With a recently convicted former Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) employee having told a court that voices in his head had told him to try and sell secret documents, and another SIS analyst found murdered after allegedly being involved in London’s gay S&M scene, serious doubts are being raised as to the calibre of Britain’s spies. “What with former MI5 whistle-blower David Shayler suddenly becoming a cross-dressing New Age Messiah, there are real worries at the highest level that our top intelligence analysts are just not up to the mental pressures of the job,” our inside source in the UK’s intelligence community – known only as ‘Deep Stomach’ – has confided to The Sleaze. “The thing is that these aren’t isolated incidents – for several years now, some of our top people have been going completely bonkers!” Speaking from his exclusive South London drinking club, the ‘Dog and Pickaxe’ in Lewisham, ‘Deep Stomach’ revealed that at least two former members of the Ministry of Defence’s Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) were certifiably insane, and had been sectioned after their bizarre antics had threatened the nation’s security. “These weren’t filing clerks we’re talking about – these were some of the DIS’s most senior staff,” he confides. “One of them – Adam Shaw – was their top expert on the Russian Navy. Everyone knew that he had a bit of a drinking problem – his projectile vomiting soon became a regular feature of departmental meetings and he once urinated out of a conference room window overlooking Whitehall during a bilateral intelligence meeting with the CIA – but nobody was prepared for him suddenly deciding he was a Bond movie-style femme fatale and trying to seduce the Russian Naval Attaché!” According to ‘Deep Stomach’, white bearded, balding sixty-two year old Shaw donned a blonde wig, full makeup, off the shoulder dress and high heels to pick up the Russian in a trendy West London bar. “Incredibly, Shaw managed to get him so drunk that they went back to the Russian’s flat, but it all went wrong when they got into the bedroom,” says our source. “The Attaché had an almighty fright when he tried to grope one of ‘her’ breasts and it burst – Shaw had been using water-filled balloons as falsies.” Shaw’s reaction was push the unfortunate Russian onto the bed and leap on him. “Apparently he let loose an enormous fart that rattled the windows before following through,” reveals ‘Deep Stomach’. “The stench was appalling and the Russian thought he was the victim of some kind of chemical suicide attack. Eventually, he fought Shaw off and called the police.”
Even whilst Shaw was in custody accused of sexual assault and soliciting, another senior DIS officer was already exhibiting signs of incipient madness. “ Toby Clagg, who was coincidentally a regular drinking partner of Shaw, was the typical ‘mad scientist’ type,” explains ‘Deep Stomach’. “He’d recently been promoted from the scientific intelligence division of the DIS to be the organisation’s Deputy Director, and the added responsibilities seemed to push him over the edge.” A research chemist by training, Clagg quickly became noted for rarely leaving his office. Eyebrows were raised when deliveries of scientific equipment and chemicals were made to the office, and the Fire Brigade was once called after a minor explosion. “Several months after his promotion, a friend of mine who worked as an analyst in the DIS was summoned to Clagg’s office, where he found the Deputy Director sitting in the midst of a plethora of scientific paraphernalia, eager to reveal the amazing results of his research,” says ‘Deep Stomach’. “He told my friend that, based on scientific intelligence obtained from a secret Russian research institute he’d perfected an invisibility serum. Incredibly, as they spoke he injected himself with a clear liquid. ‘As you can see, I’m turning invisible. Once I remove my clothes no-one will be able to see me’, he said. With that he stripped off his clothes and ran out of the room, stark naked and totally visible.” The ‘invisible’ Clagg’s reign of terror was short-lived. He ran into the neighbouring office of the Chief of Defence Intelligence – who was in conference with the Director of the CIA – and poured a decanter of water over him. He then proceeded to stand on one leg and break wind in the CIA Director’s face before fleeing the office. After molesting several female staff, he headed for the main entrance, where he encountered the Defence Secretary arriving for a meeting. The naked Clagg ran up to him waving his knob and shouting “Tosspot!”. The Defence Secretary punched him in the face and security guards dragged him away as he screamed “You can’t do this, I’m invisible!”. According to ‘Deep Stomach’, Clagg has not been seen since. “That’s real invisibility”, he commented.
“There’s no doubt that the DIS seems particularly prone to this sort of thing,” says ‘Deep Stomach’. “Intelligence analysis, by its very nature, requires a degree of obsessiveness and off-the-wall thinking, but the DIS seems to attract people who go far beyond this. The sort of people too obviously disturbed to work for the SIS, or even MI5.” Indeed, madness still seems to stalk the DIS’s corridors, judging by the recent disturbing antics of the organisation’s top arms trade expert, Bill Christopher. “To be fair, he is obsessed with security,” says the rotund mole. “He keeps his office door permanently locked. The only way in and out is through a large cat flap cut in the lower panels. It can only be opened by the magnetic device he wears on a collar around his neck.” Whilst such conduct might simply be dismissed as eccentricity, it is Christopher’s bizarre conviction that he is a master of disguise which is apparently causing the most consternation in senior intelligence circles. “He recently spent an entire meeting with the Chief of Defence Intelligence and other MoD staff pretending to be a hat stand,” sighs ‘Deep Stomach’. “For an hour and a half he stood in the corner, with hats and coats draped over his out stretched arms, before finally leaping out five minutes from the end, shouting ‘Hah, now I have you, you bunch of pesky cake stealing molluscs’. After which he walked out.” Bill Christopher’s disguise fetish – which seems to be getting worse; he recently attended a bilateral conference with the CIA dressed as a Thanksgiving turkey, saying only ‘gobble, gobble’ – would be more understandable if he were a field agent. However, he has spent his career working exclusively behind a desk. “The closest he’s ever been to field work was back in the early nineties, when he was sent on a fact-finding trip to the former Yugoslavia,” says our source. “He was just meant to be visiting factories, looking at tanks. That sort of thing.” However, the analyst seriously exceeded his brief. “For some reason, known only to himself, Bill decided to ride a moped into the Yugoslav Federal Parliament in Belgrade,” recalls ‘Deep Stomach’. “He proceeded to declare to the assembled politicians ‘I am the god of hell fire!’, before setting his top hat alight.” Whilst no direct causal link was ever established, many DIS analysts suspect that in this incident lies the genesis of the Yugoslav civil war. Not surprisingly, the MoD has never allowed Christopher to undertake any similar expeditions. “We’re dreading what he might do next,” says ‘Deep Stomach’. “Only last week he was standing in the registry pretending to be a filing cabinet – he kept trying to get young female clerks to stick Top Secret files down his pants.”
