Moreover, Spycatcher tells of the MI6 plot to assassinate President Nasser during the Suez Crisis; of joint MI5-CIA plotting against left-wing British Prime Minister Harold Wilson (secretly accused of being a KGB agent by the Soviet defector Anatoliy Golitsyn); and of MI5's eavesdropping on high-level Commonwealth conferences.
•
After the re-discovery and commercial use of PKI by Rivest, Shamir, Diffie and others, the British government considered releasing the records of GCHQ's successes in this field.
Wilson's suspicions were later partially corroborated by former MI5 Assistant Director Peter Wright in his book Spycatcher, a book that was initially banned from publication in the UK.
The modern phrase entered popular usage after it was used by the British then-Cabinet Secretary Robert Armstrong during the Spycatcher trial in 1986.
In 1952, Pinto published two books, Spy-catcher and Friend or Foe? These formed the basis of the 1959-1961 BBC television series Spycatcher, in which he was portrayed by Bernard Archard.