[Spooks] How to infiltrate an embassy: first, try removing your MI5 name badge

[spooks@mailman.qth.net]

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/story.jsp?story=460942

How to infiltrate an embassy: first, try removing your MI5 name badge
By Kim Sengupta

06 November 2003

The top secret operation was meant to be a great triumph in the war on
terrorism, a cunning plan to extract vital intelligence. It ended in a
shambles, with an embarrassing diplomatic incident between Britain and
a key Commonwealth ally.

In the immediate aftermath of 11 September, while Tony Blair was
publicly praising the role of Pervez Musharraf's regime in helping to
combat Islamic terrorism, MI5 was busy infiltrating the Pakistani High
Commission in London. Agents disguised as workmen removed documents,
tracked staff and attempted to plant bugs.

The Pakistanis said yesterday that they would make an official
complaint. A Foreign Office spokesman said: "The official comment is
that we never comment on security matters. I am not going to be drawn
on confidential diplomatic exchanges between the Pakistan government
and the British Government." It is not surprising that the Pakistani
legation, in Knightsbridge, south-west London, was a target. Western
security services have long been convinced of links between Muslim
fundamentalism and the Pakistani secret service, ISI.

Some of those involved in the assassination of the Northern Alliance
leader Ahmed Shah Masood, in Afghanistan on 9 September 2001 allegedly
received help with documents from agents of ISI.

The course of events appeared at times to be a version of Carry On
Spying. MI5, it is claimed, failed to return calls left on its
emergency hotline; did not discover that the agent it had recruited
for the mission had a history of psychiatric problems; an officer
arrived for a "secret" meeting in the street forgetting to remove her
MI5 identification badge; another, who had already infiltrated the
High Commission, risked the security of the operation by returning for
a second attempt in another guise.

High Commission staff helpfully left codes for a cipher machine for
sending secret messages on yellow Post-it notes stuck on a wall.
Inside the offices of the military attach�s, filing cabinets were left
open with details of purchases of equipment.

The diplomats handed over confidential documents to a "workman" who
promised to pulp them. He handed them over to MI5. At the centre of
the mission was an MI5 agent codenamed Notation. He received tens of
thousands of pounds for his work in the High Commission, with the
instruction not to bank it so as to avoid the scrutiny of the Inland
Revenue.

The paymasters appear to have been unaware that, years before, the
agent had been sectioned under the Mental Health Act, and had spent a
year in the Priory clinic. They also seem to have misjudged Notation's
discretion - he described what had happened to journalists.

Notation's involvement began when a building contractor was invited to
tender for renovation work on the dilapidated High Commission. He
noticed a lack of security; rooms accessible without a security pass
were stacked with documents marked "confidential". Visa applications
were stacked in the basement. The contractor felt he should alert
British security.

The contractor left messages on MI5's hotline but there was no
response. It was easier to contact the CIA, through directory
inquiries, at its offices in Langley, Virginia. A few days later he
was contacted by a man calling himself Rick, to whom he handed plans
of the legation at a meeting at the US embassy.

Later the contractor met a woman in her 30s calling herself Claire.
"I work for the government", she said. The contractor was given his
codename and instructions - to provide descriptions of layout,
communications and security. When Notation provided them, Claire's
reaction was that he was a "natural".

The next task was to take an MI5 agent, "Graham", into the High
Commission. This too was successfully accomplished, and two men who
worked at the building, of particular interest to MI5, were
identified. The next coup was getting hold the documentation for
"pulping".

But Notation was worried by what he saw as inefficiency and the fear
that he would be abandoned if things went wrong. He wanted out.

A brief and terse meeting followed with Claire's boss, "a thin,
balding man in his 50s" at a hotel in Victoria. Notation was tossed an
envelope crammed with �50 bank notes and told not to contact Claire
again. His life as a spy was over.