Paddy Ashdown in MI6

While paying tribute to his friend Paddy Ashdown for the New European, Denis MacShane lets slip more detail than I have hitherto seen in a mainstream outlet about the former Lib Dem leader's role in MI6:

Ashdown was a former Royal Marine officer with a fair bit of the clipped voice captain in his manner, as well as a secret addiction to smoking. After a tour in Northern Ireland he left the army to work for MI6 and was the link-man between the UK and the Swiss for the highly secret cold war Operation Gladio. This set up arms and supplies caches all over Western Europe ready to be activated if the Red Army swarmed in, as many feared between 1950 and 1990.

Keep it under your hat.