REMEMBER the Socialist party official I told you about, who had been befriending in prison one of the authors of the March 11 massacre? No, not this one (from whom we know more now) but a remarkable high level official.

Turns out he was also an agent of Spain's intelligence services:

Fernando Huarte, the Socialist Party leader who visited in prison a terrorist related with the March 11, 2004 bombings both before and after they occurred, had been working for the CNI, the Spanish secret service, since 1992, according to a report in yesterday's El Mundo. Huarte was "highly valued" for his knowledge of the Islamic world and several other European countries asked for his collaboration.
People's Party spokesman Gabriel Elorriaga announced that the news "means a qualitative leap regarding possible links between members of the PSOE and the cell that committed the March 11 attacks in Madrid. This is not a report with no context. Things are not at all clear and we need more information and more testimony before the investigating commission, whose closure we will not accept."

PP parliamentary spokesman Eduardo Zaplana demanded yesterday that the PSOE clarify whether or not it was Fernando Huarte who gave them "secret information" about the perpetrators of the bombings. Between March 11 and March 14, the day of the general election, the PSOE received information about the attacks before the interior ministry did, which permitted them to accuse the Aznar administration of lying when it originally blamed the bombings on ETA. Zaplana asked, "Did Huarte tell somebody in the PSOE, which bragged it had more information than the administration?"

Zaplana pointed out that Zapatero had said during his original testimony before the commission last November that he had been aware of everything during the crisis period after the bombings, and that therefore he must testify before the parliamentary commission in order to state whether he was privy to such information, and that he must also say whether he knew that Huarte was a CNI agent. Zaplana denied that the Aznar administration had known Huarte was a spy, and warned that if the Zapatero administration fails to tell the whole truth, "it would be one of the greatest possible irresponsibilities an administration could commit."