A High Court judge has ordered the U.K. internal security service MI5 to hand over secret documents after saying he had "no confidence" in its explanation of how a senior officer gave false evidence to the court. The case concerns a violent Nazi MI5 agent who abused his girlfriend while under the service's protection and used his position there in making threats to her.
Tuesday's hearing comes four months after the BBC revealed MI5 had lied to three courts about a misogynistic agent known as X. The agent used his MI5 role to coerce and terrorise his girlfriend, attacking her with a machete. … There are a range of potential options, from accepting the conclusions of MI5's investigations to initiating contempt of court proceedings against MI5 itself or individual officers – or both.
The cover-up is extensive. Not only did senior offers at MI5 lie about the agent in court, but the government tried to obtain an injunction censoring coverage and successfully won the agent legal anonymity. The BBC published its report in 2022, and later realized that MI5 was lying in court to protect him.
The BBC can reveal:
• MI5 first lied in a court case where the government attempted to block the BBC from reporting on agent X's wrongdoing – and succeeded in banning us from naming the foreign national
• The Security Service then repeated the lie to a specialist court, where the woman attacked with a machete – known by the alias Beth – is seeking answers about MI5's handling of its agent
I• t repeated the lie again to a judicial review, where Beth was challenging the specialist court's decision
• A senior officer said he was legally authorised to tell me X was an agent – so MI5 had not stuck to its policy of not confirming or denying agents' identities
• The director general of MI5 phoned the BBC's director general to cast doubt on the corporation's original story about agent X, wrongly calling it "inaccurate"
A typical "neoliberal" endgame, it being unclear if the state is willing or able to restrain unregulated forces, even within itself. Justice Chamberlain might want to buy one of these while he figures it out.
