The UK has admitted for the first time it was spying on Russia six years ago with the help of a fake rock. The adviser to the then British PM Tony Blair called the incident embarrassing.
“They had us bang to rights,” Jonathan Powell told the BBC in an interview. He added that Russians must have known about the spying hardware for some time and exposed it at a politically opportune moment.
In January 2006, a report on Russian television claimed there was proof British spies used electronic equipment hidden inside a fake rock to exchange information between agents and embassy staff.
An agent would pass by and download data from his portable computer, while a diplomat would later collect it in a similar way. Four people involved in the spy ring have been identified by the Federal Security Service.
Christopher Pierce, the diplomat who was said to have installed the secret link, was also responsible for financing Russian non-governmental organizations with British grants. The report implied that the two sides of his job in Russia may have further links, saying that the spy scandal “discredited the fine idea of NGOs.”
Britain expressed “concern and surprise” over the allegations at the time.
There have been a number of spy scandals between Britain and Russia. The latest saw a Russian woman winning her fight in London against extradition, after she was accused of being a honeytrap for a British MP.
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