There are many people in the higher echelons of society who think and say that they have been spied on. At least that is what they think. There have been specific, cases such as the senior police officer who found, a listening device in his telephone at the New Mole House police headquarters. Who put it there? The building used to belong to a UK government department before it was handed over to the police. So, what can one conclude?

In 1999 a major spy scandal hit the Rock when it was alleged that a former Attorney General of Gibraltar had been bugged on orders from M16, the British intelligence service.

Chris Clark described as a professional phone-tapper told the UK Sun-day Times that he "attached two UHF radio transmitters; each no bigger than a cigarette lighter, to the telephone lines" of the home of the Attorney General John Blackburn Gittings.

Five years earlier, the Attorney General had resigned prematurely in strange circumstances.

What the public in Gibraltar was told at the, time was that the resignation had followed differences of opinion between the Attorney General and the British Government, who had appointed him to the post in the first place.

In London, however, it was leaked to certain newspapers that continuing contacts between him and some of his former clients was regarded as inappropriate. The Attorney General had been a leading criminal lawyer in London before he was appointed to the Gibraltar job.

In a sworn statement, phone-tapper Clark said at the time that he had bugged the official's home "commissioned by British intelligence because they had become concerned about alleged links between Gittings, a former defence lawyer, and underworld figures."

Gittings, who moved on to be a high court judge in Botswana said that he was told by Joe Bossano, then Chief Minister of Gibraltar, that he had been the target of an M16 operation.

Giving details of his bugging operation, Clark said he drove his blue Range Rover up a steep road (Mount Road) and jumped out when his driver reached a cul-de-sac leading to the luxury, colonial-style home of the Attorney General.

Using leg irons to clasp a telephone pole, he shimmied up to the junction box and prised it open with a screwdriver. He took 'out a pair of crocodile clips, and by the light of the mid-summer moon, attached two UHF radio transmitters, each no bigger'' than a cigarette lighter, to the telephone lines.

He was whisked away. Later that night he called his boss in London and advised: "Job done."

The job had been "to trawl Gittings rubbish, obtain details of his outgoing phone calls and tap his telephone."

But the Gibraltar operation was cut short when "a Gibraltar Government official, tipped off by private investigators Clark had recruited to list phone records, alerted Mr Bossano, then the colony's Chief minister, who ordered his own surveillance of Clark."

Within a fortnight, Mr Bossano was called to the office of the then Governor, Field Marshal Sir John Chapple, and told that Gittings was to be removed.

Mr Bossano told the paper: "There was no evidence at all but I was told by the Governor that it was because he had maintained telephone contact with former clients which could be embarrassing to Gibraltar."

How many other stories have not been told about the adventures of spies on the Rock?

22-04-2020 PANORAMAdailyGIBRALTAR