544 • TOMLINSON, RICHARD
was posted to a new station recently opened in Sarajevo. Tomlinson
stayed in Bosnia under UN Protection Force cover until June 1994,
when a station was established at the new British embassy. He then
returned to London for a stint in the counterproliferation section,
where he participated in a couple of operations, and in April 1995
flew to Rio de Janeiro to meet a source from Buenos Aires who had
been reporting on the Argentine civil nuclear program.
Upon his return, Tomlinson was told by the director of personnel,
Richard Dearlove, that as a probationer his staff performance as-
sessments had been substandard, and there was no future for him in
SIS. He was escorted out of the building and given three months’ pay
and the promise of help to find a new job in the City. This news,
coming soon after the death from cancer of his girlfriend, devastated
Tomlinson, who protested that he had received nothing but praise
from his line managers. However, his appeal direct to the Chief,Sir
David Spedding, as was his right, was rejected. Frustrated, and con-
stantly obstructed byJohn Scarlett, Tomlinson tried to bring an ac-
tion for wrongful dismissal before an Employment Tribunal, but it
was blocked by a Public Interest Immunity Certificate. Instead Tom-
linson applied for a review of his case by the Intelligence Services
Tribunal, an independent body chaired by Lord Justice Brown cre-
ated by the newIntelligence Services Actin 1992, but the finding in
March 1996 went against him. An approach to his MP, Kate Hoey,
also failed, after she was invited to lunch with the Chief atVauxhall
Crossto discuss Tomlinson’s case and given Spedding’s assurance
that he had been treated fairly.
Running low on funds and convinced he had been badly treated by
SIS, Tomlinson left the country, using the alias passport he had been
issued to travel to Brazil. He drove a motorcycle down to the south
of Spain to write a book based on his experiences. This was a breach
of theOfficial Secrets Act, as were his calls to theSunday Times,
which started publishing a series of stories about recent SIS opera-
tions intended to embarrass his former employers. The first, in May
1996, revealed that SIS had recruited a spy inside the French naval
base at Brest, and a second disclosed the identity of a Conservative
MP who had been run as a source on the activities of well-placed
Bosnian Serb e ́migre ́s in London. These articles, including one sug-
gesting SIS had run a source inside the German Bundesbank,