"They're probably out there now, walking about, looking for targets," says
former spy, Annie Machon, as she surveys the bustling bars, restaurants and
shops in Gatwick Airport.
"MI5 used Heathrow and Gatwick in training courses. Officers would be sent
to the airports and instructed to come back with one person's name, address,
date of birth, occupation and passport or driving licence number – the basic
information for MI5 to open a personal file.
"They'd have to go up to a complete stranger and start chatting to them. One
male officer nearly got arrested. It was much easier for women officers –
nobody's suspicious of a woman asking questions."
Tall, blonde, and strikingly elegant, Machon (37) could have stepped out of
a TV spy drama. She arrives in a simple black dress, with pearl earrings,
and perfect oyster nails.
She is charmingly polite but, no matter how many questions you ask, she
retains the slightly detached, inscrutable air that probably made her good
at her job.
A Cambridge classics graduate, her book, Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers,
has just been published. She worked in 'F' branch – MI5's counter-subversion
section – and 'T' branch, where she had a roving brief on Irish terrorism.
MI5 took 15 months to vet the book. Sections have been blacked out. If
Machon discloses further information without approval, she could face
prosecution under the Official Secrets' Act.
She left MI5 deeply disillusioned. In 1997, she went on the run from the UK
with her boyfriend, former fellow spy David Shayler (39). He was
subsequently jailed for disclosing secrets including that MI6 had allegedly
funded a plot to assassinate Colonel Gaddafi.
Machon had "responsibility and freedom" in MI5 when combating Irish
terrorism. "It was wonderful when you got results, when you stopped a bomb.
That was why I'd joined.
"There was a huge understanding of the IRA and the Northern Ireland
conflict. We weren't just a bunch of bigots saying 'string up the
terrorists'. Some managers might have had that attitude but it wasn't shared
by most officers.
"They acknowledged the IRA as the most professional terrorist organisation
they'd dealt with. Loyalists, and republican splinter groups like the INLA,
were a lot less sophisticated."
Machon didn't witness state collusion but is "watching with interest" as
cases unfold. She voices some ethical concerns: MI5 ran a Garda officer as
an undeclared agent – which was illegal in the Republic.
If it wanted to tap a phone in the Republic, no warrant was needed and there
was no oversight procedure. An MI5 officer simply asked GCHQ, which
intercepts communication, to set it up.
MI5's approach to the law led to bizarre situations: "Officers covertly
entered a house in Northern Ireland to install bugging equipment.
"They trashed it up and stole things to make it look like a burglary. But
MI5 lawyers said it wasn't legally acceptable to steal so the officers had
to go and put the goods back which made it look even more suspicious."
Machon attended security meetings in Northern Ireland. Her life was never in
danger, she says. The only colleagues she knew who were killed were on the
Chinook helicopter which crashed off the Mull of Kintyre in 1994.
Machon had joined the intelligence services three years earlier. She worked
from an office in Bolton Street, Mayfair, one of MI5's three buildings in
London. "It was very dilapidated. There were ancient phones, with wires
crossing the floor stuck down with tape.
"It had battered wooden desks and threadbare carpets. There were awful lime
green walls. The dress code in MI5 was very Marks and Spencers. MI6 (which
combats terrorism abroad) was much smarter, more Saville Row."
MI5's presence in the building was meant to be a secret but everybody knew,
says Machon: "The guide on the open-top London tour bus which passed by
would tell passengers, '....and, on your right, is MI5'.
"We were advised to get out of taxis at the top of the street, not the front
door, but all the drivers knew anyway. Later, we moved to modern
headquarters in Thames House."
Being a spy isn't what people think, Machon says: "It wasn't exactly James
Bond, with glamorous, cocktail-drinking espionage. There were exciting
bits, like meeting agents in safe houses, but there were plenty of boring
days.
"Mostly, I'd be processing 'linen' – the product from telephone taps – or
reading intercepted mail or agents' reports. You get to know your targets
well from eavesdropping on their lives.
"You learn all sorts of things, like if they're sleeping with someone behind
their partner's back. It's surreal knowing so much about people you don't
know; and then it rapidly becomes very normal."
Machon claims the intelligence services were often shambolic, and blunders
meant three IRA bombs in 1993 – including Bishopsgate which cost £350
million – could have been prevented.
"MI5 has this super-slick image but sometimes it was just a very British
muddle. Tapes from telephone taps would be binned without being transcribed
because there weren't the personnel to listen to them.
"On occasions MI5 did respond quickly, but then it could take weeks to get a
warrant for a phone tap because managers pondered so long over the
application wording – whether to use 'but' or 'however', 'may' or 'might'.
"Mobile surveillance (who follow targets) were bloody good. There were some
amazingly capable officers who were often wasted. Despite everything
promised about MI5 modernising, it remained very hierarchical, with the old
guard, which had cut its teeth in the Cold War, dominating.
"They were used to a static target. They're not up to the job of dealing
with mobile extremist Islamic terrorism. We've been playing catch-up with Al
Qaeda for years."
Machon says MI5 pays surprisingly badly: "I started on £15,000 – entrants
now get about £20,000 – a detective constable in the Met was on twice my
salary.
"Of course, it's about more than money but you must reward to keep good
people. If you pay peanuts, you end up with monkeys."
Machon grew up in Guernsey, in the Channel Islands, the daughter of a
newspaper editor. "I was apolitical. My only knowledge of spying was
watching John Le Carre's drama Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy."
After taking Foreign Office exams, she received a letter on MoD notepaper.
"There may be other jobs you would find more interesting," it said.
Intrigued, she rang. It was MI5.
During the recruitment process, every aspect of her life from the age of 12
was investigated. "I'd to nominate four friends from different phases of my
life. After they were questioned, they had to nominate another four people.
"I confessed to smoking dope twice. I was quizzed about my sexual history by
a sweet old lady who looked like my grandmother but resembled Miss Marple in
her interrogation.
"She asked if I was gay. The rules have since changed, but then MI5 regarded
homosexuality as a defect. If you lied and were found out, you'd be sacked
on the spot.
"In theory, they regarded promiscuity as a weakness, but there were plenty
of extra-marital affairs. One couple were twice caught shagging in the
office.
"The male officer, who was very bad at his job, was put on 'gardening leave'
– sent home on full pay. The woman, an Arabic speaking translator who was
great at her job, was sacked."
A culture of "rampant drunkenness" existed, says Machon: "There was an
operation against a Czech diplomat who was also a spy. The officer running
it got pissed, went round with his mates to the diplomat's house, and
shouted operational details through the letter-box at him."
Recruits were encouraged to tell family and close friends they were MI5;
anyone else that they worked for the MoD.
MI5 had a million personal files (PFs), Machon says. "I came across files on
celebrities, prominent politicians, lawyers, and journalists. It was
ridiculous. There were files on Jack Straw, Mo Mowlam, Peter Hain, Patricia
Hewitt, Ted Heath, Tony and Cherie Blair, Gareth Peirce, and Mohamed Al
Fayed.
"There was a file on 'subversives' in the music industry, including the Sex
Pistols and UB40. At recruitment, I was told MI5 no longer obsessed about
'reds under the bed', yet there was a file on a schoolboy who had written to
the Communist Party asking for information for a school project.
"A man divorcing his wife had written to MI5 saying she was a communist so
a file was opened on her. MI5 never destroys a file."
The ranking in importance of targets could be surprising. PF3 was (and is)
Leon Trotsky; PF2, Vladimir Ilych Lenin; PF1 was . . . . Eamonn de Valera.
MI5 currently has around 3,000 employees. About a quarter are officers; the
rest are technical, administrative and other support staff, according to
Machon.
In recent years, MI5 appointed two female Director-Generals, Stella
Rimmington, and the current DG, Dame Eliza Manningham-Butler.
"I always found Stella very cold and I wasn't impressed with her
capabilities. There was an element of tokenism in her appointment.
"Eliza is like Ann Widdecombe's bossy sister," says Machon, mischievously
raising an eyebrow. "She scares a lot of men. She is seen as hand-bagging
her way to the top."
Machon says the only way of responding to the growing terrorist threat is
for the present intelligence infrastructure to be replaced by a single
Counter-Terrorist Agency.
The intense rivalry between MI5, MI6, Special Branch and military
intelligence, means they're often more hostile to each other than to their
targets. ID cards and further draconian security legislation will offer no
protection, she says.
Machon was active in the anti-war campaign. She believes there is an "80%
chance" that Dr David Kelly, the government scientist who questioned the
claim that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes,
didn't commit suicide but was murdered on MI5's instructions.
Other suspicious minds wonder if Machon and Shayler ever left MI5. Could it
be an elaborate plot to make them more effective agents? By posing as
whistleblowers, they gain the entree to radical, left-wing circles.
Machon dimisses this theory: "It would be very deep cover indeed to go to
those lengths. Gareth Peirce is our solicitor. She trusts us and she's no
fool."
Machon says while they have no regrets, they've paid a huge emotional and
financial price for challenging the secret state.
They survive on money from the odd newspaper article and TV interview. Home
is a small terraced house in Eastbourne, East Sussex, where they grow
tomatoes and have two cats.
Are they still friends with serving MI5 officers? "No comment!" says Machon
with a smile. These days, she goes places she never did. When she addresses
left-wing meetings, someone often approaches at the end. "You must know my
file?" they say.
