Among the scores of files declassified today at the National Archives, several relate to persistent allegations of MI5 wrongdoing, including plots to undermine Harold Wilson’s Labour government, and the possibility of Soviet penetration at the top of the agency.
These claims appeared in the memoir of the former MI5 officer Peter Wright, whose book Spycatcher the government was determined to ban. As the Guardian’s spook-watcher of the time, I had been served an injunction in 1987 preventing me from revealing Wright’s claims, along with David Leigh of the Observer, beyond the one article I had already written for the newspaper.
