Police find body in bag at MI6 man's London flat

[Jan Klimkowski]

There seems to be no MI6 equivalent of Alastair Campbell because this thing is leaking like a sieve with a slightly rehashed variation of each particular theme being anonymously briefed by "sources in the know" to sympathetic hacks from rival newspapers on a near daily basis.

So, either:

i) competing elements (factions) within intelligence agencies are pushing (leaking) their own version of events;

ii) the investigations of MI6, Scotland Yard's "finest" and the NSA have descended into farce and chaos;

iii) there is a master press strategy which is deliberately to create farce and chaos and hope the public forgets all about this embarrassment.

Meanwhile, here is some of the key rubbish in recent reports that set my antennae twitching:

But in another mysterious twist, the Mail can reveal that the outer door to Mr Williams’s flat in Pimlico, Central London, had apparently been locked from the outside when police arrived on the scene.

Detectives have now intensified their search for a Mediterranean couple known to have been with Mr Williams in the weeks before his death. They are understood to have had a set of keys to the flat.

(snip)


The revelation that the Mediterranean couple had their own keys emerged after the Daily Mail returned to the scene of Mr Williams’s death earlier this week and spoke to neighbours.

Detectives believe the man and woman, in their thirties, were known to Mr Williams because neighbours do not recall their being ‘buzzed’ into the address.

Despite repeated appeals, the couple – who visited the flat owned by the intelligence services in late June or early July – have not come forward.

That deductive process about the mediterranean couple possessing keys to an MI6 safe house is complete shit, Sherlock.

Plus surely there must a process of authorization, identification and security clearance to a top secret intelligence safe house which, it has been disclosed, was used for debriefing of high level defectors and agents.

One would imagine that process of authorization would have included CCTV or other image based technology.

But perhaps not....

Using face recognition technology, the US Federal Investigations Bureau will determine if MI6 spy Gareth Williams at any point traveled to the US with a couple that fits the description of the two individuals being sought after by Scotland Yard. The couple, described as Mediterranean in appearance, is believed to have visited Williams’ flat in June or July.

Does this mean there is no CCTV at the MI6 safe house, and there are no extant images of the dusky couple? So, the FBI is hoping to find Williams entering the US via airport CCTV and will then look for any suitably tanned couple in his vicinity?

:bebored:

In addition, if the mediterranean pair are the assassins would they seriously have placed themselves in such close proximity to Williams at airports and the MI6 safehouse, where they must surely have expected there would be security cameras everywhere?

Meanwhile, earlier this month, the Mail on Sunday had been briefed by sources close to the Scotland Yard investigation that a petite police woman had reconstructed the zipping-and-padlocking-oneself-into-a-sports-bag trick.

The newspaper then concluded that this meant auto-erotic asphyxiation was the likely cause of death:

The Mail on Sunday has learned that a woman police officer climbed into the holdall in which codebreaker Gareth Williams’ naked body was found, re-enacting the events which it is thought could have led to his death.
She managed to zip up the bag and padlock it from the inside, leading investigators to conclude that Mr Williams may have done the same for sexual kicks and suffocated when he could not reopen it.
The theory was bolstered by the fact that a key to the padlock was found alongside his body inside the £150 bag.
Despite being crouched in the holdall, the police officer was able to squeeze her hand through a small gap between the padlock and the zip fastener and lock it from the inside.
Police believe Mr Williams may have gone through the same extraordinary routine, and then passed out, possibly as a result of panic when he was unable to reopen the padlock.

The identity of the officer who undertook the unusual police assignment is not known.
She was chosen partly because her petite size is similar to the slim and short frame of 31-year-old keep-fit fanatic Mr Williams.
His body was found in an extra-large North Face bag, a type which is favoured by explorers because of its 140 litres of storage capacity, durable material, double stitching, twin haul handles and locking zips.
Erotic asphyxiation is defined as the intentional restriction of oxygen to the brain for sexual arousal.

The practice claimed the life of Tory MP Stephen Milligan, whose body was found in 1994 with a bag over his head and an orange in his mouth.

Now, "senior intelligence sources" have claimed that an escaplogist, not a petite policewoman, was used in the reconstruction, and these "senior intelligence sources" have leaked that the police believe it was auto-erotic asphyxiation:

The hypothesis was reported by the Sunday Times, quoting anonymous "security sources".

The paper claimed police had established that Williams, a single man, had a record of engaging in autoerotic practices, and that the greatest likelihood was that he had died as result of an experiment going wrong.

According to the Sunday Times' source, police recently invited an escapologist to show them whether it was possible to lock oneself in a holdall and get out again. The escapologist duly climbed into the bag, padlocked it from the inside and then unzipped it using a sharp-tipped pen.

Convinced by this - and without addressing whether a 31-year-old codebreaker would necessarily have the skills honed over the years by a seasoned escapologist - the police were apparently persuaded that Williams must have got into the bag and then suffocated in the August heat before he could release himself.

"The emerging background is something almost certainly autoerotic," a "senior official" told the paper.

But the Mail on Sunday's sources have now dissed the paper's own earlier exclusive revelations:

Initial tests are understood to suggest that Mr Williams died of suffocation while in the bag. Toxicology tests showed no traces of alcohol or recreational drugs in his system.

Mr Williams’s body was found in an extra-large North Face bag, which features 140 litres of storage capacity, durable material, double stitching, twin haul handles and locking zips.

Claims that a WPC or escapologist of similar height and build to Mr Williams had locked the padlock while inside the same type of bag, during a ‘re-enactment’ of the possible events leading to his death, have been dismissed.

The Mail on Sunday continues:

We can also reveal that there is no evidence to support claims that Mr Williams was a cross-dresser, that bondage equipment was found at his home, that a laptop was missing from the flat, or that he had reported to spy bosses that he was being followed.

Nor, as was claimed in one report, was any suspicious liquid found next to his body in the sports bag.

So, no liquid now.

And no gay sex paraphernalia.

But still the same old slurs:

Inquiries continue into his private life, which officers remain convinced will be the key to solving the case.

Um. The hacks are deliberately missing the great stomping :elefant: in the room.

It is most likely that Williams was murdered not because of some aspect of his personal life, but of his PROFESSIONAL life, as a spy for MI6 and the NSA (and who knows who else).

Williams had been involved in deep black covert operations in Afghanistan.

Williams was privy to deep black money trails in and out of the City of London, which would almost certainly have included laundering of drugs and arms money, and off-the-books funding of covert operations.

The fundamental aim of all the intel agency and police leaking to hacks appears to be to direct attention towards some "secret" in Williams' personal life, and away from the location of the truly dirty secrets, in Williams' professional life.

I currently favour my option iii) at the beginning of this post:

There is a master press strategy which is deliberately to create farce and chaos and hope the public forgets all about this embarrassment.