Britain finds that trying to silence two disgruntled former intelligence officers is easier said than done

By ROD USHER

ecrets, like Houdini, have a habit of escaping. American politician Benjamin Franklin said more than 200 years ago, "Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead." Two former operatives of Britain's main spy networks have demonstrated just how true that aphorism remains today. MI5, which conducts internal intelligence, and MI6, the overseas spy agency, are fighting to stop ex-staffers from spilling secrets, and the harder they try, the more people are getting to know what Britain's sweeping Official Secrets Act won't let them talk about.

British intelligence officers, understandably, are not allowed to reveal what they learn on the job; to do so might endanger national security or a spy's life. But the ex-officers in question argue that both branches rely on this gag to hide mismanagement, blunders and bureaucracy, leaving them immune to genuine criticism.

David Shayler and his lawyers say genuine criticism is the reason why the former MI5 junior officer is now in a Paris prison awaiting a French court's decision on Britain's application to have him extradited for breaching the Official Secrets Act. Shayler has been a thorn in MI5's side since he quit last year and went public, claiming it kept files on and regularly tapped the telephones of British journalists and senior politicians. These and other allegations in a British newspaper led to his indictment and flight to France, where he and his girlfriend, also ex-MI5, have been living in a borrowed farmhouse.

After failure to reach an amnesty-for-silence deal with British authorities, Shayler, 32, began telling more purported secrets. He claims MI5 made several intelligence blunders over I.R.A. bomb attempts. In June, over a lunch in Paris, he told TIME of a 1996 British-backed plan to assassinate Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. He said it failed because the wrong car was blown up, much the same story that was published by British newspaper the Guardian last week.

And this is where secrecy starts to unravel. The media in Britain are prevented by government injunction from revealing claims by Shayler. But the Guardian merely repeated information published in the New York Times, which is beyond the reach of British suppression orders, as is the Internet. And the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that to prevent publication of material which has appeared sufficiently widely elsewhere goes against freedom of expression.

Adding a further Catch-22, Britain's Foreign Office says, "The central claim that there was an official plot to kill Gaddafi is untrue." If Shayler is mistaken or making it up, then can something that didn't happen be an "Official Secret"?

What particularly worried MI5 were Shayler's plans to put his claims in a book which would be "a manifesto for change within the intelligence services." After finding no takers, he began to talk about publishing on the Internet. This appears to be what led Britain to ask the French to arrest him this month. His lawyer says he will fight extradition.

The British have made August unusually busy for the French police, who arrested ex-MI6 spy Richard Tomlinson, 35, at gunpoint in a Paris hotel the day before Shayler was taken in. Tomlinson--who says he has never met Shayler--had served six months of a one-year prison sentence in Britain for having sent an Australian publisher a synopsis of a book on the workings of MI6. Free on probation, he says he went to Paris fearing re-arrest by British authorities. French police later released him without charges and he flew to New Zealand, where he holds joint citizenship. But as he walked through Auckland airport last Wednesday he was served with a court injunction sought by Britain--and sanctioned by the New Zealand government--preventing him from revealing details about MI6. Tomlinson, who served in Bosnia and Moscow, is still considering writing a book "about the whole culture of complacency" in the organization. He says attempts to silence him are "nothing to do with national security...even the color of the carpet [at MI6 headquarters] is an official secret in Britain. That's absurd."

But, as with Shayler, the heat remains on. As Tomlinson tried to board a flight from Auckland to Sydney on Friday he was told by immigration he couldn't go without a visa, even though New Zealand passport-holders don't normally need them.

Right or wrong, attempting to gag Shayler and Tomlinson--and the British media--is proving to be Pyrrhic. To stop former spies from expressing their frustrations publicly, MI5 and MI6 perhaps need some device more like the one invented by Benjamin Franklin, who, as well as being skeptical about secrets and helping to draft America's constitution, was a practical scientist. After flying a kite in a storm, he invented the lightning rod.

--Reported by Barry Hillenbrand /London, Simon Robinson /Auckland and Thomas Sancton /Paris