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Spooks at MI5 probing the leaks of military secrets have spied on high-ranking SAS officers, the Sunday People can reveal.

Special forces commanders are ­believed to have initiated the investigation after becoming increasingly frustrated by SAS operations, training and disciplinary issues appearing in the media.

A team of hand-picked MI5 agents are understood to have bugged phones, monitored computer traffic and watched several senior members of the SAS between 2010 and 2011.

The MI5 operation, said to have caused a lasting and deep rift between the two covert organisations, led to the arrest of two special forces officers whose ­careers were destroyed, even though charges against them were dropped.

In February 2011, MI5 named the two officers to Metropolitan Police’s Counter terrorist Command (SO15) detectives.

They were identified as suspects ­because of their friendship with a TV journalist, who they met in Afghanistan in 2008.

He was ­embedded with the 16 Air Assault Brigade.

One, a major in command of the SAS’s counter-terrorism unit identified as AB, was with his young son driving on a bridge in Hereford when detectives stopped him.

The other, a captain known as SF, was arrested at his desk at the SAS’s London HQ by SO15 officers.

Iraq and Afghanistan veteran AB, ­being groomed as a future SAS ­commander, had visited his seriously ill wife in hospital.

(Image: PA)

Detectives took charge of his son and AB was ordered to his HQ where he was arrested on suspicion of breaching the Official Secrets Act.

AB was taken to Marylebone police station where he was quizzed for 18 hours by detectives who specialise in ­interrogating terrorists.

He was fingerprinted, made to pose for a police mugshot and give a DNA sample but AB denied leaking secret information and told police he was “a patriot” and “not a liar”.

Released on bail, AB was suspended as the head of the SAS counter-terrorist unit. In October 2011 he resigned from the Army.

All charges were later dropped by the Met, who assured AB neither he nor SF would be investigated further.

The journalist was also close to ­another senior SAS officer and had privately ­communicated with General Sir David Richards, then Chief of the Defence Staff, but neither officer was questioned.

Details of the spying operation are revealed in a Met police legal document seen by the Sunday People.

AB is now suing the Met and one of the senior officers believed to have authorised the mission – Lt Gen Jonathan “Jacko” Page, then Director of Special Forces.

A police source said: “The SAS is ­supposed to have a very close working relationship with MI5.

"But that trust was shattered after the regiment learnt that MI5 was bugging soldiers’ mobile phones and email accounts.”

This revelation follows the ­allegation – first revealed by this paper – that the covert unit were involved in the murder of Princess Diana.

The regiment has been criticised over the treatment of war hero Danny Nightingale, 38, who is ­appealing his conviction for ­illegally ­possessing a gun and ammo.

He was sentenced to two years’ suspended for 12 months at a court martial in last summer.