Hakluyt

People

• Christopher James
• Elizabeth Smith

Spying on Greenpeace and the Body Shop

A PRIVATE intelligence firm with close links to MI6 spied on environmental campaign groups to collect information for oil companies, including Shell and BP. MPs are to demand an inquiry by Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, into whether the secret intelligence service used the firm as a front to spy on green activists.

The firm's agent, who posed as a left-wing sympathizer and film maker, was asked to betray plans of Greenpeace's activities against oil giants. He also tried to dupe Anita Roddick's Body Shop group to pass on information about its opposition to Shell drilling for oil in a Nigerian tribal land. The Sunday Times has seen documents which show that the spy, German-born Manfred Schlickenrieder, was hired by Hakluyt, an agency that operates from offices in London's West End.

Schlickenrieder was known by the code name Camus and had worked for the German foreign intelligence service gathering information about terrorist groups, including the Red Army Faction.

He fronted a film production company called Gruppe 2, based in Munich, but he also worked in London and Zurich. His company was a one-man band with a video camera making rarely seen documentaries. He had been making an unfinished film about Italy's Red Brigade since 1985. Another of his alleged guises was as a civil servant of the Bavarian conservation agency in charge of listed buildings and monuments.

One of his assignments from Hakluyt was to gather information about the movements of the motor vessel Greenpeace in the north Atlantic. Greenpeace claims the scandal has echoes of the Rainbow Warrior affair, when its ship protesting against nuclear testing in the South Pacific was blown up by the French secret service in 1985. A Dutch photographer died in the explosion.

Both BP and Shell admit hiring Hakluyt, but say they were unaware of the tactics used. Shell said it had wanted to protect its employees against possible attack.

Schlickenrieder was hired by Mike Reynolds, a director of Hakluyt and MI6's former head of station in Germany. His cover was blown by a female colleague who had worked with him. Last night he refused to comment.

Reynolds and other MI6 executives left the intelligence service after the cold war ended to form Hakluyt in 1995. It was set up with the blessing of Sir David Spedding, the then chief of MI6, who died last week. Christopher James, the managing director, had been head of the MI6 section that liaised with British firms.

The firm, which takes its name from Richard Hakluyt, the Elizabethan geographer, assembled a foundation board of directors from the Establishment to oversee its activities, including Sir Fitzroy Maclean, Ian Fleming's model for James Bond. Baroness Smith, the widow of John Smith, the late Labour leader, was a director until the end of last year.

The company has close links to the oil industry through Sir Peter Cazalet, the former deputy chairman of BP, who helped to establish Hakluyt before he retired, last year, and Sir Peter Holmes, former chairman of Shell, who is president of its foundation.^[1]

notes

^ Maurice Chittenden and Nicholas Rufford MI6 'Firm' Spied on Green Groups The Sunday Times of London Published on Sunday, June 17, 2001.