Death of Gareth Williams: MI 6 Agent

Once again, I visit the death of an MI6 agent and note certain disquieting facts.

Despite all attempts by the various intelligence agencies involved to portray him as a nerdy technician rather than field agent, it is clear that he had been trained for operations and, in fact, had been conducting field operations.

As someone tasked to any field assignment it is necessary to have a cover story and as all good cover stories go, it is sensible to have depth and breadth to them so that any character appears to have a variety of interests and activities and does not appear to be one-dimensional and therefore a suspected mole. Those who look for moles or intruders are apt to be impressed by discoveries of non-mainstream interests. The famed "cover story within a cover story" is far more believable than a shallow, single-dimensional cover story that is easily blown.

To what extent the decedent's visitations to cross-dressing sites, auto-eroticism sites, bondage sites, etc. represented an actual interest versus a career-motivated affectation is unknown and to a great extent unknowable.

It is true that twenty thousand pounds is a rather substantial investment in ladies undergarments but it is also clear that a one time purchase of such items is more suggestive of a cover story than an ongoing interest persisting over the course of many years.

Exploration of a variety of extreme websites is a very sensible way to build a complex cover story for later adventures in the world of Hackers. Hackers who discover one of their number has various cross-dressing interests and auto-eroticism interests would be less likely to view him as a possible government agent sent to penetrate their network.

As in any forensic investigation, it is often impossible to exclude an option it is only possible to term it unlikely. People often have extreme skills or unusual knowledge: regurgitated keys, cat burglar climbing skills, lock picking skills, contortionist routines, etc. all come to mind as items frequently possessed by the general population and therefore unable to be rejected by a coroner.

A person who wished to advance his career by becoming accepted in the world of auto-eroticism and cross dressing may well have applied himself to some fairly interesting situations. Not only is the self entry into the holdall physically possible but there is a measure of evidence to indicate that self entry into the holdall may have been a particularly valuable career skill for him to acquire as it transcends the world of auto eroticism and extends to ordinary burglary skills.

It is impossible for a coroner to rule that self entry into the holdall did not take place. We may find comfort in the fact that we ourselves would never attempt such a thing and that if we were indeed to attempt such a dangerous contortion we would do so under conditions of greater safety, but such thoughts are of no use to the coroner. We can think the intelligence services played a role and that forensic evidence was tampered with. It is a comfort to us to think that but a coronial inquiry is not an exercise in intellectual comfort.

Would the appropriate coroner's verdict be Death by misadventure? No. Death by patriotism seems much more appropriate.

Please note that the coroner is of the opinion that the visitations to the alternative lifestyle sites were brief and sporadic and therefore should be given little weight. I accord the sites greater weight due to the assumed goal in such visitations to the alternative sites. Everything is strange about the case. Even the initially much sought after and now discounted Mediterranean Couple has ties to the Italian embassy so the intrigue seems to never stop.