Five days ago, I noted that ex-MI6 spy Richard Tomlinson had gone AWOL after a last-minute summons to a French court.
He got the order late on a Tuesday to attend court on the Wednesday. The case had been brought against him by the Attorney General here in the UK – and it is no coincidence that Tomlinson had threatened to name MI6 agents on his blog the previous Friday.
When Tomlinson failed to turn up on his blog for more than two days – where previously he was a very regular poster – I started making inquiries. As perhaps you’d expect, they went absolutely nowhere. The Attorney General’s office fobbed me off for three days in a row, and the Special Branch officer handling Tomlinson’s case didn’t even bother to reply.
But lo and behold, Mr Tomlinson has turned up, posting again late on Monday, outlining his time in court. I am growing increasingly suspicious of Mr Tomlinson. He is either having a breakdown or he is so narcissistic that he is starting to make some very stupid decisions regarding his own future for the sake of a small confidence boost. In fact, I think it is both.
Tomlinson says that the man who turn up at his door with the papers turns out to have been his French lawyer – who he mistook for a baliff. Now the reason he mistook him for a baliff (if you believe Tomlinson’s version of events) is because the main order had a baliff’s name at the top. But if the man at the door was his lawyer, Tomlinson must have been in a terrible state not to have been able to work that out. He speaks French for chrissakes. Very well, by all accounts.
This is what makes me suspect Mr Tomlinson is having a breakdown. And I’m sure it’s because of the pressure he’s being put under – on purpose – by MI6. Mr Tomlinson’s crusade is apparently all about his possessions being taken and not returned. But a reasonable man – certainly one that has worked for MI6 – would just write this off, make amends and walk away.
The fact that I couldn’t get any information about what had happened in the court hearing is indication enough that he can be vanished with surprising ease.
There is of course the central question about why Tomlinson was fired from MI6 – something that he claims he doesn’t understand and wants to have a hearing about. The fact is none of this holds water. It is becoming increasingly obvious to me that Tomlinson was kicked out for one of two reasons. He either:
- Started having mental problems and was viewed as a security risk; or
- Learnt something big, and clumsily used this information for some form of personal advancement
Both scenarios fit in with his odd situation and the unusual hounding of him by MI6. At the moment however, he appears to be on a road to self-destruction. Has being dragged in front of a French judge – who will give his judgement tomorrow – woken Tomlinson up?
Who knows? But if it hasn’t, I hope that scenario 1 of the two above is the right one because otherwise Tomlinson is heading into some very deep trouble.