Concerns have been raised among British intelligence agents about the risks involved in sharing intelligence related to anti-Russian activities with the American government. The fear is that such sharing could potentially expose the identities of British operatives, according to sources familiar with the matter as reported by The Mail on Sunday.
These sources have disclosed that British intelligence chiefs have adopted a cautious approach by limiting the amount of sensitive information they disclose to their counterparts in the CIA, particularly following Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election last year.
In a precautionary move, it has been reported that some undercover agents from Western countries operating in regions like Russia and Ukraine have been relocated secretly and via land routes to ensure their safety. This action was reportedly taken due to concerns regarding President Trump’s friendly stance towards the Kremlin.
President Trump said this weekend that he was finding it ‘more difficult, frankly, to deal with Ukraine’ than Russia, telling reporters that the US was ‘doing very well’ with Moscow.
The Americans want Volodymyr Zelensky to sign a deal that would give them a major stake in Ukrainian mineral resources and agree a truce with Moscow.
However the Ukrainian president will not do so without firm security guarantees. Mr Trump’s senior officials will travel to Saudi Arabia next week to discuss the plan with Mr Zelensky’s team.
Last night, Downing Street strongly denied there had been any change in intelligence-sharing protocols, but separate senior sources claimed that precautionary decisions were being made by the agencies on an operational basis and without ministerial oversight or sanction.
Security minister Dan Jarvis is also understood to have held meetings with Sir Richard Moore, head of MI6, and Sir Ken McCallum, head of MI5, regarding the security of British intelligence.
The headquarters of GCHQ in Gloucestershire. Spy chiefs have been rationing intelligence shared with US counterparts since Donald Trump was elected as President
Agents’ concerns increased dramatically following Mr Trump’s incendiary meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky
The agents’ concerns have increased dramatically since Mr Trump’s spectacular fall-out with Mr Zelensky in the Oval Office last month in which he accused the Ukrainian leader of being ‘disrespectful’ to the US. He then paused both military aid and information-sharing with Kyiv, effectively crippling its ability to defend itself against Russian attacks.
And it comes amid a ramping up of Moscow-backed espionage in the UK: on Friday, three Bulgarians were found guilty of being part of a Russian spy unit carrying out surveillance on a US military base and other individuals.
While signals intelligence, the electronic interception of communications, is a heavily integrated Anglo-American operation and hard to disentangle, old-fashioned human intelligence, using agents on the ground, can be kept more distinct.
Agencies have been wary of Mr Trump since the case of Oleg Smolenkov, an alleged high-level US spy who was reported to have been extracted from Moscow in 2017 after Mr Trump had met senior Russian officials including foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.
Sources also said that the Five Eyes intelligence alliance between Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States could become an effective ‘Four Eyes’, as the old Commonwealth countries discuss forming a breakaway unit.
Last night, a senior security source said: ‘Intelligence gathering is one of the few areas in which the Americans still have a high regard for Britain. We have always been careful about what we share with them in terms of protecting agents – with files marked “for UK eyes only” – but that obviously becomes more pronounced at moments like these.
‘The issue is mainly with raw intelligence, which can be very exposing of sources if it falls into the wrong hands. More care will be taken to package the information so as to disguise the origins.’
It comes amid a ramping up of Moscow-backed espionage in the UK as three Bulgarians were found guilty of being part of a Russian spy unit
Another source said: ‘It would be too aggressive an act to withdraw co-operation, and we don’t want to provoke a reaction from Trump. Just last week we used a Reaper drone to attack Islamic State in Syria, which we couldn’t do without the support of the US.
‘But there has definitely been a shift away from us overtly proffering information. The UK is also monitoring what the US provides to us to try to ascertain if the US is changing the volume of what intel it provides’.
Diplomatic sources also said that the US security services were ‘in a state of panic’ over Mr Trump, and were destroying files which could expose assets in Russia. They are said to be concerned that raw intelligence was now so widely circulated within the system that it would be difficult to completely protect sources.
The concern is exacerbated by the way Mr Trump is replacing long-standing officers with his loyal appointees.
