PAUL KIRK, Durban | Friday
A BOOK the British intelligence service MI6 tried desperately to stop from publication claims that senior members of the South African government, and at least one senior army officer, have been moonlighting as spies for the British government.
A source in the South African National Intelligence Agency has told the Mail & Guardian that the claims of espionage may be investigated officially.
Former MI6 agent Richard Tomlinson was sentenced to a year in prison in 1999 by a British high court judge who ruled that in writing the book The Big Breach – from Top Secret to Maximum Security, he had contravened the British Official Secrets Act.
Recruited by MI6 from Cambridge University, Tomlinson operated in Russia, Bosnia and various parts of Europe with, he claims, some distinction before the service dismissed him without offering a reason.
His attempts to take MI6 to court for unfair dismissal were quashed when the service claimed that discussing his case in court – even in camera – would jeopardise national security.
Tomlinson then wrote his book – and MI6 used legal action to prevent its publication in Britain. Eventually he was arrested and charged with revealing state secrets. Although his unfair dismissal case was deemed too sensitive for the courts, his Official Secrets Act case was not, and Tomlinson spent time in a maximum-security prison.
With no publisher in western Europe prepared to print the book, Tomlinson turned to his former enemies. The book was brought out last year by a Russian publisher. The M&G has a copy of the book, which contains some incredible claims regarding MI6 operations in South Africa, although he does not name any of the spies his employers recruited.
Tomlinson writes that MI6 recruited spies under the apartheid regime and that “a lot of these agents were now high up in the ANC”.
He continues: “As Nick Long [a false name used by Tomlinson for a senior MI6 officer] explained to me with a touch of sarcasm: ‘It’s amazing how many of them, having spied for years for “ideological reasons”, are now happy to carry on pocketing their agents’ salaries post-apartheid.'”
Tomlinson explains how a friend, whom he calls Leslie Milton (again a false name), was recruited into MI6 and given another false name, Charles Derry.
Milton/Derry, he says, “set himself up as a consultant in investment opportunities in the emerging economy of post-apartheid South Africa.
His house was conveniently close to the homes of two of MI6’s most important agents in South Africa, a senior army officer and a senior government official.
“Both had been recruited early in their careers but had risen to such prominence that no member of the MI6 station in Pretoria could safely contact them.”
He claims Milton/Derry met these agents twice a month, sometimes openly in bars and restaurants. If challenged, the cover story would have been that he was offering investment advice.
He writes: “Indeed Milton genuinely invested their considerable agents’ salaries for them so that their added wealth would not be noticed by their colleagues or even their wives and family.”
Helmut Schlenter, representative for the National Intelligence Agency, was in meetings at the time of going to press. Copies of the claims were faxed to the NIA for comment and were described as “very interesting”.