Blogspotter: Introducing the spy who loves blogs

Forget “Bond. James Bond.” One former British spy now greets the world as “Blogger. Angry Blogger.” Richard Tomlinson was dubbed a “renegade spy” by the British press in the late 1990s.

That’s when he ran afoul of the Official Secrets Act while peddling “The Big Breach,” an account of a thrilling four-year career in the Secret Intelligence Service (also known as MI6) that ended with his firing in 1995 for reasons never publicly revealed.

He served six months in London’s Belmarsh Prison for exposing secret information in the memoir. Now the British government is after him again, suggesting he may have posted lists of purported MI6 agents on the Internet last year – and worried he might reveal more secrets in his latest book.

But Tomlinson insists he had nothing to do with the lists (which he dismisses as inaccurate), and the book in question is a novel. Any factual information comes from publicly accessible sources, he said last week via e-mail from an Internet café near his home in the south of France.

Even after French and British authorities raided his residence near Cannes June 27, he continued documenting his battle on Tomlinson v MI6, the blog he launched in April. (“I wish blogging had been invented years ago – it would have saved me a lot of [aggravation] and a lot of money in legal fees,” he wrote in his first post. “With a blog, I’m newly empowered” against government “injunctions and legal assaults.”)

He alleged MI6 had used the agent lists as a pretext for obtaining a warrant to seize his computers and other effects. It was part of an ongoing harassment campaign, he surmised, linked to publication of his memoir and perhaps even blog posts attacking the agency’s head for his role in the run-up to war in Iraq. (MI6 “does not comment on operations or operational detail,” its Web site states.)

As soon as TypePad killed Tomlinson’s blog Aug. 5 at the request of London police, he launched another one on Blogger and linked to a copy of his old site. In September, he began discussing his thriller-in-progress, “The Golden Chain,” and informed police he would submit it for official vetting upon completion.

But after the government told Tomlinson it would have to review the manuscript before he disclosed it to “any third party” (including his co-writer, who’d obviously seen it), he decided to publish portions on the blog. By Sept. 18, chapters 1-8 were freely available. As for the British authorities, “I am not going to answer their letters until they either charge me, or drop their investigation,” he wrote before posting the first chapter.

“I felt it better to have the alleged breach of the OSA judged by a public jury than by MI6 themselves,” Tomlinson said in his e-mail to me. “If the text was kept secret, MI6 would inevitably claim that my text ‘damaged national security’ in order to have me arrested. By publishing it, anybody can see that this is not the case and it will be harder for MI6 to arrest me.”

The gambit also drew a fair bit of publicity – and at least one literary agent – to the novel excerpt. In an earlier e-mail to the London police, Tomlinson said facing charges over the book would leave him “most pleased as it will help find a publisher.”

So might the raid and resulting three-month battle with authorities fortuitously lead to a big sale for “The Golden Chain”?

“I certainly hope so,” Tomlinson said.

Meanwhile, the man who once taught snowboarding in northern Italy and promoted a canned vodka drink called KGB in Russia continues to broker yachts on the French Riviera.

Sounds like great material for another book.