supposed to happen?
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. But you now cannot help us so there is no point asking
5 you any more questions about that; is that right?
6 A. About that particular -- no, because I was never
7 aware -- as I said in my statement to the Paget inquiry,
8 I was never aware of seeing a proposal of that nature.
9 Q. Well, then since you cannot help about the original
10 situation, there comes a point -- and I just want to ask
11 you about this -- when A is asked, not by you, to do
12 what has been called a "write-up". Did you ever know
13 that he had been asked to do that in 1998?
14 A. It was just before I retired. No, I was not.
15 Q. Could we have the write-up? Have you seen it since,
16 what he wrote in 1998? I think it is coming on screen.
17 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: I wonder if I can help by asking
18 this: can you recollect any damage assessment exercise
19 taking place after the revelations in Tomlinson's book?
20 A. No, sir.
21 Q. Thank you very much. It does not have an inquiry
22 number, for all sorts of obvious reasons. It is headed
23 "The 'Milosevic assassination plot' -- the real story".
24 This is in fact A's account, and on the version I have,
25 there is handwriting on the top right-hand side,

18

1 indicating that it was August 1998 that he was asked to
2 write it down. I am not going to take you all through
3 it, but you are mentioned in it, in paragraph 3, having
4 a private word with you, "... seemed to think that there
5 may have been something behind what I was saying and
6 asked me to elaborate on a memo". He thinks he did it
7 on a white treated as pink.
8 Then in a later paragraph, 4, the other reference to
9 you:
10 "I cannot clearly recollect what happened next.
11 I think that E [that is you], on seeing the memo,
12 realised that he should never have encouraged me to
13 produce it ...", and so on.
14 Have you seen this before?
15 A. This particular account here? Yes, I think I have been
16 shown, by the Foreign Office legal people, some of the
17 paperwork which was being put forward to the court, yes,
18 but that was like in the last two or three days.
19 Q. I understand. What it comes to is this much: in 1998
20 when this was written, no one has come to you in that
21 time and said "Is this right?", have they?
22 A. Absolutely not, no.
23 Q. Had they done it in 1998, it is possible that you would
24 have had a much better memory then because it was only
25 events four-odd years before?

19

1 A. Well, it is possible. I was still in the service then,
2 albeit in a very different role, but it is possible,
3 yes.
4 Q. So that is what he wrote in 1998. Plainly, between then
5 and you making a statement which we started off with in
6 2005, no one had actually spoken to you about these
7 events, is that right?
8 A. Correct.
9 Q. I would like your help about -- it is on the original
10 report. I do not ask for it to come back up. You will
11 remember the wording of it. Your observations were,
12 about A, that he had "... an operational mind, bristling
13 with ideas, some brilliant, some preposterous". Beside
14 this one, that we have just been talking about, were
15 there other ones in the same category and can you now
16 remember or not?
17 A. No, I cannot remember. I have to say that -- I mean
18 one -- in the course one's career -- and I commented on
19 this when somebody showed me these papers the other day,
20 that one has written hundreds of appraisals and
21 countersignatures -- I could not remember probably one
22 line of any individual one.
23 Q. I understand. I am certainly not going to press you.
24 One understands the conditions under which you write
25 things and so on.

20

1 You cannot help about that. Can I take it a little
2 further? Implied in the observations, even if you
3 cannot remember the examples, would you agree first of
4 all this, that somebody like A, in the service at that
5 time, would be expected to think creatively,
6 independently, some people call it "outside the box",
7 but I think you understand what I am putting to you; is
8 that a fair observation?
9 A. Yes. The role that Witness A was in at that time was to
10 provide creative ideas for HMG to acquire intelligence
11 in the Balkans and I encouraged all my younger officers
12 to be as imaginative as possible.
13 Q. Now, of course, acquiring intelligence is only one part
14 of the exercise that was being conducted -- I am not
15 asking about the present -- at that time, was it not?
16 Acquiring intelligence, in other words, identifying
17 possible sources of information and intelligence and how
18 to get to those sources, plainly is an exercise that he
19 would play a part in?
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. But there is another part to operations in that time.
22 Was the charter for MI6 commonly known within
23 the service as the "order book"?
24 A. I believe so, the "order book".
25 Q. Please understand -- I have said it to other witnesses,

21

1 I will say it to you -- I am not intending to provoke
2 any revelations that will embarrass anybody. But was
3 part of the charter or order book, as it was known
4 within the service, that SIS/MI6, however you regarded
5 yourselves, had to maintain a capacity and capability to
6 plan and mount special operations abroad?
7 A. Entirely possible, yes. I cannot remember this, but I
8 think you are probably correct, yes.
9 Q. The reason is because of something A has said, never
10 mind Tomlinson. The planning and the mounting of
11 special operations abroad might involve the use of
12 special agents as well as special forces; is that
13 correct?
14 A. It may be so. I was never involved myself in
15 the carrying out of any operation in my particular
16 career which involved special forces, as you describe
17 them, but it is entirely possible.
18 Q. It is entirely possible. Operations of that kind -- and
19 I am sorry if you have not been involved. I just want
20 to ask you about the possibly so that it is not, as it
21 were, off the radar -- if an officer perceives a threat,
22 perceives a threat, in other words identifies a
23 potential threat in his area of work and then conceives
24 of a way of nullifying the threat, which may stretch
25 from the ultimate, in other words, annihilation, to

22

1 nullification, in other words, you nullify not by
2 killing, but by frightening, shocking or doing something
3 else; do you follow? It is that range. That is all
4 entirely appropriate thinking for an operative at that
5 time, isn't it?
6 A. Yes, I would have to qualify that by saying one would
7 have to see the detail in such a proposal, but short of
8 saying -- asking that as a caveat, my answer, I would
9 say, yes, a broad spread of imaginative ideas.
10 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: There are lots of ways of getting
11 rid of a threat apart from killing an individual.
12 A. Indeed, sir.
13 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: For example, you could stop up
14 the information getting to the threat.
15 A. Indeed.
16 MR MANSFIELD: Or you could give the threat such a shock
17 that the threat goes away; you could frighten
18 the person --
19 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Where is this getting us,
20 Mr Mansfield?
21 MR MANSFIELD: I will put it precisely. One of the
22 possibilities -- I have already floated it with another
23 witness -- is a plan or proposal that does not intend
24 killing but does intend that the person who is, as it
25 were, the target is frightened into withdrawing from

23

1 a situation in the tunnel.
2 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: It is difficult to see how that
3 fits in with any of the evidence that we have at the
4 moment, but still ...
5 MR MANSFIELD: Sir, I will certainly adumbrate it in matters
6 that are going to arise later with you as to how that
7 does arise out of the evidence, but for the moment I am
8 just canvassing the possibilities here that it is not
9 necessarily limiting to annihilation through death.
10 I think you follow the question.
11 A. Mm.
12 Q. These would have been entirely within the scope of the
13 thinking of operatives who were being creative at the
14 time; do you agree?
15 A. Again, with the caveat that one would have to see
16 the whole proposal. I think to talk in generalities of
17 this nature about operational work is very difficult, to
18 give a generic "yes" or "no" answer. I think when you
19 are dealing with intelligence operations or intelligence
20 planning, the devil is really in the detail, and I would
21 not want to give anybody in this room the idea that
22 there was a sort of -- you know, you could have --
23 Q. A licence?
24 A. -- a licence to do any of these things. Thank you.
25 That is the word I was looking for.

24

1 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Mr Mansfield, are you really
2 suggesting that the collision was a plan to scare that
3 went wrong and it was a plan that could have been
4 orchestrated by somebody in MI6? Is that what you are
5 really getting at? Because I think the witness ought to
6 have a chance of dealing with reality rather than
7 amorphous speculation.
8 MR MANSFIELD: I appreciate it is speculation. As you are
9 aware, of course, we were not there, Mr Mohamed Al Fayed
10 was not there. He was not a member of any of these
11 organisations. What the jury will have to consider,
12 looking at events in the tunnel first, is clearly
13 whether it was an accident, and if it was not an
14 accident -- I take it in stages -- then what was it and
15 how could it have been organised and for what reason.
16 There are a range of questions.
17 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: They have to work on the basis of
18 evidence, not speculation.
19 MR MANSFIELD: That may be. Of course, one appreciates --
20 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Not may be; it is.
21 MR MANSFIELD: Sorry, it is. But on the other hand,
22 the jury have, as we all have, an extraordinarily
23 difficult task in terms of looking at the evidence and
24 seeing where it drives you, and I think that is a fair
25 comment and therefore, with regard to that, I cannot ask

25

1 this witness about the tunnel because he does not have
2 anything to do with that.
3 He is, if I may say so, Eastern European, or was, in
4 charge of that controllerate at the time. I am merely
5 asking in principle whether the thinking might embrace
6 a range of possibilities which the jury will have to
7 consider.
8 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: You did not ask any of this to
9 Sir Richard Dearlove, who might have been the person
10 best placed to answer the questions generally.
11 MR MANSFIELD: Well, I do not want to make too many
12 observations about Sir Richard. Perhaps it is better
13 that I do not. But if I may say so, I have restricted
14 it to people on the ground, and this is the first
15 officer, if I may say so, of some seniority who is on
16 the ground, in touch with operatives, as opposed to
17 somebody who is much higher. Therefore I have put it to
18 him as the first officer that I can really put it to.
19 So I do not think I can take it further with this
20 officer. He has made his caveat very clear.
21 Thank you very much.
22 MR WEEKES: No, thank you, sir.
23 MR CROXFORD: Tempting though it is, no, thank you, sir.
24 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Mr Horwell?
25 MR HORWELL: Richard Horwell, on behalf of the Commissioner

26

1 of the Metropolitan Police.
2 Questions from MR HORWELL
3 MR HORWELL: There has been an important statement this
4 morning. We are moving away from a planned
5 assassination, it seems, to a planned scare of occupants
6 in a car.
7 The suggestion now is that the Duke of Edinburgh
8 takes against the partner of the Princess of Wales, of
9 just some four or five weeks standing, no more than
10 that, and he orders that MI6 scares the occupants of
11 a car in Paris that night and MI6 takes the order and
12 carries it out within a very short period of time.
13 What, in your opinion, are the prospects of MI6 getting
14 involved in any such operation?
15 A. Nil.
16 MR HORWELL: Thank you.
17 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Mr Tam?
18 MR TAM: Sir, there is nothing I need to ask.
19 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Mr Burnett?
20 MR BURNETT: No, thank you, sir.
21 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: That is all we require. I am
22 very grateful to you for coming. I am sorry you had to
23 be asked about things years ago where it is difficult to
24 cast your memory back, and we are very grateful to you
25 for helping the inquest process.

27

1 A. Thank you, sir.
2 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: I think we have next Witness I.
3 WITNESS I (sworn)
4 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Do you prefer to sit down?
5 A. I do. Thank you, sir.
6 Questions from MR BURNETT
7 MR BURNETT: Now, Witness I, again your real name has been
8 provided to the Coroner. That is right, isn't it?
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. You were in court, I think, when Witness E started his
11 evidence, so you are aware that I shall ask you
12 questions first, on behalf of the Coroner, and then
13 others may ask you questions thereafter. Now,
14 Witness I, it is right, isn't it, that you made really
15 a very short statement to Metropolitan Police officers
16 on 12th January 2005?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. In the hierarchy, if I can put it that way, you were in
19 a position which oversaw a number or all aspects of the
20 work of SIS in 1992 and 1993 because, at the time, you
21 were on the central staff, as it was called.
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. You were the private secretary to the chief, that is
24 the head of MI6, and in that position were also
25 secretary to the board of directors.

28

1 A. I was.
2 Q. We have heard, as you know now, from Witness A, whose
3 evidence is that he made a proposal for a contingency
4 plan to assassinate an unnamed Balkan potential leader.
5 We have heard from H, his immediate line manager.
6 We have now heard from E, who was head of the
7 controllerate.
8 Now the reason that we have asked you to give
9 evidence is that you may recollect or have read that A
10 inferred, from something that was said to him by
11 Witness H, although he cannot remember what was said,
12 that the fact of his proposal had gone further than
13 Witness E and had been discovered or shown to central
14 policy people on what he described as the "tenth floor".
15 You are with me?
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. Now the position you occupied in 1992 and 1993 put you
18 at the centre of the policy operations of SIS.
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. Did you, as far as you can recollect, either see or hear
21 of A's proposal in 1992 or 1993, whichever it was?
22 A. I have no memory of having seen or heard of such
23 a proposal.
24 Q. Now the proposal, as we know, contemplated a contingency
25 plan for assassination. When did you join SIS?

29

1 A. In 1975.
2 Q. In your time in SIS, have you ever seen a proposal that
3 involves assassination?
4 A. Never.
5 Q. To your knowledge, has any assassination during your
6 period been carried out by SIS?
7 A. No.
8 MR BURNETT: Thank you, Witness I.
9 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Mr Mansfield?
10 Questions from MR MANSFIELD
11 MR MANSFIELD: Good morning. My name is Michael Mansfield.
12 I represent Mohamed Al Fayed. I have very few questions
13 for you.
14 In fact, at the end of your statement, you indicate
15 that you have read "The Big Breach", that is the name of
16 the book by Richard Tomlinson, and the link that he
17 makes and so on with this case. Now have you ever seen
18 his account -- that is A's account -- of what he says he
19 did in 1993?
20 A. You mean his statement to the police inquiry?
21 Q. Well, there are two. I will take them in stages if you
22 will then. In 1998 -- I think you have been sitting in
23 court I have not actually looked to see -- he did what
24 is called a "write-up" in 1998. Did you know anything
25 about that?

30

1 A. No, not until a few days ago.
2 Q. So you had never seen that before. Then he has made
3 a statement to the police as well and you have not read
4 that?
5 A. I have read the statement he made to the police in
6 the Paget inquiry.
7 Q. That is obviously -- you have just had that put to you
8 in the sense that he recalls the possibility of it going
9 upstairs, as it were.
10 Now it seems to follow, therefore, even though that
11 seems to be what he is saying, you have never been
12 questioned about this until the Paget inquiry comes.
13 A. I should point out that I had left SIS by 1998.
14 Q. Right, but even so, nobody had ever approached you
15 before 2005?
16 A. No, they had not.
17 Q. In relation to the actual, as it were, protocols for
18 dealing with materials, can you help now or is too long
19 ago? I do not want to ask you about things you cannot
20 remember.
21 A. I shall do my best.
22 Q. If it is too long ago, please say.
23 I have to preface it with "if", because it is not
24 entirely clear, on this aspect, exactly who it went to
25 beyond A himself; all right? It has clearly got beyond

31

1 A for him to be told, as it were, to bin it. Whether
2 it was E, which is what A says, if it is on a white
3 minute board as the typist, F, said in her statement,
4 with a tally and all the rest of it, is your
5 recollection that if it had got to E, it would have to
6 have been registered and then, if had been registered,
7 it would have to have been properly recorded if it were
8 shredded? That is really what I am getting at.
9 A. I cannot comment on that minute because, of course,
10 I never saw it and know nothing about it beyond what
11 we have heard here.
12 As a general rule, I would have expected that if
13 a minute had been, as it were, launched, but it had not
14 left the section or the controllerate in which it had
15 been launched, the destruction of the minute would be
16 a much simpler matter than if it had left that
17 controllerate.
18 Q. Yes. It is simpler. I understand that. It is merely
19 this question: simple though it may be, a record would
20 have to be kept of who ordered it to be shredded and
21 when, how many copies and so on.
22 A. I am afraid I am not an authority on those kinds of
23 registry procedures but, as I understand it, had
24 the minute or the tally that would have accompanied it
25 gone to the registry so that the minute was therefore

32

1 officially launched, then there would have been an
2 official procedure and no doubt an official record for
3 destruction, had it been destroyed. But since, as
4 I understand it from this hearing, it never reached that
5 stage, then I would not expect to have seen such an
6 official record.
7 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Did you ever see white minutes
8 with "treat as pink memo" written across the top, which
9 we have heard that, on occasions, rather than trying to
10 get a lot on a little piece of paper, it was more
11 sensible to do it on the white piece of paper?
12 A. Yes, sir. I cannot recall seeing such a thing, but
13 the phrase is familiar to me, so I expect they did
14 exist.
15 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Right.
16 MR MANSFIELD: Do you remember any occasions when documents
17 were shredded?
18 A. Oh, well, documents are very frequently shredded if they
19 are ephemeral.
20 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Do you mean "shredded" or do you
21 mean torn in four and put in the secure refuse sack?
22 MR MANSFIELD: Well, there is a difference; one by machine,
23 one by hand.
24 A. One can lead to the other because what is in the refuse
25 sack is then subsequently shredded or incinerated.

33

1 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: There seems to be a bit of an
2 argument about when shredders came in.
3 A. I have certainly seen shredders.
4 MR MANSFIELD: All right. I am really dealing with formal
5 white minute documents -- that is what I am dealing
6 with -- because it is not entirely clear what has
7 happened in this case. Do you follow?
8 A. Insofar as I do follow it, it seems fairly clear what
9 has happened, that the minute was, as it were, launched
10 within the section, and then, as Sir Richard put it,
11 stifled at birth.
12 Q. That is what he says, but it is not exactly what
13 everybody else says.
14 A. Well, you will have to ask them because I am afraid I do
15 not know.
16 Q. I appreciate you never saw this. Can I ask you about
17 a folder, a sensitive ephemeral folder?
18 A. Yes. I read this. This was a new one on me.
19 Q. You cannot help?
20 A. No. I am sorry.
21 MR MANSFIELD: Thank you.
22 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Mr Weekes?
23 MR WEEKES: No, thank you, sir.
24 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Mr Croxford?
25 MR CROXFORD: No, thank you, sir.

34

1 MR HORWELL: No, thank you, sir.
2 MR TAM: No, thank you, sir.
3 MR BURNETT: No, thank you, sir.
4 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Thank you very much. It was
5 quite short, but it was important and we grateful to you
6 for coming.
7 Witness number 4?
8 MR BURNETT: Sir, would it be convenient to read 1 and 5
9 first?
10 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Certainly.
11 MR BURNETT: Sir, we are moving now from letters to numbers.
12 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: These are read as unlikely to be
13 controversial?
14 MR BURNETT: That is right.
15 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: And they have been circulated?
16 MR BURNETT: Oh long ago, sir, yes.
17 Sir, the first statement I read is the statement of
18 Witness 1. It is dated 12th January 2005. It is signed
19 by Witness 1 and then, also in the usual way, by a
20 police officer, it being a statement that was made to
21 Metropolitan Police officers. This is what Witness 1
22 says.
23 Statement of WITNESS 1 (read)
24 MR BURNETT: "I worked on the Paris station ... I was in
25 Paris on the weekend, on 30th/31st August 1997 as I was

35

1 on call and had to be in the city. I had friends
2 staying during the previous week who left I believe on
3 Saturday morning. My diary shows that I had
4 a restaurant reservation on the Friday evening (probably
5 with the friends) and the Saturday evening entry is
6 blank, which indicates to me that I was at home with my
7 husband.
8 "On Sunday morning, one of the Embassy locally
9 employed staff ... telephoned my home to confirm
10 arrangements for a pre-arranged barbecue at his country
11 home. He spoke to my husband and during that
12 conversation he told my husband of the crash involving
13 Diana. This was the first I knew of the crash or
14 the presence of Diana and Dodi Al Fayed in Paris. I had
15 had no indication that they may be coming to the city.
16 I would not have expected to be informed of any visit by
17 the Princess of Wales unless it was an official visit
18 and required attendance at functions.
19 "I was not asked to carry out any tasks in relation
20 to the crash as it had no connection to SIS work.
21 "I have been asked if I knew of Henri Paul. I had
22 no knowledge of him at all until his name became public
23 after the crash.
24 "I have never used the Ritz in Paris on
25 a professional basis, nor have I had any SIS-related

36

1 dealings with any member of the Paris Ritz or Harrods
2 staff.
3 "I do not know where any of the other SIS station
4 staff were that weekend. The station vehicle at the
5 time was, I believe, a grey Renault Laguna. We have
6 never, to my knowledge, had a Fiat Uno as a station
7 vehicle."
8 That is the statement of Witness 1.
9 Next, sir, I read the statement of Witness 5. This
10 is a statement dated 13th January 2005, and it is signed
11 by the witness and a police officer in the same way.
12 This is what Witness 5 says.
13 Statement of WITNESS 5 (read)
14 MR BURNETT: "I was part of the SIS station team in Paris.
15 "On Saturday 30th August 1997 I was in Paris.
16 I cannot remember specifically, but I believe that
17 during the day I may have gone shopping with my wife and
18 child. I do however recall that during the evening
19 I had a meal with my wife and child at the Thoumieux
20 Restaurant in Rue St Dominique. We were at
21 the restaurant from about 7.30 pm until about 10 pm.
22 It was dark when we left. I believe that we took a taxi
23 home because of the lack of public transport from
24 the restaurant to my home.
25 "I am a light sleeper and often sleep with the radio

37

1 on. On that night I recall listening to BBC5 Live and
2 at about 2 or 3 am I first heard reports of the crash
3 involving Princess Diana. I turned on the TV and
4 watched the coverage, some of which was from
5 the Alma Tunnel. I recall the formal statement at about
6 6 am that Princess Diana was dead. I believe I was the
7 duty officer on call that weekend, but I took no action
8 because I believed the response to the incident was not
9 an SIS responsibility. The Embassy staff would be
10 responsible for any arrangements and action necessary
11 following such an incident. I had the impression that
12 I was the only SIS member of staff around Paris that
13 weekend, but do not know the movements or locations of
14 any of the other staff.
15 "I went to work at the Embassy on Monday morning and
16 attended a meeting chaired by the Ambassador,
17 Sir Michael Jay. A roster was set up to supervise
18 the book of condolences in the residency and work was
19 planned for a memorial service for Diana the following
20 week, but I did not get involved in any of this.
21 "I knew from media coverage that Diana had recently
22 been on a boating holiday in the South of France but
23 I had no knowledge of her visit to Paris until I heard
24 it on the radio, as I have already stated.
25 "I had never heard of Henri Paul until 31st August

38

1 when the media reported the story.
2 "I have only used the Ritz, Paris, once in a covert
3 capacity and did not make myself known officially to any
4 of the Ritz staff ...
5 "I have had no professional dealings with any member
6 of Harrods to my knowledge.
7 "I do not recall any member of the SIS staff in
8 Paris using a Fiat Uno, be it an official or private
9 vehicle."
10 Sir, that is the evidence of Witness 5.
11 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Thank you.
12 MR BURNETT: Sir, the next witness is Witness 4.
13 WITNESS 4 (sworn)
14 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: If would you like to sit down?
15 Questions from MR BURNETT
16 MR BURNETT: Now, Witness 4, you have been in court for
17 the evidence of a number of your colleagues, so you will
18 appreciate that I shall ask you questions first, on
19 behalf of the Coroner, and then others may ask you
20 questions thereafter.
21 Now, first of all, Witness 4, is it right that on
22 14th January 2005 you made a short statement to
23 Metropolitan Police officers as part of the
24 Operation Paget inquiries?
25 A. Yes, I did.

39

1 Q. Is it right that you were the head of station in Paris
2 in August 1997?
3 A. Yes, that is correct.
4 Q. We have heard from a number of other witnesses that
5 there was, within the Paris Embassy, an SIS station.
6 I do not need to take you into a great deal of detail,
7 but as head of that station, were you in charge of any
8 and all SIS staff in Paris?
9 A. Yes, and indeed in France.
10 Q. In France. I am not going to ask you for details of how
11 many such staff there were or may have been, but we have
12 heard read to us the evidence of Witnesses 1 and 5 who
13 were in Paris that weekend. We are also going to be
14 hearing from witness 6, who was in Paris that weekend.
15 Are you able to tell the jury whether there were any
16 other SIS staff in Paris that weekend?
17 A. I know that -- I remember well that Witness 6 was in
18 town, and I am clear that we would have made
19 arrangements for duty personnel, a duty officer and duty
20 support staff, but in terms of who specifically was
21 doing what, I cannot clearly remember that.
22 Q. Have you had an opportunity of reading the witness
23 statements provided by other members of the Paris
24 station to Operation Paget?
25 A. Yes, I have.

40

1 Q. Again, without identifying numbers, it is right, isn't
2 it, that Operation Paget took statements from all SIS
3 members of the station?
4 A. Yes, that is correct.
5 Q. All the others in their statements set out where they
6 were that weekend and none was in Paris. That is what
7 they say, isn't it?
8 A. That is right.
9 Q. Perhaps we can deal with some straightforward questions
10 first. Did your station have anything to do with the
11 crash that took place in the Alma Tunnel?
12 A. Nothing whatsoever.
13 Q. Were you aware that the Princess and Dodi Al Fayed were
14 in Paris that weekend, before the crash occurred?
15 A. No, I was not.
16 Q. Now is it right that on that weekend, 30th and
17 31st August 1997, you were in fact out of Paris
18 yourself?
19 A. Yes, I was returning from a two-week holiday in
20 the Dordogne.
21 Q. So you were elsewhere in France. Are you able to
22 recollect where you were on the Sunday morning, that is
23 to say 31st August?
24 A. Yes, clearly we were in a hotel in Western France, near
25 La Rochelle.

41

1 Q. In what circumstances did you learn of the crash?
2 A. I remember clearly my wife -- I was still in bed with
3 our baby daughter and I remember my wife coming back to
4 the room and telling me that it was on the news that
5 Diana had died, so I suppose that was about 9 o'clock.
6 Q. What did you do immediately thereafter?
7 A. Well, I suppose, like everybody else, switched on
8 the television and watched that as the events unfolded
9 and then I rang up the Embassy. I cannot remember who
10 specifically I rang up, but to find if I was required,
11 and I was told that there would be a meeting of senior
12 staff the following day, so I planned and --
13 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Could you try to keep your voice
14 up a little bit? I think that you are dropping your
15 voice and I am hoping that everybody in the annex can
16 hear this.
17 MR BURNETT: To recap that, you telephoned the Embassy.
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. For what purpose?
20 A. To see if I was required back, as a member of the senior
21 staff in the Embassy, and to find out what arrangements
22 were being made and that sort of thing.
23 Q. That was to find out if you were required back that day?
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. When were you otherwise intending to go back to work?

42

1 A. I was intending to go back to work some time the
2 following Monday in any case.
3 Q. What were you told?
4 A. I was told that there was no need for me to rush back,
5 obviously it had nothing to do with SIS, but that
6 the Ambassador would be holding a meeting of senior
7 staff the following day.
8 Q. Did you then attend a meeting of the senior staff
9 the following day?
10 A. Yes. If I am correct, there was a series of meetings
11 and I went to at least one of them.
12 Q. Why was SIS involved in such meetings at all?
13 A. It was not so much SIS as me as head of station, as
14 a member of the senior management team in the Embassy.
15 Q. Prior to the crash, did you know of Henri Paul?
16 A. No I had no knowledge of Henri Paul whatsoever.
17 Q. What was the nature of any dealings that you had with or
18 in the Ritz Hotel before the crash?
19 A. I had a few dealings as an ordinary client, going there
20 for drinks or the occasional meal, either with French
21 colleagues or with a contact.
22 Q. In that capacity, did you make yourself known as an MI6
23 officer to anyone at the Ritz?
24 A. No, I did not, not at all.
25 Q. Did you have any dealings in an intelligence sense with

43

1 anyone employed by the Ritz?
2 A. None whatsoever.
3 Q. Similarly, had you had any professional dealings with
4 anyone within the Harrods organisation or its staff?
5 A. No, simply as an ordinary customer.
6 Q. We have heard from the statements that I have read that
7 the station vehicle in August 1997 was a Renault Laguna.
8 Is that also your memory?
9 A. Yes, that is correct.
10 Q. Do you have any recollection of its colour or not?
11 A. I think it was green or dark green, but I am colourblind
12 so I cannot remember exactly which shade it was.
13 Q. Are you also able to confirm that you are not aware of
14 anyone at the station having access to a Fiat Uno?
15 A. No.
16 MR BURNETT: Thank you. Those are my questions.
17 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Mr Mansfield?
18 Questions from MR MANSFIELD
19 MR MANSFIELD: Good morning. My name is Michael Mansfield.
20 I represent Mohamed Al Fayed. I want to ask you just
21 a few questions in relation to your position.
22 After the crash and in December 1998, were you still
23 at the Paris station?
24 A. No, I was not.
25 Q. So you are not able to help about any communications

44

1 then between the Embassy and the French investigation?
2 A. This is in late 1998?
3 Q. Well, I will be precise. The dates I wanted to ask you
4 about were 1st December and 16th December.
5 A. No, I was not.
6 Q. Well then I do not ask you that. The other matter --
7 and again, please understand, I am not wishing to
8 trespass on any sensitive information -- do
9 we understand from your earlier answer -- well, first of
10 all I ought to ask you this.
11 Were you aware of all the people that
12 Operation Paget spoke to as members of the station?
13 A. As members of the SIS station in Paris at that time,
14 yes.
15 Q. Was the number -- and I am not asking for the number,
16 we have been given a number -- that were seen by
17 the Paget team the total complement of membership of SIS
18 at that station at that time?
19 A. Yes, it was.
20 Q. Now, again, I am not wishing for identification, only
21 this: was any one of those responsible for handling
22 informants in Paris?
23 A. That is not really how it worked.
24 Q. Well, how does it work, if you don't mind my asking?
25 A. The overwhelming thrust of our engagement, the Paris

45

1 station's engagement, at that time, was on
2 counter-terrorism with our French colleagues. If you
3 cast your minds back, in 1995 France was hit by a wave
4 of terrorists attacks mounted by the Groupe
5 Islamique Armee. These were the most serious terrorist
6 attacks to hit the French mainland since the Second
7 World War. A number of people were killed, most notably
8 at the Mont St Michel Metro.
9 The key thing for the Paris station and the key
10 thing for the UK was that the operational thesis was
11 that those attacks had been planned and mounted from
12 the UK. You can imagine that, at that time, the level
13 of interest -- the level of tension between the UK and
14 the French authorities was extremely high, so that
15 the overwhelming thrust, in addition to such issues as
16 counter-narcotics and counter-proliferation -- but we
17 were overwhelmingly focused on trying to increase foster
18 collaboration between the French and the British
19 services, but also to try to eliminate hostility,
20 suspicion, and to try to stop relations getting bad
21 simply because we could not perhaps do everything that
22 the French authorities wanted us to.
23 Q. All of that is understandable. The question I am coming
24 to is this: if it did not work that way, can I ask you
25 this?

46

1 The Ritz is plainly and was -- still is -- a very
2 well-known hotel in Paris, isn't it?
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. For many, many years, stretching back to the Second
5 World War and before, it has been a meeting place for
6 all kinds of significant people, hasn't it?
7 A. That is its reputation, yes.
8 Q. I am sorry, I am not wishing to pry on anything. Again,
9 I make it clear, I am not asking you to reveal anything
10 that is particularly sensitive, but MI6 would have had,
11 putting it generally, an interest in the movements and
12 meetings of people at the Ritz, wouldn't it?
13 A. Not in a general sense, no.
14 Q. In a specific sense?
15 A. It did not at that time, no.
16 Q. You see, we have had evidence from others -- I will put
17 it this way -- who would have been surprised -- at least
18 two -- given who it is that occasionally stayed there,
19 if you did not have any interest. But you say none?
20 A. Yes, none. I have seen that and it is a comment that
21 surprised me. There are hundreds of hotels in Paris,
22 and much as we would like to dwell on historical
23 connections and that sort of thing, life is too short.
24 You have to concentrate on the here and now. Most of
25 the -- I used and other colleagues used the Ritz Hotel

47

1 as clients and customers. It was a very agreeable
2 meeting place, as you have intimated, but at that time
3 we had no specific interest in the Ritz Hotel or people
4 that stayed there.
5 Q. All right, I will be specific: no interest in Middle
6 Eastern -- I will be careful how I put it -- members of
7 the Middle Eastern community, diplomatic or otherwise,
8 who might be staying there. No interest in that --
9 MR TAM: Before the witness answers, my learned friend is
10 starting to trespass into very specific areas of
11 potential interest. So far we have been relaxed about
12 the generality of the propositions being put, but this
13 is really the point at which specific areas of interest
14 are being put to this witness. While the witness no
15 doubt knows the answer, these are questions which really
16 ought not to be put because the answers would tend to
17 reveal sensitive information.
18 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Yes, it is really a question of
19 the point at which he gets sufficiently specific. He is
20 still fairly general, isn't he, at the moment?
21 MR TAM: Sir, we are starting to stray into specific areas
22 of interest. While the general proposition that
23 the Ritz might have people in it, whether customers or
24 staff, of some interest is general, once one gets into
25 specific areas of interest and specific areas of

48

1 possible work, that is where confirmation or denial
2 might well harm the public interest.
3 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: I had better ask Mr Burnett. Do
4 you have any observations about this?
5 MR BURNETT: Sir, obviously Mr Tam, with the instructions he
6 has, will know where the lines are better than I, but no
7 doubt Witness 4 also --
8 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: I would think he knows where
9 the lines are too.
10 MR BURNETT: It did occur to me that a question as general
11 as Middle Eastern might be thought non-specific enough.
12 One could well understand if my learned friend were to
13 progress to individual countries or so forth that there
14 might be greater difficulty, but it is an observation.
15 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Mr Tam has flagged up
16 the problem. The witness is aware of the problem
17 and ... I am not stopping you yet.
18 MR MANSFIELD: No. I have been as careful as possible to
19 keep the questions, as it were, general enough for you
20 to answer. Do you feel you can answer that one or not?
21 A. I think, if you look back to what I said previously
22 about the thrust of our work was an engagement with our
23 French colleagues on counter-terrorism matters, that is
24 the general background. We did not have time to go
25 round hotels and look at who was staying there and see

49

1 who was of interest.
2 Q. No therefore the obvious way into some of these key
3 places would be, do you agree, this much, through
4 the acting head of security for information?
5 A. I think that might lead me into an area where I would
6 find it difficult to answer. I do not mean to be
7 evasive.
8 Q. No, I am sure you don't. I can only ask you this: at
9 the time you were there -- so I am dealing specifically
10 so that you know the period -- between September 1997
11 and possibly early 1998, were you still there?
12 A. I was.
13 Q. Did the name "Andanson" crop up?
14 A. No.
15 Q. The reason I ask is that the liaison officer -- it is
16 said by the French squad investigating this matter --
17 said that he passed on the name to them. You don't know
18 about that?
19 A. I am not aware of that.
20 MR MANSFIELD: I cannot take it further.
21 MR WEEKES: No, thank you, sir.
22 MR CROXFORD: No, thank you, sir.
23 MR HORWELL: No, thank you, sir.
24 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Mr Tam?
25 MR TAM: No, thank you, sir.

50

1 Further questions from MR BURNETT
2 MR BURNETT: Simply one contextual question. You mentioned
3 a terrorist organisation which had been responsible for
4 bombings in France in 1995. You gave it its full name.
5 It is normally known as the "GIA".
6 A. Yes, it is.
7 Q. Is it right that that was and is an Algerian-based
8 organisation?
9 A. That is true.
10 Q. With strong links to Al Qaeda?
11 A. Indeed.
12 Q. So the counter-terrorism work that you were doing in
13 the late 1990s, albeit before the 2001 attacks in
14 New York and Washington, were still essentially in that
15 Islamist environment?
16 A. Yes, that is absolutely correct.
17 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Thank you very much. We are very
18 grateful to you for coming and that is all that
19 we require.
20 Now, we are due to have our mid-morning break, but
21 I wonder what our position is with our one remaining
22 witness, witness 6.
23 MR TAM: I think I can help with this. Mr Smith has told me
24 that, with a bit of luck, after the mid-morning break,
25 we should be ready to proceed with the next witness. It

51

1 may be that if there is a small problem, there will be
2 a slightly longer break than usual.
3 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Very well. We will have our
4 mid-morning break and we will hope to resume after
5 a quarter of hour. If not, it might be a little longer.
6 (11.00 am)
7 (A short break)
8 (11.24 am)
9 (Jury present)
10 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Number 6 we will call then.
11 WITNESS 6 (affirmed)
12 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Would you like to sit down?
13 A. I would, thank you.
14 Questions from MR BURNETT
15 MR BURNETT: Now, you are Witness 6 and your real name has
16 been given to the Coroner. As you know, Witness 6,
17 I shall be asking you questions first on behalf of the
18 Coroner and, thereafter, my learned friends will also
19 ask you questions.
20 A. Thank you.
21 Q. Did you make a short statement to Metropolitan Police
22 officers on 14th January 2005 in connection with the
23 Operation Paget investigations?
24 A. I did indeed, sir.
25 Q. Do you have a copy of that in front of you?

52

1 A. I do.
2 Q. Now, just a very few questions for you: it is right,
3 isn't it, that you were in Paris on the weekend of
4 30th and 31st August 1987?
5 A. I was.
6 Q. And you were a member of SIS?
7 A. Indeed I was.
8 Q. Prior to your going to Paris, is it right that you had
9 occupied a central position within SIS that put you at
10 the heart of policy making?
11 A. Yes, indeed. That is exactly right. I occupied
12 a central position, a position of trust, at the centre
13 of the organisation.
14 Q. Now I would like to ask you first about
15 30th August 1997. Are you able to tell us what you
16 were doing on the evening of 31st August?
17 A. My wife and I were out at dinner.
18 Q. Is it right that the restaurant you were at was
19 the Bistro d'a Cote?
20 A. Yes, it was the Bistro d'a Cote.
21 Q. Forgive my appalling pronunciation. You were able to
22 verify that even in 2005 because you had a credit card
23 statement that showed that?
24 A. I am afraid I am one of those who does not throw away
25 their credit card statements, and so when I was asked

53

1 for it, I was able to produce it.
2 Q. Had you left your children at home with a babysitter?
3 A. I had indeed.
4 Q. Was it right that this was the first occasion that you
5 had used that particular babysitter and so you did not
6 stay out very late?
7 A. Indeed, and they were young children so we did not want
8 to leave them for too long.
9 Q. Are you able to now remember at what time you got back
10 to your home in Paris?
11 A. I have given it some thought. I think it was somewhere
12 between 10.30 and 11.15, something like that. It was
13 certainly before midnight.
14 Q. At that stage, had you become aware that the Princess
15 and Dodi Al Fayed were in Paris?
16 A. No, I had no idea at all.
17 Q. Did you know, before they came to Paris, that they were
18 coming to Paris?
19 A. The first time I was aware of it was on the Sunday
20 morning, when I learned of the crash.
21 Q. What were the circumstances on the Sunday morning in
22 which you learned of the crash?
23 A. We had been disturbed by our children, who wanted us to
24 get up. I went through to turn the television on, and
25 I was aware, as soon as I turned the television on, of

54

1 sombre music and coverage of a car crash, and it became
2 clear quickly that it involved the Princess of Wales.
3 Q. Presumably, given that you turned the television on in
4 the morning, it also was immediately apparent that both
5 Dodi Al Fayed and the Princess had died as well as their
6 driver, Henri Paul?
7 A. Indeed, yes.
8 Q. On that Sunday, so that is Sunday 31st August 1997, did
9 you make any contact with the British Embassy?
10 A. I did not, no.
11 Q. Did you go into work on the Monday morning, so that is
12 1st September?
13 A. I did, yes.
14 Q. Did you take part in a regular meeting with the
15 Ambassador?
16 A. There was a morning meeting which the Ambassador called
17 for, I think, all UK-based staff to explain what had
18 happened and to make dispositions for the week ahead,
19 yes.
20 Q. Did you have any dealings at all with the aftermath of
21 the crash, if I might put it that way?
22 A. The only things I did, I was on duty -- there was
23 a memorial service held in the Madeleine Church not far
24 from the Embassy, I think it was on the Wednesday after.
25 It was a very big affair with people both inside and

55

1 outside, and all members of the Embassy I think -- as
2 far as I remember most members of the Embassy were
3 responsible for ushering people in and for organising
4 it. So I was involved to that extent, yes.
5 Q. Before the crash, had you ever heard of Henri Paul?
6 A. I had not, no.
7 Q. Had you any professional dealing with any Ritz Hotel
8 staff in Paris?
9 A. I had no dealings at all with any Ritz Hotel staff in
10 Paris. In fact, I never visited the hotel during my
11 four years in Paris.
12 Q. Did you have any professional dealings with anyone from
13 the Harrods organisation?
14 A. I did not, no.
15 Q. We have heard from others that the station vehicle at
16 the time was a Renault Laguna. Is that also your
17 recollection?
18 A. It is indeed, yes.
19 Q. Do you have any knowledge of anyone at the station using
20 a Fiat Uno?
21 A. I do not, no.
22 MR BURNETT: Yes, thank you.
23 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Mr Mansfield?
24 MR MANSFIELD: Sir, may I have one minute just to confirm?
25 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Yes absolutely. (Pause)

56

1 MR BURNETT: I am sorry about this, sir, we just need a ...
2 MR MANSFIELD: Sorry, sir, about this.
3 Questions from MR MANSFIELD
4 MR MANSFIELD: My name is Michael Mansfield. I represent
5 Mohamed Al Fayed.
6 As you will have appreciated with other witnesses --
7 have you been following the transcripts?
8 A. I have.
9 Q. I have been very careful with witnesses not to provide
10 them with any embarrassment, sensitivity or whatever.
11 So it is in relation to that.
12 You were asked about, just a minute ago -- and this
13 is one of the questions I wanted to follow through --
14 you were asked about the Ritz Hotel. Now, as far as
15 that is concerned, your principal opportunity for that
16 to arise comes after the crash rather than before it,
17 doesn't it? Is that a fair observation?
18 A. I am sorry, I am not quite sure I understand where you
19 are going with that.
20 Q. If I spell it out, there will be a problem. So that is
21 why I am putting --
22 A. I think -- maybe I can help. I can confirm that neither
23 before nor after the crash, nor at any time, did I have
24 any dealings with anybody or indeed visit the Ritz Hotel
25 in Paris.

57

1 Q. Of course, the prime period might be before the crash.
2 A. The same is true.
3 Q. I appreciate that. But so you see why I am asking it,
4 the question is how much time before the crash you would
5 have had. Do you follow?
6 A. I do. I do follow --
7 Q. That is why I am treading very carefully.
8 A. I can see that. From my perspective, the answer I think
9 remains the same, both before I arrived in Paris, when
10 I was in Paris and since. There has been no point at
11 which I had contact with anybody --
12 Q. I am less interested for obvious reasons -- although
13 I can do it retrospectively, in other words, the period
14 afterwards.
15 You heard the question that I asked the previous
16 witness --
17 A. No, I did not hear that. I have not followed this
18 morning's proceedings.
19 Q. I appreciate you may not have been sitting there. All
20 right. It is this question: the acting head of security
21 or head of security at a hotel like the Ritz would have
22 been of interest to MI6 in Paris, wouldn't it?
23 A. We cannot -- as I understand it from following
24 the testimony of Sir Richard Dearlove, the point
25 about -- there are operational details which obviously

58

1 we are all aware we cannot go into. What you are asking
2 is: is that category of person a category of person of
3 potential interest to an organisation such as SIS?
4 The answer to that is that that category of person may
5 be of interest, in certain circumstances, to someone
6 working for SIS, but the point in this particular
7 instance is that we can -- that I can say categorically,
8 for myself, and I believe it has been said for others
9 and by others, that the station in Paris had no such
10 interest and nor such contact in that case.
11 Q. Can I develop it? Do you understand, what I want to ask
12 for your help about -- but it may be that you are not
13 the person who can give it -- what we are led to believe
14 is that whilst he may be in the category who may be of
15 use in certain circumstances unspecified, what we are
16 really being told is that he was deeply involved in
17 security at the Ritz for a number of years. Are you
18 able to help as to whether he was never of use to MI6 in
19 Paris?
20 A. I think that -- if I may, I think it was Witness X who
21 said that -- I can only speak for the period I was there
22 obviously and I have said that there was no contact, but
23 I think, if I recall it right, what X has said is that
24 a comprehensive trawl of the records of MI6 have proved
25 no record of contact either.

59

1 Q. Were records not kept separately in Paris? If that is
2 a difficult question, please say so.
3 A. The record, as I -- the record in a station is clearly
4 slightly different from the record in head office, but
5 the point about the record in head office is that
6 it is -- it contains everything of significance that has
7 happened on a station and a contact of that sort would
8 have been deemed significant, and therefore, had there
9 been one, it would have made its way into the record in
10 head office.
11 Q. That depends upon it being reported, doesn't it?
12 A. It depends on those of us there following the procedures
13 and processes that we are all trained and brought up
14 within the organisation to follow.
15 Q. Yes, but certain things that are not within the ethos
16 don't get put in the records, is that right?
17 A. That is not my experience.
18 Q. That is what we were told yesterday, by a member of SIS.
19 A. That is not my experience of it.
20 Q. So what is your experience in relation to things that
21 are not part of the ethos? They do get put down in
22 the records?
23 A. I think that what the organisation has -- and I have
24 been with it many years now -- it has a very strong
25 sense of self and culture and discipline, and what we do

60

1 is -- we are obviously in a difficult and sensitive area
2 of work. We do need to be creative and imaginative in
3 the way in which we go about our job, which is
4 difficult, but we are disciplined.
5 At the same time as that, we are also very careful
6 and strictly disciplined by the procedures, legislation
7 and processes in place designed to make sure that
8 we stay, you know, true to the ethos of the service. So
9 I do believe that in my experience -- and I can only
10 speak to my experience, including my experience in
11 a central role -- that the organisation does behave in
12 a disciplined and organised manner.
13 Q. I appreciate what you say, but the position is -- and
14 again I preface it by saying perhaps you are not
15 the person; I have asked other people the same question,
16 but I am asking you because of your seniority at the
17 time, in one sense. Is that a fair description, without
18 going into detail?
19 A. It is a -- it is less seniority than a position with
20 a wide-ranging vision of what is going on.
21 Q. You see, what we are being asked to believe is that at
22 no stage, in all the time that Henri Paul was at the
23 Ritz, did the British security services contact him at
24 all; no record of anything.
25 A. That is my understanding, yes.

61

1 Q. Well, I am going to put it bluntly. That is incredible,
2 isn't it?
3 A. No, I do not think it is incredible. I know there has
4 been some mention of the role of the station in Paris,
5 and our primary role, if you like, as I saw it, was to
6 work closely with our French colleagues in liaison and
7 I think others have spoken to that a bit. Quite
8 clearly, if you are working very closely with your
9 liaison colleagues, you use them and work with them on
10 things, and certainly I am aware of other examples in
11 which we would have asked -- we would have asked for
12 assistance and we would not need to have our own, as it
13 were, recourse to our own sources because we would be
14 working with our French colleagues jointly.
15 Q. The French colleagues are DGSE; yes?
16 A. We worked with the whole range of French services.
17 Q. It includes DGSE?
18 A. It included DGSE, yes.
19 Q. So if they had contacts with Henri Paul, you might know
20 about it that way, but it does not get recorded in the
21 British records; would that be a possibility?
22 A. No, it would not because we would -- this is a level of
23 detail. It would not, no. It would be -- if we were
24 working with them on anything in which we were working
25 jointly with them, the details of that joint working

62

1 would be properly recorded.
2 Q. Right. I want to ask you about people who would not
3 necessarily be working, as it were, according to
4 the rule book. Was that possible in this period in
5 the 1990s, that there might be people not working to
6 the rule book?
7 A. I can only speak to my experience. My experience is
8 that we work very hard -- and of course, we are always
9 improving our processes, but my experience, including
10 during that period, was that our processes were broad,
11 were deep and were adhered to. In that context,
12 I cannot imagine circumstances in which someone within
13 the organisation would be working beyond the rule book,
14 no.
15 Q. I appreciate what your view may be of Mr Tomlinson, but
16 do you know what he has indicated to this court about
17 the practice at that time? Have you read what he has
18 said?
19 A. I have had occasion to read some of what he has said,
20 yes.
21 Q. I mean here, not before here.
22 A. If you want to -- if it is a direct quotation, I would
23 be happy to look at it, but I am aware in general of
24 the thrust of his argument about the way in which SIS
25 behaves, yes.

63

1 Q. I will put to you a specific passage which I have put to
2 others. It is at page 93 on 13th February this year.
3 It is a question originally from me, although he had
4 said something about it before.
5 "Question: What you have said today and before
6 today is that it [this relates to Milosevic] could have
7 been done independently and it is that that I want to
8 ask you about. First of all, what did you mean when you
9 said that today and you have said it before, as I have
10 said, that it could be done independently?
11 "Answer: I think nowadays that would not be the
12 case, but I think in the olden days there could
13 potentially -- there was -- the intelligence services
14 were not as tightly controlled as I have no doubt they
15 are nowadays. I think that that has been controlled a
16 lot more deeply. There were -- as in the public domain,
17 there was, at the time of the Harold Wilson Government
18 -- I think it was quite well established now -- there
19 was a cabal of MI5 officers who were interested in -- or
20 were talking loosely about a plot and there have been
21 other incidences where MI5 and MI6 officers have done
22 things independently well outside of the control of the
23 organisation. I don't think it is something that
24 happens regularly and I don't think it could ever happen
25 nowadays."

64

1 There are more answers in that vein. He went on to
2 describe that this, in the mid-1990s and so on, was
3 a transitional period with no statutory regulations
4 coming in. That is what I am referring to.
5 Are you saying that what he has deposed to there is
6 just totally out of the question? Whether it be
7 Harold Wilson or anyone else, it just didn't happen?
8 A. I certainly cannot go as far back as Harold Wilson. All
9 I can talk to is the time that I have been in
10 the organisation, nigh on two decades, and that is not
11 a pictured that I recognise. I know that he went on at
12 some length about the fact that it has got better since,
13 when he was not in the organisation, but the picture
14 that he was describing when he was in the organisation,
15 when I was also there, I do not recognise.
16 Q. Well, can I just ask you about that? It must have come
17 quite a surprise to you that a member of the
18 organisation came up with a proposal which was quite
19 against the ethos, did it?
20 A. It was -- I had heard of that only in the aftermath of
21 the first draft of the Tomlinson book, and yes, I was
22 surprised about it. I think the other thing that
23 I would note about that, though, is that it was -- you
24 know, it held the status of an idea and it was an idea
25 that the service systems and process caught very early

65

1 and squashed, which is what I would expect the service
2 processes to do because that is how I believe they
3 function.
4 Q. When did you first hear about A's proposal?
5 A. I -- this, I have to say here that the problem for me
6 with this particular bit of the story, if you like, is
7 that it is terribly difficult, ten years on, to work out
8 exactly when I knew which bit. It is quite complicated.
9 I have thought about it a lot. My view of that is
10 that I must have known about it. I must have known
11 about it at the time at which the initial damage
12 assessment was being done, when the first draft of the
13 Tomlinson's book appeared, because at that period, as
14 soon as there was a draft, clearly the organisation
15 focused very heavily on trying to work out what
16 the damage was. By "damage", I mean those sources whose
17 lives might be at risk, those members of the service
18 whose deployments might be threatened by the fact that
19 this publicity might come and that there were drafts of
20 this book around.
21 At that point I do remember, from that central
22 position that I occupied, that there was a damage
23 assessment. Within that damage assessment, clearly,
24 what they did was they took out all those passages of
25 that book that appeared to relate, appeared to relate,

66

1 to SIS business and went into them to look to see
2 whether or not there was damage associated with them.
3 That is all I can say. As I say, I knew more about
4 it later. Obviously this week I have been reading about
5 it, but I think the state of my knowledge was that
6 I first heard about it in the aftermath of that first
7 draft in 1996.
8 Q. That is what Tomlinson was saying in the draft, but did
9 you get to know that A in fact had done a proposal,
10 different target, but with some of the same methods?
11 A. I do not think I knew that at that point, no, because --
12 Q. Can I just interrupt? What I am trying to get at is:
13 when did you first know that A had made a proposal, in
14 relation to a Yugoslav target, employing at least two
15 out of the three methods specified by Tomlinson?
16 A. I cannot answer that without speculating because I do
17 not know, is the answer to that. I cannot remember.
18 The detail of it actually -- actually, in real detail,
19 I have learned over the last couple of weeks in looking
20 at the transcripts and things. But I knew that there
21 was a link between the Milosevic story, if you like, in
22 the Tomlinson thing and something, but I did not know
23 what that something was. I had none of the detail.
24 Q. The something is quite important and there is a reason
25 for asking you this. I would like you to see -- I am

67

1 going to go very carefully. I am going to cite an
2 inquest number. I want this single page to go on
3 the screen, [INQ0049253]. Just that
4 page, please.
5 Now, I will give you a moment. You see the date,
6 1st December 1998, Paris. You were at the Embassy then.
7 A. I was.
8 Q. This is in the wake of the crash. It is the following
9 year. It is an inquiry by Herve Stefan, the examining
10 magistrate, to someone at the Embassy, Mr Johnston. Did
11 you know him?
12 A. Yes, I knew Paul Johnston well, yes.
13 Q. Have you ever seen this letter before?
14 A. It was drawn to my attention, yes.
15 Q. When?
16 A. When did I see that before? I was asked whether or not
17 I had seen it and I said I was not sure.
18 Q. Well, I would like you to think as carefully as you can.
19 I apologise for the date span. It is a long time ago.
20 You will see, if you read the letter, the reason why
21 I am going to ask you a little bit about this, because
22 what has happened, so that you have the historical
23 context, is that Tomlinson has in fact provided
24 information to the French juge. He has done that in
25 August of 1998, the same year as he does a write-up, as

68

1 he calls it or someone else calls it, of what he says
2 happened over a proposal.
3 So the juge is writing to the Embassy, to this
4 particular individual, raising a number of questions and
5 claims arising out of Richard Tomlinson's material. Do
6 you follow?
7 A. I do, yes.
8 Q. I am not going to ask you to look at the second page at
9 all because that has a number of further questions
10 arising out of what Tomlinson has said, but on this
11 page, there is specific reference to a plan. You see
12 that there?
13 A. I do, yes.
14 Q. There is a reply that goes to this letter. Did you know
15 that a reply was made to this letter?
16 A. I know that Paul was dealing with -- sorry, Mr Johnston
17 was the point of contact within the Embassy for the
18 juge's inquiries and I knew that he had replied to
19 a number of things. I am not sure -- again, I cannot be
20 sure that I would have seen the replies, but I was
21 certainly -- the station was certainly made aware, when
22 issues which related to accusations which were being
23 cast around about the involvement of the organisation --
24 when matters to that effect were brought up, we were
25 made aware of it, yes.

69

1 Q. The matters on the second page, which I am not asking
2 you to look at, were not answered in the letter. But
3 the letter does refer -- that is a reply to that one.
4 Could we have [INQ0008320], please?
5 This is the reply that goes on 16th December.
6 I will give you a moment just to look at that one. Did
7 you ever see that one?
8 A. I imagine I must have done. You know, I cannot actually
9 say -- I imagine I must have done, yes.
10 Q. Just look at what it says.
11 You see, it is important if there is an
12 investigation in France, do you accept, that they should
13 be given a full picture in relation to -- there were, in
14 fact, four queries in the earlier letter. This is just
15 one of them -- that they should be given a full picture.
16 Do you agree?
17 A. I do, yes.
18 Q. They were not, were they?
19 A. I would argue that they were, yes, in the sense that the
20 letter says that there was not an ounce of truth in any
21 plot that attributes the British Government to
22 assassinate President Milosevic, and that is true, and
23 "As for his allegations concerning the role of the
24 British Intelligence Services in the tragic accident,
25 these are also without any foundation", that is also

70

1 true.
2 Q. I am just dealing, for the moment, with the first
3 sentence. Are you saying, as far as you are concerned,
4 that that is a true statement of the information
5 available to the security services about Richard
6 Tomlinson's claim?
7 A. I think it is. We have been clear about that, that
8 there was never a plot. There was an idea. The idea
9 was not with any reference to President Milosevic and
10 anyway, the idea was squashed at birth, so --
11 Q. What was being said -- you know perfectly well what was
12 being said at the time, don't you? He was basically
13 being derided as literally fabricating matters which
14 were impossible. In fact, he was not fabricating.
15 I will put the basis. He was not fabricating
16 the fact that there was a proposal, a Yugoslav target
17 and two methods of operation, all of which A accepted.
18 Now, you knew that, did you, when this letter was sent
19 on 16th December?
20 A. I do not think I did know that. I realised that he had
21 made -- I realised that he was intending to make
22 public -- and indeed, by 1998, indeed had made public,
23 as I understand it -- his details in the book, and I was
24 aware that it bore no resemblance to the truth of what
25 had happened, which was there was an idea, as you say,

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1 not in the context of President Milosevic, not in
2 the context of a car accident, which was not taken
3 forward. That was the situation.
4 Q. Did Mr Johnson know about -- and I am sorry to have to
5 ask you -- the full extent of A's concessions?
6 A. There were a number of discussions, I know -- certainly
7 the Ambassador and Paul Johnston were obviously keen to
8 make sure that what the Embassy said to the juge was --
9 you know, that we wanted to deal with the sensitivities
10 surrounding allegations against members of the Security
11 Intelligence Services in a way that was proper, and by
12 "proper" I mean that the juge had what he needed to make
13 his determinations and that we were involved to make
14 sure that it did not do us damage. That was a delicate
15 balancing act.
16 Q. Yes.
17 A. I remember on a personal basis saying to Paul -- and
18 I think it is in my statement -- that if for any
19 reason -- and again we have to be careful here -- but if
20 for any reason the juge wanted to speak to me or any of
21 my colleagues, that would be entirely fine. So we made
22 ourselves available for the pursuit of either this or
23 any other matter, should the judge have deemed it
24 relevant.
25 I remember Paul came back to me on one occasion and

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1 I said, "Where are we on all of that?", whether or not
2 the juge might want to see us, and he said that on the
3 basis of assurances from the Foreign Secretary, from
4 letters from the Embassy, he did not feel that this was
5 relevant. Therefore the point I am trying to make here
6 is that we were available to discuss and talk. There
7 was in no sense an attempt to hide anybody from
8 the French inquiry on the part of SIS.
9 Q. But you appreciate, don't you, this: it would be
10 difficult for the French authorities to assess whether
11 they need to speak to you unless they know the full
12 picture?
13 A. It was for them to determine whether or not they wanted
14 to see us, and what we wanted to make sure was that we
15 were available should they want to do so.
16 Q. The question was different. Did you hear the question
17 all right?
18 A. If you want to repeat it again, I will have another go
19 at it.
20 Q. It was difficult for the French authorities to make an
21 assessment as to whether they need to see you unless
22 they have a full picture of what it is that you know
23 about, for example, A, who Tomlinson had specified in
24 his revelations.
25 A. The question for the French authorities I assume was

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1 whether they felt -- and the other elements on
2 the second page of the first letter are relevant here,
3 and I appreciate your sensitivity in not bringing them
4 up. There were lots around this whole area which made
5 the proposition that we were involved in preposterous.
6 I am talking now from my own perspective.
7 So there is the business of timing of folks'
8 arrivals within Paris; there is the business about us
9 having any interest whatsoever in the movements of
10 members of the Royal Family. There was the bit about
11 the method of -- I did not know the specifics of, but
12 it is clear that Tomlinson who -- as he said to
13 Operation Paget, he was there to cause us damage. That
14 was part of what he was trying to achieve. So there was
15 a whole series of things that come together in a way
16 that made it very clear to us, obviously, that it was
17 preposterous.
18 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: I just want to ask you about one
19 thing --
20 A. Indeed.
21 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: -- putting this in context.
22 This is December 1998. I think we heard that
23 Tomlinson was dismissed from the service in May 1995.
24 A. Yes, sir.
25 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: What was the service's attitude

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1 towards Tomlinson at this stage?
2 A. In 1998?
3 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: Yes, in the latter part of 1998.
4 A. The service's attitude to Tomlinson in 1998 remained
5 the same as it had always been, which was that he was no
6 longer an employee of the service. We had made
7 a decision on that in 1995. Our interest in him beyond
8 that was purely about his willingness or otherwise to
9 abide by his undertakings under the Official Secrets
10 Act. The publication of the book and everything that
11 had been associated with that and indeed the fact that
12 he served a sentence in prison for that was about his
13 undertakings given to the office at the time of joining
14 about what he would and would not do with the access to
15 the information that he had at that time and his breach
16 of those undertakings when he left the service.
17 So our focus -- I know he feels and has said,
18 I think here, but certainly elsewhere, that he feels
19 the service was in a vendetta with him. That is not the
20 attitude of the service. The service's attitude was
21 that: the whole way in which we can do our business
22 relies on our ability to prosecute our operations in
23 a secure manner, and that someone going out there and
24 talking about the individuals we might or might not have
25 recruited, the ways in which we may or may not recruit

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1 them, posed a fundamental threat to the way in which
2 we work and indeed was covered by his obligations under
3 the Official Secrets Act.
4 LORD JUSTICE SCOTT BAKER: How serious do you regard his
5 breaches of security to members of the SIS?
6 A. I regard those actually as serious, but I regard as more
7 serious, if I may say so, the threat to those people who
8 have agreed to cooperate with us. To a degree we are
9 paid for what we do and what we do is difficult and
10 dangerous and we know that when we join, but we do also
11 enter into relationships with individuals who often put
12 themselves in considerable danger, sometimes putting
13 their lives in danger, in order to tell us information
14 they feel we need to know.
15 In that context our primary responsibility has to be
16 to them, and some of his allegations and some of his
17 published details in that book were of a serious nature
18 in terms of the damage and the threat they posed to
19 individuals who had taken exceptional risks to help HMG,
20 and that we felt was unacceptable, sir.
21 MR MANSFIELD: Since you have been asked, of course, what is
22 clear in the book -- have you read the book?
23 A. I have read bits of it. I have to admit I could not
24 finish it, but I have read bits of it.
25 Q. You see, the book is quite a serious matter, since it

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1 has been raised, because there is an introduction by
2 somebody else, not Tomlinson himself, in which it is
3 explained in some detail as to the need for
4 accountability and transparency and that is why the book
5 is being written. Do you remember reading about that?
6 A. I would fundamentally dispute it. Yes, I do remember
7 reading it.
8 Q. That is what he is saying. I appreciate those in
9 the service will disagree with that, but you do agree
10 that there is a need for accountability?
11 A. I do agree that there is a need for accountability, and
12 again I can only talk to the years of experience that
13 I have had within the organisation. The whole business
14 of political submissions of -- which was going on long
15 before we had the Intelligence Services Act in 1994,
16 there was always a process by which, if you were
17 undertaking an operation which -- and before 1994 this
18 was a political judgment about risk -- you had to write
19 it up and then get the Foreign Secretary to sign off on
20 it.
21 That is a process that has been in place for many,
22 many years. Obviously, post the ISA, we have the
23 statutory responsibilities; we have the
24 section 7/section 5 authorisation, which I know
25 Richard Dearlove has spoken about; we have

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1 the Intelligence Services Tribunal; we have
2 the Parliamentary Oversight Committee; we have
3 commissioners -- we have a whole range of measures all
4 in there designed to make sure we stay within the remit
5 which we have been granted by the ISA.
6 Q. If I may say, you have put your finger on it. There was
7 a need, in the mid-1990s, to ensure that the public
8 could see that there were in place structures to ensure
9 accountability, transparency, as far as it can be taken
10 because, before that time there was a problem, at least
11 a perceived problem, certainly as far as MI6 was
12 concerned, that it was not accountable. Do you agree?
13 That was why the 1994 Act and all the structures were
14 brought into place.
15 A. I would disagree with your judgment about what happened
16 before 1994. I think quite rightly, in a modern
17 democracy, the questions and the degree to which you
18 want the organisations of state to be held to account --
19 of course, that has developed, and I do not dispute
20 that, but that is not the same as saying that what went
21 before was grossly inadequate. It was not.
22 Q. I see. So really do you say that what happened in 1994
23 with the structures, the statute and all the rest of it,
24 was really unnecessary?
25 A. No, I do not think it was unnecessary at all. I think

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1 it was a useful regularisation of a situation and
2 development of a process which was already embedded into
3 the organisation.
4 I think the -- if I can say it this way, the acid
5 test is how much of a shock, in a way, if you like, was
6 the ISA to the way in which SIS works. The answer is of
7 course there is a whole lot more procedure in place, but
8 in terms of the basic fundamentals of political
9 accountability, of transparency within the organisation
10 and within the need to know and within Government across
11 the board, it was already there, it was already there.
12 We operated it before the ISA and we operate it now
13 in its more developed way post ISA, but
14 the organisation -- it was not a huge culture shock
15 because we had suddenly become accountable in a way
16 we had to explain ourselves. We had always explained
17 ourselves. It is just a different set of mechanisms in
18 place.
19 Q. I am not going to continue the debate on that score too
20 long, but that is not everybody's view, is it, pre-1994?
21 A. No, and I accept that other people have different views.
22 I also accept that it is obvious that those of us
23 within -- it is easy in a way for us within to say how
24 good we were. I accept that you have to listen -- you
25 have to -- we have to trust that you will believe us,

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1 but I can only talk to what I know from within
2 the organisation, and from within the organisation my
3 belief was that the structures in place beforehand
4 caught things that were inappropriate such as -- if you
5 go back to the earlier example, in a way that was an
6 example of the process working. Here was an
7 inappropriate idea, it was squashed really quickly. It
8 did not even leave the originating section, according to
9 what you have heard earlier this week.
10 So, yes, of course the ISA has developed it, and it
11 has evolved a whole new layer of relationships with
12 commissioners and with the Parliamentary Oversight
13 Committee and all of that. That is all true and
14 I welcome that. I do not have a problem with that at
15 all.
16 We have a difficult job to do in an extremely
17 difficult arena, and clearly I want people to understand
18 it. I cannot go out and about talking about what I do
19 because otherwise I would not be able to do it and that
20 is the fundamental problem.
21 In terms of the nature of what we are trying to do
22 in the fields of counter-terrorism,
23 counter-proliferation and other things, I think it is
24 important that people understand it. The visibility,
25 limited as it is, that is given to that through the

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1 evidence and things of the ISC and others I think is
2 a beneficial thing. I personally welcome it.
3 Q. So what he was doing in the book was precisely that,
4 wasn't it?
5 A. No. What he was doing in the book was -- as I say,
6 we have a system and what he had decided was he didn't
7 like the system, stepped outside the system, made
8 judgments of his own about what was and was not safe to
9 publish and then published them.
10 Q. If you look, as far as the book is concerned, it is,
11 would you agree, quite remarkable that Tomlinson just
12 happened to light upon the one document that reveals
13 something unusual in the whole of SIS history.
14 A. I am not saying that. I would not make any claims that
15 grandiose. All I would say is it is odd and that is all
16 I can say. I can only talk to what I knew, and what
17 I know comes from my own experience over the years, from
18 a position which gave me a huge degree of access to what
19 was going on elsewhere. I have to say that it is -- and
20 as he said himself, I think, in his own evidence, it was
21 the first and the only time he ever s