Kompromat

He enlarged the frame still further until the writing on the waistband of the briefs was clearly legible: ‘PUT AMERICA FIRST’ it said.

Li racked his brains. Now who on earth would have ‘PUT AMERICA FIRST’ sown into the waistband of their underpants?

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The specially constituted inter-departmental team had been studying the video film for more than two hours in the basement of MI5’s Millbank headquarters overlooking the Thames, and they were feeling the strain. Analysing frame by frame the video Barnard had brought back from China was hard work. The constant stream of messages from ‘upstairs’ – the Director-General’s office – asking for a report on progress contributed to the tension.

Joshan Gupta, head of MI5’s technical support services, understood the need to come up with an answer quickly. But he was also deeply reluctant to draw conclusions that the evidence didn’t support. MI5 and its sister service MI6 had been deeply scarred by the ‘dodgy dossier’ at the time of the Iraq war, when Britain’s intelligence services had been accused of distorting, falsifying or, at the very least, ‘sexing up’ evidence relating to Saddam Hussain’s supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). They didn’t want to be caught twice in the same trap.

‘Let’s try to be clear,’ Gupta said. ‘The Chinese somehow acquire a video which shows the former Secretary of State Edward Barnard in a compromising position. We all accept that Barnard is indeed the man in the lift with the two Russian ladies but we seem collectively to be conceding that the man on the bed is not Mr Barnard. First, there is Barnard’s own statement that he does not believe he is involved, even though he was possibly inebriated or even drugged. Second, CCTV evidence from the hotel shows Barnard entering his room alone, and not in the company of the two Russian ladies. Third, according to Mrs Barnard, Mr Barnard does not normally wear boxer shorts and would certainly never have worn US-Flag boxer shorts.’

Joshan Gupta paused.

‘But surely,’ he continued, ‘it would be going too far to argue that just because Ronald Craig was in the Kempinski Hotel at the same time as the two Russian ladies, the figure on the bed with the said ladies is indeed Mr Craig?’

Jill Hepworth, one of MI6’s Russian specialists, was keen to put forward the alternative point of view.

‘Let’s blow up those boxer shorts again,’ she requested.

As the image of the US-Flag boxer shorts appeared on the giant screen in the MI5 basement conference room, Jill Hepworth took out a laser pointer.

‘Okay,’ she continued. ‘We can all see the way PUT AMERICA FIRST has been printed on, or perhaps sewn into, the waistband of the boxer shorts. But let’s look a little closer. Do you see the embroidered logo on the left leg, the little white “b” inside a black circle? Do you know whose logo that is? Well, I did some research. It’s the Bloomingdales logo. And where is Bloomingdales located? In New York? And where does Ronald Craig spend a good deal of his time? The answer’s New York. I read he even flies back home to New York to sleep in his own bed when he’s on the campaign trail. He could easily send someone over to Bloomingdales from Craig Tower to buy some boxer shorts.’

Gupta was still sceptical. ‘With respect, even if we could establish that Mr Craig buys his underwear at Bloomingdales, this would not necessarily prove that he is the man on the bed.’

Lillian Peters, head of the Foreign Office’s security team, who was chairing the meeting, was anxious to bring the meeting to a close.

‘So what line do you propose we take?’ she asked.

‘I would say we hold our fire,’ Gupta replied. ‘This could be another classic case of Kompromat, like that of Yuri Skuratov. Let me remind you that a few years back, Yuri Skuratov, Russia’s then Prosecutor-General, was in the middle of one of the biggest investigations of his career, tracking down high-profile Russian officials accused of taking huge bribes, when a tape surfaced.

‘Grainy footage, apparently captured on a concealed camera, showed Skuratov having sex with two prostitutes. Hours after it aired on Russian state television, Skuratov was suspended from his post, despite his protestations. Popov, who at the time was working at the Federal Security Agency, which we now know as the FSB, publicly certified that Skuratov was the man pictured on the videotape. Surprise, surprise! Yeltsin appointed Popov prime minister in the same year.’

Gupta paused and looked around the room. He felt he was beginning to win over the waverers.

‘This is very much a part of the way Russia works,’ he continued. ‘Intelligence agencies collect compromising information on individuals, or they fake such information to use later, when it’s to their advantage. The Skuratov affair is a case in point. Those grainy pictures were Skuratov’s undoing but they were almost certainly faked.’