Telegraph : MI6 spy inquest: 'one of the strangest events I have ever witnessed'

MI6 spy inquest: 'one of the strangest events I have ever witnessed'

At the inquest into the death of MI6 officer Gareth Williams last week, spy writer Nigel West found the reality of British espionage stranger than any fiction

By Nigel West | April 29, 2012

To hear shrieks, and then sobbing, at any inquest is harrowing. Such high emotion seems particularly at odds with the detached image many of us have of the world of spying. Yet on Thursday, during evidence into the death of the intelligence officer Gareth Williams, a female family member dramatically broke down in tears, and the hearing had to be adjourned.

Last week, the public had a rare glimpse into the shadowy world of MI6. At the coroner’s court in Westminster, the focus of attention was Gareth Williams, a 31-year-old GCHQ technician on a three-year secondment to MI6, whose naked body was found in a padlocked holdall at his Pimlico flat in August 2010. At the opening on Monday, the coroner Dr Fiona Wilcox promised she would oversee “a full, fair and fearless inquest into this highly controversial death”, with more than 30 witnesses questioned. And indeed, this was the first time that many of us could learn some of the details of the circumstances surrounding Williams’s bizarre death.

I was one of the spectators in the court. Having spent more than 30 years studying and recording the history of the British intelligence community, I can honestly say it was one of the strangest events I have witnessed. Because of the presence of Williams’s parents and sister, it was agonising and troubling, too.

The family has long been convinced that “dark arts” were involved with his death, and that a third party was present, either at his death or who later destroyed evidence. There have also been blunders. At an interim hearing ahead of last week’s inquest, it was revealed that DNA evidence found on Williams’s body came from a forensic scientist at the scene, a fact it took the forensic team more than a year to realise. And a Mediterranean couple who had visited the flat in the weeks before Williams’s death, and who the police were keen to track down, turned out to be insignificant to the case. These mistakes have only helped fuel the conspiracy theories surrounding Williams’s death.

Since we were dealing with British intelligence, security in the court was paramount. Members of MI6 were referred to by a letter rather than their names. Large blue screens were used to protect their identities (the family was allowed behind the screens, the rest of us were outside). The atmosphere was subdued; a rare moment of levity only when someone’s cell phone went off, and the coroner joked she had done the same herself some weeks before.

Yet if the entire episode were not so tragic, it could have been an exercise in absurdity. Even by the end of the week, the coroner had yet to grasp some of the basics of the espionage world, such as the difference between MI6 “officers” and their “agents”.

So who was Gareth Williams? He was a tech wizard, regarded as a “world-class” expert in his field, who had joined GCHQ at the age of 21 and had then taken a postgraduate course at Cambridge in advanced mathematics. His precise skills – or their application by MI6 – cannot be discussed in public. We do know, however, that in 2007 he applied for a transfer to MI6, only to flunk the aptitude test administered by GCHQ, which suggested he lacked the requisite self-confidence. A year later he re-sat the exam and passed, which resulted in him moving in 2009 into an office – shared with Witness G (a member of MI6 who gave evidence) and three others – in “Legoland”, as MI6’s embarrassingly ostentatious headquarters at Vauxhall Cross are known.

Williams was a geek: private, shy and, reportedly, with a slight stammer. He did not socialise with colleagues, and none are known to have visited his top-floor flat. His sister had said in court on Monday that he “disliked office culture, post-work drinks, flash car competitions and the rat race”. Instead, he enjoyed cycling and running, and was fiercely competitive, but declined to join his fellow officers who shared the same pastimes, and exercised alone.

His private life was just that, and it came as a shock to those who thought they knew him that he had attended a six-week course in fashion design at the Central St Martin’s College, and had accumulated a collection of women’s designer clothes, shoes and boots – valued at £20,000 – lipstick and an orange wig.

Such interests, according to MI6, were of no concern to the organisation, although an audit of his office computer revealed some database searches that did not appear to be connected with his work. Under the terms of a Public Interest Immunity Certificate signed by the Foreign Secretary, we are not allowed to know the precise nature of this unauthorised activity. According to a senior MI6 officer – identified only as F – Williams might have been able to provide a satisfactory explanation for his apparently illicit access.

On Thursday, a particularly upsetting detail of Williams’s death was revealed. The officer known as F had said the secret service was “profoundly sorry” that his absence went unreported for five days after Williams, a meticulous time-keeper, had failed to show up for work. She blamed his line manager – Witness G – for a breakdown in communication, but said G should not face any disciplinary action. This confession greatly distressed Williams’s mother, Ellen, sitting with her family inside the partition screening witnesses from the public area.

Later, it was revealed that when MI6 realised that Williams was missing, F had telephoned the police. In the conversation, taped by the police and played to the court, F said that Williams had been missing for the whole of the previous week and – after a question about his state of mind – she said he had been recalled from a job he had wanted to do, and was uncertain about how he had taken the news. The implication was obvious.

Key to the inquest was whether Williams – whose naked, decomposing body was found inside a padlocked holdall placed in his bath – could have locked himself in the bag. Given his apparent interest in bondage, fetish clothing and claustrophilia – as demonstrated by his web-surfing – could he have fastened the brass padlock himself, the keys to which were found in the bag, under his body? And if so, where did the other unidentified DNA traces, found on the lock and the zipper, come from? Put simply, was Williams alone when he died in the early hours of that summer morning, or, though there was no sign of a break-in, was someone else involved?

On Friday we heard from Peter Faulding, a former Parachute Regiment reservist and an expert in confined spaces, who said he was convinced another person was involved in putting Williams into the holdall and locking it. The court was shown a video of an attempt to climb into and lock a holdall of the same size. Mr Faulding said he had tried it 300 times and had failed every time. “My belief is that he was placed in there by a third party,” he said.

The other question, then, is whether Williams’s death was linked to his job. A police investigation concluded that he had died from unknown causes, but most likely asphyxiation and dehydration. Detective Superintendent Michael Broster of Counter-Terrorism Command – who has spent 31 years in the police and acted as the liaison between MI6 and the detectives – opined that there was nothing to link the death to Williams’s professional occupation, and no sign of a cover-up. Mind you, there was not much need for any covering up: for motives unknown, Williams had been quite successful in deleting the internet browsing history of his laptops, and completely reset one of his mobile phones, thereby emptying its memory.

According to MI6, in May 2009 Williams had filled a GCHQ slot at Vauxhall Cross, but had recently been granted a transfer back to Cheltenham. He had found his work boring, constrained by too much administration. Instead, he longed to resume his technical research and live in the countryside. Although he had undergone five training courses, and had passed an operational deployment course in February 2010 with flying colours, he had been determined to return to Gloucestershire. Once his request had been approved, he appeared much more relaxed.

The conspiracy theories – that Williams was living in an MI6 safe-house and had been engaged in dangerous missions overseas; or had been categorised as a high-security risk, or should have been – have all been scotched. His flat was rented by GCHQ, and he had never been sent on any foreign operations. He only ever met two MI6 agents, defined with bureaucratic accuracy by MI6 as “covert human intelligence sources”, and the operations he participated in had been undertaken in England.

In short, he was a loner who failed to fit in at Legoland. As for his private life, MI6 is now very broadminded about individual lifestyles, and anything legal is considered acceptable. Kinky sex is fine; the days when the wretched former MI6 Chief Maurice Oldfield had felt obliged to lie for decades on his enhanced vetting questionnaire about his homosexuality are long gone.

Still, the delay in reporting him AWOL is reminiscent of MI6’s past culture, when officers were encouraged to show initiative, be self-starters, think laterally and exercise some independence. Now the organisation is wholly risk-averse, awash with lawyers, and resembles a particularly staid branch of the Department of Work and Pensions.

Although in theory G should have followed the protocol and started to suspect a problem when Williams failed to show up for a meeting scheduled for Monday, August 16 – the very day he died – there is a straightforward explanation. MI6 personnel are often called at short notice to work on a particular, compartmentalised project or operation, and not everyone is likely to be indoctrinated into some of these activities. Raising the alarm because a team member has slipped away for a secret assignation is de rigueur. It is equally probable that a line-manager would be reluctant to acknowledge that he or she had been left out of the loop.

Another problem for today’s MI6 is its dependency on personnel seconded from other organisations where there is not a clearly defined chain of command and responsibility. As Williams was due to leave London permanently, the assumption was that he was already preparing for his move.

Significantly, his apparent lack of office friendships may be part of the reason why he was not missed by any of his colleagues. Although an earlier intervention would have allowed the forensic scientists to be more precise about what had happened, his life could not have been saved by battering down his door on that Monday afternoon.

Nigel West is the pen name of Rupert Allason, a military historian and author specialising in intelligence and security issues. His new book, Historical Dictionary of Chinese Intelligence, will be published in July.

EDGE (Boston) : Death of British Spy: Was It Sex Play Gone Wrong Or Espionage?

Death of British Spy: Was It Sex Play Gone Wrong Or Espionage?

by David Stringer | Associated Press | April 29, 2012

A delay in reporting as missing a British spy whose naked and decomposing body was later found locked inside a sports bag frustrated police inquiries into his mysterious death, witnesses told an inquest hearing Thursday.

Gareth Williams, 31, worked for Britain’s secret eavesdropping service GCHQ but was attached to the country’s MI6 overseas spy agency when his remains were found in August 2010 inside the bag and in a bathtub at his central London apartment.

The inquest hearing was previously told the spy’s manager at MI6, formally known as the Secret Intelligence Service, didn’t raise the alarm for a week after Williams first failed to appear for work, complicating the task for investigators.

Members of Williams’ family walked out of the hearing in tears Thursday as a second colleague- an intelligence officer identified only as SIS F - acknowledged that the delay "had some impact on the police investigation."

"We are profoundly sorry about what happened," she told the hearing, speaking from behind a screen to preserve her anonymity. "It shouldn’t have happened and we recognize that the delay in finding Gareth’s body has made it even harder for the family to come to terms with his dreadful death and we are truly sorry for that."

"I also appreciate the delay had some impact on the police investigation," the intelligence officer said.

Forensic expert Denise Stanworth said the delay had meant that toxicology tests conducted on the spy’s body couldn’t be totally reliable in determining whether Williams had been poisoned before his death.

"In terms of many of the drugs, reliable, but in terms of the more volatile substances, not that reliable," Stanworth told the hearing.

Anthony O’Toole, lawyer for the Williams family, told the hearing that relatives believed MI6 colleagues had shown a "total disregard for Gareth’s whereabouts and safety," after failing to alert senior managers and relatives about his disappearance for a week.

He said that relatives also believe police likely lost vital chances to solve the case. So far, detectives have made no arrests and are still not certain exactly how Williams died.

"Because of the decomposition of the body, any forensic evidence that could have been derived from it has disappeared, so the police investigation has in essence been almost defeated," O’Toole said.

Coroner Fiona Wilcox’s inquest hearing must attempt to determine when and how Williams died, and if anyone else could have been involved.

The spy’s colleague SIS F told the hearing that an internal review had concluded that Williams’ death was not connected to his work, which had included operational assignments with MI6.

MI6 had uncovered "no evidence of any specific threat to Gareth and we concluded that there was no reason to think his death was anything to do with his work," the woman told the hearing.

She also rejected suggestions that the spy’s lifestyle could have made him vulnerable.

Police found thousands of pounds (dollars) worth of luxury women’s clothing and shoes in his apartment and discovered that he had visited bondage and sadomasochism websites, including some related to claustrophilia - a desire for confinement in enclosed spaces.

Other witnesses have told the hearing that Williams was not a cross-dresser, but often purchased expensive clothes to give as gifts to female friends.

Williams’ colleague said MI6 had not found any cause for alarm in the spy’s background when he was vetted for his position. "There’s no set template as to what (an employee’s) lifestyle should be. Individuals have lifestyles and sexual choices which are perfectly legitimate," she told the hearing.

Copyright Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Independent : Curious case of a lack of curiosity over missing spy

Curious case of a lack of curiosity over missing spy

MI6's delay in noticing the disappearance of Gareth Williams means vital forensic evidence was lost

David Randall | April 29, 2012

All over the country, there are offices, schools, workshops, banks, pharmacies, IT departments and factories where the failure of a colleague to arrive at work and thus miss a scheduled meeting would arouse some immediate questions. Such as: "Where is he?"

But not at MI6, apparently. When Gareth Williams didn't turn up at the office on 16 August 2010, there was not so much, initially, as an attempt to track him down, an inquiry of his family, or even a casual: "Strange, not like old Gareth to go Awol."

Instead, within the Vauxhall Cross headquarters of these guardians of national security, there was a bewildering lack of curiosity about the whereabouts of this super-fit, "world-class" code-breaking mathematician who had been seconded to the service from GCHQ, Cheltenham, had just completed a course enabling him to carry out covert operations, was hardly ever late, never had a day off sick, and had a journey to work that was but 1.7 miles.

Life at MI6 went seamlessly on. Mr Williams's line manager, known as "G" when he gave evidence at the inquest last week, merely "had a gut feeling that he was away doing something I was unaware of" – an explanation which suggests absenteeism in the service might be somewhat higher than is generally realised. "G" did try his phone, and also later went round to Williams's flat to give a tentative ring on his doorbell. But one, two, three, four, five, six days went by before, finally, on the seventh, the official alarm was raised.

That day, police entered his flat, and there in the bathroom, they found a large, red, zipped and padlocked North Face sports bag. And inside it was a very dead Gareth Williams. He had probably been there at least a week, the last known sighting of him being on the CCTV of Harrods on the day before he was due back at work.

This mysterious delay in taking any concerted action – and thus the non-discovery of his body for fully seven days – continues to trouble his family greatly, and has proved crucial. Williams had lain, in a bathroom and inside a plastic bag, for a week in August. By the time he was found, his body had significantly decomposed, as had any reliable forensic evidence. If he was drugged or poisoned, we shall never know. One of his superiors, deploying a nice line in understatement as she gave evidence behind a screen, conceded: "I appreciate the delay had some impact on the police investigation."

Mystery number two is how did he get there? Despite an apparent passing interest (if web searches are anything to go by) in bondage and the sexual thrills of being in a confined space, it seems inconceivable he could have placed himself in the bag, then zipped and locked it unaided. Police gave evidence to this effect, as did two experts in Houdini-like matters who have tried a total of 400 times to replicate such a manoeuvre. Fit and supple young men of the same build as Mr Williams – a keen cyclist and climber – could get into the bag, but could not find a way of closing the zip.

Small specks of another person's DNA have been found on the bag, adding to the obvious conclusion by police that Gareth had an assistant – or an assassin. It also seems likely that he was dead or unconscious before he went into the bag. The coroner's court heard from Detective Chief Inspector Jackie Sebire that he was in the foetal position, and there was no sign that he had scrabbled to get out. She said: "In my opinion he was very calm. His face was very calm. His hands were resting on his chest." There was no damage to the bag or his fingernails.

What on earth, then, went on inside the flat at the security services safe house at 36 Alderney Street, Pimlico, south-west London? The evidence suggests that, however upsetting it may be for his family, Mr Williams was a man of unusual tastes and habits. There were, in his apartment, female wigs, 26 shoes by designers including Stella McCartney and Christian Dior, a quantity of cosmetics and, in his bedroom, some £20,000 worth of designer women's clothes.

He was a frequent visitor to couture websites, and, the inquest heard, a regular browser and sometime purchaser at Dover Street Market – an edgy emporium in west London which carries a large range of designer clothes. Carol Kirton, who works there, said he regularly shopped in the store, saying the items were for his girlfriend.

This extensive and costly wardrobe was raised in court with a female friend, Sian Jones. She told the inquest she did not think he was a transvestite. "I feel he would have been able to confide in me ... and I would not have judged him." She said she saw him every few days and he "showered" her with gifts. Another friend, Elizabeth Guthrie, suggested the clothes might have been "Gareth's attempt at a support strategy for someone. They certainly would not have been for him".

The wigs were kept neat in netting; none of the cosmetics had been used, and many of the clothes – and they were of varying sizes, the inquest heard – were kept pristine in tissue. They may indeed have been a store of gifts for as-yet unidentified girlfriends, but there could be another interpretation. After all, if the hoard was not the collection of a fetishist, it was a very good imitation of it.

Could this be connected to his death? The bathroom was evidently a venue for at least one sexual climax for Mr Williams, traces of his semen were found on its floor. Did he have some companion in sexual, or pseudo-sexual, meanderings which involved being put into a confined space such as a sports bag?

This would not have been the first time some bedroom escapade had gone wrong. When he was working at GCHQ his home was in an annex let out by a Mr and Mrs Elliot, who lived in the adjoining house. One night, the couple heard Gareth's cries for help, and went to investigate. "We went upstairs and found him lying on the bed with both hands tied with material attached to the headboard," said Jennifer Elliot's written statement. She said that he explained how he had tied himself up as an experiment, but she wrote that she and her husband thought it "more likely to be sexual than escapology".

Mr Williams's career and its particular path are clearly a complicating context to the mystery of a brilliant man who served his country. His sister, Ceri Subbe, told the inquest: "He disliked office culture, post-work drinks, flash car competitions and the rat race. He even spoke of friction in the office. The job was not quite what he expected. He encountered more red tape than he was comfortable with."

Six months before his death he had completed an intensive course which would allow him to undertake what were described to the court as very tough operational tasks. But, according to his boss, he had applied for his three-year secondment at MI6 to be cut short – a request that was granted. There are also the unauthorised searches he made of security service databases about which the inquest heard. This was not, it seems, a settled man.

Neither police nor security services say they have reason to believe that his death was connected to his work for MI6. And, if any practitioner of "the dark arts" – as the lawyer for his understandably still-distressed family put it – wanted to kill him, surely it would have been a road "accident" while he was out cycling, an assignation on a bridge that would have ended with him "falling" into the Thames, or a simple bullet to the head? But not a modus operandi so outré that it would keep the media panting for an answer 20 months later.

The inquest continues this week. The mystery of how exactly Gareth Williams died, one fears, will go on much longer.

Remarkable coincidence?

Whatever the truth in the case of Gareth Williams, details of women's underwear and cross-dressing regularly emerge in the "presentation" of the deaths of intelligence agents.

Nicholas Anderson, former MI6 officer turned author, told The Independent on Sunday: "I am on verbal record to my own family, close friends and select lawyers that if anything ever happened to me – a straight man and a positive thinker – it would likely be made to look either like a suicide or that I died dressed like a woman.

"Over the years, it seems to me a favourite way of presentation. I, of course, am not suicidal in any remote way nor do I like to dress so. When I read in the press about Gareth Williams, women's clothes, and a wig, it all fits the usual scenario."

The IoS has come across at least 17 mysterious deaths – some dubbed suicides, others freak accidents – of MI6 agents, workers at GCHQ, or those linked to the defence or intelligence services over the past 50 years. Sexual overtones, asphyxia, or both, feature in a third of cases, and they are just the ones that are in the public domain and "open source", as spooks would say.

Stephen Drinkwater, 25, a clerk employed in a department at GCHQ where highly classified documents were copied, was found dead in his parents' house at Cheltenham in September 1983. A plastic bag was over his head and he had died from asphyxiation.

In March 1990, British journalist Jonathan Moyle, 28, who had been investigating claims that US civilian helicopters were to be converted into gunships for sale to Iraq, was found hanged inside a hotel wardrobe in Santiago, Chile. Eight years later, an inquest concluded that he had been "unlawfully killed" by a "person or persons unknown". Speaking in September 2010, his former fiancée said: "The British intelligence services tried to smear Jonathan suggesting he was sexually deviant."

Four years later, in February 1994, Conservative MP Stephen Milligan, 45, was found tied to a chair wearing women's underwear and with a bag over his head and a satsuma stuffed into his mouth. He was the parliamentary private secretary to the then defence minister Jonathan Aitken. Mr Aitken has since denied media reports that he also worked for MI6.

The same month that Mr Milligan's body was discovered, James Rusbridger, 65, ex-MI6 agent turned journalist, was found hanged at his house on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall. He was dressed in a green protective suit, green overalls, a black plastic mackintosh and thick rubber gloves. His face was covered by a gas mask and his body was surrounded by bondage pictures. Consultant pathologist Dr Yasai Sivathondan said he died from asphyxia due to hanging "in keeping with a form of sexual strangulation".

In another case, an inquest in July 1997 heard how GCHQ worker Nicholas Husband, 46, was found dead wearing women's clothing after a bizarre sex ritual. Mr Husband, from Tewkesbury, had a plastic bag over his face and was wearing a nightie and a bra. He was found dead after he failed to show up for work in December 1996.

In March 1999, Kevin Allen, a 31-year-old linguist at GCHQ, was found dead in bed by his father at his home in Cheltenham. He had a plastic bag over his head and a dust mask over his mouth. An post-mortem revealed that death was due to asphyxiation.

Jonathan Owen

Irish Independent : Loner's death shines light on UK's shadowy spies

Loner's death shines light on UK's shadowy spies

By Nigel West | April 29, 2012

TO hear shrieks and sobbing at any inquest is harrowing. Such high emotion seems at odds with the detached image many of us have of the world of spying. Yet last Thursday, during evidence into the death of the intelligence officer Gareth Williams, a female family member broke down in tears, and the hearing had to be adjourned.

Last week, the public had a rare glimpse into the shadowy world of MI6. At the coroner's court in Westminster, the focus of attention was Mr Williams, a 31-year-old GCHQ technician on a three-year secondment to MI6, whose naked body was found in a padlocked holdall at his Pimlico flat in August 2010.

I was one of the spectators in the court; having spent more than 30 years studying and recording the history of the British intelligence community, I can honestly say that this was one of the strangest events I have ever witnessed.

Mr Williams's family has long been convinced that "dark arts" were involved with his death, and that a third party was present either at his death or later destroyed evidence. There have been blunders from the beginning.

At an interim hearing ahead of the inquest, it was revealed that crucial DNA evidence found on Mr Williams's body came from a forensic scientist at the scene, a fact it took the forensic team more than a year to realise. And a Mediterranean couple who had visited the flat in the weeks before Mr Williams's death, and who the police were initially keen to track down, turned out to be a red herring. These mistakes have helped fuel the conspiracy theories surrounding the death.

Since we were dealing with British intelligence, security in the court was paramount. Members of MI6 were referred to by a letter rather than their names.

So who was Gareth Williams? He was a tech wizard, regarded as a "world class" expert in his field, who had joined GCHQ at the age of 21 and had then taken a postgraduate course at Cambridge in advanced mathematics. In 2007 he applied for a transfer to MI6, only to flunk the aptitude test, which suggested he lacked the requisite self-confidence. A year later he passed, which resulted in him moving in 2009 into an office -- shared with G and three others -- in MI6's headquarters at Vauxhall Cross.

Mr Williams was a geek. He did not socialise with colleagues, and none are known to have visited his top-floor flat in Alderney Street, Pimlico. His sister said in court that he "disliked office culture, post-work drinks, flash car competitions and the rat race". Instead, he enjoyed cycling and running, and was fiercely competitive.

It came as a shock to those who thought they knew him that he had attended a course in fashion design, and had accumulated a collection of women's designer clothes, shoes and boots -- valued at £20,000 -- lipstick and an orange wig.

On Thursday, an MI6 officer -- identified only as F -- had said the service was "profoundly sorry" Mr Williams's absence went unreported for five days after he had failed to show up for work. She blamed his line manager -- witness G -- for a breakdown in communication.

Later, it was revealed that when MI6 realised Mr Williams was missing, F had phoned the police. In the conversation, taped by the police and played to the court, F said that Mr Williams had been missing for the whole of the previous week and -- after a question about his state of mind -- she said he had been recalled from a job he had wanted to do, and was uncertain about how he had taken the news. The implication was obvious.

Key to the inquest was whether Mr Williams -- whose naked, decomposing body was found inside a padlocked holdall placed in his bath -- could have locked himself in the bag. Given his apparent interest in bondage, fetish clothing and claustraphilia -- as demonstrated by his web-surfing -- could he have fastened the brass padlock himself, the keys to which were found in the bag, under his body? And if so, where did the other unidentified DNA traces, found on the lock and the zipper, come from? Put simply, was Mr Williams alone when he died, or, though there was no sign of a break-in, was someone else involved?

On Friday, an expert in confined spaces said he was convinced another person was involved in putting Mr Williams into the holdall and locking it.

The other question, then, is whether Mr Williams's death was linked to his job. Detective Superintendent Michael Broster of Counter-Terrorism Command opined that there was nothing to link Mr Williams's death to his professional occupation, and no sign of a cover-up.

The conspiracy theories -- that Mr Williams was living in an MI6 safe-house and had been engaged in dangerous missions overseas; or had been categorised as a high-security risk -- have been scotched.

In short, Mr Williams was a loner who failed to fit in at MI6. As for his private life, MI6 is now very broadminded about individual lifestyles.

Although in theory G should have followed the protocol and started to suspect a problem when Mr Williams failed to show up for a meeting scheduled for Monday, August 16 -- the very day he died -- there is a straightforward explanation. MI6 personnel are often called at short notice to work on a particular, compartmentalised project. Raising the alarm because a team member has slipped away for a secret assignation is de rigueur. It is equally probable that a line-manager would be reluctant to acknowledge that he or she had been left out of the loop.

Another problem for MI6 is its dependency on personnel seconded from other organisations where there is not a clearly defined chain of command and responsibility. As Mr Williams was due to leave MI6 permanently, the assumption was that he was already preparing for his move.

Significantly, his apparent lack of office friendships may be part of the reason why he was not missed by any of his colleagues. Although an earlier intervention would have allowed the forensic scientists to be more precise about what had happened, his life could not have been saved by battering down his door on that Monday afternoon.

©Telegraph

Nigel West is the pen name of Rupert Allason, a military historian and author specialising in intelligence and security issues. His latest book, 'A Historical Dictionary of Chinese Intelligence', will be out in July

- Nigel West