Quote:From The Sunday Times
May 18, 2008
MI5 linked to Max Mosley sex scandal
David Leppard
An MI5 officer has been forced to resign after admitting that his wife was a prostitute who took part in a notorious “Nazi-style orgy” with Max Mosley, the Formula One racing chief.

The intelligence officer, who cannot be named for security reasons, left the service last month after it emerged that his wife was one of the five call girls who took part in the sadomasochistic sex session with Mosley.

Exposure of the lurid orgy led to calls for Mosley, the son of Sir Oswald Mosley, the wartime British fascist leader, to step down from his post as president of the FIA, the governing body of world motor sport.

In an extraordinary turn of events yesterday, MI5 was forced to deny through Whitehall channels that the orgy had been a “sting” that it had set up to discredit Mosley. “Any suggestion that the service was involved in setting up Mosley is total nonsense,” a senior Whitehall official said.

The official did disclose, however, that one of MI5’s officers had left the agency after his wife’s involvement as a call girl in the orgy became known. “I cannot talk about individual cases, but we do expect high standards of behaviour from all staff at all times, both professionally and privately,” the official said.

“In any case where a member of staff is believed to have fallen below those standards, action will be taken.”

The officer is understood to be in his forties and to have served in the military before joining MI5, where he was involved in surveillance operations.

The disclosure is a severe embarrassment to Jonathan Evans, director-general of MI5, who is understood to have informed Gordon Brown and Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, and assured them the agency was not involved in any sting.

Questions will now be asked about why the service’s vetting procedures failed to expose the secret, which could have made the officer vulnerable to blackmail.

Mosley, who is 68 and has been married since 1960, is one of the most powerful men in world sport. His father was a hate figure who led the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s and 1940s. His mother was the society beauty Diana Mitford, a great admirer of Adolf Hitler.

When the story broke, Mosley said he had been told by a source close to the security services that he had been targeted in a covert investigation of his private life “by a group specialising in such things for reasons and clients as yet unknown”.

The F1 boss’s five-hour sex session with the five call girls took place in an underground “torture chamber” in Chelsea, west London. The Oxford-educated former barrister is alleged to have re-enacted a concentration camp scene in which he played the role of both guard and inmate.

The session is alleged to have involved prostitutes dressed as German officers and camp inmates. It was secretly caught on video by one of the call girls, who used the name Mistress Abi. Sources said it was Abi’s husband who worked for MI5 and that she sold the story to the News of the World newspaper for an undisclosed sum. According to the paper, Mistress Abi wore a Luftwaffe uniform during the session and oversaw beatings of Mosley.

In the video Mosley can be seen standing naked as Abi ties him up with chains before ordering him to lie face down on the bed. Later she screams: “Face down! Did I say move? We don’t want you comfortable.”

Mosley was condemned by Jewish groups and leading figures in the motor racing world. He was snubbed by the crown prince of Bahrain, who told him not to attend the Bahrain Grand Prix last month.

Sir Jackie Stewart, the former world motor racing champion, said that Mosley’s position was “untenable”. The Monaco royal family, the Grimaldis, have made it clear that he is not welcome at next Sunday’s showpiece grand prix in the principality.

Mosley has been unapologetic and has claimed that he needs to stay on to fight the Nazi allegations in a libel action. He denied the orgy had any Nazi theme and said it was “harmless” and “completely legal”. Disclosure of the MI5 officer’s role appears to be his latest tactic in a desperate attempt to save his job. “This is an astonishing piece of information, which I will pass on to my legal advisers,” he said last night.

The News of the World denies there was any collusion between itself and the secret services.

MI5 employs 3,500 people in the fight against Al-Qaeda and hostile powers and prides itself on its discretion. It has been horrified to discover that an officer has become involved, even indirectly, in a high-profile sex scandal.

The service will have been forced to conduct a thorough review of the officer’s work and personal life to establish whether he has put any state secrets at risk.

Security sources say that in any case where an MI5 officer or a close family member is involved in prostitution there is a risk that their integrity — and hence national security — could be compromised.

One official said: “Clearly there would be a conflict there for any member of the service. Prostitutes by the very nature of their business will be connected to people who are probably in the criminal fraternity.”

An internal MI5 investigation is trying to establish whether the officer knew his wife was involved in prostitution and whether he was involved in her business affairs.

The matter is also being examined by the Quest security company, run by Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, the former Metropolitan police commissioner who investigated the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Quest was already working for the FIA when it was asked to investigate the Mosley affair.

Mosley is facing a confidence vote in a secret ballot of the 220 members of the FIA assembly in Paris on June 3. He has written to the presidents of member clubs painting a doomsday scenario if he is forced out of office. He says he needs to stay at the helm of the Formula One governing body until October next year in the interests of the sport.

The suggestion of MI5 involvement in the Mosley scandal will bring back echoes of the role that the spy service had in monitoring his father. Documents released by the Public Records Office in 2002 showed how the intelligence agency had planted unnamed informants inside the British Union of Fascists. They reported on him until his arrest and detention in 1940.

Quote:Max Mosley's son dies of 'drug overdose'



Published Date: 07 May 2009
By CLARE BAILLIE
THE son of motorsport chief Max Mosley has been found dead after a suspected drug overdose. Detectives are now investigating whether Alexander Mosley's death was an accident or suicide.

The 39-year-old restaurateur and economist was found dead at his home in Notting Hill, west London, on Tuesday afternoon.

Sources close to the investigation said Alexander may have been taking recreational drugs at the property, in the same street in which former TV host Paula Yates was found dead in 2000.

Former Formula 1 boss Eddie Jordan – a friend of the family – said he was "devastated" and said Alexander was very close with his father.

Neighbours reported seeing Alexander return home with a friend just an hour before his death.

The Oxford graduate – whose grandfather was Oswald Mosley, former leader of the British Union of Fascists – was the co-founder of the fashionable Hereford Road, a restaurant near his home. His father attracted international notoriety when the News of the World published footage of him in an S&M orgy with prostitutes.

The 69-year-old, however, was awarded a record £60,000 in privacy damages against the paper last year over claims the orgy had a Nazi theme.

Jordan, the founder and former owner of the Jordan team said: "Max and Alexander particularly were very close. It's totally tragic, I'm devastated for them."

A Scotland Yard spokesman said: "The coroner's office has been informed."

Quote:Motor racing boss Max Mosley's son dies of suspected heroin overdose


By Jon Clements 7/05/2009


Motor racing boss Max Mosley was in mourning last night after his eldest son died in a suspected heroin overdose.

The body of economist Dr Alexander Mosley, 39, was found at his £1million home on Tuesday. The alarm was raised by a cleaner.

Alexander had fought a long battle with heroin addiction.

Last night Scotland Yard sources said it remained unclear if the death was accidental or suicide but they were treating it as “non-suspicious”.

Grieving father Max, 69, scrapped plans to attend the Spanish Grand Prix this weekend to be with his wife Jean and younger son Patrick, 37.

The tragedy is a fresh blow for the family after a Sunday newspaper last year revealed Mr Mosley – son of 1930s British fascist leader Oswald Mosley – enjoyed bondage and sado-masochistic sex.

Unmarried Alexander lived three doors from the mews house in Notting Hill, West London, where Paula Yates died from an overdose in 2000.

Neighbours saw two men arrive at 3pm and the alarm was raised at 4.10pm. One neighbour, retired psychologist Steve Abrams, 70, said:

“I saw Alex and another guy going to the flat about an hour before the police showed up.”

Another neighbour, who declined to be named, said Alexander had a serious drug habit but had also been clean for long periods. He added:

“I knew him. He was a troubled guy. He was too rich, too young. He obviously bought something and it was too strong and it killed him.”

Barrister Mr Mosley resisted intense pressure to resign as president of Formula 1 governing body the Federation Internationale de

l’Automobile over the story of his bondage romp.

He won a case against the newspaper which wrongly claimed the sex sessions had a Nazi theme.

In March Mr Mosley told MPs the episode was “appalling” for his sons.

He said: “Can you imagine seeing pictures like that of your father?”

Yesterday the FIA said: “We extend sincere condolences to the family.” Former F1 team boss Eddie Jordan said: “I’m devastated. As a parent it is the last thing you ever want to receive a call about.

Quote:From The Times
June 27, 2008
Max Mosley was 'warned of plot against him'

FIA President Max Mosley arrives in pitlane before practice for the Monaco Formula One Grand Prix at the Monte Carlo Circuit
Edward Gorman, Motor Racing Correspondent
Max Mosley, the president of the FIA, was warned by Bernie Ecclestone two months before his private life was exposed in a Sunday newspaper that people had been hired to discredit him and that they had been given an “unlimited budget” to do so, according to an intelligence consultant.

Rather than being a party to a conspiracy to destroy his old friend, as Mosley's spokesman has hinted this week, The Times can reveal that Ecclestone did his best to tell Mosley that he was being targeted and was astonished and angry when it became obvious that Mosley had ignored the advice he was given.

Ecclestone discovered that there was a plot to bring down the FIA president through Dean Attew, a London-based business intelligence consultant who used to work for the Formula One rights-holder and has also advised Mosley. In an exclusive interview with The Times, Attew disclosed that he was contacted in the third week of January this year by someone representing people who wanted Mosley removed from office.

The approach came more than two months before the News of the World published its first revelations and a video showing Mosley taking part in a five-hour sadomasochistic bondage session with five prostitutes in a “torture dungeon” in Chelsea, West London, which included alleged Nazi prison camp role play.

Attew, a co-founder of Titon International, the corporate intelligence company, said: “In January this year I received a call from a friend. We had a meeting and I was approached and told there was an open budget to effectively go out and source material that would bring Max to his knees and, more importantly, remove him from office and discredit him publicly.

“During the conversation I said to the guy, 'What's your budget?' and he said, 'It's an open budget,' and I said, 'OK, be specific here, are you after Max, are you after the FIA or are you after Bernie?' They then went back and they came back a little while later and said, 'We are not going to pursue it for the time being.' The person contacted me because they knew of my relationship with Bernie but did not know of my relationship with Max. The reason they contacted me was to find out whether I had any loyalty to Max and whether I knew anything of value.”

Attew said that he considered the contact to be credible and he took the conversation seriously. Rather than assist the contact, Attew informed Ecclestone. “I sat down with Bernie and told him what I'd heard,” Attew said. “Bernie then told Max - I know this because Max later confirmed this to me. Because of the relationship I have with both of them, and Max knowing who I was, I assumed that the warning would be taken seriously.”

Attew recalls that at that stage Ecclestone doubted that Mosley had any secrets to hide and had no idea about Mosley's predilection for orgies with prostitutes. “When I sat down with Bernie I said to him, 'Is there anything anyone is going to find out about Max?'” Attew said. “And Bernie said, 'Dean, you are not going to find anything because there's nothing there - he's Mr Boring in that sense.' Mosley had kept this a good secret.”

Two days after the first story on the scandal had been published, Attew contacted Mosley after being asked to do so by Ecclestone, who, despite his anger at what had transpired, wanted Attew to give whatever assistance or advice he could to the FIA president. During this phone call, Attew says that Mosley admitted that he had received the warning from Ecclestone in January and that he had been warned by someone else, too. Attew also says that Mosley conveyed to him detailed personal information about his private life during that phone call, which Attew does not wish to disclose.

Attew, who heads Titon International in partnership with Major-General John Holmes, a former director of UK Special Forces, believes that Mosley or his spokesman could have disclosed these details in recent weeks, rather than leave speculation linking Ecclestone to the exposé to fester. It is for this reason that he has taken the unprecedented step of coming out of the shadows to set the record straight.

“I hear things about people suggesting Bernie was behind this, but that is ridiculous,” Attew said. “From the very first indication Bernie and I, with Max's knowledge, have tried to find out who was the source.”

Attew is also angry at the way Mosley ignored the advice that he was given. “It was very clear that Max had disregarded both the advice he had been given and had failed to realise his vulnerability at that stage,” Attew said. “The issue for me was his total disregard for genuine advice from individuals that he knew had his best interests at heart. When we saw what was in the News of the World, Bernie was as flabbergasted as I was.”

Attew was on Ecclestone's staff for four years until 2004 and had a desk at Ecclestone's London office, where he assisted with a wide variety of issues concerning Ecclestone's business and family affairs. Titon International was in the news two years ago when it emerged that Alexander Litvinenko, the murdered former KGB agent, had worked for the company as a consultant on Russian business. Litvinenko was poisoned with polonium-210, traces of which were found at Titon's offices, in Grosvenor Street, Mayfair.

Quote:From The Times
June 24, 2008
Bernie Ecclestone denies exposing Max Mosley sex scandal

Edward Gorman, Motor Racing Correspondent
Bernie Ecclestone has taken the unprecedented step of issuing an denial that he or anyone associated with him was involved in the exposure of Max Mosley’s predilection for sado-masochistic sex with prostitutes.

In an interview with The Times, Ecclestone, the billionaire Formula One commercial rights holder, said he had no interest in “destroying” the embattled FIA president. The men have been close friends and business associates for more than 40 years, but their friendship is under severe strain after Mosley’s refusal to resign as result of the scandal.

“It is nothing in the world to do with me in any shape or form,” Ecclestone said at his London office. “Secondly, this sort of thing is not my style - not the sort of way I would operate. Thirdly, there is no way in the world that I would want to destroy Max. To suggest I would want to do that is such a lot of b****cks, quite frankly - it’s not true.”

Ecclestone said that the revelations about Mosley that appeared in the News of the World in late March, which included details of a five-hour bondage session with five prostitutes on video, may have been the work of “someone or somebody or ten bodies”. But Ecclestone denied any involvement and said that he had no idea who was behind it. “It’s nothing to do with me at all,” he said. “You must be joking.”

Ecclestone’s comments come after speculation in some sections of the media at the French Grand Prix in Magny-Cours at the weekend that he may have authorised an operation to discredit Mosley. The aim would have been to remove Mosley in advance of the battle now raging between the Mosley-led FIA and Ecclestone’s company for control of Formula One’s multimillion-pound revenues.

Rumours of this kind have swirled around the Formula One paddock from the start of the scandal and were fuelled when Mosley wrote to FIA club presidents two days after the revelations in the News of World, claiming that he was the victim of a “covert investigation” of his private life by a “group specialising in such things, for reasons and clients as yet unknown”. In recent weeks, sources close to Mosley have made no effort to discourage speculation that Ecclestone may have been involved in some way, although they have stopped short of naming him.

In any event, the Mosley camp believes that it has Ecclestone cornered as the “cold war” between the men continues. The FIA president’s supporters believe that Ecclestone is at a loss without his erstwhile friend to advise him and point out that, in the past, whenever Ecclestone had a problem, the first person he would turn to would be Mosley. Even Ecclestone admits that he and Mosley have not had a proper conversation since the scandal broke, but he laughed yesterday when it was put to him that he was missing Mosley’s “world-class political brain”.

“I’d hardly say what Max has been doing lately is world class or political,” he said. “In any case, most of the time it’s the other way round. He calls me for advice.”

The next round in the battle is a meeting of the FIA’s World Motor Sport Council in Paris tomorrow, when Mosley is planning to recommend that the FIA should not negotiate with Ecclestone until he agrees to a radical rethink on the way the sport’s revenues are shared. This would involve a huge loss for Ecclestone and much more money going to the teams. However, Ecclestone is adamant that Mosley and the FIA have no business interfering in the commercial side of the sport and he believes that the European Commission would intervene if the FIA tried to force his hand or meddle.

“I’m sure if that happened, the European Commission would move in,” he said. “Under the agreement with the European Commission, the FIA are the regulators of the sport - like the police - and Formula One Management [Ecclestone’s company] are the commercial rights holders. The money doesn’t belong to Max, it doesn’t belong to him to touch."

Quote:The Formula One Group is a group of companies responsible for the promotion of the FIA Formula One World Championship and exploitation of the sport's commercial rights.[1] The Group is owned ultimately by Delta Topco, a Jersey–based company owned by CVC Capital Partners' funds (approximately 70%) and JPMorgan (approximately 20%). Bernie Ecclestone's family trust owns the remainder apart from small shares held by financial advisers and Ecclestone himself.[2]

Quote:F1 teams drop breakaway bombshell
Formula 1 has been thrown into chaos after eight of its major teams said they are now planning to set up a rival championship for the 2010 season.

The threat by members of the F1 Teams Association (Fota) escalates their row with world motorsport boss Max Mosley over his budget cap proposals.

"The teams have declined to alter their original conditional entries to the 2010 F1 Championship," said the teams.

"We've no alternative than to commence preparation for a new championship."

Mosley was insistent on introducing a voluntary £40m budget cap for teams to curtail a "financial arms race" in F1.

But Fota refused to agree to his conditions, prompting championship leader Brawn GP, Ferrari, McLaren, Renault, Toyota, BMW Sauber, Red Bull Racing and Toro Rosso to take their drastic action.

They announced their decision following a four-hour meeting on Thursday night ahead of this weekend's British Grand Prix at Silverstone.

"Since the formation of Fota last September the teams have worked together and sought to engage the FIA and commercial rights holder (Bernie Ecclestone), to develop and improve the sport," read a Fota statement.

"Unprecedented worldwide financial turmoil has inevitably placed great challenges before the F1 community.

"Fota is proud that it has achieved the most substantial measures to reduce costs in the history of our sport.

"In particular, the manufacturer teams have provided assistance to the independent teams, a number of which would probably not be in the sport today without the Fota initiatives.

The teams cannot continue to compromise on the fundamental values of the sport and have declined to alter their original conditional entries to the 2010 world championship
Fota statement
"The Fota teams have further agreed upon a substantial voluntary cost reduction that provides a sustainable model for the future.

"Following these efforts, all the teams have confirmed to the FIA and the commercial rights holder that they are willing to commit until the end of 2012.

"The FIA and the commercial rights holder have campaigned to divide Fota.

"The wishes of the majority of the teams are ignored. Furthermore, tens of millions of dollars have been withheld from many teams by the commercial rights holder, going back as far as 2006.

"Despite this, and the uncompromising environment, Fota has genuinely sought compromise.

"It has become clear, however, the teams cannot continue to compromise on the fundamental values of the sport and have declined to alter their original conditional entries to the 2010 world championship."

Fota added that its championship would put F1 fans first and boast the best drivers and sponsors.

"This series will have transparent governance, one set of regulations, encourage more entrants and listen to the wishes of the fans, including offering lower prices for spectators worldwide, partners and other important stakeholders," added the statement.


archerwillpay
"The major drivers, stars, brands, sponsors, promoters and companies historically associated with the highest level of motorsport will all feature in this new series."

Former champions Williams and Force India have already committed unconditionally to the FIA's world championship along with three new entrants - Campos, US F1 and Manor.

The FIA has said there are other would-be newcomers waiting to take the places of those teams that refused to enter unconditionally, although one, Lola, has already withdrawn its application.

The stage is also set for a legal battle, with the FIA saying champions Ferrari and the two Red Bull teams have existing contracts which commit them to the existing championship.

The FIA had set a Friday deadline for five teams - Brawn, BMW-Sauber, McLaren, Renault and Toyota - to convert their provisional entries into unconditional ones or risk being excluded.

There was no immediate comment from the FIA or Ecclestone.

Quote:F1 breakaway quashed as Mosley agrees to go

The bitter civil war between the FIA and Formula One Teams' Association (FOTA) has been resolved and F1 has been saved from splitting disastrously in two, Max Mosley has revealed – with the FIA President adding that as part of the trade-off for competitors' guarantees of commitment, he will not seek a fifth term in the most powerful and influential position in international motor racing after October.

Mosley, the sport's commercial rights-holder Bernie Ecclestone, FOTA and Ferrari President Luca di Montezemolo and 120 key FIA members met for further eleventh hour discussions at the World Motor Sport Council (WMSC) in Paris today, in what was billed as a 'last chance saloon' opportunity to find sufficient common ground after all previous talks had broken down.

As a result of that, it seems that following weeks of protracted and highly damaging political wrangling and in-fighting, a cost-cutting compromise has finally been struck between the two warring factions that will see the 2010 regulations remain the same as those in 2009 and heads off the spectre of a manufacturer-spearheaded 'breakaway' series.

The two points of contention had been the £40 million budget cap that Mosley intended introducing into the top flight as of next year, and what was seen as the Englishman's increasingly autocratic and arbitrary manner of governance – even though the teams insisted that his resignation was not part of their mandate.

Following a long period of stalemate without any resolution being reached, FOTA announced on the eve of the British Grand Prix weekend late last week that it was pressing ahead with its menace of launching its own breakaway championship, free from the FIA's controversial and unpopular jurisdiction.

What's more, only days ago Mosley asserted that the last thing that it would be prudent for him to do amidst a crisis would be to leave his post, hinting that in such a prevailing climate of uncertainty it was more likely than not that he would seek to prolong his reign as president beyond the end of his current term [see separate story – click here]. Now, it seems, neither of those two eventualities will materialise.

“There will be no split,” Mosley told an impromptu news conference following the WMSC reunion, quoted by the BBC. “There will be one F1 championship in 2010, which is I think something we all hoped for, but the objective is to get back to early 1990s levels [of spending] within two years.

“We've reached agreement on a number of items; in particular, we've reached agreement on reduction of costs, [with] significant help from the FOTA teams. I will not be up for re-election now we have peace.”

The legal action that the 69-year-old had threatened against the FOTA rebels – composed of Ferrari, McLaren-Mercedes, BMW-Sauber, Renault, Toyota, Red Bull Racing, Scuderia Toro Rosso and early-season world championship pace-setters Brawn GP – will also now be dropped. It is not clear whether the arranged FOTA meeting in Bologna on Thursday will still go ahead or not.

Ecclestone confessed that he was 'very happy common sense has prevailed', whilst di Montezemolo praised Mosley for his efforts in securing the key element of 'stability' at last.

“Polemics are not good for Formula 1 and particularly for the public,” the Italian is quoted as having said by Reuters, “because Formula 1 is a fantastic sport and has to be re-launched, not just protected. I hope that sooner or later I can do the same as Mr. Mosley and have a bit more relaxation. I hope I can join the club very soon.

“I think he has [brought about] a very good fix of the problem. When you have reached an agreement everyone has to help in the same way. I think the decisions we have shared this morning are important. We will have the rules of 2009, the same rules for everybody. It means that we have stability.”

Quote:Max Mosley loses European privacy case

Former Formula One boss fails in bid to force newspapers to warn people before publishing stories on their private lives

Read the Max Mosley judgment in full
Mark Sweney guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 10 May 2011 09.40 BST

Max Mosley, the former Formula One boss, lost his legal challenge to force newspapers to warn people before publishing stories exposing their private lives, after a European court ruled on Tuesday that such as system would have a "chilling effect" on the press.

The ruling by the European court of human rights in Strasbourg will mark the last stage in Mosley's campaign for tighter privacy laws following revelations about his sex life in the News of the World.

In 2008 the UK high court awarded him £60,000 damages after ruling that there was no justification for a front-page article and pictures about his meeting with five prostitutes in a London flat.

But Mosley pursued the case to the European court, challenging UK privacy laws that allow publication without giving their targets advanced warning.

The court said on Tuesday that the actions of the News of the World were "open to severe criticism" for publishing not only a print story, but also photographs and video footage obtained through covert recording, "which appears to have been included in the News of the World's coverage merely to titillate the public and increase the embarrassment of the applicant".

However, the court added it has "consistently emphasised the need to look beyond the facts of the [News of the World] case and to consider the broader impact of a pre-notification requirement".

It said such a pre-notification process for newspaper exposés is likely to have a "chilling effect" on the media and that there are "significant doubts" as to the effectiveness of such a system.

"The court is of the view that article 8 does not require a legally binding pre-notification requirement. Accordingly, the court concludes that there has been no violation of article 8 of the convention by the absence of such a requirement in domestic law," the Strasbourg ruling stated.

Article 8 of the European convention on human rights guarantees the right to respect for private life.

Mosley responded to the Strasbourg ruling by indicating that he had not given up in his fight to force newspapers to warn people before publishing stories exposing their private lives. Asked if he had a message for newspaper editors, Mosley said: "It's not over yet."

Quote:From The Sunday Times May 18, 2008

MI5 linked to Max Mosley sex scandal

David Leppard

An MI5 officer has been forced to resign after admitting that his wife was a prostitute who took part in a notorious "Nazi-style orgy" with Max Mosley, the Formula One racing chief.

The intelligence officer, who cannot be named for security reasons, left the service last month after it emerged that his wife was one of the five call girls who took part in the sadomasochistic sex session with Mosley.

Exposure of the lurid orgy led to calls for Mosley, the son of Sir Oswald Mosley, the wartime British fascist leader, to step down from his post as president of the FIA, the governing body of world motor sport.

In an extraordinary turn of events yesterday, MI5 was forced to deny through Whitehall channels that the orgy had been a "sting" that it had set up to discredit Mosley. "Any suggestion that the service was involved in setting up Mosley is total nonsense," a senior Whitehall official said.

The official did disclose, however, that one of MI5's officers had left the agency after his wife's involvement as a call girl in the orgy became known. "I cannot talk about individual cases, but we do expect high standards of behaviour from all staff at all times, both professionally and privately," the official said.

"In any case where a member of staff is believed to have fallen below those standards, action will be taken."

The officer is understood to be in his forties and to have served in the military before joining MI5, where he was involved in surveillance operations.

The disclosure is a severe embarrassment to Jonathan Evans, director-general of MI5, who is understood to have informed Gordon Brown and Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, and assured them the agency was not involved in any sting.

Questions will now be asked about why the service's vetting procedures failed to expose the secret, which could have made the officer vulnerable to blackmail.

Mosley, who is 68 and has been married since 1960, is one of the most powerful men in world sport. His father was a hate figure who led the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s and 1940s. His mother was the society beauty Diana Mitford, a great admirer of Adolf Hitler.

When the story broke, Mosley said he had been told by a source close to the security services that he had been targeted in a covert investigation of his private life "by a group specialising in such things for reasons and clients as yet unknown".

The F1 boss's five-hour sex session with the five call girls took place in an underground "torture chamber" in Chelsea, west London. The Oxford-educated former barrister is alleged to have re-enacted a concentration camp scene in which he played the role of both guard and inmate.

The session is alleged to have involved prostitutes dressed as German officers and camp inmates. It was secretly caught on video by one of the call girls, who used the name Mistress Abi. Sources said it was Abi's husband who worked for MI5 and that she sold the story to the News of the World newspaper for an undisclosed sum. According to the paper, Mistress Abi wore a Luftwaffe uniform during the session and oversaw beatings of Mosley.

In the video Mosley can be seen standing naked as Abi ties him up with chains before ordering him to lie face down on the bed. Later she screams: "Face down! Did I say move? We don't want you comfortable."

Mosley was condemned by Jewish groups and leading figures in the motor racing world. He was snubbed by the crown prince of Bahrain, who told him not to attend the Bahrain Grand Prix last month.

Sir Jackie Stewart, the former world motor racing champion, said that Mosley's position was "untenable". The Monaco royal family, the Grimaldis, have made it clear that he is not welcome at next Sunday's showpiece grand prix in the principality.

Mosley has been unapologetic and has claimed that he needs to stay on to fight the Nazi allegations in a libel action. He denied the orgy had any Nazi theme and said it was "harmless" and "completely legal". Disclosure of the MI5 officer's role appears to be his latest tactic in a desperate attempt to save his job. "This is an astonishing piece of information, which I will pass on to my legal advisers," he said last night.

The News of the World denies there was any collusion between itself and the secret services.

MI5 employs 3,500 people in the fight against Al-Qaeda and hostile powers and prides itself on its discretion. It has been horrified to discover that an officer has become involved, even indirectly, in a high-profile sex scandal.

The service will have been forced to conduct a thorough review of the officer's work and personal life to establish whether he has put any state secrets at risk.

Security sources say that in any case where an MI5 officer or a close family member is involved in prostitution there is a risk that their integrity and hence national security could be compromised.

One official said: "Clearly there would be a conflict there for any member of the service. Prostitutes by the very nature of their business will be connected to people who are probably in the criminal fraternity."

An internal MI5 investigation is trying to establish whether the officer knew his wife was involved in prostitution and whether he was involved in her business affairs.

The matter is also being examined by the Quest security company, run by Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, the former Metropolitan police commissioner who investigated the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Quest was already working for the FIA when it was asked to investigate the Mosley affair.

Mosley is facing a confidence vote in a secret ballot of the 220 members of the FIA assembly in Paris on June 3. He has written to the presidents of member clubs painting a doomsday scenario if he is forced out of office. He says he needs to stay at the helm of the Formula One governing body until October next year in the interests of the sport.

The suggestion of MI5 involvement in the Mosley scandal will bring back echoes of the role that the spy service had in monitoring his father. Documents released by the Public Records Office in 2002 showed how the intelligence agency had planted unnamed informants inside the British Union of Fascists. They reported on him until his arrest and detention in 1940.

Quote:How an MI5 agent's involvement in a sex-scandal led to a high-speed car chase through London

An MI5 agent's involvement in the Max Mosley sex scandal was unmasked after an extraordinary sequence of cloak and dagger events that can be revealed for the first time today.

His exposure came after a car chase through London, fears of a terrorist plot and a sophisticated surveillance operation by detectives working for former Metropolitan Police chief Lord Stevens, the man who headed the inquiry into the death of Princess Diana.

The Mail on Sunday has learned that the MI5 officer's connection emerged after he was targeted by a surveillance team from Lord Stevens's investigation firm Quest.

The firm had been hired by motor racing chief Mosley, 68, to identify who was behind newspaper revelations that he had paid five prostitutes to take part in a five-hour bondage session.

So days after the damaging disclosures, when the MI5 man left his home in Milton Keynes, where he lived with his wife, the professional dominatrix known as Mistress Abi who was at the centre of the affair, he was followed by the detectives.

But the highly trained officer, alert for danger because of his sensitive role tracking terror suspects, spotted the tail and put in an urgent call to MI5's duty officer. MI5 immediately feared that a major antiterrorist operation had been compromised, potentially putting agents lives at risk.

It put its staff on high alert and deployed all the sophisticated counter-surveillance methods at its disposal to identify the source of the threat.

A team at MI5's headquarters at Thames House, near the House of Commons, began to track the £30,000-a-year surveillance officer's route looking for evidence that he was being tailed.

With access to feeds from traffic cameras and sophisticated number plate recognition equipment, the team was quickly able to identify the vehicle following their colleague as belonging to Quest, the company headed by Lord Stevens that carried out the Premier League investigation into 'bungs' in football transfers.

The Quest team apparently followed their target to Thames House. It was only then that they realised he was a Security Service officer.

High-level discussions between MI5 and Quest bosses - thought to include Lord Stevens himself and Security Service chief Jonathan Evans - followed, in an effort to ensure that no anti-terrorist operations had been put at risk.

Yesterday a spokesman for Quest said it was company policy 'never to discuss client matters'.

The MI5 officer was later forced to resign after it was revealed that his wife - a 38-year-old mother-of-two who charged £120 an hour for her services - had secretly filmed the bondage session, using a camera hidden in her bra, and sold it to a newspaper.

Investigations by The Mail on Sunday raise new questions about the background to the sordid affair. Official sources said that the officer, a former Royal Marine commando, had kept his bosses in the dark about his relationship with Mistress Abi and failed to inform MI5 when the couple married in August last year.
Neither Mistress Abi nor her husband could be contacted by The Mail on Sunday last week.

But a source with detailed knowledge of the disgraced officer's work at MI5 said he had made no secret of what his wife did for a living.

He said the officer had regularly bragged about her activities and even showed colleagues pornographic pictures of her on a website advertising her services.

Guests at the couple's church wedding in Milton Keynes also dispute MI5 claims not to have known he had married. They say several of his 'work colleagues' had attended the reception and 'heckled loudly' during the speeches.

It is still unclear why MI5's routine vetting procedures failed to unearth Mistress Abi activities.

Her personal website - removed from the internet in the wake of the Mosley affair - gives a full breakdown of her specialities', which include caning or flogging ('light to severe'), face-slapping and even 'blackmail'. It also shows pictures of her in military uniforms similar to those she and the four other prostitutes wore during their five-hour session with Mosley, who is the son of the wartime British fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley.

The website was designed by Simon Edwards, a film director who makes promotional films for BT and Land Rover and is currently trying to raise the money to start work on his first feature film, called Legion --Dawn Of Evil, a horror movie which is set in ancient Rome.

He said last night: 'She is a long-time friend of mine and I designed the website for her as a favour when she first decided to become a professional dominatrix.'

He said that he had met Mistress Abi's husband on only a few occasions but knew he had been in the Marines and 'worked in surveillance'.

He added: 'I think they met at some kind of holiday camp when she was away with her two children. I'm sure she would have told him very early on about what she did for a living - she's always been very upfront about it.'

Last night, Whitehall sources said the Mosley scandal had led to a major review of the MI5's vetting procedures.

Mosley has begun court proceedings for invasion of privacy over the revelations and a High Court judge has issued an order banning the identification of any of the five prostitutes involved in the case.

Google told to block Max Mosley orgy pictures