The Australian : More questions than answers after the inquest into MI6 spy Gareth Williams' death

More questions than answers after the inquest into MI6 spy Gareth Williams' death

Fay Schlesinger and Fiona Hamilton | From: The Times | May 3, 2012

THE death of the MI6 spy Gareth Williams is likely to have been "criminally mediated" by another person who locked him a sports holdall and placed it in a bath, a coroner has ruled.

The ruling came as MI6 and the police were accused by the coroner, Fiona Wilcox, of serious failings in the investigation.

The chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), Sir John Sawers, apologised for adding to the "anguish and suffering" of the code-breaker's family, after his managers did not report him missing for more than a week, potentially allowing evidence to be lost.

Scotland Yard began a review of the 21-month inquiry last night, after the coroner and family levelled criticism at the relationship between the police counter-terrorism command, SO15, and the secret services.

The coroner found that Mr Williams died in the early hours of August 16, 2010, at the MI6-owned flat in Pimlico, Central London, where he lived.

He was probably alive when he entered the bag but succumbed either to poison or suffocation inside the holdall, Dr Fiona Wilcox said after a seven-day inquest.

She said: "I am satisfied ... that a third party placed the bag into the bath and on the balance of probabilities locked the bag.

"The cause of death was unnatural and likely to have been criminally mediated. I am therefore satisfied on the balance of probabilities that Gareth was killed unlawfully."

The inquest had focused on whether Mr Williams would have been able to lock himself inside the 81cm by 48cm bag.

After seeing footage of confinement experts trying to manoeuvre their bodies inside, Dr Wilcox said the the absence of foot and finger prints on the bath and tiles made her certain someone else put the bag in the bath.

The toggles were arranged with peculiar neatness, while someone may have tried to speed up the body's decomposition by turning on the heating despite the warm August weather, and disguised the smell using the bag itself, a screen across the bath and the closed ensuite bathroom door.

There was no evidence pointing to a culprit, and it was unlikely the death would ever be satisfactorily explained, the coroner said, though police said that they were following new leads that had emerged during the inquest.

During a two-hour narrative verdict, Dr Wilcox debunked a string of theories, many of which had some basis in evidence but had been embellished through lurid speculation in the media. There was no evidence that Mr Williams was a transvestite; the $A30,000 of unworn women's clothes in his wardrobe reflected an interest in high fashion, the coroner said. Some may have been gifts for his sister and friends.

Visits to bondage websites represented a tiny proportion of his online browsing and could not be seen as indicative of an active interest or having any link to his death, the Coroner said.

Dr Wilcox said it remained a "legitimate line of inquiry" that the secret services were involved in Mr Williams's death, because he socialised with very few people and would only allow those he knew to enter his flat. But she said "there was no evidence to support that he died at the hands of" spies.

Evidence of Mr Williams's death being linked to his work were also rejected by the coroner, as he was considered a "low-risk" employee. He was on a three-year secondment to MI6 from the Government's listening post in Cheltenham, GCHQ. He had not enjoyed the "rat race" in London, but was buoyant about a return to Cheltenham scheduled for a week after his death.

The coroner ruled out suicide and said: "I find that if he had got into the bag and locked himself in, he would have taken a knife in with him. He was a risk assessor." Speaking of the lack of prints in the bath, she added: "In relation to the prints found within the bathroom, in my view what was more significant was what was not found."

She said that "many agencies fell short", including the LGC Forensics, a contractor that chased a false lead for months after an administrative error. The Met's SO15 officers failed to take formal statements from Mr Williams's colleagues, some of whom later showed a remarkably poor memory of events. The coroner cast aspersions on evidence from Detective Superintendent Michael Broster, who acted as a conduit between MI6 and the Met, after hearing that he seized an iPhone from Mr Williams's office containing a video of him naked but for a pair of boots, and kept it until the next day.

Dr Wilcox said: "I find this is either not what occurred - in which case how did he acquire this phone? - or it demonstrates disregard for the rules governing continuity of evidence."

Mr Broster had also faced censure for allowing MI6 to analyse and assess the relevance of evidence, including nine memory sticks whose existence was only revealed to the investigation's senior officer this week.

On MI6's failure to report the code-breaker's absence from work for a week, Dr Wilcox said she could "only speculate as to what effect this had" on the investigation. She said that evidence given anonymously by Mr Williams's MI6 line manager, Witness G, had "stretched bounds of credibility". Referring to the manager's recollection of attempting to contact Mr Williams on the day after the "punctual" worker failed to arrive at the office, the coroner said "there was no phone call".

Speaking through their solicitor, Mr Williams's family called on the Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, to review the investigation. They said they were "extremely disappointed" at the secret services' "reluctance and failure" to make relevant information available. They also attacked the "total inadequacies" of the inquiry by SO15 into MI6.

The SIS said that Sir John Sawers "recognises that the Service's failure to act more swiftly when Mr Williams was first became absent has contributed to the anguish of his family. Gareth Williams was a man of remarkable talents which he devoted to public service. The work that Gareth undertook during his career ... made a real contribution to the security of this country."

An MI6 spokesman said: "We fully co-operated with the police and will continue to do so during the ongoing investigation. We gave all the evidence to the police when they wanted it; at no time did we withhold any evidence."

Martin Hewitt, Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Met, said that investigations into Mr Williams's death were continuing.

Isle of Wight Radio : Coroner To Announce Spy Death Verdict

Coroner To Announce Spy Death Verdict

May 2, 2012

Dr Fiona Wilcox has spent seven days listening to evidence from 39 witnesses.

She has questioned all of those who appeared in person and listened as lawyers for Gareth Williams family, as well as lawyers representing both the Metropolitan Police and MI6 cross examined the witnesses.

Tuesday's evidence included some surprising revelations, including the disclosure that MI6 had failed to pass over some of Mr Williams belongings from his office at MI6.

The officer in charge of the investigation into his death only found out about the existence of some of the items on Tuesday.

"Had I known about their existence, I would have expected them to be disclosed and any relevant information to be sent to my team. I would have expected to have been told," DCI Jackie Sebire told the court.

A senior Metropolitan Police officer also admitted that he had relied on MI6 to decide which of Mr Williams belongings were relevent to the investigation into the death.

Detective Superintendent Michael Broster said that he trusted MI6 to give him all the information he needed.

Responding to that admission, the coroner said: "Shouldn't the investigators be examining the items, not the people providing them?

"I would suggest that you are not being an impartial investigator in this case. An impartial investigator would have seized the items themselves."

The lawyer for Mr Williams family, Anthony O'Toole, put it more directly to Supt Broster.

"If the person who killed Gareth was a member of the Secret Intelligence Service, you did nothing to investigate because you believed that the organisation was trustworthy?"

The wide range of witnesses in this inquest began with Mr Williams sister Ceri Subbe who talked fondly of her brother.

She described him as "a country boy" who had expressed frustration with his secondment from GCHQ in Gloucestershire to MI6 in London.

Friends of Mr Williams also gave evidence. Among them was Sian Jones, a fashion consultant.

"We were childhood sweethearts and I would just say we were very very close." she told the court last week.

She, and other witnesses were asked how they could explain the fact that £20,000 of women's clothes and shoes were found in the flat where Mr Williams body was discovered.

Ms Jones and Ms Subbe both told the inquest that Mr Williams was a very generous man and that the clothes were likely to be gifts. Ms Jones said that he had frequently bought her clothes and handbags.

"He was a truly generous person. It wouldn't surprise me if they were gifts." she said.

His family listened as other uncomfortable details about his private life were discussed. He had visited bondage websites, the court was told, but only on 4 occasions in two years.

The inquest was also told that he had once tied himself to a bed and and had to rely on his landlord to free him.

Mr Williams' professional life was examined in minute detail as well. He was described as a brilliant man, highly intelligent and part of a team whose "Herculean efforts" in cryptology had won departmental awards at GCHQ.

Staff at MI6 gave evidence anonymously from behind a screen. They were pressed on why it took them eight days to report Mr Williams missing.

One MI6 officer, identified only as witness G said he first thought Mr Williams was stuck on a train, then thought perhaps there had been a mix up with holiday.

"In hindsight, knowing what I know now, should I have taken action? Absolutely." witness G said.

Another witness, SIS-F, apologised for Witness G's lack of action.

"SIS are profoundly sorry about what happened. It shouldn't have happened. We recognise the delay [of a week] in finding Gareth's body has made it harder to come to terms with his death." SIS-F said.

The delay in reporting him missing made the pathologists work very hard, the court heard. When Mr Williams' body was eventually discovered it was badly decomposed.

The three post mortem examinations could not establish the cause of death. Three pathologists told the inquest that the decomposition hindered their work.

Benjamin Swift, a Home Office pathologist, said that although the cause of death was "unascertained", he believed that poisoning or asphyxiation such as suffocation were "probably rather than possibly" to blame.

The police officer in charge of the investigation said at the start of the inquest that she believed the crux of the case surrounded the bag Mr Williams was found in.

The police still do not know how Mr Williams came to be in that bag. If he was alone, they do not know how he locked it from the outside.

If he was not alone, then who else was there and what motive did they have to kill him?

The police investigation had drawn a succession of blanks.

New evidence heard in this inquest for the first time might help them draw new leads in the coming months.

The police have repeatedly said there is still a chance of the breakthrough they need.

But now it is the turn of coroner Dr Wilcox to deliver her verdict on a case that remains, for now, a mystery.

Telegraph : Gareth Williams verdict: the case reviewed

Gareth Williams verdict: the case reviewed

It could have been straight out of a crime novel: the secretive world of spies, a bizarre unexplained death, a police puzzle and wild goose chases and a hidden life of womens’ clothing and bondage websites. But for the death of MI6 codebreaker Gareth Williams, it was very much a case of fact being stranger than fiction.

By Tom Whitehead, Security Editor | May 2, 2012

From the moment his naked, decomposing body was discovered in a padlocked sports bag in a bath in August 2010 the mysterious death grabbed the public attention and fuelled an army of conspiracy theories.

Over eight extraordinary days at Westminster Coroners’ Court, involving more than 40 witnesses including anonymous spies speaking from behind a screen, an incredible story emerged, albeit one that asks more questions than it answers.

Coroner Dr Fiona Wilcox vowed to carry out a “full, fair and fearless” inquiry to determine how Gareth came to die and whether sinister forces had a hand.

What followed was an unending series of twists and turns and unprecedented scenes of men trying to lock themselves in to hold alls, potential evidence emerging 20 months after his death and accusations of cosy relationships between senior police officers and MI6.

And at the heart of it was a family devastated by grief, stunned by a secret life they never knew, determined for answers and traumatised by an apparent disregard for their son’s wellbeing.

The death

The body of Mr Williams was discovered naked, in a foetal position in a padlocked North Face hold all measuring just 81cm by 48cm.

It was found in the bath of the Pimlico flat in London where he lived alone while on secondment to MI6 from GCHQ on August 23, 2010.

When found it had been sitting there for a week and was badly decomposed.

Because of the sensitive nature of his job a convoluted police investigation began.

Detective Chief Inspector Jackie Sebire led the Met team investigating the death. But because neither she nor her officers were suitably cleared for national security data, officers from the Met’s counter terrorism unit acted a conduit between her and MI6.

His last known activity was browsing a cycling website in the early hours of Monday August 16.

The secret life

A hidden life of Mr Williams also emerged during the painstaking investigation.

He had a penchant for buying expensive womens’ clothing, had visited bondage websites, tied himself to his bed and was recorded on his phone prancing naked but for a pair of leather boots in front.

Missing

The first riddle was how Mr Williams could have been missing for a week at one of the country’s most sensitive organisations without anyone raising the alarm.

The codebreaker was known for his meticulous time keeping and professionalism and should have been back at work from a foreign trip on Monday August 16.

He did not show up all that week and missed two pre-arranged meetings with other intelligence officers.

Despite working in a small office with just three others, no one thought it strange.

His line manager, known only as witness G, thought he must have forgotten he was on a course or something similar and made only the most cursory attempts to contact him by phone.

There were also suggestions of confusion over who was responsible for his whereabouts as he was due to return to GCHQ, having cut short his secondment, the week after he was found.

He was not officially classed as missing until Monday August 23 and even then it took another four hours before the police were notified and his body discovered.

Alive or dead

Central to the case was whether he could get in to the bag himself and, if not, whether he was alive or dead when placed in it.

Two experts in confined space rescue or “unusual occurrences” tried and failed more than 400 times to climb in to a bag unaided and lock it.

Videos of their attempts were shown to the hearing.

One concluded even Harry Houdini would struggle and that Mr Williams was “dead or unconscious” when he went in to the bag.

Pathologists would later estimate that “poisoning or asphyxiation” were the most likely causes of death and that he would have been overcome by carbon dioxide within three minutes of being placed in there.

But because the body was so badly decomposed several poisons, including cyanide and chloroform, could not even be tested for.

The third party

The police investigation had its own problems.

No usable DNA was recovered from the flat and police spent more than 18 months chasing one encouraging sample before discovering it belonged to one of the forensic officers who attended the scene. An error in recording it for checking had sent police on a wild goose chase.

However, DCI Sebire is convinced a third party was involved and that the death is “suspicious”.

Weak traces of DNA of at least two other people were found on the bag but they may never be sufficient for a match.

The “Old Boys” club

The issue of how much help DCI Sebire received from MI6 and the counter terror officers acting as the link was also a constant focus.

Anthony O’Toole, the family lawyer, raised concerns over what assurances were taken that none of Mr Williams’ work equipment and belongings were “interfered” with before being handed to police.

He was concerned that counter terror officers simply accepted what the intelligence services told them because they were acting almost under an “Old Boys Act”.

In dramatic events on Tuesday, Dr Wilcox accused Det Supt Michael Broster, who headed up the counter terror team, of not being “completely impartial”.

It emerged nine memory sticks possibly belonging to Mr Williams and a sports bag similar to one he was found in were discovered at MI6 but never passed to the investigating team.

Det Supt Broster insisted he was impartial throughout.

The family trauma

For Mr Williams’ parents Ian and Ellen and sister Ceri Subbe, the hearing has been a daily ordeal.

On several occasions relatives were overcome with emotion, especially as they heard of the apparent disregard and apathy his colleagues had in noticing he was missing.

MI6 said it was “profoundly sorry” for the failures.

The shock of learning of Mr Williams alternative lifestyle will also have taken its toll but they acted with dignity throughout.

Their lawyer Mr O’Toole has suggested those specialized in the “dark arts” were involved in the death and that all the family want are answers.

Future

DCI Sebire has insisted the investigation will continue until answers are found.

Results are expected within weeks as to whether a DNA sample has been recovered from a towel found in the kitchen.

And a full review of the case will be carried out in light of all the evidence that has emerged during the inquest.

No evidence that his death was linked to his work or his private life has been unearthed and the inquest has failed to answer many key questions.

For the police and the family the quest goes on but unlike the crime novels, this mystery may never be solved.

Sky : Spy Death: Unlawful Killing Verdict Ruled Out

Spy Death: Unlawful Killing Verdict Ruled Out

Mark Stone, Sky reporter | May 2, 2012

A coroner investigating the death of MI6 spy Gareth Williams has said there is insufficient evidence to consider a verdict of unlawful killing.

Dr Fiona Wilcox said a narrative verdict was the most appropriate option available to her as an open verdict "would not do justice" to her findings.

Mr Williams' body was found curled up naked in a padlocked holdall in the bath of his flat in Pimlico, central London, in August 2010.

Dr Wilcox, who has spent seven days listening to evidence from 39 witnesses, is due to deliver her verdict later today over his mysterious death.

A narrative verdict is an option open to a coroner when other verdict options do not fit the case. It is a short factual statement outlining the facts.

It does leave open the option to include any failures by any party relevant to the circumstances of a death.

The lawyer for Mr Williams' family, Anthony O'Toole, believes that in the balance of probability, to use his words, the codebreaker's death was unlawful killing.

However, he accepts there is perhaps insufficient evidence to come categorically to that conclusion.

The very fact that Mr Williams' body was found locked in a bag would lead some to believe that perhaps there was a third party involved.

Indeed, the police have said all along that it is their belief that a third party was involved.

Dr Wilcox has questioned all of those who appeared in person and listened as lawyers for Mr Williams' family, as well as lawyers representing both the Metropolitan Police and MI6 cross-examined the witnesses.

Evidence included some surprising revelations, including the disclosure that MI6 had failed to pass over some of Mr Williams' belongings from his office at MI6.

The officer in charge of the investigation into his death only found out about the existence of some of the items on Tuesday.

"Had I known about their existence, I would have expected them to be disclosed and any relevant information to be sent to my team. I would have expected to have been told," DCI Jackie Sebire told the court.

A senior Metropolitan Police officer also admitted that he had relied on MI6 to decide which of Mr Williams' belongings was relevent to the investigation into the death.

Detective Superintendent Michael Broster said that he trusted MI6 to give him all the information he needed.

Responding to that admission, the coroner said: "Shouldn't the investigators be examining the items, not the people providing them?

"I would suggest that you are not being an impartial investigator in this case. An impartial investigator would have seized the items themselves."

Mr O'Toole put it more directly to Supt Broster.

"If the person who killed Gareth was a member of the Secret Intelligence Service, you did nothing to investigate because you believed that the organisation was trustworthy?"

The wide range of witnesses in this inquest began with Mr Williams' sister Ceri Subbe who talked fondly of her brother.

She described him as "a country boy" who had expressed frustration with his secondment from GCHQ in Gloucestershire to MI6 in London.

Friends of Mr Williams also gave evidence. Among them was Sian Jones, a fashion consultant.

"We were childhood sweethearts and I would just say we were very, very close," she told the court last week.

She, and other witnesses were asked how they could explain the fact that £20,000 of women's clothes and shoes were found in the flat where Mr Williams' body was discovered.

Ms Jones and Ms Subbe both told the inquest that Mr Williams was a very generous man and that the clothes were likely to be gifts. Ms Jones said he had frequently bought her clothes and handbags.

"He was a truly generous person. It wouldn't surprise me if they were gifts," she said.

His family listened as other uncomfortable details about his private life were discussed. He had visited bondage websites, the court was told, but only on four occasions in two years.

The inquest was also told he had once tied himself to a bed and had to rely on his landlord to free him.

Mr Williams' professional life was examined in minute detail as well. He was described as a brilliant man, highly intelligent and part of a team whose "Herculean efforts" in cryptology had won departmental awards at GCHQ.

Staff at MI6 gave evidence anonymously from behind a screen. They were pressed on why it took them eight days to report Mr Williams missing.

One MI6 officer, identified only as witness G said he first thought Mr Williams was stuck on a train, then thought perhaps there had been a mix up with holiday.

"In hindsight, knowing what I know now, should I have taken action? Absolutely," witness G said.

Another witness, SIS-F, apologised for Witness G's lack of action.

"SIS are profoundly sorry about what happened. It shouldn't have happened. We recognise the delay (of a week) in finding Gareth's body has made it harder to come to terms with his death," SIS-F said.

The delay in reporting him missing made the pathologists work very hard, the court heard. When Mr Williams' body was eventually discovered it was badly decomposed.

The three post-mortem examinations could not establish the cause of death. Three pathologists told the inquest that the decomposition hindered their work.

Benjamin Swift, a Home Office pathologist, said that although the cause of death was "unascertained", he believed that poisoning or asphyxiation such as suffocation were "probably rather than possibly" to blame.

The police officer in charge of the investigation said at the start of the inquest that she believed the crux of the case surrounded the bag Mr Williams was found in.

The police still do not know how Mr Williams came to be in that bag. If he was alone, they do not know how he locked it from the outside.

If he was not alone, then who else was there and what motive did they have for killing him?

The police investigation had drawn a succession of blanks.

New evidence heard in this inquest for the first time might help them draw new leads in the coming months.

The police have repeatedly said there is still a chance of the breakthrough they need.

The Week : Spy-in-bag death can be solved if police are allowed to do their job

Spy-in-bag death can be solved if police are allowed to do their job

Crispin Black | May 2, 2012

THE WESTMINSTER Coroner investigating the death of GCHQ mathematician Gareth Williams in 2010 has delivered a narrative verdict after listening to the evidence of 39 witnesses over seven days. This means that the circumstances of a death are recorded without attributing the cause to a named individual. But it’s a narrative verdict with a twist. She has made it clear that she believes that ‘on the balance of probabilities’ Gareth Williams was unlawfully killed.

She has shown both ingenuity and common sense in framing her formal verdict in this way. But it’s not a surprise. It was clear from the outset that Madam Coroner suspected foul play - she referred in court to the police investigation a number of times as a "Category A Murder Investigation". Technically, it is only an investigation into a ‘suspicious death’.

Towards the end of the process, her own dissatisfaction with the police investigation became abundantly clear. In an electrifying moment mid-afternoon yesterday she snapped. Visibly wearying of the answers of Detective Superintendent Michael Broster, the counter-terrorism officer acting as liaison between MI6 and the police investigation, she suggested angrily that he had not been "totally impartial".

He was coming to the end of a rough hour or so in the witness box trying to explain why he hadn't passed nine memory sticks found in Gareth Williams's locker at MI6 to Detective Chief Inspector Jackie Sebire, the detective in charge of the investigation.

The spooks had apparently assured him they were not relevant.

He hadn't seen fit to mention to anyone that a black North Face holdall similar to the one in which Williams was found dead had been found beneath his desk at Vauxhall Cross. It didn't help that Broster's account of the search of the locker didn't seem to tally with the account given earlier in the day by an equally evasive and unimpressive subordinate who had assisted him.

Broster's uncomfortable experience in the witness box - he looked absolutely furious as he left the building - made embarrassingly clear the shortcomings in the police investigation.

Because DCI Sebire and her team do not have the security clearances to deal with Top Secret matters of national security, they have not been allowed to enter MI6 HQ or question any of Gareth Williams's colleagues at either GCHQ or MI6. These aspects of the investigation have been undertaken by officers from Counter Terrorism Command like Broster who have been security vetted.

Quite why Sebire and her team can't be put through the 'developed vetting' procedure isn't clear. It does not take that long and she and her team have been on the case for 20 months now. The absurdity of this was underlined in court on Tuesday.

When Williams's overall boss at MI6 'Witness D' gave evidence, it was entirely proper that he did so from behind a screen. He is a spook and therefore his identity should be protected. The Coroner, the family and the lawyers could all see him face to face but court officials and journalists could not. We could hear the questions and answers but not see anything. Sitting with us also unable to see anything was DCI Sebire. One wonders what she made of Witness D's evidence. His memory didn't seem to be too good - unusual in a spook.

‘Witness G’, Williams’s immediate superior, also giving evidence from behind a screen earlier in the inquest – failed to impress. In her summing up the Coroner described his evidence as beginning ‘to stretch bounds of credibility’.

This is much more serious than just a slightly unwieldy protocol to protect national security. It is hard not to conclude that MI6 is being protected in some way from a proper investigation. Sebire hasn't been able to interview any spooks and she has had to rely on the judgment of others about physical evidence.

As the Coroner said to Broster, "Don't you think the murder inquiry and those responsible for it should have been investigating that evidence and not the person providing the evidence to you?" The Coroner's implication was clear and you could see the penny dropping with Broster as she said it. A few minutes later under heavily sarcastic questioning from Anthony O'Toole, the lawyer for the Williams family, he let slip: "I am not saying a member of SIS is not involved, I don't know."

Although I greatly admire the way Fiona Wilcox has conducted the inquest I don't agree with her pessimistic summing up that it is "unlikely" that Gareth Williams's death "will ever be satisfactorily explained". The answer is out there somewhere.

The way the police investigation has been conducted does not command public confidence and as currently organised seems unlikely to unravel the mystery. DCI Sebire, who has been convinced all along that "a third party was involved" has clearly done her best in difficult circumstances, but a whole avenue of investigation dealing with Williams's work colleagues has been deliberately closed off to her. As she made clear throughout the inquest she is convinced she can unravel the mystery. Let her do her job.

Perth Now : Coroner rules out unlawful death for British spy found in sports bag

Coroner rules out unlawful death for British spy found in sports bag

Sky News | From: NewsCore | May 02, 2012

A CORONER investigating the death of British spy Gareth Williams, who was found dead inside a padlocked sports bag, said today there was insufficient evidence to consider a verdict of unlawful killing.

Fiona Wilcox said a narrative verdict - a short factual statement outlining the facts of the case - was the most appropriate option available to her, as an open verdict "would not do justice" to her findings.

Wilcox, who has spent seven days listening to evidence from 39 witnesses, is due to deliver her conclusion tomorrow (AEST).

Today's evidence included some surprising revelations, including the disclosure that British intelligence agency MI6 had failed to pass over some of Williams' belongings from his office to investigators.

The wide range of witnesses in the inquest began with Williams' sister Ceri Subbe, who described her brother as "a country boy" who expressed frustration with being transferred from Britain's secret monitoring site GCHQ, in southwestern England, to MI6 in London.

Friends of Williams also gave evidence, including his childhood sweetheart Sian Jones, a fashion consultant.

She, and other witnesses were asked how they could explain the fact that £20,000 ($32,428) of women's clothes and shoes were found in the apartment where Williams' body was discovered.

Jones and Subbe both told the inquest that Williams was a very generous man and that the clothes were likely to be gifts.

His family listened as other uncomfortable details about his private life were discussed. He had visited bondage websites, the court was told, but only on four occasions in two years.

The inquest was also told he had once tied himself to a bed and had to rely on his landlord to free him.

Staff at MI6, who gave evidence anonymously from behind a screen, were pressed on why it took them eight days to report Williams missing.

One MI6 officer, identified only as witness G, said he first thought Williams was stuck on a train, then thought there had been a mix up with leave dates.

The delay in reporting him missing made the task facing pathologists very difficult, and three post-mortem examinations could not establish the cause of death, the court heard.

Benjamin Swift, a Home Office pathologist, said he believed that poisoning or asphyxiation were "probably rather than possibly" to blame.

The police officer in charge of the investigation said that she believed the crux of the case surrounded the bag Williams was found in. Police still do not know how he came to be in the bag as it was locked it from the outside.

Telegraph (Au): Coroner rules out unlawful death for British spy found in sports bag

Coroner rules out unlawful death for British spy found in sports bag

Sky News | NewsCore | May 2, 2012

A CORONER investigating the death of British spy Gareth Williams, who was found dead inside a padlocked sports bag, said today there was insufficient evidence to consider a verdict of unlawful killing.

Fiona Wilcox said a narrative verdict - a short factual statement outlining the facts of the case - was the most appropriate option available to her, as an open verdict "would not do justice" to her findings.

Wilcox, who has spent seven days listening to evidence from 39 witnesses, is due to deliver her conclusion tomorrow (AEST).

Today's evidence included some surprising revelations, including the disclosure that British intelligence agency MI6 had failed to pass over some of Williams' belongings from his office to investigators.

The wide range of witnesses in the inquest began with Williams' sister Ceri Subbe, who described her brother as "a country boy" who expressed frustration with being transferred from Britain's secret monitoring site GCHQ, in southwestern England, to MI6 in London.

Friends of Williams also gave evidence, including his childhood sweetheart Sian Jones, a fashion consultant.

She, and other witnesses were asked how they could explain the fact that £20,000 ($32,428) of women's clothes and shoes were found in the apartment where Williams' body was discovered.

Jones and Subbe both told the inquest that Williams was a very generous man and that the clothes were likely to be gifts.

His family listened as other uncomfortable details about his private life were discussed. He had visited bondage websites, the court was told, but only on four occasions in two years.

The inquest was also told he had once tied himself to a bed and had to rely on his landlord to free him.

Staff at MI6, who gave evidence anonymously from behind a screen, were pressed on why it took them eight days to report Williams missing.

One MI6 officer, identified only as witness G, said he first thought Williams was stuck on a train, then thought there had been a mix up with leave dates.

The delay in reporting him missing made the task facing pathologists very difficult, and three post-mortem examinations could not establish the cause of death, the court heard.

Benjamin Swift, a Home Office pathologist, said he believed that poisoning or asphyxiation were "probably rather than possibly" to blame.

The police officer in charge of the investigation said that she believed the crux of the case surrounded the bag Williams was found in. Police still do not know how he came to be in the bag as it was locked it from the outside.

LBC : Spy Death: Unlawful Killing Verdict Ruled Out

Spy Death: Unlawful Killing Verdict Ruled Out

May 1, 2012

A coroner investigating the death of MI6 spy Gareth Williams has said there is insufficient evidence to consider a verdict of unlawful killing.

Dr Fiona Wilcox said a narrative verdict was the most appropriate option available to her as an open verdict "would not do justice" to her findings.

Mr Williams' body was found curled up naked in a padlocked holdall in the bath of his flat in Pimlico, central London, in August 2010.

Dr Wilcox, who has spent seven days listening to evidence from 39 witnesses, is due to deliver her verdict later today over his mysterious death.

A narrative verdict is an option open to a coroner when other verdict options do not fit the case. It is a short factual statement outlining the facts.

It does leave open the option to include any failures by any party relevant to the circumstances of a death.

The lawyer for Mr Williams' family, Anthony O'Toole, believes that in the balance of probability, to use his words, the codebreaker's death was unlawful killing.

However, he accepts there is perhaps insufficient evidence to come categorically to that conclusion.

The very fact that Mr Williams' body was found locked in a bag would lead some to believe that perhaps there was a third party involved.

Indeed, the police have said all along that it is their belief that a third party was involved.

Dr Wilcox has questioned all of those who appeared in person and listened as lawyers for Mr Williams' family, as well as lawyers representing both the Metropolitan Police and MI6 cross-examined the witnesses.

Evidence included some surprising revelations, including the disclosure that MI6 had failed to pass over some of Mr Williams' belongings from his office at MI6.

The officer in charge of the investigation into his death only found out about the existence of some of the items on Tuesday.

"Had I known about their existence, I would have expected them to be disclosed and any relevant information to be sent to my team. I would have expected to have been told," DCI Jackie Sebire told the court.

A senior Metropolitan Police officer also admitted that he had relied on MI6 to decide which of Mr Williams' belongings was relevent to the investigation into the death.

Detective Superintendent Michael Broster said that he trusted MI6 to give him all the information he needed.

Responding to that admission, the coroner said: "Shouldn't the investigators be examining the items, not the people providing them?

"I would suggest that you are not being an impartial investigator in this case. An impartial investigator would have seized the items themselves."

Mr O'Toole put it more directly to Supt Broster.

"If the person who killed Gareth was a member of the Secret Intelligence Service, you did nothing to investigate because you believed that the organisation was trustworthy?"

The wide range of witnesses in this inquest began with Mr Williams' sister Ceri Subbe who talked fondly of her brother.

She described him as "a country boy" who had expressed frustration with his secondment from GCHQ in Gloucestershire to MI6 in London.

Friends of Mr Williams also gave evidence. Among them was Sian Jones, a fashion consultant.

"We were childhood sweethearts and I would just say we were very, very close," she told the court last week.

She, and other witnesses were asked how they could explain the fact that £20,000 of women's clothes and shoes were found in the flat where Mr Williams' body was discovered.

Ms Jones and Ms Subbe both told the inquest that Mr Williams was a very generous man and that the clothes were likely to be gifts. Ms Jones said he had frequently bought her clothes and handbags.

"He was a truly generous person. It wouldn't surprise me if they were gifts," she said.

His family listened as other uncomfortable details about his private life were discussed. He had visited bondage websites, the court was told, but only on four occasions in two years.

The inquest was also told he had once tied himself to a bed and had to rely on his landlord to free him.

Mr Williams' professional life was examined in minute detail as well. He was described as a brilliant man, highly intelligent and part of a team whose "Herculean efforts" in cryptology had won departmental awards at GCHQ.

Staff at MI6 gave evidence anonymously from behind a screen. They were pressed on why it took them eight days to report Mr Williams missing.

One MI6 officer, identified only as witness G said he first thought Mr Williams was stuck on a train, then thought perhaps there had been a mix up with holiday.

"In hindsight, knowing what I know now, should I have taken action? Absolutely," witness G said.

Another witness, SIS-F, apologised for Witness G's lack of action.

"SIS are profoundly sorry about what happened. It shouldn't have happened. We recognise the delay (of a week) in finding Gareth's body has made it harder to come to terms with his death," SIS-F said.

The delay in reporting him missing made the pathologists work very hard, the court heard. When Mr Williams' body was eventually discovered it was badly decomposed.

The three post-mortem examinations could not establish the cause of death. Three pathologists told the inquest that the decomposition hindered their work.

Benjamin Swift, a Home Office pathologist, said that although the cause of death was "unascertained", he believed that poisoning or asphyxiation such as suffocation were "probably rather than possibly" to blame.

The police officer in charge of the investigation said at the start of the inquest that she believed the crux of the case surrounded the bag Mr Williams was found in.

The police still do not know how Mr Williams came to be in that bag. If he was alone, they do not know how he locked it from the outside.

If he was not alone, then who else was there and what motive did they have for killing him?

The police investigation had drawn a succession of blanks.

New evidence heard in this inquest for the first time might help them draw new leads in the coming months.

The police have repeatedly said there is still a chance of the breakthrough they need.

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

SMH : A very bizarre death gives an insight into a very secret service

A very bizarre death gives an insight into a very secret service

Nigel West | April 30, 2012

The death of MI6 officer Gareth Williams has shown that the reality of British espionage is stranger than any fiction. Spy writer Nigel West was at the inquest.

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 last week 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 outside world had a rare glimpse into the shadowy world of MI6. At the coroner's court in Westminster, London, 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 mobile 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 last 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.

The Sunday Telegraph, London

Guardian : MI6 and MI5 must be held to account

MI6 and MI5 must be held to account

The Gareth Williams case is just one in a series of failings – the security services need reform, for our sake and theirs

Richard Norton-Taylor | April 30, 2012

Britain's security and intelligence agencies, MI5 and MI6, have always been the targets of criticism, conspiracy theories, all sorts of allegations. And they are used to it.

But this time is different. They are mired in unprecedented controversy, desperately trying to withstand growing evidence – evidence, not just allegations – of unacceptable activities, specifically conniving with Gaddafi's secret police over the fate of Libyan dissidents.

The inquest into the death of Gareth Williams, the GCHQ computer expert, has revealed a side to MI6 management that raises serious questions about its duty of care to its own staff. Williams was missing for a week before MI6, to which he was seconded, notified the police and his family. The delay seriously hampered the investigation and caused distress to those close to the young man. Williams's naked body was discovered inside a locked hold-all in his flat more than a week after he failed to turn up to a scheduled meeting at Vauxhall Cross, the agency's headquarters on the Thames in August 2010.

A GCHQ witness told the inquest that action should have been taken on the first day of Williams's absence. A female MI6 officer, witness F, apologised saying "it clearly took too long" to do anything about it. She blamed Williams's line manager, identified only as witness G, and what she called a "breakdown in communications".

MI6's attitude seems even less explicable given that Williams had already made it clear he was unhappy working at Vauxhall Cross. "My understanding through conversations with Gareth at the time was that there was some frustration in that the job was not quite what he anticipated", G told the inquest. He was "frustrated by the amount of process risk mitigation".

Not for the first time, bureaucratic procedures designed to minimise risk in Britain's security and intelligence agencies had not taken into account an individual's sensitivities. The ethos in GCHQ is quite different to that prevailing in MI6.

MI6 and MI5, meanwhile, are facing legal action from opponents of Muammar Gaddafi who sought refuge in Britain. Two were rendered to Tripoli where they were brutally treated. Other dissidents say MI5 pressed them to spy on their fellow refugees in the UK. Salah al-Hashemi, a businessman, has told the Sunday Times he was threatened with detention if he did not accept MI5 demands to supply the Libyan authorities with details of fellow dissidents who had fled to London and Manchester.

According to a Libyan intelligence dossier, a named female MI5 agent wanted Hashemi to feel "pursued by both the British and the Libyan security services in order to make him feel worried enough to seek a friend's advice". The friend, who had been recruited by MI5, would then encourage him to co-operate.

According to the documents, MI5 advised that a dissident in Manchester be told that if he did not supply information, he should be warned that "British security services will arrest him and accuse him of working with Libyan intelligence … or he will face court and be deported to Libya".

MI5's job is to seek informants but only in the interests of protecting Britain's national security. And, according to MI5's own guidelines, such sources must never be coerced into providing information, nor should they be threatened with deportation, or being rendered, back to their own country.

These cases may be pursued in the courts but are unlikely to be resolved at least until the completion of police investigations into the role played by MI5 and MI6 officers and by Labour ministers to whom they were accountable at the time.

Just as well, perhaps. The security and intelligence agencies, MI5 in particular, are facing a huge challenge — namely, securing the Olympics. That is their priority now. After the Olympics, there will in any case be a shake-up with the election of police commissioners and the setting up of a National Crime Agency.

That should be the time for MI5 and MI6 to be subjected to a shake-up in the way they are held to account. They should be scrutinised by an independent inspector general (as security and intelligence agencies are in the US, Australia and Canada) and the parliamentary intelligence and security committee should be made much more robust and effective than the government, and its existing members, have suggested. This would help to restore confidence in them and boost their own morale. Reforms such as these are essential, for the sake of MI5 and MI6, as well as the public.

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

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’.

Sky : Spy Inquest: MI6 'Profoundly Sorry' For Delay

Spy Inquest: MI6 'Profoundly Sorry' For Delay

By Mark Stone | April 26, 2012

An MI6 officer has apologised for failing to raise the alarm about the disappearance of spy Gareth Williams whose body was found in a padlocked sports bag in his London flat.

Relatives of Mr Williams walked out of the inquest into his death in tears after they heard the secret service witness say she was "profoundly sorry" for the pain it had caused.

The senior MI6 intelligence officer, known only as witness 'F', said that Mr Williams' line manager, known as witness 'G', did not report that Mr Williams had been missing for a week.

The family's lawyer accused MI6 of showing "total disregard for Gareth's whereabouts and safety" before he was found dead in his London home on August 23, 2010 - 12 days after he failed to turn up to work.

Witness 'F' said that witness 'G' had not been the subject of any disciplinary action despite the delay.

Mr Williams' naked and decomposing body was found in the large holdall in the bath of his home in Alderney Street, Pimlico.

Some 20-months on his death still remains a mystery.

Giving evidence from behind a screen to protect her identity, witness 'F' said there was no evidence to suggest that Mr Williams' death was connected to his work.

She said when he had been vetted to work - both with GCHQ , the government listening station, and MI6 - he was rated very low risk.

No foreign intelligence agency was aware of Mr Williams or the job he did, so there was no threat to him and neither was he ever a target, she said.

His work was based in the UK, she said, dismissing reports that he had been to Russia and Afghanistan.

The GCHQ codebreaker was working at MI6, where he was just a few days away from finishing a year-long secondment.

Relatives of the 31-year-old have demanded to find out if his death was covered up by secret services - and why the alarm was not raised when he failed to turn up to work.

Officer 'F' told the inquest she had "no knowledge" of a cover-up.

She said no secret agents went into Mr Williams' flat before or after his body was found - and neither had counter-terrorism police or other agencies.

Asked if Mr Williams' flat was an MI6 "safehouse", the witness replied: "It was not."

Toxicologist Denise Stanworth told the inquest that Mr Williams was probably not poisoned or drugged when he died.

But she said she could not "rule out volatile agents" because toxicology tests on Mr Williams were carried out nine days after his death.

The inquest is operating under some unusual restrictions. As well as some of the witnesses appearing from behind screens, some of the witnesses are restricted over what they can say.

Witness 'F' declined to answer specific questions about the vetting process which cleared Mr Williams to work at MI6.

She also hesitated before answering questions about whether intelligence officers should report contact with foreign nationals from certain countries.

When asked whether friendships with US nationals needed to be reported to MI6 bosses, witness 'F' said: "I am not sure I can answer that." She paused and then said that no reporting of US friendships was required.

But when asked about contact with a Kurdish national needed to be recorded, she refused to answer the question.

Mr Williams is thought to have had possible contact with Kurdish man through his friend Elizabeth Guthrie.

Journalists, photographers and editors covering the inquest were also warned again today about not identifying any members of SIS.

On Wednesday, the inquest heard that Mr Williams had once been found tied to his bed, calling for help.

He was working at GCHQ headquarters in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, at the time and had to be untied by his landlady.

Scotland Yard told the hearing on Monday that investigations were on-going and that there was still a "real possibility" of criminal charges over the death.

Mr Williams' sister, Ceri Subbe, revealed that her brother had been due to return to the West Country a week after his body was discovered.

He had complained of "friction" at work and was unhappy with life in the capital, she said.