MI5 is staffed by incompetent liars

Neither confirm nor deny, except when fibbing

16 July 2026

Britain’s Liar-in-Chief, Sir Ken McCallum

Today sees the publication of yet more evidence that “British intelligence” is an oxymoron. Not only do MI5 officers tell lies all the time, even when giving evidence in British courts, but they aren’t even very good at it.

The latest humiliation comes courtesy of Sir John Goldring’s devastating report into the Agent X affair. Running to more than 200 pages, it chronicles years of incompetence, evasions, missing notes, selective memories, and false evidence. If this were the script for a political satire, the editor would reject it for being too implausible.

Neither Confirm Nor Deny

The story begins with an MI5 informant embedded in the British far right. When BBC journalist Daniel De Simone prepared to expose him as a dangerous neo-Nazi, MI5 panicked. Rather than following its own procedures, one of its communications officers simply rang the journalist and announced that the man was actually working for MI5. So much for the organisation’s famous doctrine of “Neither Confirm Nor Deny” (NCND).

This wasn’t some carefully authorised departure from policy. Goldring concludes that the required authorisation from senior management was never obtained. Even more astonishingly, the very officer who made the disclosure had helped draft MI5’s own policy requiring detailed written records whenever journalists asked about human sources. Yet after one of the most extraordinary conversations an MI5 press officer could ever have, he somehow forgot to make a note.

Unfortunately for MI5, the journalist did. Years later, when MI5 found itself before the High Court and the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, it confidently assured judges that no disclosure had ever taken place. Witness statements were prepared. Special Advocates were reassured. Oversight bodies were challenged. Again and again the official line was repeated: NCND had been maintained throughout. It hadn’t.

The problem with lying

The difficulty with telling lies is that reality has a habit of keeping receipts. In this case, Daniel De Simone had contemporaneous notes and recordings of the conversations. Once these emerged, MI5’s carefully constructed narrative collapsed with spectacular speed.

Goldring’s conclusions are remarkable. He finds that the officer who made the disclosure knew perfectly well that he had departed from NCND and later lied about it. Another senior officer is criticised for repeatedly misrepresenting what colleagues had said, withholding information from lawyers, shutting down internal dissent, and playing a pivotal role in sustaining MI5’s false account before both the High Court and the Investigatory Powers Tribunal.

This was not simply a case of one person having a faulty memory. Goldring identifies repeated failures across the organisation: inadequate record-keeping, poor supervision, missed opportunities to discover the truth, and repeated failures to comply with the duty of candour owed to the courts.

Perhaps the most astonishing aspect of the whole affair is that the deception wasn’t uncovered by some master spy or rival intelligence service. It was exposed by a BBC journalist with a notebook and a recorder.

One is left wondering what would have happened had Daniel De Simone not been so meticulous. Would MI5 still be assuring judges that black is white? Would oversight bodies still be accepting demonstrably false accounts? The report strongly suggests they might.

Oxy-moron

For decades, MI5 has cultivated an image of cool professionalism: an organisation staffed by brilliant analysts, meticulous investigators and subtle practitioners of the intelligence arts. The Agent X report paints a rather different picture. It describes an organisation whose officers ignore their own procedures, fail to keep records, tell demonstrable untruths, mislead oversight bodies and then appear genuinely surprised when someone produces the tape recordings.

The recent decision by the Home Secretary to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a threat body was based on evidence that its operatives engage in deception, covert influence and hostile activity against the United Kingdom. That “evidence” was provided by MI5. In October last year, the Director General of MI5, Sir Ken McCallum, announced that MI5 had tracked more than 20 potentially lethal Iran-backed plots in the previous twelve months. Why should anyone believe him?

If “engaging in deception, covert influence and hostile activity against the United Kingdom” are the qualifying criteria for being designated as a “threat body”, perhaps someone should have a quiet word with the Home Office about MI5. According to Sir John Goldring’s report, officers of Britain’s own domestic intelligence service repeatedly misled the High Court and the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, failed to disclose relevant evidence, ignored their own procedures, and allowed false accounts to persist for years. The only obvious difference is that, when MI5 officers are caught lying, Whitehall commissions an inquiry instead of designating them a national security threat. One can only hope the Home Secretary doesn’t accidentally read the report and decide to proscribe Thames House.

Perhaps “British Intelligence” isn’t an oxymoron after all. Perhaps it’s simply a contradiction in terms.