British intelligence officers were forced to begin one of the most delicate and risky investigations since the Cold War due to fears that a senior officer of the foreign intelligence service MI6 was a Russian double agent, writes The Guardian.
It is believed that the investigation continued in some form for up to 20 years, but MI5 could not determine whether there was a mole in British intelligence, increasing the likelihood that the agent could have gone unpunished. "We thought we had another Philby," said a source, referring to Kim Philby, the notorious MI6 double agent who was part of the group of Britons recruited by the Soviet Union, known as the Cambridge Spy Ring.
The large-scale hunt for the suspected spy, named Wedlock, was conducted by the MI5 agency, the domestic intelligence service that assesses threats to the UK's national security. The team included 35 staff members for surveillance, planning, and administrative work, who traveled around the world. Information about the suspected spy came from the US CIA, which was convinced that a British intelligence officer working in London was passing secrets to Russia.
The MI5 investigation began in the 1990s and reportedly continued until at least 2015. By that time, the officer who was the subject of the team's investigation had already left MI6, which at that time employed 2,500 staff members.
The newspaper Guardian discovered that the UK had identified the suspected spy, and a team of MI5 specialists was tasked with monitoring him. According to a source, the operation was so secret that the officer leading the surveillance was briefed in a church. Some of those selected to participate in the operation were initially told they were going on an exercise, and only when they were outside the headquarters were they informed of the assignment. The interviewee noted that the situation where one British intelligence service effectively spies on another was extraordinary. This operation was unusual, the longest in recent times, and probably the most expensive.
The surveillance team was based in a building in south London, near the MI6 building on the riverbank in Vauxhall. Officers worked there under the guise of a fake security company. The team was informed that the target held a high position in MI6 and had access to a wide range of highly classified materials. The technical operations team of MI5, then known as A1, secretly entered the MI6 officer's home and installed listening and video devices. Real-time images were transmitted to the operations room.
According to the source, an MI5 car parked outside his home was equipped with a camera hidden in a tissue box on the shelf behind the rear seats. Sources reported that some concerning activities were identified during the surveillance, but they were unrelated to espionage.
During the operation, surveillance teams tracked his movements abroad, following him through cities in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, which was a very risky step as the team operated outside the jurisdiction of MI5.
"MI5 never obtained the convincing evidence it was seeking," a source told the publication.
Photo: Frank Baron/The Guardian