MI6 spy who was found dead in locked bag had 'hacked secrets files about US president'

A British MI6 spy who was found dead inside a bag in 2010 had hacked into restricted information about the US president, it has been claimed. Gareth Williams, a 31-year-old employee of GCHQ who was seconded to the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) was found dead inside a padlocked bag at a safe house in London.

The Sun on Sunday newspaper quotes an intelligence source as saying Mr Williams had obtained sensitive documents regarding former US president Bill Clinton. “The Clinton diary hack came at a time when Williams’s work with America was of the most sensitive nature,” the source is reported to have told the newspaper.

“It was a diplomatic nightmare for Sir John Sawers, the new director of MI6 at the time.” A coroner had previously ruled that Mr Williams was probably unlawfully killed and that his death was likely to have been the result of criminal actions.

More at  The Independent

The Murder of Gareth Williams

Experts who tried and failed to lock themselves into a sports bag identical to that in which UK MI6 officer Gareth Williams was found believed it likely a third party was involved, his inquest heard, as it emerged he browsed self-bondage websites and videoed himself naked in boots.

The Guardian - Gareth Williams on WikiSpooks – Mail Online

Craig Murray

So nobody in the (British) security services was guilty of complicity in torture. Those rendered to torture were in fact whisked off by flying pigs. Or maybe a big boy did it and ran away.

I should say I never had the tiniest bit of doubt that the institutionally corrupt Metropolitan Police would let off the security services. Nobody ever is guilty in these things. It was nobody’s fault that an unarmed and unresisting electrician was shot six times in the head as he sat on a tube train. It was nobody’s fault the police subsequently lied about him. It is nobody’s fault that MI5 and MI6 officers were interviewing detainees with freshly mutilated genitals. It was nobody’s fault that, when I blew the whistle on active UK complicity in torture, I was immediately suspended from duty and charged with eighteen allegations of gross misconduct, every one of which was subsequently adjudged to be false. It was nobody’s fault that David Kelly died a horrible, lonely and mysterious death after letting slip the truth – that there were no Iraqi WMD. It was nobody’s fault that hundreds of thousands died and trillions were squandered due to the lies officially published – by nobody’s fault – about WMD.

Craig Murray Website

Inquiry into MI6 role in abduction and torture of Libyans

Scotland Yard has opened a criminal investigation into secret MI6 rendition operations that resulted in leading Libyan dissidents being abducted and flown to Tripoli, where they were subsequently tortured in Muammar Gaddafi's prisons.

The announcement came as the Metropolitan police and the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer, said there was insufficient evidence to prosecute individual MI5 or MI6 agents following lengthy investigations into allegations of British complicity in the torture of terrorism suspects in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The new investigation is to focus on Abdul Hakim Belhaj, a military commander of forces that opposed Gaddafi's rule, and Sami al-Saadi, who lodged complaints with the police last November after the chance discovery of a cache of classified documents in an abandoned Libyan government office laid bare the role MI6 played in their rendition.

Saadi was detained in Hong Kong in 2004 and then forced on to a plane to Tripoli with his wife and four children in an operation that MI6 mounted in co-operation with Gaddafi's intelligence chief, Moussa Koussa.

Belhaj was detained in Bangkok after an MI6 tip-off and allegedly tortured by US agents for several days before being flown to Tripoli, where he was imprisoned for several years and tortured.

The Guardian

But:

British spies escaped immediate criminal charges over torture complicity Thursday, but the country's top prosecutor ordered a new investigation into claims that intelligence shared with Moammar Gadhafi's regime led to the torture or rendition of Libyans.

Prosecutors have been investigating claims of mistreatment by detainees who were eventually sent to the United States prison in Guantanamo, Cuba. Most of the torture allegations come from terror suspects who were either initially held in Pakistan and Afghanistan, or sent to other countries such as Morocco for interrogation.

AP

Links between Gaddafi Regime and British Intelligence

Documents retrieved by Human Rights Watch from Colonel Gaddafi’s former intelligence chief reveal embarrassingly close ties between the regime and western intelligence services.

The documents, found in the offices of Moussa Koussa, Gaddafi’s former right-hand man who has since defected, implicate the CIA in the rendition of suspects to the Libyan security forces, and suggest that MI6 gave the Gaddafi regime details of Libyan dissidents. Koussa, Libya’s spy chief before he became Foreign Minister is suspected by human rights groups of involvement in the torture of Libyan prisoners; the British Government came under pressure to arrest him when he defected to the UK earlier this year. He has since moved to Qatar.

The files are believed to originate from a period of rapprochement between Gaddafi and the West, with Tony Blair instrumental in bringing the despot back into the international fold.

More on huffingtonpost.co.uk

Some journalists covering events in Libya are “not real journalists”

Global Research journalist Mahdi Nazemroaya says he fears for his life and is being threatened for “not going by what NATO is presenting” as news out of Libya. He says he believes that some of the journalists covering events are “not real journalists”, but are instead working for security services.

Brit held with SAS in Libya was spy

The British "diplomat" captured in Libya along with seven special forces soldiers was a Bond-style MI6 spy, The Sun can reveal.

He and his SAS team were released last night, 72 hours after a secret mission to make contact with rebel leaders went badly wrong. Angry questions were being asked about alleged intelligence failures that forced them to surrender when surrounded and "suicidally outnumbered" by militia.

Despite Government claims it sent a "small diplomatic team", The Sun can reveal it was an MI6 secret agent and his special forces minders. Their job was to contact opponents of Libyan tyrant Colonel Gaddafi after intelligence reports that the rebels were open to talks.

More on The Sun

Bondage claims over dead MI6 officer untrue, say UK police

Officers who found body of Gareth Williams say it was 'a neat job', leading to speculation that it was a professional hit

Further questions have been raised over the death of an MI6 officer after police confirmed that reports of bondage equipment found at his flat and a "ritualistic" arrangement of his possessions were untrue.

The body of Gareth Williams was found stuffed in a bag in the bath of an MI6 safehouse in Pimlico, south London, a week ago. Reports have said there was evidence of a break-in, and that sim cards containing the numbers of gay escorts were found at the flat, but police who found the body told Channel 4 News it was "a neat job", leading to speculation that Williams was killed in a professional hit.

The police and security services seem to disagree over precisely what led to Williams' death, with Whitehall sources maintaining that his death was "more to do with his private life than his job".

Claims that 31-year-old Williams was secretly gay appear to be wrong, according to the original police dispatch seen by Channel 4. His family claim Williams has been the victim of a smear campaign to deflect attention from his work within the intelligence service. He is thought to have played a role in gathering intelligence as a code-cracker or cipher, and was seconded to MI6 from GCHQ.

The Guardian

Also see: U.K. Spy's Death Remains Cloaked in Mystery (The Wall Street Journal) - Family fury at private life smears of British spy Gareth Williams (Telegraph) - The dead MI6 spy was an unsung hero, so why are shadowy figures trying to blacken his name? (MailOnline)