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The Big Breach; From Top Secret to Maximum SecurityCompliments of http://www.192.commentally stable,' he chuckled. Spencer explained how MASTERWORK hadturned up at the meeting wearing a Mickey Mouse hat, clutching themanuscript of a manic and twisted book he was writing. `The guy shouldbe getting pyschiatric help, there's no way we should be running him asan agent,' Spencer concluded. But his judgement was over-ruled by P5because MASTERWORK helped meet the controllerate CX targets, andSpencer was ordered to continue the bi-monthly meetings in Tallinn. Therelationship was later taken over by the Moscow station and they ranMASTERWORK until one clandestine meeting in a Moscow restaurant inApril 1996 was rudely interrupted by FSB. They arrested MASTERWORK,charging him with `broadcasting classified information of a politicaland strategic defence nature to a foreign intelligence service'. Thefemale case officer at the meeting and three other officers from theMoscow station were expelled from Russia. In July 2000, after fouryears in a pyschiatric detention hospital, MASTERWORK was sentenced to11 years in a top security prison. The Russians were alerted toMASTERWORK by his rambling boastings that he was a spy, but the realfault lay with MI6 who should never have continued to run an agent somanifestly unstable.As a probationer, I was expected to take every opportunity to learnfrom the work of senior colleagues. An objective of UKA was to acquireadvanced Russian weaponry, and one operation had been very successful.Russel told me to read the file, adding, `It's a classic operation,you'll learn a lot from studying it.'BATTLE was one of the arms dealers that MI6 had on its books. Armsdealers are useful sources of intelligence on international arms dealsand can be influential in swinging the deals to British companies.BATTLE, a multi-millionaire Anglo-Iranian, earned a salary of aroundœ100,000 per year from MI6. In late 1991, the United Arab Emirates(UAE) asked BATTLE to buy them a consignment of new BMP-3 armouredpersonnel carriers. The BMP-3, then the most advanced APC in theRussian armoury, was a heavily armed tracked amphibious vehicle,capable of carrying seven infantry and its three-man crew. The MODheard rumours that its performance was better than western equivalentsand asked MI6 for intelligence.BATTLE set to work on the deal, flying regularly between the BMP designbureau in Kurgan and Abu Dhabi, and he eventually sealed a deal for theRussians to sell a batch of the lower-specification export variant BMP-3s to the Gulf state. He did not omit to see his MI6 handler every timehe passed through London, however, and on one visit mentioned that hehad been shown around the advanced variant of the BMP-3 on his lasttrip to Kurgan. MI6 persuaded him to try to acquire one. On his nexttrip, with a œ500,000 backhander and forged end-user certificateprovided by MI6, BATTLE persuaded his Russian contact to hide one ofthe advanced specification BMP-3s amongst the first batch of 20 exportvariants which were shipped to the UAE.The consignment of BMP-3s went by train from Kurgan to the Polish portof Gdansk. There the 20 UAE vehicles were offloaded into a containership and sent on their way to Abu Dhabi. The remaining vehicle, underthe cover of darkness and with the assistance of Polish liaison, wasloaded into a specially chartered tramp steamer and shipped to the armyport of Marchwood in Southampton. From there it was transferred to thepage- 75 - To purchase the original limited edition hardback version of this bookplease call 08000 192 192 or go to http://www.192.com
The Big Breach; From Top Secret to Maximum SecurityCompliments of http://www.192.comRARDE (Royal Armaments Research and Development Establishment) fordetailed examination and field trials.The RARDE technicians were highly impressed by their new toy andestablished that the BMP-3's firepower was substantially higher thananything in the UK's armory. Field trials on army ranges in Scotland -with the vehicle disguised under a fibreglass shell to prevent beingspotted by Russian satellites - revealed that its manoeuvrability,cross-country ability and speed were also better than westernequivalents. The complicated and expensive operation was a greatsuccess and they invited most of the East European controllerate totheir establishment near Camberley to thank us for the operation.While reading BATTLE's file, I came across something that, though justmildly interesting at the time, became significant five years later.Some of the meetings that were described took place at the Ritz hotelin Paris, and intelligence on the whos, whats and wheres of thesemeetings was provided by an informant in the hotel. The informant didnot have a codename and was just addressed by a P-number, referring tothe number of his personal file. The P-number was mentioned severaltimes in BATTLE's file so, curious to get a better fix of his access, Icalled up central registry and asked for the file. Flicking through, itwas no surprise to learn that he was a security manager at the Ritz andwas being paid cash by his MI6 handler for his reporting. Hotelsecurity managers are useful informers for intelligence servicesbecause they have access to the hotel guestlist and can be helpful inbugging operations. What was a surprise was that the informer'snationality was French, for we had been told on the IONEC how difficultit was to recruit Frenchmen to work for MI6 and for this reason hestuck in my mind. Although he was only a small cog in the operation andhis name was unimportant to me at the time, I have no doubt with thebenefit of hindsight that this was Henri Paul, who was killed fiveyears later on 30 August 1997 in the same car crash that killed Diana,Princess of Wales and Dodi Al Fayed.Most breakthroughs in espionage come after a lot of methodical researchand tedious sifting of leads and contacts, but occasionally aworthwhile lead came out of the blue. Such was the case when onemorning in June 1992 a former colleague in the TA called me asking forsome advice. The sergeant, a keen long-distance runner, had recentlygone to Moscow to run in the city marathon. A spectator who spokeEnglish approached him at the finish line and it emerged that he was acolonel in the Russian strategic rocket forces. The two men becamefriendly and the sergeant invited the colonel to visit him if ever hewere in England, not really expecting that it would be taken up. Butthe colonel did take him up and he was due to arrive at Gatwick airportthe following week. `Would we be interested in meeting him?' my formercolleague asked. Russel agreed that the story was worth checking out.The following day I took the train out to Clacton-on-Sea, a couple ofhours east of London, to visit the sergeant in his home.Terry Ryman greeted me at the front door and ushered me into the pincleanfront-room of a small terraced house where his wife served tea.Ryman was in his 40s, greying with milk-bottle glasses, but took pridein his fitness. He worked as a black cab-driver in London to earn hisliving.page- 76 - To purchase the original limited edition hardback version of this bookplease call 08000 192 192 or go to http://www.192.com
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