Sex orgy link embarrasses British MI5 spy service

By Mark Trevelyan, Security Correspondent

LONDON (Reuters) - A bizarre sex scandal involving a top motor sports official and the prostitute wife of a British spy has raised urgent questions about the screening procedures employed by the MI5 security service.

The Sunday Times and Sunday Telegraph reported that an MI5 officer had been forced to resign after it emerged that his wife was one of five prostitutes who took part in an orgy with Max Mosley, president of Formula One's governing body, the FIA.

A security source contacted by Reuters did not dispute the reports but said any suggestion the orgy had been an MI5 'sting' operation to entrap Mosley was "nonsense".

"The service is very busy and constantly stretched by the demands of the threat from AQ (al Qaeda) and other terrorist organizations...This is not how they're spending their time," he said when asked about the Mosley affair.

"This is a very unhelpful distraction for us."

Mosley has been fighting to keep his job after another paper, the News of the World, reported in March he had taken part in what it called a Nazi-style sado-masochistic orgy.

The 68-year-old FIA president, while apologizing for any embarrassment caused to the sport of motor racing, has strongly denied any Nazi connotation to the affair and said he was the victim of a "covert investigation".

He asserted after the scandal broke that he had been targeted "by a group specializing in such things, for reasons and clients unknown".