It was sixteen years ago that the brilliant mathematician, on secondment to MI6 from GCHQ, the government’s communications analysis centre in Cheltenham, was found dead in the most sensational circumstances. His body was padlocked into a zipped-up red holdall and found in the bath of his flat at 36 Alderney Street, Pimlico. His face was serene, his hands neatly folded on his chest in an almost religious pose. The key to the padlock lay under one of his buttocks.
Numerous explanations have been offered as to what happened and why.
Gareth was last seen alive on Sunday 15 August 2010. He probably died early the next day. He was a keen cyclist and computer evidence showed a cycling website had been visited at 1.15am. According to the official version of events, it was only after his worried sister Ceri alerted his employers at 11am on Monday 23 August that his absence was investigated. The police were not called in until 4pm the same day. MI6 would later apologise that no earlier action was taken.
I have spoken to a number of insiders and intelligence experts and all without exception regard this alleged delay of a week as simply not credible. It was a view shared by the new Westminster coroner, Dr Fiona Wilcox, who handled the inquest into his death. She said the failure to investigate his absence further “begins to stretch bounds of credibility.”
The inquest, heavily attended by spooks, lasted seven days. Her predecessor, Dr Paul Knapman, had expected it to take just a day and a half. In 1978, he had handled the case of Georgi Markov, the Bulgarian dissident who was killed on Waterloo Bridge by the jab of an umbrella tip poisoned with ricin.
Gareth failed to attend a meeting at MI6 he had been due to chair on Monday 16 August, and another on Friday 20 August, yet we are asked to believe that the non-appearance of a man who had a reputation for being as accurate as a Swiss watch set no alarm bells ringing. I am told that as a matter of routine, steps would have been taken to speak to him or track him down as soon as he failed to turn up on the 16th.
He was also due on the evening of the 16th to meet a colleague from GCHQ interested in taking over his flat but his failure to answer the door seems also not to have generated any response.
He had also alerted his bosses in the months before his death to his suspicion that he was being followed. Any unexpected absence would be bound to be pursued speedily.
Despite official denials, it seems certain that his absence was investigated and this would have included entering his flat, for which MI6 had a key, and discovering the gruesome find in the bath. The question then is why MI6 said that it had not done so, and allowed the body to lie in situ for a week until the police became involved.
Moreover, his flat was part of an MI6 safe house which had an alarm system connecting it to MI6 headquarters. It would also have had other security systems. It is reasonable to expect that these would in fact have been enhanced as the ground floor flat had been subject to a break-in a few months before. That flat was occupied by another employee of the security services.
The building itself, and other safe houses, were owned by a company registered in the British Virgin Islands called New Rodina. Rodina is the Russian word for “motherland”. The Rodina Society was used as a KGB cover operation during the Cold War.
Naturally, there was widespread speculation as to the circumstances that led to his death, and The Sun was fed the story that Gareth was a secret transvestite who may have been killed by a gay lover. Women’s clothing that would fit him had been found at his flat. It was reported that cocaine had been found, along with gay pornography and various items of a sado-masochistic nature. It was briefed that he had frequently paid for male escorts.
Where had these smears come from? Not from the police, it seems, who angrily denied the stories. There was no evidence that Gareth had engaged the services of escorts, bought S&M equipment, or used drugs, they said.
Wide publicity was given to the suggestion that the MI6 operative had frequented a gay bar called Barcode near MI6’s headquarters in Vauxhall. Yet one of the managers, Saki Lidianos, subsequently told the journalist Miles Goslett that “no-one from the staff can recall ever seeing him here.” Nor had the police requested from him access to any CCTV footage.
At the inquest, the feisty coroner suggested that the leaking of material about his private life to the media “was an attempt by some third party to manipulate the evidence.”
We have been here before. Back in 1990, another British agent, Jonathan Moyle, was found naked apart from his underpants, crammed inside a 5 foot hotel wardrobe in Santiago, the Chilean capital. He was hanging from the clothes rail by his shirt, which was round his neck. His head was in a pillow case, and his body was encased in a polythene bag. Guests to a British embassy cocktail party attended by journalists were discreetly tipped the wink that he had been engaged in an auto-erotic experiment that had gone wrong. They were not told that he had uncovered a plan to sell fifty Bell helicopters to the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, modified with the latest electronic guidance system for anti-tank missiles.
It transpired he had been drugged, suffocated and injected with a lethal substance. A Chilean investigation duly concluded he had been murdered. A British coroner agreed, returning a verdict of unlawful killing.
Then in 1994 the press gleefully reported that the Tory MP Stephen Milligan had been found dead on the kitchen table of his home, naked except for a pair of stockings and suspenders, a black bin liner over his head, a length of flex around his neck, and a segment of orange in his mouth. But who leaked this to the press and why? Unsurprisingly the salacious and colourful story of a sexual experience gone wrong filled the papers. What was not reported was that the MP, who was the parliamentary support to the Minister for Defence Procurement, Jonathan Aitken, had discovered evidence of illegal British arms sales.
In the case of Gareth Williams, MI6 seemed only too keen to land the story that his death as well was a sexual matter, unrelated to his work. The police from the off took the view that he had almost certainly been murdered.
I am told by a well-connected source that MI6 were so unhelpful to the initial police enquiries that the police threatened to walk away from the case and make it public that they were not able to investigate it. It took a top level meeting between Sir John Sawers, the head of MI6, and Sir Paul Stephenson, the head of the Metropolitan Police, for an uneasy way forward to be agreed.
The police officer leading the investigation, Det Chief Inspector Jackie Sebire, was told she had to use officers from the Serious Crime Directorate of SO15 as liaison with MI6. It is clear her determination to unearth the truth was not shared by SO15. It is also clear vital evidence was withheld from her. Her team were not even allowed to speak to Gareth Williams’s MI6 colleagues.
At the inquest, almost two years after his death, it emerged that Gareth Williams had in his possession nine memory sticks. This was news to Ms Sebire. She told the coroner: “I would have expected to have been told. Had I known of their existence, I would have expected them to be at least reviewed or audited by SO15 and if information was available, then sent to my team.” In fact, one source told me that they were wiped by MI6.
The inquest also heard that when SO15 officers visited MI6 headquarters, they were shown a cabinet used by Gareth Williams but lamentably failed to take an inventory of its contents. A locked holdall of his, believed to contain personal and work-related items, was found under his desk, but the police officer who found it, Det Constable Colin Hall, told the inquest that he was instructed to leave it where it was. His evidence was described as being “as helpful as a London pea souper.”
The coroner heavily criticised SO15’s Det Superintendent Michael Broster for his “total non-sequitur” in his reasons for not passing on information to Ms Sebire and her colleagues.
In addition, computer equipment belonging to Mr Williams was examined by MI6 without the police being informed.
An MI6 spokesman told the media: “We fully co-operated with the police.”
The coroner declared herself “satisfied on the balance of probabilities that Gareth was killed unlawfully.” And on the steps of the court after the inquest, Ms Sebire made her position clear. “His naked body was found in the most suspicious of circumstances. It’s highly likely that a third party was involved in Gareth’s death.”
Much had turned on whether it was possible to get into a holdall, zip it closed and padlock it, then put the key under your body. A couple of escapology experts tried literally hundreds of times but failed to achieve the feat.
But then an odd story popped up in the Daily Telegraph shortly after the inquest. It alleged that a retired Army sergeant had shown how the feat was possible and that “Scotland Yard detectives have now been able to repeat the experiment.” We were not told who this unnamed sergeant was. Nor was any film or photographs produced to demonstrate this remarkable achievement. But it seemingly was enough to convince some in the police that, notwithstanding the coroner’s conclusions, and all the other evidence in the case, it was now safe to assume that there had been no foul play.
In November 2013, the police announced that they had concluded after further examination that it was “probably an accident” and that the case was closed. The sound of whitewash being slapped on was deafening.
It would be interesting to know what Ms Sebire made of this volte face. She was subsequently promoted to the rank of Assistant Chief Constable in Bedfordshire. She now seems to have taken a vow of silence in this case and did not return my calls.
In the November 2013 statement, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Martin Hewitt declared that there was “no evidence that his death was connected to his work.” He also said that there was “no evidence that Mr Williams’s flat had been forensically cleaned,” and it was “probable...that there was no other person present when Gareth died.” This all despite the fact that there was no evidence that Gareth was remotely interested in claustrophilia, the deriving of sexual pleasure from being confined in a small space.
Hewitt termed it “beyond credibility” that MI6 had destroyed any evidence. Yet the inquest had heard that there were no fingerprints, palm prints or indeed any traces of Gareth’s DNA on the rim of the bath, the bag zip, or the bag padlock. As well as successfully locking himself into a bag in a manner that expert escapologists found impossible to replicate, we were now being asked to believe that he thoughtfully and indeed miraculously wiped away all traces of his entry into the bag. The inquest had also been told that the door and locks had been removed before the police arrived. Had he done this as well? And had he also turned the light off in the bathroom and shut the door? And, for some reason, turned the heating on full in the middle of summer? That latter move of course helped to speed decomposition. Had he also wiped his phone and returned it to its factory settings? For that was how it was found.
So what had happened?
Gareth was engaged in highly sensitive work relating to the laundering of Russian money through this country. He was at the time of his death creating computer defences for the City of London and would have been aware of a range of illegal transactions.
He was a key person. He had also undertaken work on Echelon, the US interception system based at “RAF” Menwith Hill. He was also regularly engaged with the US National Security Agency and was a regular visitor to their headquarters at Fort Meade in Maryland. The FBI would open a file into his death.
The Russian defector Boris Karpichkov began noticing cars with Russian diplomatic number plates slowly driving by, or parked close by Alderney Street with their engines running, from July 2010. He recorded the numbers. He was particularly observant as he was worried about his own safety. At the time, he was coincidentally living close to Alderney Street but has subsequently been moved.
There was a spate of sightings between the 6th and 9th of July, and then again between 12th and 15th August, the last day of Gareth’s life and covering the period following his return from a holiday in the US which ended on the 11th. They have not been seen since. The Russian embassy is four miles away in Kensington.
It is standard practice in this looking-glass world to establish in advance the patterns of an individual to be targeted: what time they leave, where they go, what time they return, who else might be around.
There is some evidence that Gareth may have been gay, though colleagues describe him more as asexual. For MI6 and the rest of the British security world, in these enlightened times that would not have been a problem. I know from my time as a Home Office minister that those in sensitive positions are expected to reveal everything as part of the vetting process, not simply who they have been to bed with, but what they did when they got there. None of this is judgemental and providing there had been no illegal activity, it is simply recorded. But telling all does markedly reduce the likelihood of successful blackmail.
An MI6 officer told the inquest: “Individuals have lifestyle and sexual choices and preferences which are perfectly legitimate.” They were aware of his interest in women’s clothes and transvestite comedy.
The Russians, however, egged on by ex-KGB man Vladimir Putin, still have the Cold War mindset that homosexuality is a weakness to be exploited.
I have been told by a well-placed source that while Gareth was in the United States on holiday in August, he was drugged, rendered unconscious and then a compromising scene was created around him in which he was the star. Here was kompromat for the Russians to exploit. I have no proof of this, but it has been a tactic deployed by Moscow over many decades.
According to Boris Karpichkov, his Russian contacts told him of the existence of the Russian operation to target Gareth, disparagingly codenamed Operation Sweetie.
It is also possible that the Russians were aware that Gareth had unwisely and improperly accessed material within MI6 which was not relevant to his work, and specifically the guest list for an event in London which was to be attended by Bill Clinton. It seems he did this for a friend. If known by the Russians and not known by his bosses, that could certainly be a lever for blackmail.
In the days between 11th and 15th August, three payments of £2000 were paid into his bank account and then withdrawn on subsequent days. These might have been the £2000 tax-free sums he was paid monthly as a London supplement.
More unusual were the two piles of notes, each totalling £500, which were found in his flat after his death. And the week after the discovery of his death, the Mail on Sunday revealed the claim that £18,000 had disappeared from one of his bank accounts two months earlier, and at that point its destination had not been traced. Also in his flat were designer women’s clothes worth £20,000. They were in bags, unopened.
To add to the financial mystery, the paper the following week suggested that Gareth’s bank and credit cards were used in the week between his death and the official discovery of his body in the bath.
Where does all this leave us? I do not believe that Gareth was anything other than a good man, loyal to his country. His reaction to the Russian attempt to compromise him would, I think, have been to tell his line managers.
And suppose they then encouraged him to play along with the Russians, and pretend he had fallen under their spell. But Gareth was a mathematician, a crypto-analyst, not someone versed in counter-espionage and he made a fatal mistake.
Boris Karpichkov has provided a narrative for the episode immediately before his death. Crucially, I have as part of the research for this story received broad confirmation of his version of events from a separate and entirely independent inside source.
According to Mr Karpichkov, he was visited by an East European businessman codenamed Lukas whom he let into his flat. Lukas was there to turn Gareth into a double-agent, past the point of no return. But in the conversation, Gareth revealed that he suspected the identity of a Russian mole in a senior role at GCHQ. This was the fatal mistake. This man, codenamed Orion, was a key person for the Russians and they could not risk him being outed, so Gareth had to be kept quiet. Permanently.
According to Mr Karpichkov, his wine was drugged to render him unconscious and then a specialist Russian team was called in to finish the job, with a plant-based poison cocktail, designed to leave no trace at post mortem.
I believe therefore that the Russians did not come to his flat with the express intention of killing him, but with a Plan B to do so if necessary.
The fact that he was placed in a bag suggests that the intention was to remove him from the flat so that he became a missing person rather than corpse, so delaying any investigation. Otherwise why not just leave him lying around? The fact that the bag was not retrieved suggests that the Russians were somehow interrupted or that their surveillance told them that MI6 had discovered the body before they were able to return.
If MI6 was aware of the alleged double agent in GCHQ, they may well have concluded it was pragmatic not to officially discover the body, and prudent to try to present the death as some sort of personal sexual event. That might give them time and opportunity to identify the mole in GCHQ.
If that is what happened, who is to say that MI6, with the national interest at stake, was wrong to make that call?
But for Gareth, the reward for loyalty in life was to be trashed in death. And so he joined Stephen Milligan and Jonathan Moyle who paid for their loyalty not just with their lives but with their reputation too.
MI6 may have had to do what they did back in 2010, but ten years have now passed. The least they can do now is to wipe away the smears and the sexual innuendo and make it clear that Gareth was an honest man who died serving his country.
