And why isn’t a blog by a disgruntled ex-MI6 employee, Russian defector and, evidently, completely vengence-obsessed, egomaniacal asshole bigger news? Because it is unfuckinggoogleable, that is why. Try it: google “Richard Tomlinson,” “blog” and any possible other combination. For a bog-standard Typepad blog, it’s pretty well invisible. I got to it only via googling ‘Richard Tomlinson v MI6’ which is what the Observer says it is called, which it is not btw, which led to a Romanian mirror site archive of Cryptome, which led to the blog. This is, like, way more cloak-and-dagger than most internet searches and, given the way Google works, cannot be accidental. Either Google is experiencing a significant failure or Google is overriding its searches even for people who don’t live in China…and with that, an internet icon falls. The reason people used Google in the first place was you couldn’t buy your way to the front of the line; that you can bully your way there, or bully another person off it, completely negates any advantage Google had.
According to Cryptome, his first site got shut down when it posted a list of currently active MI6 agents. It’s too bad he doesn’t work for the White House; Rove didn’t even have to use vacation time to testify.
ADVISORY, not for publication:
We have been asked by the secretary of the Defence, Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee to publish the following:
FOR THE ATTENTION OF ALL EDITORS FROM SECRETARY DEFENCE, PRESS & BROADCASTING ADVISORY COMMITTEE
I understand that a US-based website has today published on the internet a list which identifies a large number of SIS (MI6) officers.
Defence Advisory Notice No 6 asks editors and programme makers to seek advice before publishing such details unless they have been widely disclosed or discussed as such action could put lives at risk.
Departmental officers are examining how the damage of this disclosure can be minimised. While this is in progress, I would ask that editors do not
interpret the information in the website as being widely disclosed and do not, therefore, publish the address or the content of the website without
first contacting the D Notice Secretary, Rear Admiral David Pulvertaft
And here is the inevitable Wired story: File not found. Quel suprise. But, fortunately, archived on Cryptome again:
Secret service eliminates ex-spy’s Web site
A former James Bond wannabe had his Web site shut down by MI6 last week after threatening to expose some of Britain’s top secrets.
Richard Tomlinson’s site aimed to shake up and stir MI6 by identifying its officers and site locations around the world, according to a report in The Mail on Sunday. Tomlinson also warned that he would publish a book synopsis of his own MI6 career –- an act he was jailed for last year.
Top government law officer Anthony Hammond, got the injunction banning the site, which is based in Switzerland, where Tomlinson now lives.
The site, run by Lausanne ISP IPWorldcom, stated: “The objective of MI6 is to steal the secrets of other countries. Most of the secrets are stolen by MI6 officers working abroad under cover as British diplomats.”
The map of MI6 office sites was said to be “coming soon”.
Another page showed Tomlinson wearing a silly hat and grinning in front of the MI6 headquarters at Vauxhall Cross in London.
When the site was opened up it played the theme tune to Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
Last week, Tomlinson said he would appeal against the injunction.
Meanwhile, the cheeky Web wizard had switched the pages to a site run by California-based Geocities.com. Again he was closed down after the Swiss injunction was pointed out to Geocities.
According to Tomlinson, MI6 was breaking the law around the globe by its activities, as well as playing with his liberty.
“They are trying to obstruct my freedom to travel and I have already been banned from entering France, the USA and Australia,” he told the MoS.
“There would be no need to put up this Web site if they stopped messing me about. I have already lost one job by being prevented from entering France.” ®
And here is the story in the Observer that got my attention in the first place. Handing Polly Toynbee her ass is just gonna have to wait for now…
Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service is bracing itself for a fresh series of security leaks about its operations on an internet blog launched by a former top-ranking MI6 officer.
Richard Tomlinson who was jailed in 1998 for breaching the Official Secrets Act, has been quiet since fleeing to Russia in 2001 to publish a book about covert MI6 activities. He is back now and seems intent on taking revenge on the secret service which sacked him in 1995.
Tomlinson, who claims he now lives in the South of France and works as a yacht broker, began the blog last month with a warning: ‘Let the game begin…’
Note, as well, that none of the stories contain links to his actual blog. Which we here at raincoaster global HQ, of course, do.
UPDATE: Blog go bye-bye. Quel Suprise. Still, there’s always Google Cache, isn’t there.
UPDATE UPDATED: Cryptome is reporting that the blog has been shut “by request of HMG which bluffed craven US-based Typepad.com.” No source given for that information; I haven’t had any replies to my emails to Typepad, although on a long weekend I’d be surprised if I see anything at all before Monday. The latest upload of the MI6 spreadsheet that is extant is on Cryptome, from July 31st of this year.
raincoaster 
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Please contact me at your earliest convenience to tell me where Richard Tomlinson’s current blog is located.
I see the Tomlinson v MI6 one was closed yesterday, 4th August 2006
Thanks so much.
Alan Sparrow
Post Data: Email address: brightraven20002000@hotmail.com
Thank you!
Alan Sparrow.
Alan, if you know for sure that the blog was closed for good yesterday, then you have more information than I do. All I have is Google Cache. He may still be blogging, he may have hidden it behind a special link, or he may have moved it elsewhere. The warning you get when you go to the blog is NOT a normal message when the blog has simply been taken down. I suggest you email Typepad with questions about that.
In any case, if he wants to be putting stuff in the public eye, a blog is bound to surface sooner or later. But I know he said he’d deliberately tried to hide the last one from search engines, so how he’ll get the news out I do not know.
T’was interesting reading, while it lasted.
My theory: He’s been tossed in jail and the blog secured by the government. But it’s only a theory at this point.
Richard, baby! The Comment and Blogroll sections await!
He lists his interests as:
And as of two days ago said the police had told him he wasn’t going to be charged but his things were not going to be returned. Maybe they only JUST found the blog, and seized that as well, or at least seized it as they understand it.
UPDATE:
Just noticed this quote on the blog:
The vanishing of the blog would seem to indicate that his conditions were met. He’s a trusting soul, it seems, which would be out of character for him.
When in doubt, go to the Wikipedia. Yes indeed, the ISP has blocked the blog; it was not, as far as I can tell, done at Tomlinson’s request. I have emailed Typepad about it, but don’t hold your breath.
Thanks for getting back to me! You will realise i had been writing hour after hour on that blog trying to get some kind of discussion on the affidavit Richard presented to Judge Herve Stephan in Paris.
I insisted and insisted, day after day on this point. Eventually the whole of the blog from beginning to end, on all sections was totally filled with the affidavit.for a while. – Eventually being left in one section only.
BUT … There was no discussion ANYWHERE as to its content!
… In fact in all the 4 years after its presentation there has been no formal admittance to its existence by any authority at all! … Readily obtainable on several websites too. One being “The Truth Seeker – Affidavit of Richard Tomlinson”
… Then you get called a conspiracy “nutter” if you dare to ask why the Trappist monk stunt on this subject! Silence is golden? … Silence is clearly telling us something IS wrong!
Please let me know if you track down Richard’s new blog. Thanks so much!
Try cryptome.org. They’re how I found him in the first place. Good luck!
Thank you.
It seems it will not be long before the almost total indifference the vast masses are showing, will bring on a terrible reality …
… That is not to say we must despair at all … but simply that we must be ready for a very rude and sudden awakening; when the machinations of the secret services all around the world become so overtly grotesque and obvious, that they let their masks slip and force us to see our governments are not governing at all.
No, I think some will be exposed and some will stay secret. That’s the human way. The old order may die, but there’ll always be a new one.
BTW I found a very old email for Richard and tried to send him a message, but it bounced. The account had been terminated with extreme prejudice (another case where it wasn’t his request, it was someone else’s). Oh well. Cryptome will connect you, of that I have no doubt.
Thank you. We shall see if Cryptome can do that. The Daily Express is the only newspaper in the UK with guts to shed any light on this white-hot story now. The British public itself is getting increasingly suspicious … as if it needed to be any MORE … as Operation Paget could lumber on for another year or more. – This, after the Royal Coroner, Michael Burgess, astutely quit just before Lord Stevens was about to announce the result of the investigation! Clearly, things are going catastrophically wrong from within; no judge is now forthcoming to take the place of Michael Burgess and the shocking responsibilty. (Only a judge with terminal cancer might toy with spending his last days in such an obvious furore to be unleashed at the eventual closure of Operation Paget)
Below you will find my last public message, moderated by Richard Tomlinson himself, on his blog “Tomlinson v MI6”. The blog was shut down soon afterwards on the eve of 4th August 2006 by the ISP, without any warning whatever. My message made indirect reference to a phone call Richard had received from Mr Pink of Scotland Yard. Pink hinted that Richard was not to be charged with “revealing names” on the Cryptome website, but, nevertheless, all electronic equipment that was forcibly taken from him by DST officers in Cannes would remain in their custody for further investigation:
“Richard! Cat and mouse is their “traditional ” game. Now you can see the mouse is clearly chasing the cat!
“They” are up to their necks in it!
Come curtains on Operation Paget and Madame la Guillotine will look like tiddly-winks!
Sit back, hold tight and SMILE!”
For those who might not know; this man, Richard Tomlinson, IS the Number One witness in the current drawn-out investigation into the bizarre circumstances and anomalies of the crash at the Pont de l’Alma underpass in Paris, in the early hours of 31st September 1997. This crash as we all know, resulted in the deaths of Diana Princess of Wales, her beau; Dodi Fayed, and the long-term MI6-informer/chauffeur at the Ritz Hotel, Henri Paul.
Even if it WERE possible to have direct contact with Richard Tomlinson right now; that would only complicate matters for him. He can trust nobody but himself, it is obvious why, when human nature and its usually covert motives should always be held suspect until sincerity proves otherwise. His battle is a lonely one; and I pray to God he will be vindicated at last; as I am SURE he will be … and that his SHOCKING affidavit to Judge Herve Stephan in Paris will be finally addressed openly and in public!
Raincoaster, I’d rather that people couldn’t google our state secrets, I don’t wanna getr blown up in the morning my some crazed lunatic that thinks the Grand Ayatolah is the best thing since the Holocaust.
Perhaps it would be better to get our priorities right and in the first place to try and find out who exactly is doing what to whom!
Shall we start with back-row canoodling, pop-corn and Dylan Avery’s “Loose Change 2nd Edition” ???
… If you only want the canoodling and the pop-corn bits in your life and very little else, that’s perfectly ok and legitimate, no one’s blaming you, but just make sure and certain you do NOT see this film. (That’s a warning!)
I sent this story to an acquaintence of mine in the UK, someone in a position to get the news out and make this a front-page story overnight.
He objected, saying he didn’t approve of state secrets being leaked. Now, I’m all for free speech as anyone can see. But I see that he and Steven have a point: Tomlinson is, as I said in the first line of this post, an asshole. He’s untrustworthy, and he’s a walking dossier of state secrets and quite obviously not shy about using them for his own advantage.
He has knowingly risked the lives of members of Special Services who are still active; he started out with a smaller list, of mostly retired or dead members, but as the war between him and MI6 has escalated, he started adding names. Many of them are his contemporaries who are still on diplomatic assignments around the world. This is “pulling a Rove” on a huge scale, and there’s no question that the cover, the missions, and the lives of those persons is endangered.
Is Special Services right to illegally seize his computers in a foreign land, shut down his blog without warning, mislead him into thinking they’d reached a settlement?
Are they WISE to do so?
I’d say no to both. Tomlinson is a famewhore of a specific kind, and he’s also a jerk of a very specific kind; every time they’ve pushed him around, he’s leaked more names (his “easily googleable” claim is simply bullshit; I’ve googled, trust me). And it was dumb of them to have hired him in the first place and, having hired him, to place him in supervisory positions where he had access to those kinds of lists. Maybe his few years between University and the Special Services were enough to give him an eye for the main chance, rather than the overriding patriotism necessary for an agent.
Would he throw the entire country into the flames if it came down to “me or them”? Without a second’s hesitation, I think, but with a great long, mournful press release about how it had to come to this. The question is, what to do NOW with this man who leaks state secrets whenever his life is compromised.
DOES HE HAVE AMMUNITION LEFT? That is the question at this point, because if he does they have the choice between locking him up or watching it hit the blogosphere. From there (given what’s happened in the past) it’ll be about eight months until someone in the Mainstream Media picks it up, although probably not in the UK. It will not be containable. As long as that man is alive, free, and possessed of information that the rest of the world wants, he’s a risk to the UK.
Is the United Kingdom a country who will put a man on ice for crimes he hasn’t committed yet, or is it the kind that takes responsibility for making a bad hire and takes the risk? They can recall those people, most of whom are approaching or at desk-job ages anyway. That’s what I’d do. Expensive, destructive, will cost them years.
But better than becoming a proactively repressive state.
With all due respect. We need to get something very clear here:
… ALL Richard Tomlinson’s problems began when he presented a signed affidavit to Judge Herve Stephan in Paris.
The affidavit has been available to the entire world for 4 years; yet in all this time despite its extremely grave implications, it has never been addressed publicly by any authority whatsoever!
The implications are SHOCKING!
… That a plan for the assassination of Slobodan Milosevic by a simulated car “crash” in an underpass in Zurich way back in 1992 , which Richard Tomlinson was privy to, would have been an EXACT copy in every detail of the crash which killed Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997.
This man, Richard Tomlinson, can be maligned in any way whatever … But these facts and the affidavit itself can be found very easily for those with eyes to see. … To call a man a donkey does not mean he will suddenly appear in front of you munching on carrots with big teeth and instantly grow long furry ears! … However many times you call him a donkey; the truth remains absolute, of course, and is not born of whim or caprice.
Mohamed Al Fayed has publicly accused HRH The Duke of Edinburgh of personally giving the order for the assassination of Diana, Princess of Wales …
AND YET …
As Mr Al Fayed himself so rightly points out … As his accusation could not be more serious, WHY is he not silenced by the British legal system and made to shut his “slanderous” mouth? … His valid answer is that IF he were to be taken before a court of law, the details of the information and evidence he would give would be so catastrophic that the legal system cannot risk that eventuality under any possible circumstances. So nothing happens, in the hopes that the bogeyman might go away or simply die!
We have EXACTLY the same situation with Richard Tomlinson … The implications are CATASTROPHIC; of course!
… Yet, in BOTH cases, if the accusations are SO ludicrous and unfounded they could be shown to be a tissue of lies in the course of one afternoon in a court of law.
… As it is, the claims cannot be faced in court as they SHOULD be … for what seems to be VERY murky reasons indeed.
You’ve rather missed the point.
I don’t think he was silenced for what he has to say about Milosevec or the late Princess of Wales. I think he was silenced for posting the list of names. My question is, is it right for a nation to shut a man up, limit his freedom of speech (regardless of how dangerous or inconvenient that speech may be) and interfere with his professional and recreational pursuits without bringing him to trial and convicting him of something first?
We are in agreement about their fears of a trial. Whatever bolts Tomlinson has left will undoubtably be shot from the witness stand, on the record.
And for the record, Richard Tomlinson is no donkey, but he is a self-serving, untrustworthy user. This, of course, isn’t a prosecutable offence, but it makes him more predictable. That’s my point.
Besides, he’s likely armed. Don’t want to piss him off TOO much!
We have to agree to differ here, it seems to me! To say Richard Tomlinson is “predictable” is hardly an accusation or a verity either. If you can say a human being is “predictable” implies you are trusting a foreseen reaction. My own experience with my fellows is that you need to be constantly aware that NOTHING in life is predictable at all and that once you EXPECT reactions from the people around you, you are inviting a bumpy ride for sure. It was obvious to me on one particular evening. MI6 was tapping my telephone here in Spain …. What they could not PREDICT, however, was that a very good friend of mine was a boss in Telefónica and he was able to impartially verify my own conclusion!
Casting nasty aspersions and looking into crystal ball is one thing … But the hard facts of reality stand up to any kind of subtle and not so subtle attack; totally impervious! … Which is precisely why countless bizarre details around the crash in the Pont de l’Alma which resulted in the demise of Diana, her beau and her driver, just will NOT go away … Operation Paget or no Operation Paget.
Call Richard Tomlinson whatever you like; it will not change him. What is CERTAIN, whether you like the man or not; he IS the Number One witness in the apparent assassination of Diana, Princess of Wales.
… As such, the man automatically protagonises; whether he likes it ot not. It is a DREADFUL protagonism and I am sure it is one he could well do without it and has never once relished it … even in his wildest dreams!
This story is NOT imagined or from a comic book; it is real.
Again, you misunderstand.
It’s quite possible that Special Services was behind Diana’s death. Do they attempt to assassinate people? I don’t doubt it for a moment. I don’t consider the information to be shocking or even particularly interesting.
That’s not my focus; it’s larger.
I am interested in this story because of the conflict of moral imperatives and national security. The Diana story is, really, not something that interests me much.
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You say you have more interesting things to attend to other than the assassination of Diana, Princess of Wales. Several points in your argument seem to imply a prepotency which does not interest me either.
I see clearly now that your blog does not attract posters who are interested in the Diana story; it is clear that millions think it is neither here nor there and you appear to be one of them …
… Perhaps it might be a good idea if such an “insignificant” occurance as this bizarre crash WAS taken a little more seriously … Only God knows if my comment is valid or not.
Thank you for listening and for your help.
Please do not feel offended if I do not reply to a possible answer of yours to this posting.
… I shall not be returning to this blog, as I am looking for one which is genuinely concerned with Richard Tomlinson and the maligned Princess of Wales; as you already realise.
Good luck!
If you don’t return, you’ll miss the email response from Typepad, which I posted. Up to you.
We don’t quite disagree about the Diana story; it’s just that I accept the possibility it may have happened as Tomlinson says, and am unsurprised. You’re shocked and fascinated. I wish you luck in your pursuit of the truth, and better protection than Tomlinson’s enjoyed.
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Tomlinson’s blog is back here
http://tomlinsonvmi6.blogspot.com/
Yes, I blogged about it a few days ago.
I have just finished his book and feel he has been unjustly picked on and humiliated by a pack of pommie arseholes!!
His blogspot blog is now a spam repository. Hope he got a nice bit of change for it, it’s crap now.