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Did MI6 spy Gareth Williams commit suicide?

By Jonathan Rugman

Updated on 14 September 2010

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Conspiracy theorists will argue that this is a cover up by the Secret Intelligence Service or SIS, but for now I don't buy that.

First off, we know that Mr Williams travelled to the US listening centre in Maryland where he also worked, but he did not have any dealings - that we know of - with governments or foreign intellligence agencies potentially hostile to Britain.

At first this was interpreted as a sign of a ritualistic killing, but with hindsight it may have been just the punctiliousness of a very private man - ideal for his job, I would have thought. Mr Williams was on secondment to MI6 from GCHQ in Cheltenham and was due to return to Gloucestershire imminently.

This fact - that he was going back to his former place of employment - is the only potential "trigger moment" we have which could provide a clue to the puzzle of his death. In the week the police found the body, I reported for Channel 4 News the theory that the code expert's "sexual preferences" may have had something to do with his death.

Two days later, The Sunday Times reported that it had spoken to two witnesses who had seen Mr Williams on the gay scene in South London.

All this apparently appalled the dead man's family in Wales - only beginning to come to terms with his tragic death - and both they and the police let it be known that this was not a useful line of enquiry. One outraged family member suggested that this could be an orchestrated "dirty tricks" campaign by British Intelligence. What would be the merits of MI6 falsely describing its employee as gay?

MI6 employs gay people, and like every other branch of the civil service it cannot discriminate against them. What it may not be able to tolerate is the security risk of an employee being a closet gay - leading a double life on top of their double life as a spy - in case this leaves an employee open to blackmail.

A "dirty tricks" campaign unfairly suggesting that Williams was a closet homosexual in fact does the reputations of GCHQ and MI6 few favours, because it makes it obvious that their supposedly rigorous vetting procedures failed. In other words, it is an "own goal" for SIS. So why suggest it if it wasn't true?

To disguise the fact that the Russians or the Iranians or Mafia hit men killed him, when they could have killed him in myriad and far less bizarre ways if they had wanted to, assuming they had even known who he was? Which brings us back to the body in the bag.

A padlocked bag in a flat which was double-locked with no sign of forced entry that we know of. Could the bag have been padlocked from the inside?

It has been reported that it could. Which leads us to the theory - and that is all this is - that an act of "erotic self-asphyxiation" or sex game caused Gareth Williams' death, either by accident or on purpose.

And if it was on purpose and involved no one else, what was the trigger? Perhaps it was his imminent departure from the bright lights of London and his return to his old life in Cheltenham.

I repeat that this is just a theory based on the little that we know; but Gareth Williams lived in a world of secrets, and perhaps the secret of his private life was, for him, one secret too many.

First off, we know that Mr Williams travelled to the US listening centre in Maryland where he also worked, but he did not have any dealings - that we know of - with governments or foreign intellligence agencies potentially hostile to Britain.

Potentially hostile governments other than America's, I assume.

Tests on the body of an MI6 worker found naked in a holdall in a London flat have failed to establish how he died, Scotland Yard has said.

Gareth Williams, 30, from Holyhead on Anglesey, was found dead in the bathroom of his Pimlico flat in August.

Police said all tests on the body for drugs, alcohol and poisons had proved negative. No further tests are planned.

Mr Williams, a mathematician, worked at the government's GCHQ listening post. He was on secondment to MI6.

He may have been dead two weeks before he was found, the Metropolitan Police said.

A Met spokesman said: "Results from comprehensive further toxicology tests carried out in relation to the death of Gareth Williams have come back negative, showing no trace of any drugs, alcohol, poisons or any other substances that would indicate cause of death.

"There are no plans to carry out any further tests of this type, but inquiries continue to try and establish a formal cause of death.

'Complete mystery'

"Mr Williams' death remains suspicious and unexplained and inquiries into the circumstances continue."

BBC Home Affairs correspondent Daniel Sandford said: "His cause of death remains a complete mystery.

"In an investigation like this you never quite know what the police have got to go on they are not telling you about.

"There are strong suggestions his laptop is missing so possibly it may link to his work."

The case will be reviewed in private by coroner Dr Paul Knapman on Wednesday.

An inquest was opened on 1 September.

Mr Williams graduated with a first class degree in maths from Bangor University at just 17.

In 2000, he took a postgraduate certificate in mathematics at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, before beginning work at GCHQ.

Officers who entered the flat where his body was found discovered a mobile phone and several mobile phone Sim cards laid out.

It is not known what work he was doing for MI6.

This is despite a post-mortem, a second examination and toxicology tests, the results of which might not be available for weeks.
Sources close to the inquiry say the PC who found the body described it as being in ‘fluid’ when he radioed for assistance. Detectives at the scene are understood to have used the same word in their reports.
Immediately after making the discovery at the flat, the PC said: ‘This is a murder scene.’

jingofever wrote:Gordon Thomas says that Gareth Williams may have been working on Stuxnet. That Gordon Thomas always has something sensational to add to a story.

justdrew wrote:I just can't believe a guy like this doesn't show up for work at MIfucking6 and they don't send some security round his house the next day at latest.

Police are now focused on finding a couple known to have been with the 31-year-old in the weeks before his death.

The Mediterranean couple, who are understood to have had a set of keys to the flat, are thought to be key to the investigation.

The man and woman, in their thirties, were known to Mr Williams and were seen entering the flat owned by the intelligence services in late June or early July. But, despite repeated appeals, they have failed to come forward.

Detectives are convinced that the cipher expert could not have died alone.

One possible explanation being investigated by detectives is that Mr Williams was locked in the bag by someone else and left in the bath as part of the bizarre sex game. It is thought that when the person returned to release him they found him dead and fled.

Police are certain he was alive when he was padlocked into the large holdall by, which led to him suffocating. There were no injuries on his body to suggest a struggle. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -body.html

Mystery of meetings with couple in a cafe five miles from home
By ABUL TAHER and IAN GALLAGHER

Gareth Williams had a series of mysterious meetings at a cafe in the weeks leading up to his death.
Witnesses said the MI6 codebreaker’s late-morning encounters at Patisserie Valerie in Holland Park, West London, took place twice a week and never lasted longer than a few minutes.
Mr Williams, who lived five miles away in Pimlico, usually met a man and a dark-haired woman in their early 30s, although the man occasionally turned up alone

Polish waitress Magdalena Kolakowska, 24, recalled that Mr Williams would sit at the back of the dimly lit cafe ‘so he could keep an eye on the door’.
Ordering an Americano coffee, he then ‘waited for the couple to approach his table and speak to him’. Miss Kolakowska added: ‘They would come up to him as if they had suddenly just seen him and say, “Hi.” They would speak to him for two or three minutes and go. They would never sit down or have a coffee with him.’
In all, she recalls about eight such encounters. She could not remember any items passing between them and heard nothing of their conversations because all three spoke in low voices.
But it was the brevity of the meetings – coupled with their regularity – that struck staff
as odd. They assumed that Mr Williams, who was dressed casually, was local.
Last week, police announced they were seeking a man and a woman, both of Mediterranean appearance, who called at Mr Williams’ home late one evening in June or July.
Although the man and woman at the cafe are roughly the same age as the couple being sought by police, staff say they did not look Mediterranean.

The Mail on Sunday has learned that a woman police officer climbed into the holdall in which codebreaker Gareth Williams’ naked body was found, re-enacting the events which it is thought could have led to his death.

She managed to zip up the bag and padlock it from the inside, leading investigators to conclude that Mr Williams may have done the same for sexual kicks and suffocated when he could not reopen it.