From Russia With Love Panorama

Last year, MI5 believed it had uncovered a Russian spy at the very

heart of British democracy, inside the House of Commons. If MI5 did

not take this sort of thing seriously, we would want our money

back. And we would be entitled to get our money back. The 26-year-old

Russian, Katia Zatuliveter, was accused of being the eyes and ears

of Russia's foreign Intelligence Service. Were you a honeytrap spy?

No. I am sorry to disappoint you. In her only interview, she talks

about being an innocent victim, targeted by MI5. Russian spies are

very skilful. I have never met any, I don't know. And the MP who was

her lover has hit back furiously at the Security Service. She felt like

she was a hunted animal. And I can understand that. The court has

upheld her case and she will not be deported. But the question that

will now be asked is why was this case brought in the first place,

and how, on the face of it, did MI5 On Tuesday, Katia's long battle to

avoid deportation and clear her name ended in victory. She had

taken her appeal to the Special Immigration Appeal Commission, SIAC.

It deals with cases of national security and some evidence is held

in secret. This is the first espionage case that the court has

ruled on. What did the verdict mean to you? Everything. I would have

been branded a spy forever. heart of the story is a tantalising

question. Was Katia an innocent abroad, or a long-term sleeper for

Russian intelligence? Were her relationships genuine, or was she a

honeytrap spy? Is there honey trap just Hollywood fiction? Gosh, of

course not. It is only fiction for governments and countries that

played by some kind of sense of rules, whatever that may be. The

honey trap is used extensively. fact is that a honeytrap spy

represents a real and present threat. Gullibility must come into

it by definition. What sensible 60- year-old man thinks that a 22-year-

old woman has found the love of her life in him? I am not saying it

never happens, but it is very The story begins in St Petersburg,

where Katia studied international relations. MI5's assessment is that

she was recruited by one of Russia's intelligence agencies when

she was a student. St Petersburg is a well-known recruiting ground.

There were people that everybody knew were from the KGB and the FSB

around. They would have watched her, approached her and invite her in

for a career chat. Vladimir Putin was recruited there. He let it be

known that he wanted to work for the then KGB. They duly recruited

him. When you were a student at St Petersburg University, were you

ever approached by anybody from Russian intelligence? No. Never?

Never. We were absolutely unaware that there was Russian intelligence

around us. Every year, students from the University volunteer to

help at an international conference. Katia acted as one of the

chaperones. This was how she first met the Liberal Democrat MP Mike

Hancock. I was working with the British delegation, which consisted

of British MPs and Lords. What did Mike Hancock say to you? When you

chatted to him? Lots of things. he make advances to you? Can we

make a break? I met her at a conference in St Petersburg in 2006.

She was bright, intelligent, spoke good English, friendly. That was it.

It was the beginning of a four year relationship between the married MP

and the Big Dom Russian. But Hancock was not the first Westerner

chaperoned by Katia who would fall for her charms. Two years earlier,

she met a Dutch diplomat at a St Petersburg conference. We had a

couple of drinks, we had dinner at the reception. We exchanged our

details. The next day, we went for dinner and the theatre. Did you

sleep with him? Yes. Did you know what his job was? He was a Dutch

diplomat, that is everything I knew. Did you ask him about his job?

Spying, the second oldest profession in the world, still

relies on human sources to deliver what nothing else can. People look

at technology in the spy business. Because it is sexy, they think it

is the centre of the universe. I don't care if it is the 15th

century or the 21st century, if you want to understand intent, you need

a human being. In 2006, Katia moved to the UK. Mike Hancock gave her a

job as his parliamentary researcher. She was vetted and given a

parliamentary pass. Now with a House of Commons pass, Katia was at

the heart of Westminster and, potentially, close to some of its

secrets. At Westminster, Mike Hancock was a busy MP, with a seat

on two important parliamentary bodies, the All-Party Russia Group

and the Defence Select Committee. What kind of documents would Mike

Hancock have had access to? Would they be confidential? For the most

part, it is not seeing some plan of a bomb-making installation or

something, like on a James Bond episode. It is nothing like that at

all. What you are trying to do is gain information, knowing who is

sleeping with who, having access to a building where there are lots of

other people's researchers you can get to know, where most tours are

not locked, that would be immensely useful to another country's

intelligence gathering operation. Did you see any confidential

documents in the course of your work? Never. Did Mike Hancock ever

show you will give you any confidential documents? No. I never

hid the fact that Katia was a Russian, working for me. Why should

I? She was very good at her job. Irrespective of personal

relationships, she was the best person for that job. As well as

being Mike Hancock's assistant, Katia was his live-in lover and

shared his London flat. She had been keeping a very personal diary,

referring to him as her darling teddy bear. She wrote, there is no

one more tender and sincere than you. Did you love him? I think we

have a judgment on that. It clearly states that we had a genuine

relationship. I don't think that I need to try to respond to that. It

has been scrutinised well enough. Mike Hancock's constituency is in

Portsmouth, home to most of Britain's warships and headquarters

of Britain's fleet. So, the MP for Portsmouth South is in a position

to know a lot. MI5, the security service, has an obvious interest in

Russians working at a house of Commons. Checks are routine, as the

potential for a Russian sleeper spy is always there. MI5 called Katia

to set up a meeting. A man called me, I picked up my office phone and

he said that he was from the Ministry of Defence and he would

like to meet me. Did you meet him? Yes. Did he say he was from the

Ministry of Defence? No, not any more. He now said he was from MI5.

Her visit to wanted to know if she had had any contact with people at

the Russian embassy. Together with him, we went through all my

business cards. He found the car of Boris. The business card that

interested MI5 the most belonged to a man working at the Russian

embassy in Kensington. MI5 were concerned about this individual, as

they suspected he was one of the many spies working undercover at

the embassy. He was referred to in court as Boris. My understanding is

that she was picked up by MI5, not because there was any smoking gun

evidence against her, not because she was found carrying documents,

secret documents out of Parliament or had a memory stick about her

person, but because she was making contact with a Russian intelligence

officer in the Russian embassy in Kensington, in whom the MI5 were

already taking an interest. Katia had originally met Boris from the

embassy at a conference in London. He subsequently struck up a

conversation with her at a nearby underground station. Do you think

I am questioning it now. I think maybe. Katia says that she told

Mike Hancock about her encounter with Boris. She says he told her

not to have anything to do with him. There are lots of Russians in

London, some of them desirable and some of them very undesirable. She

had to make their own judgments on lots of people. This was a specific

operative working inside the Russian community in the embassy. I

felt that would be completely inappropriate for her to meet them.

Although the cold war ended over 20 years ago, relations between Russia

and the UK are still characterised by mutual suspicion. MI5 says that

the number of Russian intelligence officers in London is up to Cold

War levels. The most dramatic recent evidence of recent Russian

activity in London was the murder by poisoning of Alexander

Litvinenko. Every day you could see that he became worse. Every day it

was a fight for life. He had been an outspoken critic of the then

In Moscow, the former Russian intelligence officer suspected of

the killing, Andrei Lugovoi, is now a put in supporting politician,

elected to Russia's parliament. -- Following the killing, he believes

that Katia is simply a pawn in the wider game between British and

The idea that, at the end of the day, the Russia we are living with

his in many ways not that different from the old Soviet Union, and all

the problems we had with that old Soviet Union, is very, very

chilling. Frankly, if MI5 did not take this sort of thing seriously,

we would want our money back. And we would be entitled to get our

In 2010, Mike Hancock ended his relationship with Katia. And Katia

moved out of his flat. She then met her next lover. A high ranking

German NATO official whom she met at another London conference. He

was in his fifties. Did you know what he did? Yes.

you talk about his work with NATO? No. Did you sleep with him? Yes.

Were you a honeytrap spy? No. I'm sorry to disappoint you. It would

have been a much better story if I In the summer of 2010, alarm bells

from across the Atlantic rang in MI5 Headquarters. The FBI had

uncovered a sleeper cell of ten Russians who'd been living all

American lives unsuspected in the United States. The most prominent

Russian recruit to the cell was Anna Chapman who'd once been

married to a British citizen. On her return to Moscow, Chapman was

greeted as a Russian hero, cashing in on her new found fame with a

series of photo shoots. She even went on to host her own TV show.

All I'm going to say is say is I'm interested in helping other people,

that's all. That was a very disturbing case because it was

clear the Russians were putting a great deal of money into developing

long term sleeper penetration agents at a young age. They could

be expected, one way or another, to grow into the fabric of American

political culture. But Katia was never an illegal. She

was living quite openly under her own name and was known to the

intelligence services. She says that she cooperated with them fully.

In August 2010, Katia was returning home from a holiday in Croatia with

a group of female friends. It was her birthday and they had been away

to celebrate. It was midnight. They were waiting for me there to arrive.

They knew that I would arrive. Katia was taken away and

interviewed by two MI5 officers. They showed me a picture of my then

boyfriend, which made me laugh because I couldn't understand why

would they be interested in my relationships. Katia's boyfriend at

the time was the senior German official who worked for NATO.

What was the tone of the interviews? It started neutral but

very quickly it went into aggressive. I mean, sitting in the

middle of the night. You don't know where exactly where you were

brought by the car. There were people screaming at you. You have

no idea what's going on. How were you feeling? I can't even describe.

Katia says that the screaming was done by a man. Whereas, in

subsequent interviews conducted in a series of up market London hotels,

a woman adopted a very different approach. She tried to be friendly,

talking about herself a lot. Her son, for example. The books she

read. Did you realise what she was trying to do, the way she was

operating? Yes, but I didn't mind that. I'd rather have that than

somebody screaming at me that I'm a liar.

MI5's interviews with with Katia continued over a period of months

towards the end of 2010. scariest part of this interrogation

was that I've seen that these people were unprofessional and

paranoid. Everything they've seen in Russian people was a spy. If you

are Russian in this country you are a spy. They could not understand

how a Russian in London can speak English language. That was one of

the questions they were querying. They believe that if you are

Russian the only way you can learn English language is in some kind of

spy school. Katia's former lover was also

invited to meetings with MI5. I invited them to come to the House

of Commons. I said, well, I'll come to Thames House, meet you at your

headquarters. They didn't want to do that. They said, "Oh, we'd

rather meet you in a hotel." So had this rather bizarre arrangement

where I go to a hotel, I find them in a room. And then I go into the

room and they lock the door. I didn't like some of the questions

they asked, because they were of a personal nature. But I had nothing

to hide, so I answered them all truthfully. What I found strange

was each time I tried to probe what is this about, what is the

allegation, they wouldn't say. They didn't say and I think it was

because they didn't know what to say. And I think that was rather

Katia discovered she would be asked to meet at one hotel and then be

asked to go to another slightly less grand. The Savoy became the

Strand Palace. Although Katia wasn't to know it, this was to be

her final interview with the Security Service. It appears that

by this stage, MI5's investigation I had a knock on my door, seven in

the morning. I opened my door. There were five people standing

outside my door with a light in my face. They came in. They asked for

my passport. They didn't even look at it. They put it in their pocket

and said that I have to dress and pack up and we're leaving. And I

will be leaving this country shortly.

At the beginning of December last year, Katia was served with

deportation papers on the grounds that her presence in the United

Kingdom was considered a threat to national security. A Russian woman

working for a Liberal Democrat MP is arrested for espionage. MI5 it

raise concerns about the 25 or graduate who now faces deportation.

Katia was determined to fight her case and decided to appeal. She had

to do so through the Special Immigration Court. On the face of

things, MI5's case looked circumstancially strong. MI5

thought you were a spy. They didn't make it up. I can't imagine anybody

would believe, based on their case, that I was a spy. I think they

probably believed it, given the knowledge of how the Russian

intelligence services work. You seemed to be the perfect case, the

perfect profile, given your relationship with a series of

powerful political and security and diplomatic figures, including an MP.

I don't know what they know about Russian intelligence. I don't know

much about Russian intelligence. I have learned quite a lot in this

process but my knowledge is very limited. Nick Fielding was an

expert witness and part of in Katia's defence team. Isn't it

perhaps more than coincidence that she chose as her lovers a Dutch

diplomat, a NATO official and a British MP? That is not the extent

of her relationships, according to the evidence presented to court.

And there were other people who were not involved in these areas of

work and who had very mundane occupations and don't fit that

pattern at all. But she still had sexual relationships with... A

Dutch diplomat, a NATO official and a British MP. That's absolutely

true. On the other hand, she was somebody who was a student of

foreign relations. That was her degree and her postgraduate degree,

and she was mixing in precisely those circles. Katia and her legal

team took a momentous decision in a desperate bid to convince the three

judges. One of whom was a former Director General of MI5. This

involved revealing the contents of her highly personal diaries.

When you decided to appeal against your deportation, did you realise

that it would entail revealing much of the intimate details of your

private life in public? Yes. you were prepared to do that?

to weigh... The two options I had. One is that I will be forever

branded a spy but will be able to keep my private life private. Or I

had to give all of this out into press and into the public, but be

able to prove that I'm not a spy. And for me, more important was to

prove that I'm not a spy. The only way we could try to win this case

was by really giving the court an avalanche of evidence about Katia's

life. About her relationships, about what she's done over the past

ten years. To show and to try to prove a negative, which is that she

is not and never was a Russian spy. I was crying in my lawyer's office.

I was absolutely prepared to be humiliated by the press, by

everybody around me, yes. appeals hearing lasted for nine

days. Having decided to reveal her personal thoughts in her diaries,

Katia was taken aback when their authenticity was questioned.

But if you had been a spy, it's reasonable to think that you would

have written the diary as part of your cover. It would be incredible.

It would be very skilful. But spies, Russian spies are very skilful.

I've never met any. I don't know. Katia's diaries became crucial

evidence. When the judge declared them to be genuine, MI5's case

started to unravel. In closing arguments, Katia's lawyers said the

MI5 investigation was more akin to Inspector Clouseau than George

Smiley. The senior case officer in this case had only been with the

counter intelligence department since the spring of 2010. She

didn't speak Russian. She wasn't sure how many people in her team

even spoke Russian. She had received effectively on-the-job

training in counter intelligence. All these things point to somebody

who doesn't have a huge background and a great deal of knowledge about

the way in which the Russian intelligence services operate. I

think that is a little bit disturbing to me. How do you regard

the way in which MI5 have handled your case, and brought your case?

Extremely unprofessional. I was absolutely shocked. I can

understand that they would have suspicion about me as a Russian

working in Parliament. About my relationships as well. But

suspicions is not everything. You have to find evidence. Security

Services case was found to be wanting at every stage. The last

year has been a Kafkaesque nightmare.

Although the court vindicated Katia, the judgement was criticised her

character. It described her as immature, calculating, emotional

and self centred. But her supporters have hit back.

absolutely delighted but disgusted about the time it's taken. And the

way in which the security services have acted. As well as the way in

which senior politicians within the Home Office have acted on this

issue. They had a pig-headed adherence to their belief, and

reasonable suspicion isn't enough. And once that reasonable suspicion

is met with evidence, which suggests very strongly that she is

not and never was a Russian spy, they should have reconsidered their

case. The more that MI5 is demoralised, the more it's laughed

at. The more it's seen as unnecessary in today's world, the

greater the chance for those who would do us harm or simply want to

know sensitive things about us, to Although there will be

disappointment at the Home Office that it has lost a high profile

case, the mood at MI5 Headquarters is likely to be more sanguine. They

feared that Katia was a long term Russian spy. And though they

couldn't prove it, she has now been burned and rendered inoperative. To

MI5, despite the inevitable embarrassment, it's job done.

was an extremely unfair process. I think if I can describe it in war

terms, it would be me on a horse with a sword against tanks and

aircrafts. So not for a second actually I thought that there was a

possibility that I could win. Spying is a world of assessments

and suspicions. The court accepted it may have been hoodwinked by a

rigorously trained spy, but thought it unlikely. Katia knows the answer.