GCHQ's spy death riddle shines light on UK hacker war British intelligence agent Dr Gareth Williams’ last mission before he was “unlawfully killed” was to infiltrate and report on US hacker meetings, evidence given at his inquest this week has indicated. Williams appears to have been one of a team of intelligence officers and agents sent to penetrate hacking networks in the US …
Am I the only person here thinking that the investigators have been intentionally rubbish here? They seem to have spent more time trying to ruin his character than investigating who killed him.
Maybe they already know?
Maybe the investigators have been categorically told that they wont find out who killed him, if you take my meaning?
Sod beating about the bush: maybe, for reasons as yet unknown, MI6 had him killed?
Few conspiracies of that sort seem likely to stay watertight for very long. On the contrary, it seems whoever killed him was smarter than to leave the kind of trail you suggest by raising such obvious suspicions with anyone likely to have passed these on. The extraordinary fact that seems to leap out at me when reading about this case is how little of a trail the killer has managed to leave.
Given that the readership of this site tend towards the Daily Mail/Clarkson/pure vanilla and angry end of the spectrum, maybe you're looking in the wrong place for open mindedness.
It's not worth expecting anything too adventurous or tolerant from the readership here :)
(AC because, well, there are some strange people out there, and head over the parapet still isn't so smart)
I feel sorry for his friends and family.
The Police investigation into his death is piss poor. His private sexual life is spread all over the media. And I bet his employers aren't being totally truethful or co-operative either.
Not the kindest of circumstances under which to grieve.
".....where cleaned could equally mean staged." Staged by whom? The authorities? Puh-lease, do provide an at least vaguely realistic motive for the authorities to want to kill him, and then explain why they would do so in such a means as to guarantee plenty of media attention? The killer? How would a killer fake weeks of bondage site browsing, and then get Williams to make the video?
Williams evidently had some "unnatural" hangups (or maybe tiedowns), simple as that. People like you keep the tinfoil industry healthy.
Did I mention the authorities? I'll answer that for you because you seem to lack an ability to comprehend what you read, NO.
Now let's look at facts. It was a week between not tuning up at work and his decomposing body being discovered. Bodies do not start to decompose overnight so it's likely he had been dead most of week. Someone did a bit of housekeeping. Whoever did was comfortable being in his flat and was sure they wouldn't be discovered, that takes some nerve. You decide who it could have been but don't try to say I suggested who it was.
I said, based on what has been released, that the flat had been cleaned and *COULD* have been staged. Whatever, it was left for the police to find in an un-natural state.
From the article, "Save for exceptional tidiness, Williams’ London government-rented flat was equipped as a nerd should wish..."
Exceptional tidiness? Hmmmm. I've been in a few nerds' flats. I'm inclined to agree with you that his flat probably had a visit from the cleaners before the police became involved. Whoever it was that killed him, I don't have any difficulty believing that his employers went in for a thorough search and clean up when they discovered him and before notifying the police. In that case, the competence or otherwise of the police investigation is quite irrelevant.
If the whole inquest had been done behind closed doors then that would have justified much greater public suspicion, than the suspicions now being stated on this forum, that the inquest was part of a wider cover up. Given much of it was carried out in public this unfortunately makes some release of personal details inevitable which must unfortunately be very upsetting to close friends and family.
Either the Police are actually as incompetent as we are always led to believe or the Secret Services are incompetent in covering things up. Either way the public are unlikely ever to know what really happened and are left as always with a distrust and lack of confidence in our government institutions. But perhaps they'd like us to think of them as a bunch of clowns.
To do it properly they should have out-sourced the investigation and cover up to the Chinese ;-)
Let's sprinkle some rational fairy dust over this, and see what emerges ...
1) Even the official verdict on his death is that it was not a lone act
2) The "crime" scene is mysterious "clean", if we are to believe this is just a sex game which went too far. There are very few criminals who are able to sanitise a crime scene beyond a thorough forensic sweep (the ones that can haven't been caught). Let alone a non-criminal.
3) This unforunately shorts occams razor. The guy was *killed*.
4) Who by ?
5) First off, UK security services do not go round "bumping off" agents - especially not their own. Quite aside from the illegality, it has the unfortunate tendency to draw attention *to* the security services, rathet than *away* from (which they would obviously prefer).
6) It was not a UK operation
7) Who else ?
8) Any sufficiently aligned, and equipped agency which wanted to send a message
9) Message ?
10) Look at how this guys death has played out. If you were a threat to a foriegn agency, would you want to go like that ?
Of course, the tantalising question we can't really be sure of is "why ?"....
A little less David Icke here please.
As for Occmam's Razor :
"The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is most likely to be correct"
The most likely explanation was a sex game gone wrong and maybe there was another party present. I am sure the security services have much less clumsy methods to kill and make it look like an accident. There are a long list of people who have died in similar bizarre circumstances such as David Carridine or Stephan Milligan. I am sure someone is going to make a career and a long list of (lucrative) conspiracy theory books out of this unfortunate case.
A sex game gone wrong with someone who apparently swabbed the scene of the crime and left *no* DNA evidence, and also made sure - or perhaps SiS or the Police made sure - there was no incriminating evidence on any of the technology left in the flat.
You're right - that sounds completely plausible.
Mysteriously evidence-free accidental bondage murders happen *all the time.*
"Mysteriously evidence-free accidental bondage murders happen *all the time"
Of course, there was the strange case of Jonathan Moyle back in 1990 - found dead in a wardrobe in his hotel room in Chile. British officials initially punted the idea that he had accidentally killed himself whilst engaging in some masturbatory bondage. He had been attending a defence conference and was hoping to expose an arms deal between a Chilean arms dealer and Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq.
As the original comment suggested, there was no desire from the perpetrators to try and make the death look unsuspicious.
I'm old enough to remember Stephen Milligan ... there was never any suggestion someone else was involved in his death.
At the end of the day, as you yourself say, this case will be written about for a long time.
*Maybe*, that was the intention all along ?
"three days of condor". It is a novel/ movie so not spoiling it.
Btw, if agency sent him to black hat circles and he went into real dark stuff, those guys aren't really polite/ passive aggressive nerds you see on movies. They just know computers and likely powerful&merciless as 1930s gangsters. Just stay away.
In the eighties the Soviet Union was famous for setting up sexual adventures for visitors then blackmailing on the basis of photographs or cine film. You knew you were lucky if your hotel room had extremely bright lighting with no opportunity to access the bulbs. And a mirror securely fixed to the wall.
There was the tale of one young businessman in Moscow who retired to his room. There was a knock at his door which he opened to find an impossibly beautiful woman. He could not refuse such an invitation. He put a pillow case over his head and followed the script for the camera.
Williams death could have been caused by any agency. Perhaps he was identified as a spook with unusual tastes. A game went wrong. The flat was professionally cleaned.
I can't help but feel the real story lies in the other direction, behind a big screen of smoke...
My fullest commiserations to his family, no matter what else, he died a horrible death and it must be mortifying for his family to see all this in the papers.
I would not be in the least bit surprised if in 50/75/100 yrs time when the files are released to the public he turns out to be a very different character from how we are seeing him protrayed right now. But *anyone* working for GCHQ / SIS has my respect, for generally taking risks hoping to improve the world in some way.
I know nothing about this story beyond the media coverage. However, your closing boot note made me think; does the Register publish a public key for email encryption? Particularly for whistle blowers and tip offs.
If someone had information pertaining to SIS or GCHQ they wanted to share, I doubt they'd want to send it in the open.
Just a thought.
To quote from the quintessential BBC TV series Between the Lines -"Lets say" that the Police were asked to look at the Laptops / Phones of this poor individual. These were the phones and laptops that were found at this address. Who's to say who got to these devices before the police? It would be wrong to say "cover-up", more like "housekeeping". Didn't want the cops finding anything they shouldn't did we? They had to be seen to be going through the motions of an investigation - but they couldn't risk anything getting out into the public arena, so what they examined was a sanitized version of his laptop and phones. This was probably a sad accident during some kind of sex game - nothing more or less, but unfortunately "there are people out there who can weave a conspiracy out of the fluff in their belly-buttons" (Between the Lines, BBC). AC of course, as I don't fancy waking up padlocked inside one of those Nigerian shopping bags !!
Yeah, but he makes a very good point if you consider that:
a. it was in his job description to mingle at Blackhat/Defcon etc
b. (assumption) he had unusual private interests
c. the *really* (in hindsight, natch) obvious route to having a hold on him would be to obtain access to his browsing habits etc in the interests of blackmail
d. we (or any black hats so inclined) wouldn't know all of the above, but he did - all along
e. I'm not buying that he had a careless personality that would have ignored such a threat
The whole thing stinks, and his family have my deepest condolences - almost any other death in recent memory hasn't been followed up by quite such an awful line in sordid detail.
So he testified under oath but the phone records contradict it. And in fact directly imply he is lying because they show he phoned later "in a panicked fashion" (it's not just that he used an untraceable phone or something).
Why is he not under arrest for perjury and attempting to pervert the course of justice? Oh wait never-mind, I forgot that there was one rule for them and another one for everyone else.
2600 , "black hat" conference, public in freaking USA city are just media events or tip of iceberg.
Things like stuxnet, conficker (still alive!) are basically way deeper and I believe you would end up in bag if you found slightest evidence. These new breed actually targeted the virus analysts in person although digitally. There is a very thin line between real and virtual.
<quote>There is a very thin line between real and virtual. </quote>
At exalted levels of immaculate communication does the line disappear and the one is the other with both real and virtual merged [with AI Singularity Control for Better Beta Presentation of Virtual Reality ProgramMING to the SMARTR Masses..... Rabid Knowledge Receivers.©™]
And what does one imagine that means and tells one all about the Nature of Reality? That it is Truly Heavenly in IT?
It's entirely possible that his investigations into self bondage just went too far. Maybe he thought he could bust the zip open. From experience, it's not difficult to put a padlock on a zip/closure on the outside of a restraint, even with your hands inside the restraint. Some zips give very easily when pushed against, maybe he underestimated the strength of the one on this bag. If the holdall had been in his office for some time before this event, he could have been planning it. Self bondage is always a risk, that is the thrill and draw of it. But without a safety person, self bondage can be fatal, as is easily seen by searching for self bondage fatality on google.
This would explain the complete lack of any evidence of a ner-do-well in the flat and the door being locked from the inside.
AC because I practice self bondage and have had some issues escaping in the past, though not anything that would prove fatal.
"except experts in escapology contradicted this for this style of bag."
Am I the only one who find it incredulous that, for the purposes of the investigation, somebody should attempt to fit themselves into a similar bag "more than 300 times", as was given in evidence.
That takes a lot of dedication and a lot of time, or perhaps the inability to count.
I'm still confused though, if a person with Ehler's Danlos syndrome tried it I bet they'd succeed, it's possible he was undiagnosed as many people with mild EDS live their entire lives without knowing they're anything other than a bit more flexible than others..
Also, who says the bag had to have been padlocked *after* he was in it?
Any padlocked holdall without solid sides and/or rods sewn into the fabric next to the zip can be opened without removing the padlock just by pulling apart the zip in the gap between the zipper and the end, it will unzip itself, try it.
The side effect of this is that as you stretch the bag in the direction of the zip, the zip will fasten itself up again so entirely possible that someone could trap themselves in a bag sufficiently large to fit into.
Presumably they registered with a CIA email address, paid with a CIA credit card, asked for a receipt for a cup of coffee - for expenses - and turned up wearing a suit, dark glasses and driving a Escalade with dark windows.
MI5 agents would have been more inconspicuous, except that they would have tried to register with a telegraph address and been surprised to find that telephones no longer needed wires.
I thik it quite curious that someone with that much clearance not turning up for work including a meeting you are supposed to chair doesnt raise a few alarm bells with a supervisor. From my understanding of a friend who works on a highly secured site, if he doesnt turn up to work and fails to inform anyone, military police are sent round to find out whats wrong on the first day.
you would think that someone from one of these geek conventions would have piped up to say they saw him at one.all sounds like bollox to me.
Also glad to see the mentally ill hoarders that populate gchq somehow have nothing of value concerning this incident. makes me feel safer already.
If you were a hitman, could there be a more showy- off, f*** you, nasty way to kill someone?
"here's someone dead in a bag, with no way they could have got in themselves, and the police are going to fumble around for weeks eventually proving themselves to be totally impotent to find out what happened, how safe do you spies feel now?"
I fail to believe that a maths prodigy, spy, in a safe house, would have invited a random stranger to zip him up in a bag. It strains credibility.
I feel deeply sorry for him and his family, in my view he died for his country in the most horrible of ways and it is terrible the way his name has been blackened. Who among us would want our browsing records to undergo that kind off scrutiny.
How about a bit of sensitivity, el reg?
If you cannot think of at least a dozen more showy-off nasty ways to kill someone, your imagination is sadly lacking.
As a hitperson, you make the killing a lot more blatantly murder (and a lot nastier), make it a likely suicide, or 'vanish' them so their body is never found.
My bet would be on a sex game with someone else in the service that went wrong.
AC @ 00:18
A major part of positive (nowadays called developed) vetting is to get all the dirty secrets out - if you are prepared to disclose everything to the vetting officer then the blackmail risk is negated. If you fail to disclose (and they have ways of finding "stuff" out...) then that is the FAIL.
Sorry folks, the persona and mystique around DEFCON and the longtime 'Spot a Fed' is no longer how you describe. Only if the Fed is willing to participate and be outed will the DEFCON staff interrupt the session for the staged outing. Where in the early years of DEFCON the scenario described happened, more recently the Fed are protected.
Seems the DEFCON staff have become more in league (or even pawns) to the Feds.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
