The Big Breach

Richard Tomlinson

Average Rating 5/10 (1 Review)

The first insider's account of MI6 exposes:

• MI6's espionage against France, Germany and other European countries.
• MI6's disregard for the civil rights of the British public and its own employees.
• MI6's routine use of the media, non-governmental organisations and the United Nations as covers for spying.

Richard Tomlinson was recruited initially by MI6, the British foreign intelligence service, during his senior year at Cambridge University. After joining, he quickly gained the trust and confidence of one of the world's most effective intelligence organisations. He was relied on to smuggle nuclear secrets out of Moscow, to run an undercover operation in Sarajevo while the city was under siege, and to infiltrate and dismantle a criminal group that sought to export chemical weapons capabilities to Iran.

Four years after joining MI6, Tomlinson's career was abruptly terminated for reasons that are still not clear. When he tried to fight his unjust dismissal, he was arrested for breaking the notorious Official Secrets Act and jailed in one of Britain's toughest maximum-security prisons.

Following his release MI6 continued to hound Tomlinson, launching a smear campaign in the international press and pressuring its allies around the world to arrest and expel him.

The British intelligence service has used threats of legal action to force publishers in several European countries to abandon plans to publish this book.

Review by Vex (310701) Rating (5/10)

Review by Vex
Rating 5/10
I wasn't entirely sure whether to buy this or not, but managed to find it on offer, so I thought I might as well...

It's pretty obvious after reading the first handful of pages that this guy isn't a particularly good author, but then he's a spy, not a novelist. Most of the first part of the book is taken up with his initiation, training and subsequent deployment, which although interesting in places, it can be quite tedious. There were certainly some insights into the way that MI6 works, but much of the first half is fairly mundane.

The second half deals with his sacking from MI6 and the ensuing battle for reinstatement, which gets a lot more interesting, and intriguing.

There's a number of reasons why I didn't particularly enjoy this book, apart from being hard to believe in places. Tomlinson's writing style isn't particularly great, and in many ways he comes off as very arrogant, also his OOA*s is AITE**, EWHDBTET***.

* Overuse Of Acronyms

** Annoying In The Extreme

*** Especially When He Doesn't Bother To Explain Them!
Vex (31st July 2001)