In 1992, Smith was arrested, accused of spying for the KGB, and charged with four offences under sections 1(1)(b) and (c) of the UK Official Secrets Act 1911.
[2] Christopher Andrew, in his history of the KGB, described Smith as "probably the most important British Line X agent since the retirement of (Melita) Norwood".
[6] In July 1976, he started work as a test engineer in the quality assurance department of Thorn EMI Defence Electronics at Feltham, Middlesex.
Since at least 1977, it had been a "prohibited place" under Section 3(b) of the Official Secrets Act 1911 because it held classified material for the purpose of fulfilling MoD contracts.
[3] The prosecutors alleged that Smith was recruited as a spy by Colonel Viktor Oshchenko (Russian: Виктор Ощенко), a KGB Line X officer,[7] who befriended him at a union meeting in 1975[3] and ran him until September 1979.
Despite the fact that the most serious alleged espionage occurred whilst he was working for EMI, the trial was confined to charges relating to documents taken from GEC in his possession at the time of his arrest.
[13][14][15] The report of the Security Commission dated July 1995, prepared after an inquiry into the case, stated that, On 10 January 2006, Andrew Mackinlay MP asked in Parliament for clarification as to which weapon system the most serious document in the prosecution was linked.