more on the spy that didn't make it
online.wsj.com
WSJ on-line
Nov. 05, 2012
Briton Killed in China Had Spy Links
By JEREMY PAGE
BEIJING—Cruising around Beijing in a silver Jaguar with "007" in the
license plate, Neil Heywood seemed to relish the air of intrigue that
surrounded him.
In meetings, the British consultant hinted about his connections to Bo
Xilai—the onetime Communist Party highflier—but often he would refuse to
hand over a business card. He spoke Mandarin, smoked heavily and worked
part time for a dealer of Aston Martin cars, the British brand driven by
James Bond. Some thought him a fantasist, others a fraud.
But his contrived aura of mystery appears to have been a double bluff: He
had been knowingly providing information about the Bo family to Britain's
Secret Intelligence Service, known as MI6, for more than a year when he
was murdered in China last November, an investigation by The Wall Street
Journal has found.
The revelation is a new twist in the saga of Mr. Bo, whose wife was
convicted in August of poisoning Mr. Heywood in his hotel room in the
southwestern city of Chongqing, where Mr. Bo was then party chief. The
downfall of one of the party's most powerful families threw into turmoil
China's plans for a once-a-decade leadership transition, due to start at
the 18th Party Congress opening Thursday, and raised questions about
corruption, abuse of power and bitter personal rivalries within China's
political elite.
The Journal investigation, based on interviews with current and former
British officials and close friends of the murdered Briton, found that a
person Mr.
Heywood met in 2009 later acknowledged being an MI6 officer to him. Mr.
Heywood subsequently met that person regularly in China and continued to
provide information on Mr. Bo's private affairs.
China regards the private lives of its leaders as state secrets, and
information about them and their families is prized by foreign governments
trying to understand the inner workings of an opaque political system.
British authorities have sought to quell speculation that Mr. Heywood was
a spy ever since the Journal reported in March that he had been working
occasionally in China for a London-based business-intelligence company
founded by a former MI6 officer and staffed by many former spies.
William Hague, the British foreign secretary who oversees MI6, broke with
standard policy of not commenting on intelligence matters and issued a
statement in April saying Mr. Heywood, who was 41 when he died, was "not
an employee of the British government in any capacity."
That was technically true, according to people familiar with the matter.
They said Mr. Heywood wasn't an MI6 officer, wasn't paid and was "never in
receipt of tasking"—meaning he never was given a specific mission to carry
out or asked to seek a particular piece of information.
But he was a willful and knowing informant, and his MI6 contact once
described him as "useful" to a former colleague. "A little goes a long
way," the former colleague recalls the contact saying in relation to
intelligence reports based on Mr. Heywood's information.
Mr. Heywood's intelligence links cast new light on the response to his
death from British authorities, who initially accepted the local police's
conclusion that he died from "excessive alcohol consumption" and didn't
try to prevent his body from being quickly cremated without an autopsy.
The British government didn't ask China for an investigation until Feb.
15—a week after a former Chongqing police chief, Wang Lijun, fled to a
U.S. consulate in China and told U.S. diplomats that Mr. Bo's wife, Gu
Kailai, had murdered the Briton.
There could be implications, too, for Chinese authorities, who would be
guilty of a major security breach if they were unaware that MI6 had a
source inside the inner family circle of a member of the Politburo—the
party's top 25 leaders—according to people familiar with the matter. If
China's security services were aware of Mr. Heywood's contacts with MI6,
they likely had him under surveillance during his final visit to
Chongqing, those people said.
Until the scandal broke, Mr. Bo was a front-runner for promotion to the
Politburo Standing Committee—the party's top decision-making body—in this
year's leadership change.
Mr. Bo, sacked from the Politburo in April, is now facing criminal charges
after Chinese authorities accused him in September of a series of
offenses, including bribe-taking and interference in the murder
investigation into his wife.
Neither Chinese nor British officials have suggested Mr. Heywood was
killed because of his MI6 links. A Chinese court found Ms. Gu guilty in
August of killing him because she thought he threatened her son over a
business dispute, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.
However, friends of Mr. Heywood and prominent Chinese figures have pointed
out omissions, ambiguities and inconsistencies in the official account of
his killing presented by state media.
And when Mr. Wang fled to the U.S. consulate in Chengdu on Feb. 6, he told
U.S. diplomats there that Ms. Gu had confessed to him that she "killed a
spy," according to one person who has seen a transcript of what Mr. Wang
said.
A spokesman for Britain's Foreign Office declined to comment on what was
said in the U.S. consulate, and, when asked about Mr. Heywood's
relationship with MI6, referred back to Mr. Hague's statement in April.
Asked whether Mr. Heywood had been knowingly passing information to an MI6
officer, without being a government employee, the spokesman said: "We do
not comment on intelligence matters or allegations of intelligence
matters." Mr. Heywood's MI6 contact declined to comment.
Former intelligence officials say most informants and agents in the field
aren't considered employees because they rarely have a contract and aren't
necessarily paid, but people are usually registered as "knowing" sources
and assigned a code name if they are providing information to someone who
has acknowledged being an MI6 officer.
Mr. Heywood's Chinese wife, Lulu, declined to comment. His mother and
sister didn't respond to requests for comment through an intermediary.
China's Foreign Ministry didn't respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Heywood was a potentially risky choice as an informant, not least
because of the 007 license plate on his Jaguar. He was, on the other hand,
an old-fashioned patriot with a taste for adventure. He was in the rare
position of having regular contact with the family of a Politburo member
as well as intimate knowledge of their private affairs, according to
several of his closest friends. Ms. Gu was godmother to his daughter,
Olivia, according to one close friend.
He got to know the family in the 1990s while living in the northeastern
city of Dalian, where Mr. Bo was mayor at the time, according to several
of his friends, and had become part of an "inner circle" of friends and
advisers.
Mr. Heywood kept a low profile in the expatriate community, according to
people who knew him, using his connections in China to build a modest
freelance consultancy business advising companies and individuals on how
to navigate Chinese politics and bureaucracy.
He had dealings with several British companies and politicians, including
at least two members of Britain's House of Lords—the upper house of
Parliament. One of those peers met Mr. Heywood several times in the
company of his MI6 contact, according to people familiar with the matter.
In the last two years of his life, Mr. Heywood's relationship with the Bo
family deteriorated, especially after Ms. Gu became convinced she had been
betrayed by a member of her "inner circle" and demanded that Mr. Heywood
divorce his wife and swear an oath of allegiance to Ms. Gu, according to
friends of Mr. Heywood.
Mr. Heywood informed his contact of this, according to people familiar
with the matter. The contact warned him at one point that he should be
careful not to become "a headline," but continued meeting him and filing
confidential reports on those meetings, according to those people.
Mr. Heywood hadn't seen Mr. Bo for more than a year when he died and had
been making plans to leave China, but he appeared to be trying to persuade
the Bo family to pay him money he felt he was owed, according to close
friends. They said he seemed stressed and increasingly concerned that his
emails and phone calls were being monitored. He also had put on weight and
begun to smoke more heavily.
"He definitely felt that he should have got more out of the relationship"
with the Bo family, said one close friend. "That may explain why he agreed
to go to Chongqing that last time. I think he was still hoping to get what
he thought he was owed."
Mr. Heywood flew to Chongqing on Nov. 13 after being summoned at short
notice to a meeting with the Bo family, according to Xinhua. He believed
he was "in trouble," according to one friend he contacted that day.
He was murdered that night in his hotel room. According to an official
account of Ms. Gu's trial from Xinhua, she poured potassium cyanide in his
mouth after he vomited from drunkenness and asked for a drink of water.
The Foreign Office said that no British officials, including MI6 officers,
were in contact with him in the 48 hours before his death, but declined to
comment on when and how it became aware of his relationship with the Bo
family and that he had been summoned to Chongqing to meet them.
Mr. Heywood's body was found on Nov. 15, and the British consulate was
informed by local authorities the next day, according to a statement by
Mr. Hague to Parliament.
Chongqing authorities initially told Mr. Heywood's wife, who had traveled
to Chongqing, that he had died of a heart attack, while informing the
consulate that he died of "excessive alcohol consumption," according to
British officials. They said the body was cremated on Nov. 18 without an
autopsy, but with the permission of Mr. Heywood's wife.
British consular officials formally expressed to their superiors their
concern and suspicion about how Chinese authorities handled Mr. Heywood's
death, but other British officials believed that asking for an
investigation would be problematic, according to people with knowledge of
the events.
The British officials who initially handled Mr. Heywood's death are
unlikely to have known about his MI6 links or his connection to the Bo
family, these people said, but intelligence officials in Beijing and
London would have been aware at the time of his death, or made aware soon
after.
Britain's Foreign Office says it had no reason to suspect foul play until
members of the British community began raising suspicions on Jan. 18. But
the Foreign Office didn't raise the matter with Chinese authorities until
almost a month later—after Mr. Wang's flight to the U.S. consulate in
Chengdu.
U.S. officials informed British authorities about Mr. Wang's allegations
while he was still in the consulate on Feb. 7, according to the Foreign
Office. It also told the Journal that a British diplomat was sent to
Chengdu to try to meet Mr. Wang, but arrived after he had left the
consulate.
Mr. Hague has said that the British Embassy first asked the Chinese
central government to investigate Mr. Heywood's death on Feb. 15. But
British authorities didn't make that public until more than a month
later—a delay that confused some U.S. officials following the matter.
"We couldn't understand what the British were waiting for," said one U.S.
official who was unaware of any links between Mr. Heywood and MI6.
The Journal was the first to report, on March 26, that Britain had asked
China to investigate Mr. Heywood's death, as well as to provide details of
his
connection to the Bo family and of Mr. Wang's allegations in the U.S.
consulate. The following day, the Journal reported that he had worked
occasionally for Hakluyt, the business-intelligence company founded by a
former MI6 officer.
The company said he wasn't a full-time employee and wasn't involved in
projects in Chongqing, but declined to say what he had worked on in the
past.
Richard Ottaway, a Conservative member of Parliament and chairman of the
Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote a letter to Mr. Hague in April asking him
to address the speculation about Mr. Heywood's relationship with British
intelligence.
Mr. Hague responded in a letter dated April 26: "The Committee will
recognize that it is long established government policy neither to confirm
nor deny speculation of this sort. However, given the intense interest in
this case it is, exceptionally, appropriate for me to confirm that Mr.
Heywood was not an employee of the British government in any capacity."
Write to Jeremy Page at jeremy.page@wsj.com
A version of this article appeared November 6, 2012, on page A1 in the
U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Briton Killed
in China Had Spy Links. |
