Report Finds MI5 Gave False Evidence to Courts but Director General Accepts Responsibility

A report by deputy investigatory powers commissioner Sir John Goldring found that MI5 gave evidence based on lies to three courts while defending a violent neo-Nazi spy. The investigation, ordered by the prime minister in September and lasting 10 months, determined that MI5 repeatedly told the courts it had maintained its neither confirm nor deny policy when it had not.

The High Court rejected MI5's explanations as deficient and unreliable.

Sir John Goldring concluded that senior officer Officer 2 repeatedly told lies that formed the foundation of MI5's false account and put forward a wholly fictitious denial of telling a BBC journalist that the agent was an MI5 informant. Officer 3 misled colleagues, misrepresented what Officer 2 had said, and was not truthful about warnings received.

Witness A, an MI5 deputy director, overstated matters during a key internal meeting.

Various people in MI5 knew the policy had been departed from, with cogent evidence in case files, yet the falsehood persisted. MI5 also misled the Investigatory Powers Commissioner's Office during its examination of the case. MI5 Director General Sir Ken McCallum stated that the service recognizes without hesitation the seriousness of its failings and repeated previous apologies to the courts for the incorrect evidence and slowness in recognizing what had happened.

MI5 disclosed the agent's status in 2020 phone calls to its journalist while trying to dissuade an investigation. The case involves Agent X, a foreign neo-Nazi who coercively controlled his British partner Beth and attacked her with a machete. MI5 helped him go abroad to continue intelligence work while under police investigation.