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Joined SIS (MI6) in 1991. Tomlinson smuggled nuclear secrets out of the new Russia, ran an undercover operation in a besieged Sarajevo and went on to infiltrate and dismantle a organized crime group trying to illegally export chemical capabilities to Iran. However in 1995 an internal dispute led to his leaving the service under a cloud. All attempts to rectify the situation or to get an acceptable explanation failed. Tomlinson was accused of being a 'whistleblower' or worse, and much of the period since he has been alternatively under arrest or on the run. Whatever the truth may turn out to be, Tomlinson's accusations against SIS include illegal acts and should be addressed. The fact that there still appears to be no effective internal or external political oversight of SIS activities is disquieting. That SIS was allowed to hound Tomlinson without adequately explaining the reasons is quite wrong and simply hiding behind the OSA is not enough to satisfy a genuine democracy.
Tomlinson raised one of the most important elements of his case against SIS by claiming that
there was a proposal by MI6 to assassinate President Milosevic of Serbia. From March 1992 until September 1993 he had worked in the East European controllerate of MI6 under the staff designation of UKA/7. His role was to carry out natural cover operations (undercover as a businessman or journalist etc) in Eastern Europe. The Balkan war was in its early stages at this time, and so his responsibilities were increasingly directed to this arena. His work thus involved frequent contact with the officer responsible for developing and targeting operations in the Balkans. At the time, this was Nicholas Fishwick, who worked under the staff designation of P4/OPS. They would frequently meet in his office on the 11th floor of Century House to discuss proposed and ongoing operations that SIS was involved in.
During one such meeting in the summer of 1992 Fishwick casually mentioned that he was working on a proposal to assassinate President Milosevic of Serbia. Later he showed Tomlinson a document from a file that was indeed a proposal to assassinate President Milosevic of Serbia.
The minute was approximately 2 pages long, and had a yellow minute card attached to it, which signified that it was an accountable document rather than a draft proposal. It was entitled "The need to assassinate President Milosevic of Serbia". In the distribution list in the margin were P4 (Head of Balkan operations, then Maurice Kendwrick-Piercey), SBO1/T (Security officer responsible for eastern European operations, then John Ridd), C/CEE (Controller of east European operations, then Richard Fletcher or possibly Andrew Fulton), MODA/SO (The SAS liaison officer attached to MI6, then Major Glynne Evans), and H/SECT (the private secretary to Sir Colin McColl, then Alan Petty).
The first page of the document was a political "justification" to assassinate President Milosevic. Fishwick’s justification was basically that there was evidence that Milosevic was providing arms and support to President Radovan Karadzic in the breakaway republic of Bosnian Serbia.
The remainder of the document proposed three methods to assassinate Milosevic. The first method was to train and equip a Serbian paramilitary opposition group to assassinate Milosevic in Serbia. Fishwick argued that this method would have the advantage of deniability, but the disadvantage that control of the operation would be low and the chances of success unpredictable. The second method was to use the Increment (a small cell of the SAS and SBS which is especially selected and trained to carry out operations exclusively for MI5/SIS) to infiltrate Serbia and attack Milosevic either with a bomb or sniper ambush. Fishwick argued that this would plan would be the most reliable, but would be undeniable if it went wrong. Fishwick’s third proposal was to kill Milosevic in a staged car crash, possibly during one of his visits to the ICFY (International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia) in Geneva, Switzerland. Fishwick even provided a suggestion about how this could be done, such as by disorientating Milosevic’s chauffeur using a blinding strobe light as the cavalcade passed through one of Geneva’s motorway tunnels.
Strikingly reminiscent of course, of the circumstances surrounding the death of Princess Diana in a Paris underpass in 1997.
Tomlinson had little doubt about the intentions of SIS to carry out the operation should circumstances permit and has therefore pressed the British Government to take action against the intelligence officer, Nicholas Fishwick. Even if only to show other SIS (MI6) officers that they should not assume that they could plan murders and carry out other illegal acts with impunity.
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