内容摘要：The email confirms for the first time the link between M&S's hack and the

The email confirms for the first time the link between M&S's hack and the

, known publicly as "Beth".MI5 had told me he was an agent in 2020 while trying to stop me running a news story about the man's extremism. I had already heard he was an agent, also known as a covert human intelligence source (Chis), and told MI5 as much.

The calls were an attempt by MI5 to protect and cover for X, a violent misogynistic abuser with paedophilic tendencies. Telling me he was an agent was inconsistent with MI5's public claims about always abiding by a core secrecy policy – known as neither confirm nor deny (NCND) – on the status of agents.But the Security Service maintained it had stuck by the NCND policy - first in a court case where the government tried to prevent the BBC from publishing a story about X, and then in two further courts where Beth made a claim against MI5.Keeping X's status officially secret meant that key evidence was withheld from Beth.

IPCO's role is to inspect the use of investigatory powers by MI5, such as its use of agents, and to identify any concerns in its reports.It reviewed MI5 documents about the case of agent X, including an official record authorising a departure from NCND, and sent a draft report to MI5 in February 2023.

The report concluded that MI5 had taken the "extraordinary" decision to depart from NCND on X's agent status in calls with me.

But MI5 pushed back and denied it had departed from the policy, including in correspondence with the Investigatory Powers Commissioner himself Sir Brian Leveson, a former High Court judge best known for chairing a public inquiry into the culture and standards of the media.Afterwards the "wreck was essentially lost, obviously you're dealing in a period with no satellite navigation," said Dr Bennett.

He added while the crew tried to save the ship it "drifted for several hours, before it finally made its way to the bottom, sadly, with many of its crewmen on board".He said the wreck was lost until a local dive team identified it in 2024.

Mr Robinson, who has been diving for about 35 years, said he heard about the unidentified wreck from the UK Hydrographic Office.said the wreck "was clearly an early steamship when we got down there" but "at the end of my dive I found a broken piece of plate... I decided to bring it up to the surface [and] we found that had the Cunard Steamship crest on it".