Geoffrey Prime

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In espionage, Geoffrey Prime was a spy for the Soviet Union while working for GCHQ, the UK cryptography agency, during the late 50s and early 60s.

He was eventually detected due to his sexual interests in children and identified as supplying information to the Soviets. He was tried, convicted, and imprisoned. Publicly, his information was represented as having been damaging to the UK, and beneficial to the Soviets, but details were not released and remain unknown. His position at GCHQ certainly made him privy to information which would have been damaging had he turned it all over to the Soviets.

In the late 1970's, Prime was sentenced to 38 years, three of those were for child sex offences. The judge at his trial said that if Britain was at war with the Soviet Union, his crimes would make him eligible for the death penalty and that he would have no compunction to use it. Ironically he was only caught when his involvement in the Paedophile Information Exchange came to light, as they use codes to communicate between paedophiles. His release was controversial, as it caused public outcry. Press reports mentioned that no community would have him because he was both a traitor and a paedophile. He lives quietly in an undisclosed area, though The Daily Mail reported on his whereabouts some years ago. He is still on the sex offenders register.

He was also the subject of a book by D.J Cole.

Note: Britain still had the death penalty for treason until 1998, when the European convention on human rights became law.