British Secret Service Agency Apologizes To BBC Over Spy Abuse Story

British spy agency MI5 has apologized to the BBC.

The unprecedented situation arose after MI5 was forced to say sorry to three courts for lying about a neo-Nazi agent who attacked his girlfriend with a machete, the BBC revealed today.

Initially, the BBC reports that MI5 said it could not share information about the agent due to the secret service’s policy of not confirming or denying informants’ identities.

But the BBC’s Daniel De Simone, who has been reporting on the case for years, says MI5 did in fact disclose the man’s status to him in a phone call while it was trying to persuade him not to investigate. MI5 had been trying to prevent De Simone from reporting on the agent’s behavior, he wrote.

The case goes back to 2022 when the BBC first reported on how the man known as Agent X was terrorizing his partner and how the BBC believed that his identity should be revealed in order to protect his partner and others.

Today, MI5 issued an “unreserved apology” to the BBC and all three courts, describing what happened as a “serious error” and saying “MI5 takes full responsibility,” according to the BBC. The case will now head back to the specialist court, which is investigating if the Security Service breached the woman’s human rights by failing to protect her from Agent X’s abusive and coercive behavior.

In legal submissions today, the BBC also invited a court to take further steps to ensure that this “serious breach is properly investigated,” it said.