Brits Use Fake 'Spy Rock' in Moscow Espionage

LONDON -- In a rare acknowledgment of espionage reminiscent of the Cold War, a former British government official admitted that a fake rock discovered in 2006 by the Russian FSB secret service in a Moscow park concealed a listening device planted by British spies.


Speaking on a three-part BBC documentary starting Thursday -- "Putin, Russia and the West" -- Jonathan Powell, chief of staff at the time to Labor Prime Minister Tony Blair, said, "The spy rock was embarrassing, they had us bang to rights. Clearly they had known about it for some time and had been saving it up for a political purpose."


Hidden Russian TV cameras recorded video of the rock and of men handling it. The video was widely broadcast at the time along with footage showing the rock being taken apart to reveal the delicate listening mechanism inside.


The Russian regime waited for some time before claiming publicly that it was a British device. Russian leader Vladimir Putin ordered a crackdown on several foreign-funded organizations, claiming they were a front for western government intervention in Russia’s internal affairs. A Russian-British diplomatic row followed.


Tony Brenton, British ambassador to Moscow at the time, said in a BBC radio interview Thursday that the rock episode was “a considerable headache.


Around the time the Russian report was shown in 2006, then-President Vladimir Putin introduced a new law that restricted NGOs from receiving funding from foreign governments.


At that time, Britain's ambassador to Russia, Tony Brenton, reportedly said all interactions between the British government and Russian organizations was "above board."


According to the Russian news outlet RT, the FSB denies the "spy rock scandal" was linked to the NGO funding controversy, but chose to leak the story to the press in 2006 only after the spy agency failed to discreetly settle the matter with the British government.


When asked for comment on this report, a spokesperson for the British Foreign Ministry told ABC News the office does not comment on "intelligence matters."


Mark Stout, a historian for the International Spy Museum and former intelligence analyst in the U.S. government, said such a method of "cover communications" is not uncommon for most major intelligence services.


"All the major services have technical staffs... in a lot of ways analogous to Q in James Bond, who are really good at this sort of thing and always looking for the latest, greatest ways to hide something in a place that no one would've ever imagined in a million years," Stout said.