CORBYN ‘RIGHT MAN TO GIVE INFORMATION’

What the secret agent who met Labour MP during the Cold War told his spy chiefs

A COLD War spy told his bosses that Jeremy Corbyn had a good supply of information, secret papers revealed last night.

Jan Sarkocy, who was a Czech agent, documented his meetings with the Labour leader, which began in November 1986.

After an encounter at a social event in Parliament, he wrote a briefing note to his superiors under the heading: ‘Jeremy Corbyn: connecting with contact.’ It describes how the then Labour backbencher was very well informed about those involved in ‘anti- communist agencies’.

The letter concluded: ‘He seems to be the right person for fulfilling the task and giving information.’ In a dossier on his contacts, Mr Sarkocy gave Mr Corbyn the codename ‘ COB’. The dossier said: ‘ Corbyn, Labour MP of the House of Commons of the British Parliament, contact initiated 25.11.1986.

‘Followed up to the degree of RS (person of interest). He has an active supply of information on British intelligence services.’

In his memos Mr Sarkocy said he had an ‘important’ meeting with Mr Corbyn – who says the claims are ‘a ridiculous smear and entirely false’ – outside the Commons as well as another liaison at the MP’s office in north London.

He said it was ‘helpful to enrich our relations and confidences’. One letter described Mr Corbyn as ‘mellow’ but ‘explosive’ whenever the issue of human rights came up. A note from 1987 cryptically suggested ‘contacting’ Mr Corbyn with the aim ‘to obtain a possible motive’. The letter also warned: ‘Let’s approach carefully as Labour MPs are also under control of the British intelligence service.’

The documents indicate Mr Corbyn did not know he was meeting a spy and was not being paid for any information.

This contradicts claims by Mr Sarkocy that the MP was a paid informant, an allegation emphatically denied by Mr Corbyn. Mr Sarkocy worked for the Statni Bezpecnost, Czech secret police, at the country’s London embassy. He was in Britain from 1986 to 1989 before being expelled. He says there was ‘no question’ that Labour figures knew he was a spy.

Translators said Mr Sarkocy’s letters and memos to his handlers back in Prague were written in tangled bureaucratic language, which made them difficult to read even for native Czech speakers.

Svetlana Ptacnikova, director of the Czech security forces archive, said the fact that Mr Corbyn had been mentioned in the documents suggested that he had some ‘questions to answer’.

But she also told the BBC: ‘Mr Corbyn was not a secret collaborator working for the Czechoslovakian intelligence service.

‘The files we have on him are kept in a folder starting with the identification number one. Secret collaborators were allocated with folders that started with the number four.

‘ If he had been successfully recruited as an informant, then his person of interest file would have been closed and a new folder would have been opened and that would have started with the number four.’

Asked if the way files were numbered suggested that Mr Corbyn was never anything other than a person of interest, a potential collaborator but not an informant, she replied: ‘This is exactly what we believed.

‘The abbreviation “RS” used in front of his file number translates as a prospective contact.

‘Then above that was “RT”, but not even that meant that the person had agreed to collaborate, so he stayed in that basic category.

‘And in fact he is still described as that, a person of interest, in the final report issued by the agent shortly before he was expelled.’

A spokesman for Mr Corbyn has said: ‘Jeremy was neither an agent, asset, informer nor collaborator with Czechoslovak intelligence. These claims are a ridiculous smear and entirely false.

‘The former Czechoslovak agent Jan Sarkocy’s account of his meeting with Jeremy was false 30 years ago, is false now and has no credibility whatsoever. His story has more plot holes in it than a bad James Bond movie.’

The first of Mr Sarkocy’s letters was signed under the name Jan Dymcic, his diplomatic alias.

In it, he requested £1 in expenses to cover the cost of the Tube trip to meet Mr Corbyn.