Thirty-fifth edition of the N&O column / Spooks newsletter

(Date: Sun, 01 Apr 2001 20:59:49 +0200)

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Intelligence news

The big breach

The big breach: From top secret to maximum security
By Richard Tomlinson
Published by Narodny Variant Publishers, Moscow, Russia

Ex-MI6 agent Richard Tomlinson has published an interesting book about his career called 'The Big Breach'. If you are interested in the book, check the following websites: to purchase the original limited edition hardback version, priced at £20.00, go to 192.com site, or download your copy in Word, TXT, or PDF format from that site.

Here a few quotes from the book:

.....MI6's intelligence `product' is known as CX, an anachronism from the earliest days of MI6 when the Chief, `C' in popular fiction, was Mansfield Cummings. Then the service was so secret that intelligence reports were not distributed outside MI6 and so were marked `Cummings Exclusively', abbreviated to CX. Intelligence is worthless if it is not passed on to decision-makers, and nowadays CX reports are disseminated far more widely to `customers'. The FCO and the MOD are the most important, but any government department can receive CX if the material is relevant to them. Even some large British companies, such as British Aerospace, BP and British Airways, have MI6 liaison officers who receive relevant CX.

IB officers working in British embassies overseas under cover as diplomats gather the majority of CX. These officers normally work in a small, discreet cell within the embassy, known as the `station'. The station has its own highly secure communications with Head Office and only MI6 staff are allowed access to its rooms. These rooms are frequently swept for listening devices and in many stations there is a special `safe-speech' room where important meetings are held.

There are about 50 stations around the world. The size of the station reflects the importance of the host country to Britain's interests.

Those in the spy capitals of the world - Geneva, Moscow, Vienna, New York and Hong Kong - may contain up to five IB, three or four GS and perhaps half a dozen secretaries. Most stations in Western Europe are two- or three-man stations, while third world stations usually consist of only one officer and a secretary. However there are exceptions. Jakarta, for example, has a three-man station because Indonesia is a good customer for Britain's weapons industry, and Lagos is a three-man station by virtue of British interests in its oil industry. The head of station, usually a senior officer in his 40s working under cover as an FCO Counsellor, is normally `declared' to the secret service of the host country, and much of his work is in liaison. The other officers are mostly `undeclared' and may spend part of their time spying against the host country.........

Germany

• A Defense Ministry official denied a report in 'Der Spiegel' that German officials were banning Microsoft operating systems because they were concerned about a possible backdoor built into them by the U.S. National Security Agency.
• Recently two spy's were caught in Germany. Both were from Iraq and were captured in Heidelberg, a city that hosts some of the largest US Army premises in Germany.

Hungary

Hungary has set up a new organization; SZBEKK. Szervett Bunozes Elleni Koordinacios Kozpont (Coordination Center Against Organized Crime) will collect, analyse and disseminate information about criminal organizations that operate in Hungary.

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