ETHIOPIA & PRESIDENTIAL ADVISOR
9167 OU35 - Ethiopia – SIS/MI6
It was not clear what my real position was in Ethiopia, apart from my formal role in running our MBA programme. As I have already said, I certainly reported to the part of the embassy that in turn reported through the SIS and/or MI6 line. On the other hand, in London I only ever reported through the desk officer at the FCO. However, the questions that I was asked to answer, by the embassy in Addis and by the FCO in London, were quite often of a sensitive intelligence nature. Accordingly, there was no reason for me to have an informal contact with MI6 or any other intelligence organisation (including the FCO’s own operation); and as far as I'm aware I didn't have any such formal relationship.
However, I'm fairly certain that I had a very high-level of positive vetting. Most directly, one of our neighbours, who we had had nothing to do with previously, suddenly invited us to a buffet lunch. At the buffet lunch they just happened to have an ex-ambassador along. He bearded me and we spent a lot of time talking about Ethiopia. It is – to put it mildly - unusual, for an ex-ambassador to turn up unexpectedly in this way. I had -- of course – previously met one, but only one, in a different capacity as part of the recruitment procedure for the civil service. Even so, I suspect that the real objective was a very high-level of vetting.
I don't know what the view was the other way round. If I had been in the position of the Ethiopian government I would have assumed that I was working for MI6. Indeed, I very carefully made them aware of the fact that I was reporting back to the embassy. As they had spies inside the embassy I am sure that they knew that this information was going back to the security services. Paradoxically, I think this may have helped my position since -- as they were very good at handling intelligence themselves -- they actually appreciated this informal route for messages to go backwards and forwards. I've always reckoned that spies are the best contributors to peace. The better each side knows each other, and spies are a significant contributor to this, the fewer problems they have with each other.
I well remember one question that was posited by the desk officer as we were leaving one of best restaurants in the West End, where I had bought him lunch, and he was getting into a taxi. In the conversation that was yelled across the top of the taxi, which could have been heard by half the people in the street, he simply asked me "What you think of the President? Would you give him a good reference?" I had no difficulty in replying that I would give him a superb reference, since he was probably one of the best presidents in the world. It struck me, though, rather comedic that such a conversation -- giving a reference for the president of a nation -- should the carried out in the middle of a busy street.
The other part of my contact with the intelligence services was what I considered to be my MI6 minders within the Open University. To the best of my knowledge there were two of these. The first was a course manager, Joy, who was a very interesting, and potentially very sexy, blonde; some might even have thought she was a bimbo. She was anything but that, since she'd been at Oxbridge and had nearly completed a PhD in the States after that. Instead she appeared to be into various other adventures. I tried to get her to apply to be a member of the academic team, since she was one of brightest people in school, but she refused. She had a good point, for she would have had to take reduction in salary! But, I suspect there were other reasons.
She used to be part of the life and soul of the business School, and hosted one of the big parties each year -- I hosted the other one. It was at one these parties we met her boyfriend. He was also very interesting. He obviously was very well off, but it was only later that we found out that the part of Fiat he was working for was in fact the arms division. In essence, he was one of the leading European arms dealers. We deduced, again much later on, that he was one of people trying to sell nuclear technology to Iraq.
Joy was his girlfriend in London, and did many things with him. I well remember her going off to Paris for the weekend with him, on the back of his BMW motorbike. I also, though, began to think that the liaison -- not just with him but with other men -- was the sort of liaison that the security services might encourage. When I finally found out that her father was in MI6 I began to believe even more strongly that she was working with them.
Her great friend, and also mine, was George -- who ran part of the business operation of the OU dealing with outside franchises. It took me a lot longer to have my suspicions about him, but eventually, I found out that his father had also been in MI6. Moreover, George had a habit of taking holidays in the parts of the world -- such as Iraq -- where MI6 might have had an interest.
Most specifically, when the Queen was due to visit St Petersburg, George came to me and asked me if I could get him into St Petersburg through the backdoor. His claim was that it was that it would take too long to go through the Russian bureaucracy, and his friend had suddenly found a flat for him to stay there for a week. In reality, of course, I suspected the George wanted to get into St Petersburg without coming to the notice of Russian intelligence. I smuggled him in as a visitor to our regional headquarters in that city. George, surprisingly ‘breaking cover’, actually admitted at one stage the he had worked for MI6
The OU was a very useful location for MI6 operatives, since -- remembering the ambassador's comments about businessmen and academics -- its people went out all over the world; as indeed I did. I don't think that either George or Joy were operatives in the James Bond mould, though I thought Joy came fairly close to it. But they were what I described as 'ancillaries'. Their background ensured their loyalty, and they were called on to do individual projects. One of those projects was probably me.
The most impressive piece of their work, and that of MI6, came when I was trying to find out how reliable RTZ was. I went to my desk officer at the FCO and explained that I needed to be sure RTZ were whiter than white. When he demurred, and said he couldn't comment on that, I said well let me see the MI6 file on them. He was horrified.
That was on a Thursday or Friday. The following Monday I went into lunch, as usual in the main refectory. I sat down at one end of a table at the other end of which was a girl I'd never seen before. A few minutes later I was joined by George and Joy, and I told them of my difficulty with RTZ -- I had no problems of confidentiality since I was by then convinced they were MI6 operatives. At that point they turned to the girl at the other end of the table and said perhaps you can help. She was, it turned out, someone who had worked for RTZ, in their head office, who could vouch for their suitability for the work in Ethiopia. Clearly, it seemed to me, this was a setup; whereby the MI6 files were effectively divulged to me. Certainly I took it that way. The most impressive part of it, though, was that she was even placed at the table I went to before George and Joy arrived. Maybe they would have pulled her across from another table if necessary, but it was a very smooth operation.
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