Gideon's Spies

Watching from a distance, Ari Ben-Menashe felt that al-Fayed “was his own worst enemy. From all the enquiries I had made, at no expense to him, the sort of preliminary investigation I made before assigning my company to any such work, it was clear that the Royal Family as such has no case to answer. It may well be that privately they would not have wished Diana to marry Dodi. But that is a long way from saying they wanted the young couple murdered. That said, I did turn up some hard evidence that does point to the involvement of security services around the time of their deaths. There are serious questions to be asked and answered. But al-Fayed will not get answers the way he continues to behave. Fundamentally he does not understand the mentality of those he is trying to convince. And worse, he is surrounded by lackeys, ‘yes men’ who tell him what he wants to hear.”

Early in May 1999, John MacNamara flew to Geneva, Switzerland, to meet Richard Tomlinson, a former staff officer with MI6. For four years Tomlinson, who had once been tipped to be a high-flier in British intelligence, had run a relentless campaign against his former employers. Originally recruited at Cambridge University by an MI6 “talent spotter,” Tomlinson had been abruptly sacked in the spring of 1995 after telling his MI6 personnel officer of his growing emotional difficulties.

In a telephone conversation he told me that “my honesty cost me my job. The ‘powers-that-be’ decided that despite my impressive results, I lacked a stiff upper lip.”

Tomlinson described how he had tried to sue MI6 for unfair dismissal but the British government had successfully stopped his case coming before a court. Then its offer of a pay-off—“cash for my silence” was how Tomlinson put it—was withdrawn after an Australian publisher to whom Tomlinson had sent a synopsis of a book about his career with MI6, submitted the document to MI6 to see if publishing would lead to legal action. MI6 moved swiftly. Tomlinson was arrested as he was about to leave Britain and sentenced to two years in jail for breaching the Official Secrets Act.

Released from prison in April 1998, Tomlinson moved first to Paris and then to Switzerland. There he began to use Internet cafes to post highly embarrassing details of MI6 operations. This included revealing a high-level mole in Germany’s Central Bank claiming the man—code-named Orcadia—had betrayed his country’s economic secrets to Britain. He also disclosed details of a plot by MI6 to assassinate President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia in 1992.

Then came the moment he moved from being just another disgruntled former spy into the world of Mohamed al-Fayed, already wellpeopled with conspiratorial figures.

To the billionaire Tomlinson, by now almost penniless, was, al-Fayed told me, “like a sign from heaven.” He encouraged Tomlinson to tell all he knew to the French judge investigating the deaths of Diana and Dodi.

In a sworn affidavit, Tomlinson claimed MI6 was implicated in the couple’s deaths. Agents of the service had been in Paris for two weeks prior to their deaths and had held several meetings with Henri Paul, “who was a paid informer of MI6.” Later in his affidavit, Tomlinson alleged “Paul had been blinded as he drove through the underpass by a high-powered flash, a technique which is consistent with MI6 methods in other assassinations.”

Such allegations brought Tomlinson even deeper into al-Fayed’s inner circle. The former agent was now more than “a sign from heaven.” He had become, in al-Fayed’s words to me, “the man who could unravel the terrible truth of an incident of such magnitude and historical importance.”

It was to further encourage Tomlinson to continue with his campaign that MacNamara had flown to Geneva.

Ever since he had arrived in the city, Tomlinson had faced increasing insolvency. He could barely find the rent for his studio apartment. His efforts to raise money by writing travel articles had come to nothing. His efforts to be employed as a private detective had also failed because he feared to travel around Europe in case MI6 agents “snatched me.” On the advice of MI6, he had been banned from being admitted to the United States, Australia, and France. Only Switzerland had offered him sanctuary on the grounds that any breaches of the Official Secrets Act was “a political crime” and therefore not a subject for extradition.

MI6 sources I have spoken to suggest that MacNamara had gone to see Tomlinson with a view to resolving the former spy’s financial plight. More certain is that shortly afterwards Tomlinson had sufficient funds to launch what he called “my nuclear option.” Using a sophisticated Microsoft program he had installed in his state-of-the-art computer, Tomlinson began to publish on his specially created and very expensive website the names of over one hundred serving MI6 officers—including twelve he said had been involved in a plot to kill Diana and Dodi.