Valdo Calocane approached security at Thames House in 2021 but did not meet threshold for further assessment, public inquiry told
A man who killed three people during a 2023 knife attack in Nottingham had attempted to hand himself into MI5 for arrest two years earlier, an inquiry has heard.
Valdo Calocane, 34, fatally stabbed Grace O’Malley-Kumar and Barnaby Webber, both 19, and Ian Coates, 65, during a stabbing spree in the city on 13 June 2023.
Continue reading...Dan Jarvis accuses Tories of suggesting case was deliberately abandoned ‘without a shred of evidence’
The government made “every effort” to support the trial of two men accused of spying for China, a minister has said, as he accused the Tories of claiming the case was deliberately abandoned “without a shred of evidence”.
Dan Jarvis, the security minister, issued a robust defence of Jonathan Powell in the Commons after reports that Keir Starmer’s national security adviser played a role in the collapse of the case.
Continue reading...Gurpreet Singh Johal wants to know if stops are linked to his efforts to find out whether UK intelligence played a role in sibling’s arrest
The brother of Jagtar Singh Johal, a British Sikh jailed in India, has written to the Home Office to ask why he is being repeatedly stopped at the airport by British border police.
Gurpreet Singh Johal, a Labour councillor in Dumbarton, asked if it was linked to his legal efforts to discover whether British intelligence played a role in his brother’s arrest eight years ago.
Continue reading...Mark Rowley, Met commissioner, had said plans for England and Wales were made ‘without any analysis of the impact on policing’
The justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has hit back at the UK’s most senior police officer in a row over the impact of allowing thousands of criminals to serve their sentences in the community instead of being sent to jail.
The Ministry of Justice insisted on Wednesday that officials “consulted with police” including the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, over proposed changes to sentencing policies introduced to ease prison overcrowding.
Continue reading...From Guy Burgess’s briefcase to microdots secreted in talc, an exhibition reveals remarkable items from the agency’s archives – and the extraordinary stories behind them
The agency that would become MI5, originally known as the Secret Service Bureau, employed just 17 staff in 1914; by the end of the first world war, the number working for Britain’s domestic counter-intelligence agency had swelled to 850, including a number of female administrators.
While valuable for managing the card index records, noted Edith Lomax, the controller of women staff in 1918, only women under the age of 30 should be recruited “on account of the very considerable strain that was thrown on [their] brains”.
Continue reading...A new exhibition at the National Archives in London will reveal the extent of MI5 operation to expose the British double agent who was also Observer reporter
Secret surveillance of Britain’s notorious double agent, Kim Philby, made public for the first time in archived documents, reveals how keenly the Security Service wanted to confirm or disprove early suspicions of his high-level treachery.
In daily bulletins submitted to MI5 in November 1951, undercover operatives describe how Philby, codenamed Peach, moved about London.
Continue reading...Soviet spy defected to Britain from Moscow under threat of exposure after supplying information to MI6 and MI5
Oleg Gordievsky, the UK’s most significant cold war double agent inside the KGB, has died at his home in Surrey aged 86.
Gordievsky, who would eventually defect to Britain from Moscow under threat of exposure, was considered a key agent operating for the UK’s intelligence services working within the Soviet Union.
Continue reading...Officer who investigated Rhianan Rudd, who killed herself, tells inquest ‘wider conversation’ needed on such cases
MI5 officers investigating a schoolgirl who went on to kill herself after being charged with far-right terror offences had complained of a lack of guidance on handling the growing number of such cases, according to internal emails heard at an inquest.
A special evidence session in London heard that intelligence agents working on the case of Rhianan Rudd, who died at the age of 16, lamented the lack of national strategy in dealing with a proliferation of vulnerable young people holding violent far-right views.
Continue reading...MI5 told Bogarde in 1971 that he had been identified as ‘practising homosexual’ of interest by Russian spies
The film star Dirk Bogarde was “clearly disturbed” and “troubled” after MI5 warned him that his name had been given to the KGB as a “practising homosexual” and he risked being compromised in a sting operation, newly declassified intelligence files show.
Bogarde, who died in 1999 and never came out publicly but lived with his life partner and manager, Anthony Forwood, was told by security services that his name was on a list of “six practising British homosexuals” given to the Russians by an unnamed source who had himself been sexually compromised during a visit to Moscow in the late 1950s.
Continue reading...Documents indicate monarch was informed Anthony Blunt was Soviet agent in 1973, though he confessed in 1964
The late Queen Elizabeth II was not told for almost 10 years that Anthony Blunt, a surveyor of the queen’s pictures and a member of the royal household, had confessed to being a Soviet double agent, previously secret security files suggest.
Declassified MI5 documents throw intriguing new light on how the security services closely guarded news that the art historian, of the notorious Cambridge Five spy ring, had confessed in April 1964, with records indicating the queen was only informed in 1973.
Continue reading...After expulsion of hundreds of embassy-based spies, Kremlin is using riskier and less conventional methods
A developing Russian campaign of arson, sabotage and even murder plots has left western intelligence agencies alarmed over the past year.
The ramping up of activity has come as the Kremlin’s spy apparatus recovered from the initial shock of seeing 450 agents posing as diplomats expelled from Europe in response to the invasion of Ukraine.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Former Australian PM witnessed ‘shocking act of perjury’ and says MI5 are still trying to hide something
The former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has accused the UK government of hypocrisy and concealment over the way it continues to block the release of secret files about the Spycatcher affair.
Before entering politics, Turnbull was a barrister for Peter Wright, a retired senior MI5 intelligence officer who revealed a series of illegal activities by the British security services in his memoir Spycatcher.
Continue reading...Release of intelligence year after death ‘casts doubt’ on security service’s previous claims about British spy in IRA accused of murders
The police chief investigating murders allegedly carried out by Freddie Scappaticci, a British agent in the IRA known as Stakeknife, has expressed alarm that hundreds of pages of files providing “new investigative leads” have been found by MI5 a year after Scappaticci’s death.
Sir Iain Thomas Livingstone, a former head of Police Scotland who leads Operation Kenova, has written to the Northern Ireland secretary of state to highlight the troubling timing and warn that the new intelligence raises questions about MI5’s previous claims of knowledge about Stakeknife.
Continue reading...Ministers considering more funding to protect important research sites, with China seen as a particular concern
MI5 has warned universities that hostile foreign states are targeting sensitive research, as ministers consider measures to bolster protections.
Vice-chancellors from 24 leading institutions, including Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College London, were briefed on the threat by the domestic security service’s director general, Ken McCallum, and National Cybersecurity Centre (NCSC) chief, Felicity Oswald.
Continue reading...More than 250 people join group action claiming security service failed to take steps that could have prevented 2017 bombing
Hundreds of the Manchester Arena bombing survivors, along with relatives of the victims, have launched legal action against MI5, claiming it failed to take action that could have stopped the attack.
More than 250 people have joined the group action against MI5 and have submitted their claim to the investigatory powers tribunal, which hears complaints against the intelligence services.
Continue reading...Victims’ families say Jon Boutcher’s report into British spy proves state and IRA were ‘co-conspirators’ in murder
The police chief who led the inquiry into a murderous British spy in the IRA known as Stakeknife has condemned MI5 for stalling his investigation, as his report was hailed by victims’ families as proof that the British state and the IRA had been “co-conspirators” in murder.
Jon Boutcher criticised attempts “to undermine me and the investigation” and spoke of a delay strategy deployed by the secret services as he revealed that agent Stakeknife had probably killed more people than he saved in the service of the British state.
The army’s claim that Stakeknife saved “hundreds” of lives was “implausible”, “rooted in fables and fairy tales” and should have rung “alarm bells”. He said it was probable that the handling of Stakeknife “resulted in more lives being lost than saved”.
Stakeknife was involved in “very serious and wholly unjustifiable criminality, including murder”.
There were several cases of murder where the security forces had advance intelligence but did not intervene in order to protect sources.
Boutcher had “extremely fractious spells” with the secret services. He was forced to hold several meetings with MI5 to raise “concerns regarding access to information, its decision to classify as ‘top secret’ an accumulation of ‘secret’ documents, the fact that solicitors representing former security force personnel had been given greater and unorthodox access to MI5 materials and my concern that its strategy was one of delay”.
When Operation Kenova tried to submit evidence files in October 2019 to prosecutors on Scappaticci and members of the security services relating to cases of murder, abduction and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, that “MI5 informed us that the building’s security accreditation had expired and we therefore could not proceed”. The evidence was finally submitted in February 2020.
Continue reading...National Archives papers show prime minister tried in vain to avoid inquiry over Peter Wright’s memoirs
Margaret Thatcher was “utterly shattered” by the revelations in Spycatcher, the memoirs of the retired MI5 officer Peter Wright, files released publicly for the first time reveal.
The files also reveal the dilemmas faced by Thatcher’s government in its futile battle to suppress the book, including whether to agree to the Australian media tycoon Kerry Packer mediating an out of court “solution”.
Continue reading...Counsel for ex-MI5 officer Peter Wright suggested role for Australian media tycoon but idea was swiftly rejected
The Australian media tycoon Kerry Packer was suggested as a mediator in the fight by Margaret Thatcher’s government to prevent the publication of Spycatcher, the memoirs of former MI5 officer Peter Wright, according to newly released official papers.
The offer was made by Wright’s Australian counsel – and future Australian prime minister – Malcolm Turnbull as part of a proposed out-of-court settlement, files released by the National Archives show.
Continue reading...Heads of MI5 and FBI say Jewish communities and other groups may face danger from lone actors, Iran or militants
The heads of MI5 and the FBI have issued an unprecedented joint warning that the threat of a domestic terrorist attack could rise as a result of the crisis in the Middle East.
The counter-terror chiefs said Jewish communities and organisations, as well as other groups, may face a heightened danger from lone actors, Hamas militants and Iran on British or US soil.
Continue reading...GCHQ, MI6 and MI5 propose weakening safeguards that limit training of AI models with bulk personal datasets
The UK intelligence agencies are lobbying the government to weaken surveillance laws they argue place a “burdensome” limit on their ability to train artificial intelligence models with large amounts of personal data.
The proposals would make it easier for GCHQ, MI6 and MI5 to use certain types of data, by relaxing safeguards designed to protect people’s privacy and prevent the misuse of sensitive information.
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