The spies we left in the cold

When a terrorist group is active in the UK — as Islamist extremists and dissident republicans are at the moment — there is no more essential figure in the prevention of carnage than an agent working for the security services. Reliable intelligence is what defuses bombs, intercepts arms caches, and apprehends suspects. Its acquisition can involve unimaginable personal risks, in circumstances of nerve-shredding tension. We should all be grateful, but most of us never get to know what to say thank you for, or to whom. An agent’s success manifests itself in nothing happening. Its continued value depends on secrecy.

Is MI5 grateful on our behalf? Well, it seems that gratitude for intelligence sources may come with an expiry date. Earlier this month, for example, the BBC interviewed a former MI5 surveillance officer, codenamed Robert Acott, who claimed to have spied for 18 years, mostly on Irish and Islamist targets.

After 9/11, he said, MI5 found itself worryingly short of Muslim agents, and officers such as Acott struggled to compensate. After the Tube bomb attacks in July 2005 the stakes grew higher. Acott had his first panic attack as he followed a suspected suicide bomber on to the Tube. He began to have nightmares, further panic attacks, and problems with alcohol. Acott said that when his health problems became obvious, MI5 ‘wanted rid of me’: he was dismissed for ‘gross misconduct’ after leaving an MI5 manual, which he claims was of negligible security value, in his shed.

Security sources have said that this is only half the story, and perhaps it is. Given the nature of MI5, we are unlikely ever to hear the other half. But it is not the only accusation of abandonment currently being levelled at the organisation. Martin McGartland, a former agent who infiltrated the IRA on behalf of RUC Special Branch, is suing MI5 for breach of contract and negligence in his care.