MI6 Building: Fortress where secrecy reigns

LONDON - MI6's offices at Vauxhall Bridge has been dubbed by some staff as "Ceausescu Towers" after the former Romanian dictator with a penchant for grandiose and inhuman architecture.

The offices, the target of a terrorist missile attack on Thursday (New Zealand time), originally cost 240 million pounds ($834 million) to build.

But to accommodate its strange new occupants a further 86 million pounds of public money needed to be spent to cope with the secret service's needs.

Opened in 1994, the building now includes a shooting range and arsenal, a special garage for adapting and maintaining MI6's special fleet of cars, special rooms which cannot be eavesdropped by the "enemy" and a array of computer and radio communication rooms.

There are even rooms for the development of special espionage equipment of the type made famous by "Q," the fictional boffin of the James Bond films.

In another corner is a specialist forgery section which, for instance, forges National Union of Journalists' cards for use by officers working undercover abroad.

What is actually in the building is covered by the Official Secrets Act which every member of the staff is obliged to sign and sworn to secrecy.

Former MI6 officer New Zealander Richard Tomlinson, who now lives in Italy, visited the building many times before he left the service in 1996. "If I told you what was in the building I would be open to prosecution," he said yesterday.

As the attack shows the fortress like quality of the building is not misleading. The walls and windows have been specially modified to stop bomb and missile attack. The windows of MI6's old 1950s style offices 1.6km up the road on the South Bank were strewn with untidy net curtains which were specially designed to stop flying glass in a bomb attack. In the elegant Farrell building this has all been incorporated in a much more tidy manner.

Everybody in Whitehall has long been aware that MI6 headquarters is a prime target for attack especially for propaganda purposes and it is designated a HPT - high potential physical threat - from terrorism. Prescient as ever, last year's James Bond film The World is not Enough features a plot line triggered by a daring rocket attack on the Thames side of the MI6 building by international terrorists.

There is triple glazing installed on all windows as a safeguard against laser and radio frequency flooding techniques. The building is also specially screened with metal shielding and wiring to prevent eavesdropping on its computers or the conversations that take place in the offices. For top secret meetings there is a special "silent" room deep in the centre which is designed to prevent any conversation being monitored.

According to author Stephen Dorrill, there is also a secure command and control room to run major operations like those in Bosnia where war criminals were tracked and arrested by SAS personnel. On the lower ground floor there are interview rooms for debriefing defecting spies like the former KGB Colonel, Vasili Mitrokhin, who brought out the KGB archives which resulted in the unmasking of spies like Melita Norwood.

The more interesting parts of the building are discreet. At the top of the building is an array of radio and satellite equipment that enables it to communicate with its offices around the world. If MI6 wants to communicate with an officer under deep cover, say in Russia, it will send a radio message that will be compressed at the Moscow MI6 station and then transmitted in data burst transmissions to the agent as he drives passed the British Embassy in Moscow.

On a second floor is a powerful computer setup in which all the sensitive data that is sent in by MI6's officers and spies is collated. This is the information that enables MI6 to produce the CX reports - the weekly intelligence briefings that go to the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary.

To the casual visitor the MI6 office would appear as other any modern office, except perhaps for the very tight security at the door which is more like that of an airport with explosive detectors and x-ray machines. Entry to the building is by swipe card and PIN number.

There are now more women than men working in the office and the open plan offices give a sense of informality.

Like every bureaucratic organisation there are departments that have nothing directly to do with secret work. The rocket exploded on the eight floor where the personnel department is based.

After MI6 moved in 1994 the then new chief of MI6 - "C" as he is known in the vernacular - David Speeding reorganised the MI6 into a new set of "desks." The Controllates for the Western Hemisphere and Far East were merged into one desk as were Africa and the Middle East. Global Tasks became a desk on its own. Operational Support which is tasked with assisting officers overseas running deep cover operations was made a separate department and placed on the fifth floor.

One former MI6 officer told me there had been one major oversight in the design of the office - there had been nowhere to park one's bicycle.

To stop staff being overheard talking about sensitive intelligence in local pubs, there is a staff bar in the building which has a spectacular view over the River Thames.

The cost of the MI6 building has left MPs gasping. The expenditure and high annual running costs have been criticised by Parliament's overseeing body the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee.

- INDEPENDENT