Irish Independent : MI6 spy Gareth Williams: An enigma, in life and death

MI6 spy Gareth Williams: An enigma, in life and death

By Michael Burleigh | May 3, 2012

THE south bank district of Vauxhall, London, is famous for two principal reasons. After long spells at 54 Broadway in Victoria and Century House across Westminster Bridge, SIS (or MI6) took possession of its new headquarters at 85 Vauxhall Cross in 1995.

Staff dubbed Sir Terry Farrell’s vast cream and green-coloured ziggurat “Legoland”. It is also known as Babylon-on-Thames, for there are 60 terraces, as well as cameras surveying spiked railings from every angle. Staff enter and leave as inconspicuously as possible through electronic gates.

These look on to an establishment across the road called Roman Chariots Spa. For Vauxhall is also well known as “VoHo”, because of its dense concentration of gay clubs.

Some of these – The Hoist and The Spike, within the cavernous railway arches – cater to a specialist clientele which may well include adventurous heterosexuals. Their names indicate what happens within. A cottage craft industry has also sprung up in the area, including a black-painted Master of Leather shop offering bespoke harnesses and studded belts, when it opens after dark.

By some terrible coincidence, elements of these two worlds appear to have met in the macabre case of Gareth Williams. His decomposing body was found in a red North Face bag in the bath of his flat in Alderney Street, Pimlico on August 23 2010 – circumstances which have given rise to speculation that he died as a result of a bondage-related sex game.

The last evidence that he was alive was a week earlier, on August 16, when he logged on to a cycling time-trial website. The top floor flat was registered to New Rodina, a front for the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, for it was used by people visiting Vauxhall Cross, half a mile across the Thames. At the time, Williams was seconded from the Cheltenham-based communications intelligence agency GCHQ to SIS in Vauxhall Cross. It is mooted that he was involved in securing the computer systems of the Bank of England from hostile cyber-raiders. He was certainly well qualified. Having passed his GCSEs aged 10, Williams graduated with a First in maths from Bangor aged 17. Four years later, with a PhD under his belt, he was recruited by GCHQ. They sent him on an advanced maths course at Cambridge.

In many respects, the 31 year-old had a healthy extracurricular life. Raised on Anglesey, he adored the rugged outdoors. He loved cycling, climbing and fell-running and was extremely fit, lithe and strong. But he would appear to have had idiosyncratic sexual interests, though these have been downplayed by the coroner Dr Fiona Wilcox, in her narrative account of his unexplained death.

Although his friends and family have put a favourable construction on the evidence, claiming that he was generous to his small coterie of girlfriends, Williams’s possessions included a woman’s wig and £20,000 of carefully stored designer clothes, though not necessarily in sizes that would have fitted him. A few days before his death he attended a show by the “Trannie Superstar” Jonny Woo, who blends fashion with transvestism for a variety of clubs and corporate clients. Police investigating Williams’s death also discovered a short film in which he “gyrated” for the camera, wearing nothing but leather boots; the coroner accepted that he derived a sexual thrill from women’s footwear, while noting that this might not be uncommon.

Several years before Williams’s death, his Cheltenham landlord and landlady had to cut through knots to free him when his cries for help led them to discover him tied up in his boxers on his bed. “Gareth, we cannot have you doing this,” exclaimed a perplexed Brian Elliot. The Elliots and Williamses never mentioned the incident again, though the Elliots decided that it did not involve escapology related to Williams’s secret work.

These snapshots from his private life suggest why a man in touch with his feminine side may have been unhappy at Vauxhall Cross, with its strong quotient of hard-drinking public schoolboys and ex-military types telling tales of derring-do in foreign parts. He had been granted a transfer back to GCHQ shortly before his death, and evidently felt ill at ease in London and alienated by SIS’s culture of red tape.

Certainly, Williams seems to have slipped through the net of modern human resources scrutiny. Although he was as punctual “as a Swiss clock”, Williams’s absence – including from a meeting he was supposed to chair – does not seem to have alarmed his SIS managers, an oversight for which Sir John Sawers, the head of SIS, apologised yesterday. But just as seriously, an organisation that positively vets its staff seems to have been surprised by Williams’s on-off interest in bondage and transvestism. In the past, SIS officers were supposed to report to their superiors anything which might be useful to blackmailers.

It is plausible that with SIS having to process a workforce that doubled after 9/11, no such attention was paid to a man who came in through the back door of GCHQ. How very modern, too, of his SIS line manager to claim that lifestyle and sexual preferences “would not in themselves pose a problem”. One is only surprised that they do not make available leaflets on safer autoerotic sex. Of course, people able to conduct double lives – like Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt or Kim Philby in earlier times – are as ideal for the secret services as those with unmemorable faces. But while homosexuality is unexceptional nowadays (and anyway there is no suggestion that Williams was gay), would an interest in bondage be a problem if the person sought to conceal it?

Then there is the investigation. Det Chief Insp Jackie Sebire is the detective charged with clearing up Williams’s death. Although a highly experienced homicide detective, she lacked security clearance to even enter SIS’s Vauxhall Cross headquarters; evidence, if one needs it, of the absurd levels of secrecy practised by Britain’s deep state. This meant that Sebire’s investigation relied upon the “mediation” of Det Supt Michael Broster, of SO15, the counter-terrorism branch, which works closely with the security services.

Imagine Sebire’s surprise that no verbatim notes were taken of interviews with Williams’s colleagues; and that the existence of nine memory sticks, and a black holdall, in or under his SIS desk, was revealed only in the final stages of the coroner’s inquest. Not that other agencies are entirely blameless, since the DNA evidence seems to have been contaminated by a scientific incompetent who put his palm on the bag in which Williams was found.

In addition to clumsy obstructions in the path of the police investigation, there are several disturbing aspects of this case. The coroner was rightly mystified by how the bag containing Williams got into the bath without his leaving foot or handprints on it. Getting into the bag would have been hard enough; it would have been incredibly difficult to fit a heavy and rigid body into it. So Williams was alive when he went in.

It could be that to focus on Williams’s alleged sexual proclivities exaggerates what were merely the tentative inclinations of a fundamentally private man. That is certainly how Williams’s friends and family feel. After all, in 1990 the young defence expert and former RAF helicopter pilot, Jonathan Moyle, was said to have died while engaged in autoerotic strangulation in a cupboard of his hotel room in Santiago, Chile. The fact that he was wearing a nappy indicates he fully intended to live, if you think about it. Details like the orange segment in his mouth were given prominence, as if he had died in a sex game that went wrong.

But Moyle appears to have uncovered illicit helicopter sales by the Chilean arms dealer Carlos Cardoen to Saddam’s Iraq. Like Neil Heywood, the Briton poisoned recently in China, he seems to have poked his nose into some very murky business with undue self-confidence. A reconvened British inquest in 1998 found that Moyle had been unlawfully killed, probably by the needle mark in his leg that was missed by the initial police investigation.

As with the death of the government weapons expert David Kelly, speculation about another party’s involvement in Gareth Williams’s death will run and run. Suicide has been explicitly ruled out. After imagining that it could out-manoeuvre “Plod”, meaning highly competent detectives, MI6 needs to think about how it lost track of its “vital” employee – for tracking people is what it allegedly does on a global stage – and how it can allay the understandable distress of the Williams family while helping DCI Sebire, who has every right to feel short-changed. SIS director Sawers’s apology is a start, for otherwise we would be hearing much more speculation about whatever happened in Alderney Street. Does anyone remember the new dawn of greater transparency?

- Michael Burleigh

Channel 4 : Spy inquest : 'Houdini would have trouble squeezing into bag'

Spy inquest : 'Houdini would have trouble squeezing into bag'

April 27, 2012

Escapologist Harry Houdini would not have been able to fit inside the bag in which MI6 spy Gareth Williams was found dead, his inquest is told.

While one expert testified that it was possible Mr Williams locked himself in the sports bag, Peter Faulding said a third party must have been present.

"I couldn't say it is impossible, but I think even Houdini would have struggled with this one," Mr Faulding, an ex-Parachute Regiment reservist, testified. "Mr Williams was either placed in the bag unconscious, or he was dead before he was in the bag."

A reconstruction played to the London hearing shows a man of similar height and build to Mr Williams struggling to pull the zip shut. The reconstruction in the video was carried out by experts under controlled conditions and should not be copied.

'Extreme heat'

If Mr Williams was alive at the time, he would have only been able to survive for 30 minutes as it was "extremely hot" and uncomfortable, Mr Faulding said. Between them, the two specialists tried 400 times to lock themselves into a similar bag 81cm x 48cm with no success.

William MacKay, an expert in "unusual occurrences," would not rule out the possibility, however, telling the inquest some people can do astonishing things.

"There are people around who can do amazing things and Mr Williams may well have been one of those persons," he said.

Bondage websites

With the hearing now in its fifth and final day, it is unlikely the public will ever know if Mr Williams was the target of foreign agents, the victim of MI6's own "dark arts," or a claustrophiliac with a love of enclosure. The 31-year-old maths genius visited websites about claustrophobia, bondage and sadomasochism.

Police said they found £20,000 of designer women's clothes in his London flat, although one of his close friends said that in her opinion Mr Williams was "straight". His former landlady testified that she found him tied to the bedpost, hollering for help three years before his death.

"My husband said 'What the bloody hell are you doing?'" Jennifer Elliot testified. Mr Williams, wearing only his boxer shorts, said he was "just messing about" to see if he could free himself.

Contaminated evidence

Some of the crime scene evidence was either contaminated or inconclusive because MI6 - including Mr Williams' superviser - said they did not notice he was missing from work for a week. Mr Williams had never missed one day's work previously, and normal procedure was to investigate within two to four hours, fuelling conspiracy theories.

Mr Williams' body was eventually found naked and decomposing, alongside the keys, inside a bag left in his bath. His family say they suspect "a member of some agency specialising in the dark arts" of entering the flat and removing evidence. The equipment used by Mr Williams at MI6 headquarters and Government Communications Headquarters Cheltenham was not retrieved for days after his body was discovered. The agency denies a cover-up.

"There was no reason to think his death was in any way connected to his work," said one MI6 witness, known only as "F". Nor, she added, was there any evidence that Mr Williams' identity as an MI6 officer had been discovered by foreign agencies.

Mr Williams, a former mathematics prodigy, was on a three-year secondment from GCHQ in Cheltenham. He designed technology for his four-person team, according to "F".

One of the detectives who worked on the case said she believed Williams had help getting into the bag as specks of unknown DNA were found on it. But in earlier testimony, the inquest heard crime scene investigators may have contaminated evidence.

SMH : Landlady found British spy tied to bed in underwear

Landlady found British spy tied to bed in underwear

April 27, 2012

LONDON: The MI6 spy, Gareth Williams, was discovered tied to his own bed wearing only boxer shorts three years before he was found dead, naked in a sports bag, an inquest has heard.

The maths prodigy was living alone in Cheltenham in 2007 when he had to call for help in the middle of the night. His landlady and landlord, who lived below him, heard his yells and were met with the "shocking" scene, Westminster coroners' court heard.

The incident was disclosed in a written statement from the landlady, Jennifer Elliot, at the inquest into the death of Mr Williams, whose decomposing body was found in a holdall in the bath of his London flat in 2010. One of the theories surrounding his death included suggestions that he had been involved in a sex game that went wrong. Searches of his home computers showed that he visited "claustrophilia", bondage and sadomasochism websites, the inquest heard.
Advertisement: Story continues below

The inquiry also heard that Mr Williams's boss, identified only as "G", said he waited a week before raising the alarm after his colleague went missing.

In another dramatic day of evidence, a senior counter-terrorism officer said he could not guarantee that Mr Williams's work computers had not been tampered with after his death.

The inquest heard that in 2007, Mr Williams was living in an annexe above Jennifer and Brian Elliot's home when the couple heard cries for help at about 1.30am one winter night. They discovered Mr Williams, who was working at GCHQ at the time, lying on his back with both hands tied to the bedposts and wearing only boxer shorts.

The spy did not "appear aroused", Mrs Elliot said, but he was "very embarrassed, panicky and apologetic" and insisted that he was "just messing about".

The inquest has previously heard that traces of DNA belonging to another person were discovered on the bag containing Mr Williams's body but they were too small to be of use to the police. Detective Chief Inspector Jackie Sebire said it had always been her opinion that another party was involved in locking the padlock on the bag and placing it in the bath.

It also emerged that the spy, regularly bought women's clothing at an upmarket store, claiming that they were for his girlfriend. Police found women's clothing, shoes and wigs valued at more than £20,000 ($31,204) in his flat.

A friend, Elizabeth Guthrie, insisted Mr Williams was "straight" and would never consider cross-dressing for sexual purposes.

Ms Guthrie, who had known Mr Williams since 2009, said he may have had women's clothing in his flat as a "support strategy" for women friends. The hearing continues.

Telegraph, London; Associated Press

MSNBC : UK intelligence officer: No cover-up in 'spy in the bag' case

UK intelligence officer: No cover-up in 'spy in the bag' case

By F. Brinley Bruton, msnbc.com | April 26, 2012

LONDON - There was "no evidence" to suggest that British intelligence services were part of a cover-up after one of their own was found naked and decomposing inside a locked duffel bag in his London apartment, an intelligence officer said on Thursday.

"Witness F" gave evidence to the inquest -- which are held when deaths are deemed violent or unnatural -- in the August 2010 death of MI6 officer Gareth Williams from behind a screen, BBC News reported.

MI6, Britain's foreign intelligence agency, is roughly equivalent to the Untied States' CIA.

The denial came on the same day that one of the code-breaker's relatives shrieked and brought proceedings to a halt while listening to details of a series of missteps that allowed for the spy to lay in his bathroom undiscovered for a week, the Telegraph reported.

The relatives walked out of the inquest in tears during Witness F's evidence, the BBC reported.

Their lawyer Anthony O'Toole said the agency showed a "total disregard for Gareth's whereabouts and safety."

Williams, 31, was a math prodigy working as a codebreaker at Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the state eavesdropping service.

Williams' family became increasingly upset during the four days of proceedings as it became clear that his absence did not spark any concern, despite the sensitive nature of his job, according to reports.

Witness F, a senior intelligence officer, told the inquest that MI6 was "profoundly sorry" for the delays, which had made it more difficult for the family to "come to terms with his dreadful death," the newspaper reported.

A detective told the inquest on Tuesday that a "third party was involved in that padlock being locked, and Gareth being placed in the bag."

The inquest has also been told that Williams, who was single and intensely private, would not have let a stranger into his flat, and that he would not have given his keys to anyone apart from close family.

There were no signs of a break-in or indications of foul play.

Small amounts of unidentified DNA were detected on the bag.

On Wednesday, the inquest heard that years earlier Williams had been found tied to his bed and unable to free himself.

Williams had shouted out for help in the middle of the night when he was living in an annex of the home of his then-landlady Jennifer Elliot in Cheltenham, western England.

Elliot and her husband found Williams dressed only in boxer shorts with his hands tied to the headboard of the bed. He told her that he had been just "messing about," trying to see "if I could get myself free," the Telegraph newspaper reported.

In a written statement, Elliot said it was likely "to be sexual rather than escapology," the paper added.

Williams later took up a three-year assignment at the headquarters of Britain's foreign intelligence service MI6, whose offices are on the banks of the River Thames in central London.

Sky : MI6 Spy Found Tied To Bed Years Before Death

MI6 Spy Found Tied To Bed Years Before Death

April 25, 2012

MI6 spy Gareth Williams tied himself to his bed "to see if he could get free" years before his body was found in a padlocked bag, his inquest heard.

Mr Williams was working for GCHQ in Cheltenham when his landlord and landlady in the town discovered him with his wrists attached to the head board.

They concluded the act was "more likely to be sexual than escapology," the hearing was told.

In a written statement read to Westminster Coroner's Court, his landlady Jennifer Elliot described the startling scene that confronted her and her husband in the middle of the night three years before their tenant's death.

Ms Elliot, who rented out an annex to her home to Mr Williams, said: "We were in bed and we heard Gareth shouting for help. It was about 1.30am and during winter.

"We both got up, got the spare key and opened the door to the annex. I called 'are you ok?' Gareth replied 'can you help me?'

"We went upstairs and found him lying in his bed with both hands tied with material attached at the headboard."

The spy was dressed in boxer shorts, with the bedclothes pulled over his legs, she said.

"He was very embarrassed," she said.

"He said 'I just wanted to see if I could get myself free'."

Ms Elliot could not describe what material he had used to tie up his wrists, adding that her husband thought he had formed two loops and put his hands through them.

The couple thought the material looked taut enough to cut into the spy's skin, the court heard.

Ms Elliot's statement continued: "My husband said 'what the bloody hell are you doing?' and he said 'I just wanted to see if I could get free'.

"He told my husband there was a knife on the side and my husband cut him free.

"We said 'Gareth, we can't have you doing this'. He agreed and said it wouldn't happen again."

Mr Williams then offered to pay more rent but Ms Elliot declined, the inquest heard.

There was no repeat of the strange incident, Ms Elliot said, and she and her husband never spoke of it to anyone but each other.

"We obviously discussed it and thought it more likely to be sexual than escapology," she added.

But apart from this, Mr Williams's flat was always immaculate and his landlady "never saw anything of a sexual or fetish nature" there, the inquest was told.

Mr Williams's body was found locked in a hold-all in his flat in Pimlico, London, in August 2010 but 20 months on his death still remains a mystery.

MI6 spies are expected to give evidence at the inquest of GCHQ codebreaker Mr Williams later.

The witnesses will appear anonymously behind a screen and will be referred to only as Witness K, Witness F, Witness G and SIS F.

Between them the witnesses will be asked to explain Mr Williams' role, both at his main job at GCHQ, and on his secondment to the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) at Vauxhall Cross in London.

(c) Sky News 2012

Telegraph : MI6 spy Gareth Williams was 'discovered in bed with hands tied to headboard'

MI6 spy Gareth Williams was 'discovered in bed with hands tied to headboard'

MI6 spy Gareth Williams was once discovered tied to his bed posts wearing only boxer shorts, the inquest in to his death heard.

By Tom Whitehead, Security Editor | April 25, 2012

The maths prodigy was living alone in Cheltenham at the time and had to call for help in the middle of the night to be set free.

His landlady and landlord, who lived below him heard his yells and were met with the “shocking” scene, Westminster Coroners’ Court heard.

It is the first time the incident has been revealed and emerged in a written statement from landlady Jennifer Elliot at the inquest in to Mr Williams, who was found dead in a sports bag in the bath at his London flat in 2010.

The death sparked widespread conspiracy theories including suggestions he had been involved in some kind of sex game that went tragically wrong.

Searches of his home computers seized after his death revealed that he had been visited "websites of claustrophillia, and he also had access to bondage and sado masochism websites, the inquest has heard earlier in the day.

In 2007, Mr Williams was living in an annexe above Jennifer and Brian Elliot’s home in Cheltenham when the couple heard cries for help around 1.30 one winter night.

They let themselves in to the flat and discovered Mr Williams, who was working at GCHQ at the time, lying on his back with both hands tied to the knobs of the his bed posts and wearing boxer shorts.

The spy did not “appear aroused”, Mrs Elliot said, but he was "very embarrassed, panicky and apologetic".

He was tied with some material that was so tight it was cutting in to his wrists but insisted he was “just messing about”.

Mrs Elliot added: “My husband said ‘What the bloody hell are you doing?’ and he just said he wanted to try and get himself free."

Mr Ellliot cut him free adding: “Gareth we cannot have you doing this.”

Mr Williams offered to pay more rent but Mrs Elliot refused.

She added: “My husband and I discussed it and said it was more likely to be sexual than escapology or similar but cannot be sure.

“There was nothing a sexual or fetishtistique nature in the flat” she added and she did not think of Mr Williams as “sexual”.

The three never spoke about the incident again.

Mr Williams had planned to return to the flat after completing a three year secondment in London but in August 2010 his naked decomposing body was found in padlocked holdall in his flat in Pimlico.

Earlier in the inquest, a senior counter-terrorism police officer could not guarantee that security service computer equipment belonging to Mr Williams had not being tampered with after his death.

Superintendent Michael Broster, from the Met’s SO15, acted as a "conduit" between the Met's murder squad, who were investigating the death and GCHQ and MI6.

He revealed his GCHQ computer was not handed over until six days after his body was discovered and the MI6 one four days later.

Supt Broster insisted there was nothing to suggest a link between his work and his death but under cross-examination by Anthony O'Toole, representing the family, he admitted he could not “say absolutely definitely”.

Mr O’Toole suggested he had accepted GCHQ’s word that there was nothing of relevance in his computer because it was “almost like the Old Boys Act, they told you that and you accepted it”.

The officer strongly denied the claim but when quizzed whether he could be sure that Mr William’s MI6 computer hadn’t been interfered with, he said: “I can't specify absolutely that it wasn't interfered with, but I have no reason to suspect that it was."

It also emerged that no witness statements were compiled for the interviews carried out with the security service officers and those questioned were not given the opportunity to check the summaries that were written up.

Mr O’Toole claimed at least two believed the summaries were inaccurate in some way.

Earlier, friend Elizabeth Guthrie insisted Mr Williams was “straight” and would never consider cross-dressing for sexual purposes.

The inquest has already heard that Mr Williams had £20,000 worth of expensive womens’ clothing and shoes in his flat.

Miss Guthrie, known as Missa, who had known Mr Williams since 2009, said he may have had women’s clothing in his flat as “support strategy” for female friends.

She revealed the pair had planned to go to a fancy dress party in bright clothes and wigs as Manga characters - Japanese cartoon characters.

At the end of the hearing a woman, believed to be a member of the Williams family, was heard hyperventalating and the court was cleared.

It was not possible to see who it was as the family were sitting behind the screen set up to mask the security witnesses from the press.

Mr Williams mother, Ellen, and his sister Ceri are among those who have been attending the hearing.

The hearing continues.