TOMLINSON, RICHARD• 545prompted SIS’s personnel department to contact Tomlinson, who
agreed to a meeting in Madrid in November. Over the next four
months, three further meetings were held, resulting in an agreement
signed in the British embassy in February 1997. In return for a guar-
antee that he would not be prosecuted for speaking to theSunday
Times, a loan of £60,000, and help in finding a job, Tomlinson agreed
to surrender the hard drive of his laptop computer, erase his manu-
script, and assign the publication rights for it to the Crown. Reluc-
tantly accepting these terms, which included his future silence,
Tomlinson returned to England but was disappointed by the offer of
a job with the Jackie Stewart Grand Prix racing team that had been
arranged by SIS. Instead he flew to Australia, determined to find
work on the strength of his New Zealand dual nationality.
However, in May 1997 Tomlinson offered Transworld Publishers
in Sydney a seven-page synopsis of his autobiography and returned
to England, having decided to accept the job with the racing team.
He also wrote to SIS seeking advice on how to apply for permission
to write a book, an event that set off alarm bells at Vauxhall Cross.
TheSpyCatcheraffair had demonstrated the problem of foreign pub-
lication, as SIS had learned fromLeslie Nicholson, and SIS’s direc-
tor of security, John Gerson, understood the implications of further
leaks from Tomlinson, especially with the opportunity for instant, in-
ternational dissemination offered by the Internet. A balance had to
be struck between maintaining staff morale and discipline by crack-
ing down hard on a breach of security, and undermining the authority
and status of the service by opting for a full-scale public humiliation.
What was probably not fully appreciated was the consequence of in-
voking criminal sanctions.
Tomlinson was arrested bySpecial Branchdetectives at his par-
ents’ home in Cumbria and charged with offenses under the Official
Secrets Act, but SIS was virtually powerless to intervene to prevent
a prosecution, short of persuading the attorney-general that such an
action would not be in the public interest. Tomlinson in December
1997 pleaded guilty to breaches of the Official Secrets Act. He was
sentenced to a year’s imprisonment and served six months at Bel-
marsh top security prison before he was released on parole in April
1998, but broke the terms of his parole by driving to Paris shortly
before the end of his sentence, which amounted to a further criminal
offense.