MI6 officer 'guided by voices' to sell state secrets

[TonyGosling]

Ex-MI6 officer told by 'voices in head' to sell state secrets
• Daniel Houghton admits Official Secrets Act breach
• Former spy sought £2m for classified intelligence files
A former MI6 officer accused of disclosing in exchange for money highly classified documents, including a list of nearly 700 members of the security and intelligence agencies, pleaded guilty today to breaking the Official Secrets Act.
In a clumsy attempt to sell top secret information, Daniel Houghton, 25, admitted disclosing the material – electronic files containing two staff lists and MI5 intelligence collection techniques – claiming "voices in his head" told him to. He denied theft.
Houghton, of Hoxton in east London, who has dual British and Dutch nationality, was arrested in March in a Scotland Yard sting as he walked to the lift of a central London hotel carrying a suitcase containing £900,000....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/14/mi6-agent-voices-sell-secr ets

http://www.janetaylor.co.uk/dialect

[TonyGosling]

lots of weird stuff here
does make one wonder at the profiles of many of the spooks that work in Saruman's tower at Vauxhal

Former MI6 man Daniel Houghton admits secrecy breach
BBC 14th July 2010
A former MI6 worker from London has said he was "directed by voices" after admitting charges of unlawfully disclosing top secret material.
Daniel Houghton, 25, of Hoxton, east London, pleaded guilty to two offences under the Official Secrets Act.
Houghton worked for the Secret Intelligence Service between 2007 and 2009. He has been remanded in custody.
He denied a charge of stealing materials, a plea which was accepted by the prosecution.
Royal Courts of Justice judge Mr Justice Bean heard Houghton's account was that he was "directed by voices to do what he is said to have done in the charges".
The judge said a prison term was "inevitable" and gave the prosecution permission to obtain expert psychiatric reports ahead of sentencing on 3 September at the Old Bailey.
Houghton had tried to sell copies of electronic files containing details of information gathering software and staff lists to Dutch agents for £2m.
Daniel Houghton was no James Bond but he still might have been dangerous.
He appears to have been motivated solely by greed rather than ideology but the IT specialist was also, fortunately for MI6, not very skilled at espionage.
The idea the Dutch intelligence services - close allies of Britain - would not tell the authorities in London showed a high degree of naiveté.
But even though he was easily caught, the fact that he was recruited into MI6 and then was able to smuggle so much information out of the building will raise questions about how tight security and vetting procedures really are at the Secret Intelligence Service.
There will also be concerns over whether all the information he took out of the building has really been recovered.
The Dutch authorities then tipped off MI5.
Agents from the Netherlands are understood to have bugged and filmed him as he displayed the files and offered to provide them with lists of MI5 agents he had worked with.
The price was negotiated down to £900,000 and immediately after Houghton handed over the files on 1 March he was arrested while carrying a suitcase containing the cash.
When police searched his flat they discovered paperwork marked top secret.
A computer memory stick was found containing 7,000 files while a hard drive with top secret documents stored on it was also discovered.
MI6, who vetted Houghton before employing him, declined to comment on the security breach.
Police sources said Houghton appeared to have been motivated by greed.
One senior source said he was living a "champagne lifestyle on ginger beer wages".
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10629017

[Andrew.]

Looks like a plea for diminished responsibility, get away with any crime ploy (We all have bad thoughts going through our minds, like wise good intuitive thoughts) The bad thoughts will tell our minds this is not the case continually.

[fish5133]

David Shayler seemed to go one better claiming his voices were from God and angels, then tried cross dressing. Certainly can screw your head up working for the SS and then upsetting them. Do hope David is on the road to recovery.

[Andrew.]

[Marigold]

[Andrew.]

[fish5133]

Marigold

[ian neal]

Hmmm

Me thinks there is a lot of speculation about stuff based on a reading of things from afar.

Firstly I am reliably informed that david was partial to a bit of cross gender dressing prior to his involvement in 9/11 (and that's fine by me) and second IMO David was not shafted by the '911 movement' or even particular individuals connected to it. Instead David decided to say what he had to say and act as he choose to act as a free individual and others also acting of their own free will decided to follow a different path to David.

No great mystery. After all David isn't the first person to declare himself (wrongly in my opinion) to be THE messiah and he won't be the last.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_messiah_claimants

For what it is worth, I reckon we are all messiahs or messengers of the divine since we are all divine in nature anyway. David's error IMO is in believing himself to be THE messiah rather than just another messenger of God. But what do I know?

[Andrew.]