Kiwi takes feud with UK spy bosses to the internet

The Kiwi-born renegade spy who has battled Britain's Secret Intelligence Service for more than a decade has taken his fight online, posting photos from an undercover mission to Moscow on a weblog.

Richard Tomlinson has raised the ire of the British intelligence community with his new blogsite - Tomlinson v MI6 - which named SIS agents, revealed details of the agency's pension scheme, and criticised senior government figures.

Born in Ngaruawahia, Mr Tomlinson was a top-ranking operative at MI6 - the elite espionage agency of James Bond fame - before he was sacked in 1995 for poor service when he became depressed.

He has fought an 11-year feud with the agency, punctuated by multiple arrests, six months in jail, and a life on the run through Switzerland, Russia, Spain, the United States, Germany, Italy, Australia and New Zealand.

The 43-year-old now lives in the south of France, near Cannes, but told the Herald On Sunday: "If I felt 100 per cent sure that I could return to New Zealand without problems, then I would."

He has been refused a guarantee of safety by the Government.

Mr Tomlinson's battle with the British establishment stems from his request to have his dismissal tested before an employment tribunal - declined on national security grounds.

In 1998 he was jailed in the UK for breaching the Official Secrets Act, after he gave a synopsis of his autobiography to a publisher in Australia. He has lain low since fleeing to Russia in 2001 to publish his tell-all book, The Big Breach.

The ex-spook has previously claimed that the SIS was monitoring Princess Diana before her death, that her driver on the night she died was an MI6 agent, and that her death mirrored plans he saw in 1992 for the assassination of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

In a series of strongly-worded blog posts he has described MI6 as "energetically nasty", condemned MI6 head John Scarlett and former Blair spin doctor Alastair Campbell as "war criminals", and labelled Western democracy "a total load of crap".

Responding to a recruitment ad from MI6, he wrote: "Good luck to any applicants - it is a very interesting career. I really enjoyed my time there. But be warned - they are a bullying employer, and are thoroughly vindictive towards any ex-employee who dares to criticise them.

"If I were to return to the UK, I would be arrested and imprisoned, simply for the crime of having written a book."

The blog posts have elicited several irritated letters from the Treasury Solicitor for the British Government requesting that Mr Tomlinson remove the names of SIS officers mentioned on the internet site.

Last week he posted photos from a 1992 undercover mission to Moscow, where he travelled under the name Alex Huntley, and has promised photos of operations in Bosnia.

The Moscow mission had a bizarre postscript when singer Alex Kapranos of rock band Franz Ferdinand was detained in Russia last year after being mistaken for a spy while travelling under his mother's maiden name, Huntley.

Mr Tomlinson has also posted a satellite image of an MI6 training facility and a copy of the spy agency's pension scheme.

But the blogsite is not limited to MI6 and he frequently comments on other intelligence and military matters - such as the prison sentence of New Zealand-raised doctor and Iraqi war objector Malcolm Kendall-Smith.

"He is the modern equivalent of German conscientious objectors who were sent to Nazi concentration camps for refusing to serve in the Wehrmacht. History will vindicate him," he wrote on April 13.

He has pledged to take the blog down if MI6 agrees to let an employment tribunal hear his grievance, but said he expected the spy agency to take "the expensive option" and serve a series of injunctions on him or get the CIA to pressure the US-based hosts of the site.