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 94 of 94 
 
Thursday, 18th November 1993 
SENTENCE
MR. JUSTICE BLOFELD: Michael John Smith, the jury by their verdicts have found that you
deliberately supplied information to the Soviet Union, or the Russians as the case may be, and were
intending further to supply information if you had not been stopped by your arrest.
I have had the opportunity of observing you at length in the witness box and I have also had the
opportunity of listening to your lengthy interviews with the police. It is clear to me that you are
obviously an intelligent man. You are articulate, you are resourceful and you are also a fluent liar. I
am bound to conclude that your motives for your actions were partly ideological but primarily
financial. You were prepared to betray the interests of this country for greed.
I have considered the submissions made on your behalf now in mitigation. I recognise that you are a
man of previous good character; I take that into account. I recognise that there is only one
effectively classified document. I say effectively; I mean by that there is only one bearing the word
“Restricted” in the documentation. However, having heard the whole of the evidence in this case, I
have to sentence you on the basis that the documentation that was found in your car in parts was of
considerable importance and was of great sensitivity, and could have been substantially prejudicial to
this country.
I am bound to come to the view that, by the nature of the payments made to you and by your
persistence, you had been supplying information of use to your paymasters during the past eighteen
months to two years. Again you were doing that partly because of your ideology and partly for
money.
I am bound to assume that that information was sensitive material to the extent that you were able to
lay your hands upon it. I recognise that, by reason of your security classification, it was not possible
for you to obtain “Top Secret” or “Secret” material because your security classification was limited
to “Confidential”. I further take into account as much as we know in the public press about our
relationship with Russia on the break-up of the Soviet Union.
Nevertheless, I am bound to take the view that these are very serious offences committed over a
period and quite deliberately committed. The sentence of the Court is that you go to prison for a
total period of 25 years. That will be 8 years and 8 years on counts 1 and 2, and 9 years on count
4, to run consecutively.
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