Daily Mail : MI6 'body-in-bag' spy learned to pick locks at Las Vegas escapology convention weeks before he died after being sent there to mix with criminals

MI6 'body-in-bag' spy learned to pick locks at Las Vegas escapology convention weeks before he died after being sent there to mix with criminals

By Chris Greenwood | May 4, 2012

Spy Gareth Williams may have studied lock-picking and escapology weeks before his naked corpse was found in a padlocked bag.

It has emerged that MI6 sent the 31-year-old to mingle with hackers, fraudsters and other criminals at the Def Con conference in Las Vegas.

It included classes on opening padlocks without keys, escaping from handcuffs, tampering with objects without leaving traces and confounding drug tests.

The event is a magnet for spies from agencies across the world.

Delegates are encouraged to ‘out’ government agents and undercover police officers, raising the possibility that the highly sensitive nature of Mr Williams’s job was exposed.

Earlier this week, the inquest into Mr Williams’s death was told he travelled to Las Vegas for the well-respected Black Hat hackers convention.

The event, which costs more than £1,000 to attend, features high-profile guest speakers and lavish hospitality funded by technology firms.

Less was made of the fact that Mr Williams stayed in the US to attend Def Con at the Riviera Hotel and Casino.

Its unusual conference pass – a working circuit board – was discovered in Mr Williams’s Alderney Street flat.

Two Scotland Yard detectives have already retraced Mr Williams’s steps in Las Vegas and during a week-long driving holiday that followed.

They linked an orange fancy-dress wig discovered at his flat to a shop there, where a member of staff remembered selling it to him.

However, they are unlikely to have discovered what he did during the secretive second conference, which he attended with a team of colleagues.

A British security expert told the Daily Mail he met GCHQ staff at Def Con, but said Mr Williams was not among them.

‘We met for a chat and coffee,’ he said. ‘They were just one of several intelligence agencies that I do business with. I did not see [Mr Williams] and I would remember his face.'

Mr Williams flew back to London on August 11, 2010, but never returned to MI6’s headquarters at Vauxhall Cross.

His family suspect that an agent of the ‘dark arts’ was involved in his murder, in the early hours of August 16.

Detectives have been instructed not to rule out the ‘legitimate line of inquiry’ that an MI6 colleague or foreign agent was responsible.

Delegates queue for hours to pay £60 admission for Def Con, which was founded as an alternative to the main Black Hat conference. Few provide their real names.

In 2010, one of Def Con’s main stands included a huge range of padlocks that attendees were invited to pick.

Elsewhere, three escapology experts gave an hour-long presentation demonstrating how to release handcuffs using slim pieces of metal and skeleton keys.

Delegates could also win a prize by working around supposedly tamper-proof stickers, metal clasps and plastic ties with a range of tools and chemicals without leaving a trace.

Most seminars and talks focused on computer hacking, including password cracking, eavesdropping on phone conversations and seizing control of wi-fi networks.

In one demonstration, a well-known hacker showed that he could make a cash machine spew out notes.

Chester Wisniewski, of computer security firm Sophos, said Def Con has a ‘free-wheeling spirit’ and an ‘anything goes environment’.

He added: ‘There are probably criminals there – anyone from a Russian mafia guy, a child pornographer to God knows who else.

‘It’s a well-known fact that lots of spies and Government agents go.

There is even a game called “spot the Fed”.

If you call them out and they admit to being from an agency the person gets a T-shirt.’

Mr Williams attended the same conference two years earlier, according to one of his colleagues at GCHQ who gave evidence at the inquest.

It was also revealed that Mr Williams ran up a substantial credit card bill at the two 2010 conferences, sending his account into the red.

Wired : MI6 Codebreaker Attended U.S. Security Conference Before His Death

MI6 Codebreaker Attended U.S. Security Conference Before His Death

Kim Zetter | May 3, 2012

A top British codebreaker who died a mysterious death in his flat two years ago had just returned from a computer security conference in the United States before his death, according to information disclosed during an inquest this week.

The body of Gareth Williams, a codebreaker with Britain’s MI6 spy agency, was discovered stuffed into a sports bag in his bathtub on Aug. 23, 2010, though he’s believed to have been killed Aug. 15.

Williams had just returned to London on Aug. 11 after spending six weeks in the United States, where he attended the annual Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas as part of a contingent of British spies, according to witnesses who spoke at the inquest. He attended Black Hat in 2008 as well.

It’s believed Williams may have also attended Black Hat’s companion hacker conference, DefCon, which follows Black Hat and draws many of the same attendees. In 2010, Black Hat was held July 24 to 29, while DefCon ran from July 30 to Aug. 1.

Black Hat is one of the top security conferences in the world, targeting the professional security crowd, while DefCon is geared more specifically to hackers. Law enforcement agents, the military and undercover spies regularly attend both conferences — often undercover — to keep pace with the latest research and learn what hackers are up to. They also recruit hackers for professional work.

DefCon holds an annual spot-the-fed contest to out undercover agents as a good-natured sport. Attendees who spot a fed receive an “I spotted a Fed” T-shirt, while the outed agent gets a trophy T-shirt of his own to take back to his office, sporting the phrase “I was spotted at DefCon.”

Not everyone wants to be outed or plays by the conference ground rules for working undercover. Several years ago, undercover agents believed to be working for Israel’s Mossad spy agency were kicked out of the conference after registering as journalists and posing as a French film crew from Canal Plus.

It’s not known specifically why Williams attended Black Hat or if he and his colleagues attended incognito. A Black Hat organizer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Williams, who was 31 when he died, was found inside a North Face nylon sports bag in the bathtub of his apartment. His nude body was in the fetal position, with his arms folded across his chest. The bag was closed with a padlock, and two keys to the padlock were found underneath Williams’ body inside the bag.

His mobile phone and a number of SIM cards were laid out on a table nearby; the phone had been restored to its factory settings. There were no signs of forced entry to the apartment and no signs of a struggle.

Williams was described by those who knew him as a “math genius” who graduated from Bangor University at the age of 17 with a degree in mathematics. He’d begun his university studies while still in secondary school. In 2001 he joined Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Britain’s listening post, helping to break coded Taliban communications, among other things. He was considered a “world-class intelligence officer” and had won two awards for codebreaking, according to his boss at GCHQ.

In 2009, he was loaned out to MI6, Britain’s foreign intelligence service, for a three-year stint, but asked to be transferred back to GCHQ after a year. He was preparing to move back to his old job around the time he was killed.

Williams had worked in a four-man team as an expert codebreaker and shortly before his death had been in contact with two secret agents working in the field in the U.K., according to testimony at the inquest.

The Daily Mail quoted anonymous sources last year saying that Williams had been working on secret technology to track stolen money being laundered through Britain by Russian mafia. The technology was reportedly designed to allow MI6 agents to follow money from bank accounts in Russia to criminal gangs in Europe via internet and wire transfers.

He also worked on another secretive project to develop devices for stealing data from mobile phones and laptops using wireless technology.

“He was involved in a very sensitive project with the highest security clearance,” the anonymous source told the Daily Mail. “He was not an agent doing surveillance, but was very much part of the team, working on the technology side, devising stuff like software.”

The source indicated that Williams’ work to disrupt the Russian mafia could have put him at risk.

“Some of these powerful criminal networks have links with, and employ, former KGB agents who can track down people like Williams,” the source said.

Williams also had reportedly worked with the NSA and British intelligence to intercept e-mail messages that helped convict would-be bombers in the United Kingdom. He had made repeated visits to the United States to meet with the National Security Agency and worked closely with British and U.S. spy agencies to intercept and examine communications that passed between an al-Qaida official in Pakistan and three men who were convicted in 2009 of plotting to bomb transcontinental flights.

Investigators said during the inquest that there was no evidence Williams was killed as a result of the work he was doing, but they acknowledged that a full investigation had been thwarted by the spy agencies who employed Williams, raising suspicions that the agencies might have been involved in his death or at least know who was responsible for it.

Hours before he died, surveillance cameras captured Williams in London’s Knightsbridge neighborhood while he was shopping at the luxury department store Harrods. Williams was expected at work the next day, but never showed up. MI6 did not report him missing, however, until Aug. 23, at which point his body had decomposed, thwarting attempts to determine the precise cause of death.

The spy agencies also failed to hand over nine thumb drives found in Williams’ locker at work. The drives were released to investigators only this week. Other electronic equipment that Williams used at work was handed over to Scotland Yard investigators four days after Williams’ body was discovered, raising questions about whether they had been cleaned by the spy agencies first.

Family and friends testified that Williams was unhappy with his work environment at MI6 and felt he didn’t fit in with his colleagues. During the inquest, testimony revealed that the coder had conducted unauthorized searches of an MI6 database that could have put him at risk if he was discovered. Investigators said, however, that MI6 was apparently unaware that Williams had conducted the searches.

A coroner said at the inquest that while it appeared unlikely that British spy agencies played a role in the coder’s death, it was still a “legitimate line of inquiry” for the investigation.

Investigators found no fingerprints or other any other evidence indicating someone had been with Williams the night he died, or that anyone beyond his family had ever been in his apartment. Investigators said at the inquest that small traces of incomplete DNA had been found on the tiny padlock that had been used to closed the bag in which Williams’ body was stuffed. The only other DNA evidence found in the apartment that didn’t belong to Williams or his family was found on a green hand towel in the kitchen.

Authorities plan to take DNA evidence from 50 colleagues who worked with Williams at MI6 to determine if there is a match.

NZ Herald : Body in a bag: Doubts over spy's state of mind

Body in a bag: Doubts over spy's state of mind

April 30, 2012

The handlers of body in the bag spy Gareth Williams raised concerns about his state of mind on the day he was found dead inside his flat.

The inquest into Mr Williams' death heard that a senior executive at GCHQ, the Government's secret listening post, told police that the MI6 spy may have reacted badly after being removed from a covert operation.

A transcript of the call revealed that the executive added: We are not sure how he's taken that.

The warning was passed on to officers searching for Mr Williams, who had been missing from work for more than a week.

He was expected at MI6's headquarters at Vauxhall Cross, South London, on Monday August 16, 2010.

But his bosses did not raise the alarm until Friday and waited until after the weekend before deciding to call the police.

Mr Williams' naked body was discovered in a padlocked holdall in the bath of his flat in Pimlico, Central London, on the evening of August 23.

The GCHQ warning has been seized on by Mr Williams' parents as possible evidence of a cover-up about the truth of what happened to their son. The intelligence services have always claimed the spy's death had nothing to do with his secret work.

But the warning message appears to contradict this, as it suggests they were concerned about him after they had told him to withdraw from a secret operation.

Gareth's parents, Ian and Ellen Williams, and sister Ceri, from Anglesey, North Wales, believe the dark arts of an unnamed secret agency may have been involved in his death.

Evidence submitted to Westminster Coroner's Court confirms that Mr Williams, who was on secondment to MI6 from GCHQ in Cheltenham, had been involved in covert operations in the months before he died.

The spy worked in a four-man team as an expert code breaker and shortly before his death had been in contact with two secret agents working in the field in the UK.

On August 11 he returned to London following a six-week visit to the US, where he had been part of a contingent of UK spies sent to a computer intelligence conference, known as the Black Hat.

The coroner, Dr Fiona Wilcox, said on Friday that the Las Vegas conference attracted criminal hackers who attend the briefings to keep up with the latest developments in computer technology.

But it is also used by security agencies from Britain and America to target hackers. The FBI has been reported to have sent teams of undercover agents to the conference to break up hacking cells, and al so to mount clandestine operations to recruit criminal hackers as informants.

If Mr Williams had gone to Las Vegas as part of an active intelligence operation he could have been exposed to dangers from criminal hacking gangs.

But GCHQ insists that its officers in the US faced no greater risk than they did in the UK.

His bosses also say Mr Williams, who was due to end his secondment with MI6 in September 2010, had not been working on an undercover operation at the time he went missing.

The eight-day delay in GCHQ and MI6 telling police he was officially missing has provoked accusations from his family that they knew something horrible had happened to him.

The inquest heard of a transcript of the call, made at 4.41pm on the 23rd by senior GCHQ officer Helen Yelland, in which she said: He was last spoken to on Friday 13th. He was expected into work all of last week and did not appear. Both the landline and mobile phones are not picked up. The mobile is switched off. His sister was expecting to stay with him on Wednesday this week and she has not been able to contact him.

The Metropolitan Police operator asked if there were any concerns, to which Ms Yelland replies: He is going to be coming back to Cheltenham because he's just been pulled back from a job he's supposed to do and we are not sure how he's taken that.

Police suspect another person was involved in Mr Williams' death and experts believe he was likely to have been unconscious or dead when he was placed in the bag.

Forensic experts are still examining Mr Williams' mobile phone after it emerged on Friday that all the data on it had been wiped.

Detective Constable Robert Burrows told the inquest that he was unable to say when the iPhone, which was found in the living room of the flat, had been wiped before or after the spy's death.

The inquest has also heard how traces of the date-rape drug GHB were found in Mr Williams' body.

Forensic scientist Denise Stanworth said the traces were probably naturally occurring, which is common after death, but admitted she could not rule out that it had been taken.

MI6 has apologised for failing to raise the alarm about his disappearance, conceding the error may have hampered police inquiries. The inquest will tomorrow be told the results of an investigation into a second post-mortem examination ordered by the coroner's office in the days after Mr Williams' death.

The spy's family want to know why the police were not informed of this post-mortem examination, as they would have been in an ordinary murder inquiry.

During the inquest, spies from MI6 and GCHQ have given evidence behind screens to protect their identities and Foreign Secretary William Hague has signed an order prohibiting the disclosure of details of Mr Williams' work. The family's barrister, Anthony O'Toole, told the inquest that since MI6 performed such an important job it was even more vital that Mr Williams' team leader known as Witness G should have done more to raise the alarm about the spy's absence from work.

It took Witness G five days before he visited Mr Williams' flat. The team leader has told the inquest he had been preparing to go into the field on a secret operation in the week the Welsh spy went missing.

The coroner has heard the dead spy was considered a world-class intelligence officer by GCHQ. Stephen Gale, Mr Williams' boss in Cheltenham, said the maths prodigy had won two awards for his code-breaking work.

Dr Wilcox has intimated that she is prepared to consider a verdict of unlawful killing if she believes another person was involved in the death.

The family want the coroner to explore the possibility that Mr Williams' flat may have been wiped of other people's DNA and the spy's office computers tampered with.

The electronic equipment was handed to Scotland Yard's counter-terrorism command, SO15, on August 27, four days after the death came to light, the inquest heard.

Mr O'Toole noted there was not any statement from any person at GCHQ to say that equipment was not tampered with in the interim period.

But Superintendent Michael Broster, who was responsible for SO15's involvement in the investigation, insisted Mr Williams' workplace had been sealed and taped.

- Daily Mail

Daily Mail : Warning call by GCHQ boss to police about Gareth aborting secret mission may hold key to his death

Warning call by GCHQ boss to police about Gareth aborting secret mission may hold key to his death

* Gareth Williams's spy bosses expressed concerns about his state of mind
* He'd been pulled from a case and missing from work for a week

By Robert Verkaik and Stephanie Condron | April 28. 2012

The handlers of ‘body in the bag’ spy Gareth Williams raised concerns about his state of mind on the day he was found dead inside his flat.

The inquest into Mr Williams’s death heard that a senior executive at GCHQ, the Government’s secret listening post, told police that the MI6 spy may have reacted badly after being removed from a covert operation.

A transcript of the call revealed that the executive added: ‘We are not sure how he’s taken that.’

The warning was passed on to officers searching for Mr Williams, who had been missing from work for more than a week.

He was expected at MI6’s headquarters at Vauxhall Cross, South London, on Monday August 16, 2010.

But his bosses did not raise the alarm until Friday and waited until after the weekend before deciding to call the police.

Mr Williams’s naked body was discovered in a padlocked holdall in the bath of his flat in Pimlico, Central London, on the evening of August 23.

The GCHQ warning has been seized on by Mr Williams’s parents as possible evidence of a cover-up about the truth of what happened to their son.

The intelligence services have always claimed the spy’s death had nothing to do with his secret work.

But the warning message appears to contradict this, as it suggests they were concerned about him after they had told him to withdraw from a secret operation.

Gareth’s parents, Ian and Ellen Williams, and sister Ceri, from Anglesey, North Wales, believe the ‘dark arts’ of an unnamed secret agency may have been involved in his death.

Evidence submitted to Westminster Coroner’s Court confirms that Mr Williams, who was on secondment to MI6 from GCHQ in Cheltenham, had been involved in covert operations in the months before he died.

The spy worked in a four-man team as an expert code breaker and shortly before his death had been in contact with two secret agents working in the field in the UK.

On August 11 he returned to London following a six-week visit to the US, where he had been part of a contingent of UK spies sent to a computer intelligence conference, known as the Black Hat.

The coroner, Dr Fiona Wilcox, said on Friday that the Las Vegas conference attracted criminal hackers who attend the briefings to keep up with the latest developments in computer technology.

But it is also used by security agencies from Britain and America to target hackers.

The FBI has been reported to have sent teams of undercover agents to the conference to break up hacking cells, and also to mount clandestine operations to recruit criminal hackers as informants.

If Mr Williams had gone to Las Vegas as part of an active intelligence operation he could have been exposed to dangers from criminal hacking gangs.

But GCHQ insists that its officers in the US faced no greater risk than they did in the UK.

His bosses also say Mr Williams, who was due to end his secondment with MI6 in September 2010, had not been working on an undercover operation at the time he went missing.

The eight-day delay in GCHQ and MI6 telling police he was officially missing has provoked accusations from his family that they knew something ‘horrible’ had happened to him.

The inquest heard of a transcript of the call, made at 4.41pm on the 23rd by senior GCHQ officer Helen Yelland, in which she said: ‘He was last spoken to on Friday 13th. He was expected into work all of last week and did not appear.

Both the landline and mobile phones are not picked up. The mobile is switched off. His sister was expecting to stay with him on Wednesday this week and she has not been able to contact him.’

The Metropolitan Police operator asked if there were any concerns, to which Ms Yelland replies: ‘He is going to be coming back to Cheltenham because he’s just been pulled back from a job he’s supposed to do and we are not sure how he’s taken that.’

Police suspect another person was involved in Mr Williams’s death and experts believe he was likely to have been unconscious or dead when he was placed in the bag.

Forensic experts are still examining Mr Williams’s mobile phone after it emerged on Friday that all the data on it had been wiped.

Detective Constable Robert Burrows told the inquest that he was unable to say when the iPhone, which was found in the living room of the flat, had been wiped before or after the spy’s death.

The inquest has also heard how traces of the date-rape drug GHB were found in Mr Williams’s body.

Forensic scientist Denise Stanworth said the traces were ‘probably’ naturally occurring, which is common after death, but admitted she could not rule out that it had been taken.

MI6 has apologised for failing to raise the alarm about his disappearance, conceding the error may have hampered police inquiries.

The inquest will tomorrow be told the results of an investigation into a second post-mortem examination ordered by the coroner’s office in the days after Mr Williams’s death.

The spy’s family want to know why the police were not informed of this post-mortem examination, as they would have been in an ordinary murder inquiry.

During the inquest, spies from MI6 and GCHQ have given evidence behind screens to protect their identities and Foreign Secretary William Hague has signed an order prohibiting the disclosure of details of Mr Williams’s work.

The family’s barrister, Anthony O’Toole, told the inquest that since MI6 performed such an ‘important job’ it was even more vital that Mr Williams’s team leader – known as Witness G – should have done more to raise the alarm about the spy’s absence from work.

It took Witness G five days before he visited Mr Williams’s flat.

The team leader has told the inquest he had been preparing to go into the field on a secret operation in the week the Welsh spy went missing.

The coroner has heard the dead spy was considered a ‘world-class’ intelligence officer by GCHQ. Stephen Gale, Mr Williams’s boss in Cheltenham, said the maths prodigy had won two awards for his code-breaking work.

Dr Wilcox has intimated that she is prepared to consider a verdict of unlawful killing if she believes another person was involved in the death.

The family want the coroner to explore the possibility that Mr Williams’s flat may have been wiped of other people’s DNA and the spy’s office computers tampered with.

The electronic equipment was handed to Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism command, SO15, on August 27, four days after the death came to light, the inquest heard.

Mr O’Toole noted there was not ‘any statement from any person at GCHQ to say that equipment was not tampered with’ in the interim period.

But Superintendent Michael Broster, who was responsible for SO15’s involvement in the investigation, insisted Mr Williams’s workplace had been ‘sealed and taped’.

West End Extra : MI6 chiefs say sorry to family of Gareth Williams, the spy found dead in a locked holdall

MI6 chiefs say sorry to family of Gareth Williams, the spy found dead in a locked holdall

by JOSH LOEB | April 27, 2012

SENIOR member of the security services apologised to the family of spy Gareth Williams yesterday (Thursday) for MI6’s delay in raising the alarm until a week after the code-breaker first failed to show up for work.

Speaking from behind a screen, the witness, known only as “F” due to the sensitive nature of her work, said she was “profoundly sorry”.

She added that the 31-year-old’s absence should have become a matter of concern within hours of him failing to appear at his desk on August 16 2010. “F” added: “We acknowledge that the delay in finding Gareth’s body has made it even harder for the family to come to terms with his tragic death.”

Mr Williams’s body was found curled up in the foetal position inside a padlocked sports holdall in the bath of his top-floor, two-storey flat in Alderney Street, Pim­lico, on August 23.

The case remains shrouded in mystery despite a 21-month investigation and the inquest which today (Friday) enters its fifth day.

Westminster Coroner’s Court heard the dead body of the prodigious computer expert, who was known to colleagues as “the Swiss watch” because of his punctuality, could have lain undiscovered for as long as nine days.

“F” told the court that under MI6 protocol an investigation into the whereabouts of Mr Williams, who was on a secondment to the organ­isation from the GCHQ listening station in Cheltenham, should have been launched as early as two hours after he failed to appear for work.

Anthony O’Toole, a lawyer for Mr Williams’s family, said the delay had produced “horrendous results” as the family had been unable to “say goodbye properly” because the corpse had not been “in an acceptable state”.

He added: “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 effect been defeated.”

Mr Williams’s family walked out of court in tears as “F” said no one had been disciplined for what Mr O’Toole called “this total disregard for Gareth’s whereabouts and safety”.

When coroner Dr Fiona Wilcox suggested there had been a “complete breakdown in communication” between Mr Williams and his line manager, “F” told the court she agreed.

She also said she did not believe that Mr Williams’s job – the details of which have been excluded due to national security – had been a factor in his death.

The court heard that Mr Williams, originally from Wales, had wanted to leave London to return to GCHQ and had received clearance to do so shortly before his death.

He had also recently returned to London from an annual digital security event, The Black Hat Conference, in Las Vegas.

“F” was asked by Dr Wilcox whether there was evidence from Mr Williams’s work compu­ter that indicated he had used restricted databases improperly to search for information unconnected with his work.

“F” said such searches had potentially taken place. But she said it would be better to describe the searches as “unexplained”.

Somewhat cryptically, Dr Wilcox also asked “F” whether contact with anyone from the central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan was something M16 employees were expected to report – but “F” said she was unable to answer for national security reasons.

On Wednesday, Superintendent Michael Broster, of the SO15 counter terrorism command, whose job was to liaise between homicide investigators and the secret services, said he had received “assurances” from his contact in MI6 that nothing on Mr Williams’s desk or computer had been tampered with prior to it being seized by police on August 27.

Mr O’Toole replied: “So, almost under the old boys act – they tell you that and you accept it, do you?”

The inquest continues.