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

[Jan Klimkowski]

This "rebuttal" begs some fresh questions.

Was Williams undergoing some sexual metamorphosis - to emerge with a new private, personal, sexual identity?

MI6 agent Gareth Williams was not gay, says friend

Sian Lloyd-Jones tells Mail on Sunday that codebreaker was preparing to take on new identity before his death

Press Association guardian.co.uk, Sunday 26 December 2010 13.31 GMT

MI6 agent Gareth Williams was preparing to take on a new identity eight months before he was found dead, it was reported today.

A close friend insisted the Williams was a straight man after detectives suggested the 31-year-old may have died at the hands of a mystery bondage sex partner he met on London's gay scene.

Sian Lloyd-Jones, 33, told the Mail on Sunday that before he died, Williams was studying for a new identity as he visited her central London flat.

She said: "He said he was learning his new identity. It was all so relaxed. He often came round with his work. That night he came over with his box file and started going through it. He had two passports."

She said Williams had been looking for a girlfriend. "He was open with his family, and if he was gay and had any temptations he would have spoken about them, especially to his sister," she said. "Hand on heart, there were no innuendos about him."

She added: "He cherished the time he had with his sister and with me, and he wanted that with other girls."

Police have said it would have been impossible for the dead man to lock himself in the holdall where his naked body was found.

They also say forensic evidence indicates other people were in Williams's Pimlico flat, but they have been unable to trace them.

Scotland Yard said it was impossible to say whether Williams was already dead when he was put in the bag or suffocated once zipped inside.

The spy also hoarded unworn women's designer clothes worth £15,000 in his wardrobe alongside several wigs.

Lloyd-Jones, who went to primary school with Williams before renewing their friendship four years ago, said the outfits were probably gifts for her or his sister Ceri.

"He bought me a high-end Balenciaga top, a Gucci bag, a Mulberry bag, an Armani fur. He did the same for his sister. "I truly believe that Ceri and I were going to receive the clothing. We received so many things from him, that wouldn't have been strange," she said.

Lloyd-Jones added that the wigs could have been for a fancy dress party in October, which he planned to attend as a Japanese superhero.

Williams, of Anglesey, north Wales, was found by police at his top-floor flat in Alderney Street, Pimlico, on 23 August.

Investigators believe he died in the early hours of Monday 16 August; he was last seen the previous day returning from a shopping trip to Harrods.

His decomposing body was in a large North Face holdall sealed by a travel-style Yale padlock through the zip fasteners. The keys were inside, under his body.

The mathematician worked as a cipher and codes expert for GCHQ, the government listening station, but had been on secondment to MI6.

Postmortem tests and a police inquiry failed to determine how he died. A spokesman for Scotland Yard said it would not be making any further comment on the investigation.

An inquest will be held at Westminster coroner's court on 15 February.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec...py-not-gay

Ah - I've found the full Daily Mail article.

The Guardian left out some absolutely key details. Such as why this MI6 and NSA cryptologist was adopting a new identity. The claim of Sian Lloyd-Jones is that this new identity was required by his spooky bosses.

Perhaps the original Guardian piece was simply incompetent.

Perhaps not.

The secret double identity of murdered spy: Friend insists Gareth Williams was not gay - and was being trained by MI6 for undercover role

By Daniel Boffey
Last updated at 11:18 PM on 25th December 2010


The spy found dead in a sports bag had been given a new identity by his MI6 bosses in the months leading up to his mysterious death.

Gareth Williams, a GCHQ codebreaker on secondment to MI6, had two passports and told his best friend that he was preparing for an undercover operation.

Details of the 31-year-old's role within the secret services are disclosed today in an interview with his confidante and childhood sweetheart, Sian Lloyd-Jones.

Double life: MI6 bosses had given Gareth Williams training for a new identity as part of an undercover operation a close friend revealed in an interview with the Mail on Sunday

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, she said: I find it difficult to see anything in his personal life which could lie behind this.'

She reveals:

He was training to take on a new identity eight months before he was found dead.

He often purchased designer women's clothes, but she insists they were gifts for her and his sister.

The maths genius was found dead two days before he was due to visit Paris with his sister.

The revelations shed new light on Mr Williams's work which, until now, had been regarded as highly technical and carrying little risk.

His body was found inside a zipped and padlocked North Face holdall in the bathroom of his

MI6 flat on August 23. A post-mortem was inconclusive.

Last week police released e-fits of a couple they wish to question and provided intimate details about Mr Williams's life, including his interest in bondage websites and his extraordinary collection of women's designer clothes and shoes, worth about £15,000.

But Ms Lloyd-Jones, 33, claims Mr Williams would have confided in her and his sister, Ceri, if he had any homosexual urges. Ms Lloyd-Jones, a fashion stylist, said: I'm not in denial and nor is his mum, dad or sister. It would have been fine if he was [gay].

I have seen every item of clothing that was there. I truly believe that Ceri and I were going to receive the clothing. He was so generous you wouldn't believe.'

She finds it difficult to see anything in his private life which could have led to his killing.

But she reveals his work was more complex than previously believed.

He said he was learning his new identity,' she said. In February he said he'd be unavailable for nine days because he was on a training exercise. He'd often go away, so I didn't think any more about it.'

Ms Lloyd-Jones added that she last heard from Mr Williams on the day he was last seen alive when he was happy and warm and the same as he always was'.

But it was Mr Williams's sister who was due to accompany him on a trip to Paris later that week who alerted her that something may be wrong when she couldn't get hold of him on the phone. She said that was when she became worried because he's like clockwork, he's so predictable'.

There's no mystery about those women's clothes. He bought them for me and his sister Memories: Sian Lloyd-Jones spent many happy hours with Gareth Williams during his childhood and cannot believe that the rumours surrounding his private life are true

To Sian Lloyd-Jones, it was just another ordinary evening. A fashion stylist, she was pottering around the sitting room of her Knightsbridge flat organising outfits for the following day's photoshoot.

Meanwhile her friend, Gareth Williams, was sitting on the sofa leafing through the contents of a black box file. Inside there were documents and notes and two passports.

He said he was learning his new identity,' says Sian now. It was all so relaxed. I was taping up shoes and co-ordinating outfits and he was going through his papers.

He often came round with his work. That night he came over with his box file and started going through it. He had two passports. He probably fell asleep on the sofa that night and stayed overnight with all the documents.'

At the time, Sian thought nothing of it. Nor did she think it significant when Gareth said he'd be unavailable' for nine days the following month as he would be away on a training exercise.

Sian knew her friend was a spy and that his job would often take him away for weeks at a time. She also knew there was a necessary element of secrecy to his life. What she couldn't know was that eight months later, Gareth would be found dead, and in the most horrific circumstances.

It was on August 23 that police were called to Gareth's flat in Pimlico, Central London, an MI6-owned safe house. He had been missing for more than a week. They found his decomposed body locked in a large red North Face sports bag.
In the months since, his friends and family have not only had to try to come to terms with their loss, they have had to endure a stream of unsavoury leaks from mysterious sources.

It was rumoured that Gareth, 31, was gay after bondage equipment was allegedly found in his apartment along with phone numbers for gay escorts. This was denied by the police, but by then the damage had already been done. Then there were reported irregularities in his finances, also denied.

And last week there were further lurid allegations after police said they wanted to question a Mediterranean couple who were seen calling at Gareth's flat before he died. But as well as releasing e-fits of the unknown man and woman, they revealed that Gareth had bought £15,000 of designer clothes and shoes, including labels such as Stella McCartney and Christian Louboutin. They were all stored unopened in their bags and boxes alongside a number of women's wigs.

Police disclosed that Gareth had visited five bondage websites, which were not pornographic but would give readers advice on how to get in and out of confined spaces. They also said they had found tickets for a number of drag shows.
Gareth devoted his life to serving his country. He was already acknowledged as a talented codebreaker and had worked for the Government listening post GCHQ for ten years before being seconded for a year to MI6. Now, it appears he was rather more than that and was involved in the type of tradecraft more commonly found in a John le Carre novel. There is even a plaque to him at GCHQ in Cheltenham in honour of his work.

'The person everyone talks about .  .  . I don't recognise him at all. He was the complete opposite of everything that has been said about him.'

Yet the constant drip-feed of sordid allegations has not only destroyed his reputation, it suggests that he is somehow to blame for his own demise. For Sian, and for Gareth's parents, Ian and Ellen, and sister Ceri, this has caused untold pain at an already heart-wrenching time.

Until now, those close to Gareth have kept their counsel. Yet now Sian, 33, has agreed to speak about the man she has known since she was eight; a man who is very different from the one she keeps hearing about in the media.

A bubbly, garrulous young woman, who also comes from Gareth's home town of Holyhead, she's not the sort of girl who would be friends with a strange loner', as Gareth has so often been painted.

She says: The person everyone talks about .  .  . I don't recognise him at all. He was the complete opposite of everything that has been said about him. It's been awful for everyone but particularly his family. They're at breaking point, to be honest. They're not celebrating Christmas. They weren't going to anyway but the latest revelations have just made it even worse for them.

They're completely broken by this because it's not the true Gareth at all. He was a lovely guy, a true, old-school gentleman. He had an excellent sense of humour and, from the bottom of my heart, he was the most charming, sensitive, gorgeous man. Truly, he was one in a million. He was somebody who really had a sound judgment for life.

He was very effortless as a person. Nothing was a bother to him; whether you asked him to call you a cab or do a big deed, he was always the same. He wasn't a loner and he wasn't lonely. He had close chums in Cheltenham whom he was very friendly with and whom he spoke highly of, but because of the line of work they do they naturally keep in the background. He loved what he did and he thrived on it. He was a workaholic. That kept him very happy and content.

Devoted: Gareth Williams gave his entire life to serving the country and was a talented codebreaker, but it appears there was more to his work than was originally revealed

When Gareth was not at work, I was the person he spent more time with than anyone else. I have thought about this every day since he died. I find it difficult to see anything in his personal life which could lie behind this. But I know this is a murder investigation so we must remain open to every possibility.

His family respect, 100 per cent, that he worked for MI6. I and the family respect the role he wasin. But personally, I don't think we'll ever get an answer as to what happened.'

As for the latest allegations, Sian rejects them absolutely. While most men might not keep thousands of pounds of designer clothes, she says it was merely a sign of his generosity. She told police in the summer that Gareth would often buy her and his sister, Ceri, expensive gifts and she believes the clothes were meant for them.

As if to prove it, she points to her £760 Stella McCartney PVC trousers which were a present from Gareth.

She says: I've seen every item of clothing that was there in the flat. There was Diana von Furstenberg, Stella McCartney, all in a size 6 or 8 which he wouldn't even fit an arm or a leg into. He was small but not that small. And the shoes they found in his apartment were not in his size, but his sister's. He was so generous you wouldn't believe.

'I truly believe if he had any interest in homosexuality, he would have spoken to his sister and to me as well.'

The list is endless. He bought me a high-end Balenciaga top, a Gucci bag, a Mulberry bag, an Armani fur. He did the same for his sister. I truly believe that Ceri and I were going to receive the clothing. We received so many things from him, that wouldn't have been strange.'

As for the women's wigs, Sian says there is an entirely innocent explanation. He and an American friend were going to a fancy-dress party in October,' she says. One of his hobbies was Japanese superhero cartoons and they were going to go as two of the characters. They were pink and yellow and those are the only wigs that were found.

I didn't know he went to the drag clubs but I think that was quite a new thing. He spoke in depth to his sister about everything. He mentioned he'd been to the transvestite comedy club so it's not something he was trying to hide.'

The constant implication throughout all the rumour and counter-rumour is that Gareth was gay. This is something Sian also denies. She says: They said last week that he had been training in fashion, doing night school at Central St Martin's. I didn't know about that but I knew he liked fashion. He saw it as art.

He had lots of magazines at his flat, Italian Vogue and all sorts, but he was open with his family, and if he was gay and had any temptations he would have spoken about them, especially to his sister. Hand on heart, there were no "innuendoes" about him.

His father was his best friend and he adored his mother and his sister. He was really open with his friends and family about his personal life and I truly believe if he had any interest in homosexuality, he would have spoken to his sister and to me as well.

I'm not in denial and nor are Gareth's mum, dad or sister. It would have been fine if he was but he had too much interest in women. He wanted a girlfriend and he wanted a wife and family. The truth is he wished he was better with women. He had a mild stutter, which was a big barrier as it would get worse when he was nervous.

Child prodigy: Gareth met Sian at primary school when he was placed two years above his age group due to his superior intellect

I don't know if he ever had a girlfriend. There weren't any I was aware of but to be honest, we never mentioned it. I know it was my next big project to get him a girlfriend. He felt he lacked confidence with women. He cherished the time he had with his sister and with me and he wanted that with other girls. I know because Gareth had a bit of a soft spot for me.'

Sian and Gareth first met at Ysgol Gynradd Morswyn primary school where her mother, Eleri, was a dinner lady. Her father Alwyn was a BT engineer.

Gareth was two years younger than her, the brilliant child prodigy of Ian, an engineer at Wylfa power station, and Ellen, who worked in education. Sian says: He was moved up two years because he was so clever. He used to read encyclo-pedias at six. Even in primary school, he was doing his GCSEs during lunchtime.

'I was quite naughty at school. I used to sell his homework. He used to have a big list. People used to come, all those who couldn't do their maths, and he would do it for them.'

We were childhood sweethearts at school. Then when we went to Bodedern, our secondary school, he moved on leaps and bounds with his intellect. He really was a genius. I would say a date, say May 15, 1974, and he would count back and then say, yes it was a Wednesday. He could work it out. But if he was here today, he'd hang out and enjoy a chat and a catch up. He was so approachable.

I was quite naughty at school. I used to sell his homework. He used to have a big list. People used to come, all those who couldn't do their maths, and he would do it for them. We only sold it for school dinner money, 70p a time or something like that, and I used to buy magazines. He got nothing, to be honest. He didn't want anything. That's how he was, how we were as friends.'
After school the two friends went their separate ways.

Mr Williams gained special permission to leave school for Bangor University aged just 15, and at 18 he left home to study for a PhD at Manchester University. Three years later, he was approached by the British security services, who apparently spotted his precocious online gaming abilities.

Sian left school at 16 to become a window-dresser for Next in Bangor before going on to become a celebrity fashion stylist. She moved to Manchester and worked on Hollyoaks and Coronation Street.

It was in Manchester, four years ago, that she bumped into Gareth again. She says: It was surreal at first. I was coming down the escalators at Selfridges and I spotted him coming up. We took off again. We went out for a drink and chatted. To be honest with you, I think we were both slightly in awe of each other. We were both excited by what the other was doing and amused too. He told me he was working for GCHQ.

We talked for a couple of hours and made a pact we would always stay in touch, and we did. We called each other every week from then on. And he would come up roughly once a month. He was hugely into music, from classical to rap. Music was his life. He'd always tie up his visits with a gig at the MEN Arena or the Apollo. I never went with him, I'd meet him afterwards or the next day. He'd often help me with the shopping for my shoots.'

Spotted: Mr Williams left school for university aged just 15 and was approached by the security services due to his precocious online gaming abilities
Two years ago Sian moved to London, where she lives with her partner of three years Saul Herd, 37, who runs a corporate flooring company. Gareth also moved to the capital after he was seconded to MI6.

She says: Our friendship deepened. We didn't have many friends around us he'd moved from Cheltenham, I'd moved from Manchester and so we stuck closely together. We'd grown up together and enjoyed each other's company.
We used to go to Nobu Berkeley Square in Mayfair. He always treated me. We just used to hang out.

Sometimes we'd go to the Fifth Floor bar at Harvey Nichols and drink cocktails. It would be apple sours for me. He would have a non-alcoholic cocktail. He used to join in with whatever was there, white wine or champagne if there was a group, but he wasn't a drinker. If it was just me and him he wouldn't have anything at all.

He used to just turn up at any time. He was always welcome. I might have spoken to him and told him I was finishing late and he would pop round. Sometimes he would stay over on the sofa. He would always bring me a bottle of rosé and often some cigarettes. He was a true old-school gentleman.

He loved candles. He used to love burning my expensive candles and then we'd have a catch-up and a gossip. There was no one like him, I had such an in-depth relationship with him. He was so knowledgeable about everything from restaurants to cars to maths to politics.'

Sian last saw Gareth in April. She had moved back to Wales for a while to take a break from the pressures of London life, while he was preparing to go on a driving holiday to the West Coast of America during July and August.

She says: Before he went to America, we went down to Trearddur Bay and watched the sunset. We'd spent the whole afternoon together. I was at home with my parents and he stopped by. He was excited about his trip. He seemed very together. There was nothing troubling him. It was just a lovely, completely normal afternoon.'

She had no way of knowing she would never see Gareth again. The couple stayed in touch, as ever, on the phone and he called her on August 14, the day of the last known sighting of him at Holland Park Tube station. She says: He just said, "Hi darling, how's it hanging?"

He said he was leaving London and moving back to Cheltenham, and wondering when we would meet up next. He was happy and warm and the same as he always was. He left the message on the Saturday but I didn't get it until the Wednesday as I was in Spain for work and couldn't pick up messages abroad.

He was fine, which is why I'm sure he didn't try to take his own life. And anyway, he'd never do that. He loved his family too much to commit suicide. Then on August 23, the day he was found, Ceri called me at 11am and asked if I'd heard from him. I said, "Yes, a week ago." He and Ceri were due to go to Paris on the Wednesday of that week. She'd tried to get in touch over the weekend and there was no answer on the home phone or the mobile.

It was odd she hadn't heard from him, particularly as they were going away. She said, "What do you think?" I told her I was sure it was nothing to worry about. But the minute I put the phone down, I knew something was wrong. He was like clockwork, so predictable. It was completely out of character for him.

I spoke to Ceri again later and we both admitted we were worried. We thought he must have had an accident or something. She called his work and they said he hadn't shown up for a meeting on Wednesday.'

That day all their lives changed when Gareth was found dead. A month later, on September 24, they buried Gareth at Bethel Methodist Chapel in Anglesey. The head of MI6, Sir John Sawers, attended.

Sian says: The family were really happy he came. There were around 20 people from his work there. They came in through the back door of the chapel and had a separate area they were guided into. To be honest, I don't think anyone really noticed as there were so many people there.'

But they can never fully lay Gareth to rest until they have some idea as to how, and why, he died. Sian says: I'm not sure we ever will know but the family need some answers. If anyone has any information about what happened to Gareth, I hope they will come forward. It's not fair for his family to suffer like this.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...z19JmJ5Ldx

Looks to me as if Sian Lloyd-Jones has just destroyed the police account of what happened. This offiical account which was clearly fed to Scotland Yard by the spooks....

I wonder what sordid saga the deep British state is so desperately and libellously covering up?

[Peter Lemkin]

This "rebuttal" begs some fresh questions.

Was Williams undergoing some sexual metamorphosis - to emerge with a new private, personal, sexual identity?



http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec...py-not-gay

Ah - I've found the full Daily Mail article.

The Guardian left out some absolutely key details. Such as why this MI6 and NSA cryptologist was adopting a new identity. The claim of Sian Lloyd-Jones is that this new identity was required by his spooky bosses.

Perhaps the original Guardian piece was simply incompetent.

Perhaps not.



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...z19JmJ5Ldx

Looks to me as if Sian Lloyd-Jones has just destroyed the police account of what happened. This offiical account which was clearly fed to Scotland Yard by the spooks....

I wonder what sordid saga the deep British state is so desperately and libellously covering up?

Agree Jan. If true, a double identity is quite interesting...for what....just a guess...but perhaps he was to go from desk-spook to field spook....and the target of that eliminated him....or his minders did.....but whatever it was, it is a very dirty and ugly TOP SECRET something the poor 'dumb' [naive' maths expert got caught up in........and paid with his life. Not the first, sadly, not the last.

[Magda Hassan]

http://deeppoliticsforum.net/forums/show...ht=dolores

[Jan Klimkowski]

Ah Dolores Shayler. Yes!

The spookocracy really needs to think up some new scenarios for their attempts to destroy whistleblowers by fabricating stories of sexual deviance.

Of course, with a live whistleblower, like Shayler, it would be entirely possible for a spooky shrink to place "suggestions" in David's psyche that he should reemerge with an entirely new personality: the truly gorgeous "Dolores"....

[Jan Klimkowski]

The rozzers are still desperately trying to find "evidence" to support the MI6 cover story.

If anybody fancies providing Scotland Yard's finest with a hot lead, all calls to Crimestoppers are anonymous, so find a payphone and dissemble away:

East End link to body in bag spy death
Julia Gregory, Senior reporter | December 29, 2010

Detectives investigating the death of M16 agent Gareth Williams would like to speak to anyone who may have seen him at an East End cabaret evening.

The 31-year-old's body was found in a bag in his flat in West London in August.

Detectives are anxious to hear from anyone who may have met Mr Williams at a drag cabaret act at Bistrotheque in Wadeson Street on Friday August 13. He had also bought tickets for two other shows at the Bethnal Green venue.

A police spokeswoman said: "We would like to hear from anybody who was there who spoke with him or had any interaction with him."

Two days after he visited Bistrotheque Mr Willams was spotted on CCTV shopping in the West End. His body was discovered in his flat on August 23.

Anyone who met Mr Williams should contact the incident room in Hendon on 020 8358 0200 or anonymously to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

http://www.eastlondonadvertiser.co.uk/ne...h_1_763554

[Peter Lemkin]

Gareth Williams And Gudrun Loftus Murdered To Avoid Their Becoming More George Blakes

by Trowbridge H. Ford


In the so-called war on terror, securing secrets obtained is just as important for intelligence services as obtaining them in the first place, though the Western powers, especially the United States, have been quite slow in realizing this, thanks to its beliefs that its technology is too complicated to be seriously broken, and its agents are completely trustworthy. Of course, traditionally counter-intelligence - protecting what one already has, and making sure that it is not stolen in the future - has been as important as obtaining or stealing them in the first place, but the end of the Cold War, where organized systems of the combatants faced off against one another, has greatly blunted the process, leading individual states and alliances to believe that they only need worry about hackers, thieves of specific expertise, and criminal organizations. Current intelligence agencies have been until quite recently confident that their vetting processes, and periodic checks on the bona fides of agents, thanks to all the feedback from notorious spies such organizations experienced during the Cold War - are enough to insure that nothing serious leaks out.


In doing so, intelligence services have been slow to recognize that older ideologies - nationalism which made monsters like Hitler, socialism that made ones like Stalin, and pacificism that produced utopian one-worlders - have been replaced by other ones, perhaps not so powerful as those but still militating against assumptions about loyalties, priorities, and outlooks of citizens likely to become their agents. Rights of all kinds - those of humans, women, races, animals, the unborn, the poor, interntional and domestic law, the oppressed, the uneducated, the unknown, etc. - have taken on a priority which have militated against traditional beliefs about nations, societies, and individuals. Wars are now being fought or opposed in the name of human rights, doctors are being killed or protected for doing abortions, political leaders are being assassinated or appalled for their actions regarding fur and factory farms, etc. The intelligence game has not fundamentally changed, only who are the participants, where are they located, why are they doing this, and how can they be discovered and stopped.


I personally find this most blunted interest in counter-intelligence most bizarre, having been an intelligence analyst aka clerk typist in the US Army's Counter Intelligence Corps in Paris during the end of the Korean War. We did nothing but look for spies, especially communist ones, everywhere, recruiting the French Army agency like ours to help out in the process. My job was essentially to see to the processing of all security checks pertaining to Frech citizens working for the American Army. Any French national who was considered for employment, mostly for the most menial jobs like cleaning up all kinds of places, from offices to motor pools, had to get the okay from Uncle Sam. The process must have been employed because of a hangover from the Dreyfus Affair, and that damned borderau found in the German Embassy by that cleaning lady. Still, we - rather I - had to do it, prepare the agency checks for the Service de la Securité de la Défence Nationale, Section Guerre, for every job applicant, and type up the results in sextuplicate for the higher ups back in Washington. I don't recall ever receicing any unfavorable report from the French Army, but I vividly remember the mountains of paper I produced in the process.


Of course, if that was all we were doing in France, it would have been quite harmless, though most unnecessary, but there was much more to what was afoot. The commaning officer when I left had put us on a war footing when he came, having someone in the office 24/7 to help prevent the Russkies from stealing our worthless information - what I volunteered without much appreciation that we make readily available to them just to confuse them about our mission - and seeing to the recall of our independent Liaison Officer there on the grounds that he might be a leaker because of his alleged homosexuality. Our commanding officer also wanted us to break into the apartment of a Army civilian in the hope of finding literature to prove his being a communist - what the rest of us kiboshed by stating that we had similar literature in our own digs, and when we learned that the Boss would take no responsibility if we were caught. Then we had an eager-beaver agent who independently set out to prove that Suzanne Bidault, the wife of French diplomat and offen Cabinet minister Georges Bidault, was a leading member of the French Communit Party, only to discover at the last moment before a serious diplomatic incident occurred that she was another Suzanne Bidault.


The pìeces de résistance occurred when our counterparts in the Air Force, the Office of Special Invetigations, wondered if anyone in our office would vouch for the fact that Max Asoli's Reporter magazine was communist-dominated. Since I took the magazine, and my brother-in-law was a frequent contributer to it, I told that Air Force snoops that they had it all wrong, as it was a CIA-funded one, apparently killing off the whole alleged exposé.


Then Hoover's FBI got CIC to do a surveillance on a leader of the American Communist Party, a guy name Burns who also had burns on his hands, when he visited Paris for some unknown reason. Of course, there was no legal basis for the operation, though that did not stop J. Edgar as he demanded that we go through with it after Burns had cancelled his flight. Seems a Canadian with the same name booked a flight to Paris about at this time, and we had to make sure that he wasn't the American one. Well, when he arrived at Orly, we quickly lost sight of him, and our people had a hectic 24 hours until Mike Gravel, later Senator from Alaska, and recently a Democratic candidate for President, caught up the the guy, discovering that he had no burns on his hands.(1)


I mention this experience to show just how deep this anti-communism, especially of a Russian nature, had developed by the end of the Korean War - what has persisted among Western intelligence services, especially Anglo-American ones, ever since, particularly by those agents who got burned in some way subsequently by it. Cambridge University spies Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess had just fled to the USSR in May 1951, and while I was in Paris, there were terrible riots outside the American Embassy when the Rosenbergs, really surrogates for the really important spies - and there were some - were executed. Instead of seeing the trouble in some kind of proportion, though, Western counter-intelligence preferred to see communists almost everywhere, particularly when their Apostle associates, Kim Philby, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross, did not follow them. Little wonder that historians of these betrayals have made careers out of continuing to see fellow communists amongst us, and roaming free right down to today.(2)


Little wonder with intelligence agencies stirring up so much trouble - and even MI5 was deeply involved in such wild-goose chases if Peter Wright is to be believed - the Kennedy administration consolidated all the service counter-intelligence agencies under the Defense Intelligence Agency, and all of them put increasingly less emphasis upon counter-intellignece as the Cold War dragged on, leaving the protection of their secrets to offices within them. Then vetting process were improved to make sure that the occasional bad-apple didn't join their ranks, and periodic checks on their reliability, including lie-detector tests, were established to ensure that they did not turn after joining them. By the time the Cold War ended - thanks to the belated discovery of NSA's Robert Lipka spying for the KGB by its own admission, and the Agency's Aldrich 'Rick' Ames having similarly spied for the Soviets - Anglo-American intelligence agencies were quite sure that serious spying had essentially become a thing of the past, though there was still the most belated discovery that the Bureau's Robert Hanssen had worked for the KGB too, something that could be left to the West's security services.


There are still growing signs that other loyalties rather than expected patriotism are at play, like other countries' progress, human and animal rights, etc., though security services are reluctant to recognize them. Jonathan Pollard's spying for Israel - what resulted in his being sentenced to life imprisonment without parole - continues to be justified in terms of American national security, though what he did was not so important if Washington was not attempting a sudden, non-nuclear conclusion to the Cold War - triggered by Olof Palme's assassination, and at everyone's risk - what could have resulted in Armageddon if it had not been for the spying by more important ones. Holland's Pim Fortuyn was left unprotected despite his disregard of animal rights - what his assassin Volkert van der Graaf used, among other things, to explain the killing. The killing of ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko remains unsolved because MI5 conveniently maintains that he is another victim of the Cold War, refusing to admit that he was threatening to blackmail all its participants, particularly Britain.(3) Then there is the unfortunate case of plasma expert J. Reece Roth who had not paid strict attention to whom he allowed to be his research assistants while helping out Beijing in such matters when the USA was actively using his research and others in triggering the deadly earthquake in Sichuan province in May 2008.


The places to look for potential turncoats are in the feedback from the Cold War, especially when spies involved in it see results which directly conflict with what made them spy for the West in the first place. These tensions are particularly noticeable with the unification of Germany which made former residents of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) who risked their lives in spying for the West, especially those working for MI6 and CIA, suddenly have to put up with former communists who are doing things for a united Germany which they most opposed when still living in the GDR. It could result in a situation where a former MI6 spy is confronted with a political situation where he or she is doing for London what they had risked their lives a generation before to prevent and stop. Then other loyalties and concerns could threaten to override tradiional state loyalty when it engages in 'false flag' efforts to blame others, especially former communist opponents, for what it is attempting in order to get back for former betrayals, especially if key players in the ruse don't know about it, and are vigorously opposed to such methods if they do find out.


This all seems most germane when talking about the killing of German linquist and leading Oxford academic Gudrun Loftus, though given her role in preparing analysts for the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), her intelligence status has prevented any disclosure, official or unofficial, about who she really is. Loftus was born in the GDR, and grew up there as a devout Catholic, perhaps around Leipzig where she was subjected to all its recruiting methods for joining its elite communist

ranks. She did not take to this most intrusive process, most likely because of the Stasi's eveasdropping on everyone, especially growing troublemakers like herself.

Seeems she met her future husband, Gerry Loftus, through the Brtish Council's programs of English As A Foreign Language (EFL), noted for its connections to the Secret Intelligence Service, and soon was recruited by it as a spy - what forced her to flee the country in the early 1980s when it threatened being exposed to Marcus Wolf's agents. While in West Germany, she finally finished her higher education at Tubingen, Germany's university most noted for its religious tradition. From there, she went on to Oxford where we have already seen she accomplished a lot.(4)


Gareth Williams became a similarly most important agent in an entirely different way, though still without any serious vetting about who he really was. While the media, apparently thanks to input from Britain's covert government, has portrayed him as a one-dimensional loner, he was obviously much more than that. He had serious interests in politics and religion, especially in Wales, though he was, of course, a practical maths genius, and a great expert on electrionic gizmos involved in cryptography, as his Ph.D. from the University of Manchester demonstrated. He, coming from Anglesey, might well have been a Welsh nationalist since he spoke English with a Welsh accent, committed to restoring the country to an independent one which honored its language and traditions - what would explain why people who knew him are so tight-lipped about what they say. The big problem for Britain with Gareth was allowing him to write his own ticket about anything he touched without knowing what he might do with it. It reminds me of how MI6 allowed Kim Philby and George Blake to do whatever they wanted when it came to spying for Moscow. Blake became Britain most destructive double-agent because of how he was treated as a South Korean prisoner during the Korean War.


Williams' independent interests started surfacing shortly after he arrived at Cheltentham's GCHQ. He learned, it seems, of the Foreign Office's communications with its embassy in Moscow about the activities of the GRU's Colonel Sergei Skripal, the spy who MI6 had developed in the mid-1990s to expose its spies sent into Europe, and Russia's military plans in case of war, and apparently told Putin's people about it. Willaims could not abide by the idea that he was serving HMG when it was just trying to keep the Cold War going, like it had been doing for centuries in Wales. Skripal received $100,000 for his efforts, far more than Williams was being paid. The retired Colonel's spying could have played an important role in the sinking of the Kursk in 2001 by the USS Toledo - an operation that the Royal Navy's submarine Splendid was apparently involved in.(5) Skripal was arrested in December 2004, and convicted in 2006, sentenced to thirteen years in prison, setting his release for 2017 for time already served. Little wonder that Skripal's exposure set off alarm bells in Whitehall, causing a raft of rumors about who had exposed him. Former MI6 double agent Oleg Gordievsky was left asking if Britain had another George Blake on its hands.(6)


Loftus's independent activities started surfacing after Angela Merkel became chairman of the SDU-CSU right-wing coalition in Germany, and went on to become its first female Chancellor.Obviously, Gudrun knew something of her past, having grown up in the GDR too, but she did know how deeply Merkel was involved not only in its covert activities but also that of the KGB too until, it seems, I wrote my article about it.(7) Its closing sentence must have had an impact on Loftus, especially given the activities she had engaged in to stop her from rising to the top of a united Germany. Whether Merkel was just a Stasi asset or a KGB spy, she had certainly lost her credibility to lead a reunited Germany, especially since she was providing the growing use of German forces, and eavesdropping technics reminiscent of the former communist regime to put down the insurgents in Afghanistan by the harshist means. Gudrun's major problem, like Williams', was how to make her concerns public and credible.


By this time, Williams was more interested in disclosing more counter-terrorist officers, and their intelligence collecting techniques as he worked away at Fort Meade with NSA to catch an alleged Russian sleeper cell of spies that it had discovered and the Bureau was putting the finishing touches on catching, and in Afghanistan to help NATO forces track down Al-Qaeda and Talaban insurgents. The only trouble was that the security services had belatedly come to suspect him of treachery. The only trouble with going after him directly was that he would bring out these covert, illegal operations in his defense if prosecuted, so they set up a clever sting operation in the hope that it would keep him occupied, and possibly dissuade him from continuing while they had more time to finish these eavesdropping operations. A fledgling MI6 software engineer, young Daniel Houghton, was persuaded to leave the service, and to befriend Williams - who he had apparently gotten to know through their rabid interest in cycling - so that he went along with a plan to sell such secrets, only unbeknownst to Williams, to a friendly power of Britain, Dutch intelligence agents. It was to be the crowning achievement of Scarlett's tenure as MI6's 'C'. (8)


In the counter-intelligence race against time, the British pulled off their sting operation before Williams was able to completely ruin theirs with NSA in the States, and then NATO's pursuit of insurgents in Afghanistan. In early March 2010, MI5 agents, feigning to be those of a foreign power, arrested Houghton when he was leaving a London hotel after he received £900.000 for the DVDs and video tapes upon which he, it seems, had copied the data regarding MI5's and Mi6's personnel, and operatiing procedures. He understandably stated that they had the "wrong man", as he was only Williams' intermediary, later explaining that he had been tricked into doing so by voices in his head.(9) While Judge Bean at the Old Bailey trial of the case said that that did not permit him to escape responsibility, Houghton had not done it for ideological reasons or to hurt Britain since he had sold the information to a friendly power! After he pleaded guilty in July to committing one offence of the Official Secrets Act, he was sentenced to one year in prison in early September, as if it were essentially an uncomplicated case of theft - what will result in his release, come February, as he was credited with serving time while on remand.(10)


Williams was quite confused by this rigmarole, but as Houghton's trial was stretched out to make sure that his own spying was successfully terminated, he began to act again in Russia's interest. Just after the Manhattan 11 were arrested, and charged with spying, NSA feared that he might come to their defense, given his freedom to say what he wanted about the Bureau's sting, so their crimes were reduced like Houghton's were in the process of being marginalized. Once ten of them, headed by the sultry Anna Chapman, pleaded guilty to the lesser charges, the Kremlin sought out Williams to determine if he would be willing to see them exchanged for Colonel Skripal, and three other Western spies it was holding. It would make no sense to lose Williams while exchanging Skripal. Williams' visitors were the 'Mediterranean-looking' couple who had sought him out in his safe apartment in Pimlico in late June.(11) Williams agreed to the exchange as it would help embarrass NSA/GCHQ over the 'false flag' operation - turning the tables on Washington and London on how they treated ignorant Russians who they had set up.


Shortly afterwards, Williams learned that Houghton had really set him up by dealing with the Dutch rather than the Russians with his copied material, and went to Afghanistan to gather material showing just how serious NATO forces there, especially the British, American, and German ones. had been in violating human rights in trying to suppress the insurgents. In the process of making the logs understandable to those not familiar with the languages used, particularly German, Mrs. Loftus, it seems, helped out in the translations because Angela Merkel's government was increasing its assistance to the Afghan mission while other countries were reducing theirs or were thinking of doing so. Once they were completed, Williams handed them over in July to Julian Assange's Wikileaks, apparently with the expectation that material would be redacted to protect the identity of forces and personnel involved. Wikileaks turned the Afghan Logs over to The New York Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel to pass on to the public. The choice of the German outlet as a source seemed to show Loftus's contribution to the project.


While the logs were redacted to prevent the identity of the forces involved, excesses by German forces around Kunduz were particularly noteable. In September of last year, the German commander there, Colonel Georg Klein, ordered the bombing of a crowd north of the city, looting two highjacked fuel tankers in the Kunduz river bed. Klein ordered the attack after Task Force 47, an elite special forces group, had been informed by a single source that it was a completely Taliban operation, and he agreed to the targeting of the two groups with 500-pound bombs from missiles, killing at least 142 people.


The rules of engagement allowed such action if there were no civilians in the area, and the German troops acted as if this were so, and so claimed, though the vast majority of those killed were civilians.(12) Actually, those killed were essentially civilians who the Taliban had mobilized to move the tankers. As in Britain's suppression of IRA terrorism, as Richard Norton-Taylor pointed out, the killing of 'high value' targets was done with no attempt to capture them, warning shots were hardly ever fired, and winning 'hearts and minds' of the Afghans was largely a myth, intended merely for the benefit of the folks back home. Lady Neville-Jones, Britain's Security Minister, hit the nail on the head when she said that the logs appeared to be the product of both leaking and hacking - what Williams could best provide.


What really infuriated Mrs. Loftus was that Merkel's government really did nothing about it - only accepting the resignations of Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung whose attempted cover up of the incident was exposed, and the retirement of German President Horst Köhler, another graduate of Tubingen University, after he said that German involvement in Afghanistant was good for world stability and its economy. Though Chancellor Merkel had belatedly promised a full investigation of the tragedy, the charges against Klein were ultimately dropped, and nothing has really been done about it.(13)


The unredacted leaks by Williams and Loftus, of course, just put them in greater jeopardy, as Julian Assange explained after an apparent meeting with one of them:"We have delayed the release of some 15,000 reports from the total archive as part of a harm minimization process remanded by our source. After further review, these reports will be released, with the occasional redactions and eventaully, in full, as the security situation in Afghanistant permits." (14)


Unfortunately, this explanation and future changes were far too late to save Williams who was by then on his way back to the States, trying to obtain more information about the entrapment of the ten Russians, apparently in the hope of improving his position with Moscow. By this time, Williams knew that he was really the target of the Houghton sting, and his best chance of avoiding a long imprisonment or murder was to flee, like Maclean and Burgess had when MI5 was finally closing in on them. He had no chance of being freed, as Blake had, if he ever went to prison Williams might have tipped his hand by the complicated travel arrangements he contemplated to get to Moscow. He certainly indicated his intentions by where he went, and the questions he asked, especially to the female associate and her husband at GCHQ who had taken his place at Fort Meade after he left - what resulted in their being transferred to Denver on a mission which made them unavailable for any questioning about the matter. While Williams undoubtedly collected valuable information about it and other Scarlett missteps on his laptop - what would have made the disclosures by other Russian double agents tame by comparison - he had also ingested the poison which would kill him before he ever got to Moscow.(15)


The most interesting aspects of his murder were the lengths that the securocrats went to in order to best hide his poisoning, and his killing so that it could be so clouded with rumor that most interest in what had really happened would be lost. Clearly they had complete access to his Rodina apartment or they would have reported his unexplained visit by that couple at the end of June. The fact they didn't showed that they were hoping to implicate the Russians in the murder - what some of the disinformation after the discovery of his body was intended to achieve. Obviously, they wanted to see where it was really headed before they finally acted overtly.


When he was poinsoned in the States, they believed that he would die, and could be disposed of before anyone suspected what was occurring. To facilitate this, he was dumped naked into the carryall, and padlocked in to make sure that he was only discovered after there had been vast decomposition of his body, making the discovery of a natural poison almost impossible to discover. His nakedness was the result of the clothing he had been wearing while he was dying, being removed from the apartment to make his last moves in London impossible to retrace.


The only trouble was that the police did find those security videos of him entering the Holland Park tube station, and walking along the front of Harrods. The photographs clearly show that he, so sickly that he is hardly recognizeable, was suffering jaundice from the toxins of the poisonous mushroom, apparently amanita phalloides, the most damaging evidence about official lies about his condition when he, it seems, just suddenly was killed. The photographs, especially the one of Williams in the descending lift at Holland Park station, show this, though dinformation agents and sceptics claim that its light is the cause of the yellowness, not his skin color. Actually, the light shows its light making his skin at the top of his head more white, giving him a kind of halo, while the rest of it is quite yellow.(16) And the other photographs show him in a jaundiced condition, with his arms and his head being a darkish yellow while the red of his T-shirt, and the light color of his trousers are not made to look pink or yellow.


His having been poisoned was overlooked when the securocrats cleared his safe house of medicine he had bought at Harrods Dispensing Pharmacy, missing the receipt he had about the purchase. Williams paid for most of the items he purchased in cash - what his killers were ignorant of when they finished taking him out.


Mrs. Loftus must have been at a loss to account for his killing, given all the disinformation provided about it, until, it seems, I provided essentially the above information. She apparently provided support for my continuing investigation of his murder after I posted its background (17), and no sooner had I finished it than she too was murdered. She was even more important as a witness to Williams murder, explaining what and why he did what he did, than what she herself could disclose. The article was posted on October 4th, and she was apparently pushed backwards down the steep stairs leading to the Senionr Common Room of St. John's College, Oxford early the next morning. She had apparently gone there to discuss the disclosure of the Afghan logs, and Williams killing with someone she thought knew something about it - what was discovered by GCHQ's eavesdropping on the conversation setting up the meeting - and was met at the landing at the top of the stairs by the person she sought by a heafty push back down them to her death.


The police are still investigating both murders, preventing anyone from divulging any information about them to the press and the public, and, of course, government employees are prevented from doing so under the strictist penalties. The families of the deceased have apparently been belatedly informed that their killings were a matter of national security - what has been so successfully that they have not uttered a peep about them while the heads of MI5, GCHQ, and MI6 have gone out of their way to state that such disclosures of secret information - whatever their source - cannot be allowed not matter what is required to stop it.


In explaining intelligence assurance, the Cheltenham Director Lain Lobban said most pointedly but without any clarification: "Cyberspace lowers the bar for entry to the espionage game, both for states and criminal actors." (18)


MI6 Director Sir John Sawers added about the problems such actions caused allied intelligence services: "They will not work with SIS (Secret Intelligence Service), will not pass us the secrets they hold, unless they can trust us not to expose them. Our foreign partners need to have certainty that what they tell us will remain secret, not just most of the time, but always." (19)


Counter-intelligence in the Anglo-American world has returned with increased vengeance.



References


1. For more, see this link: http://codshit.blogspot.com/2004/01/conf...py-in.html

2. For examples of this, see Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB, Nigel West, VENONA: The Greatest Secret of the Cold War, and Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Fridrikh Firsov, The Soviet World of American Communism.

3. For more, see this link: http://cryptome.quintessenz.at/mirror/mi...inenko.htm

4. http://codshit.blogspot.com/2010/10/was-...illed.html

5. http://whatreallyhappened.com/WHRARTICLE...kursk.html

6. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/wo...604149.ece

7. For more, see this link: http://cryptome.info/0001/merkel-spy.htm

8. For an account of what Scarlett had to make up for, see this link:

http://codshit.blogspot.com/2008/01/mi6-...er-of.html

9. For more, see this link: http://cicentre.net/wordpress/index.php/...t-mi6-spy/

10. http://bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-11176434

11. For a most ignorant account of the visit, see this link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/c...ouple.html

12. For more, see this link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/jul/25/g...engagement

13. http://www.afghanistanconflictmonitor.org/kunduz

14. Quoted from Curt Hopkins, "Wikileaks Releases 91,900 Afghanistan War Documents Online," July 25, 2010.

15. For more, see: http://codshit.blogspot.com/2010/10/why-...q-had.html

16 http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/a...illiams.do

17. http://codshit.blogspot.com/2010/10/why-...-gchq.html

18. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11528371

19. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11642568

[David Guyatt]

I hate when such important stores are 'allowed' to die off/out......

I'm the same with theories and assumptions masquerading as facts Pete.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Some very interesting material here:

Mirror : Security chiefs mourn loss of genius' spy Gareth Williams
Friday, August 27, 2010

They are anxious to know if there has been any breach of global security as a result of the murder at Mr Williams' Government-owned flat in Pimlico, Central London.

Britain now relies heavily on the NSA to help monitor phone calls, emails, texts and other communications of UK terror suspects.

When MI5 discovered the plot in 2006 by British Muslims to bomb transatlantic jets, GCHQ called in the NSA to help and Williams worked closely alongside them.

Spy satellites tracked and secretly copied emails from mastermind Rashid Rauf in Pakistan to the two ringleaders in Walthamstow, East London. The messages were vital to the 2008 convictions of Abdullah Ahmed Ali, Assad Sarwar and Tanvir Hussain. Mr Williams, who won a first class honours degree in maths at just 17, used to spend an average 19 days on each US trip before taking a fortnight's holiday.

Rashid Rauf "escaped" from police custody in Britain, and this and other details strongly suggest he was a British intelligence patsy in the notorious "Liquid Bombers" plot, which was used to justify a particularly draconian phase of Homeland Security on airlines.

The Rashid Rauf material is expanded upon here and in the subsequent chapters at that website.

Gareth Williams, the Boy in the Bag, appears to have been a key "codebreaker" in deciphering the "Liquid Bomber" emails. However, the entire "Liquid Bombers" scenario has always seemed fantastical and constructed, and this is precisely what several juries thought.

The "Liquid Bombers" plot has great signfiicance for MI6, the NSA and US Homeland Security. If the gauche and innocent Williams finally realized he'd been played by his bosses, he would most certainly be a security risk....

[Craig Wilson]

I realise that as a newbie here I will be treated with some caution (and understandably so). But I would just like to say that the site linked to by Jan K in the post before mine is one of the finest pieces of investigative work - "fictional" or otherwise - that I have seen in a long time.

Do yourself a favour and read the blog from the beginning. Written by "Winter Patriot", it contains some very astute observations about the operation of state power in the UK and a remarkably perceptive analysis of this enlightening case.

Not sure I'm able to post links but here goes:

www.shatasm.blogspot.com

[Magda Hassan]

Welcome Craig! Yes, it is a great source of information and speculation on the Gareth William's case, still unsolved.