Detective Inspector John Redgrave and Detective Constable Michael Charman, two experienced Met detectives, never thought their involvement in Operation Nightshade would destroy their careers.
They have been under investigation for six years, three of them secretly, and suspended for three. This is despite the original allegations against them being withdrawn in January 1997, before their houses were raided and they were suspended. Last December they were cleared of all criminal proceedings, but they remain suspended.
"I have been suspended in relation to a complaint that is six years old.This has caused the complete destruction of every aspect of my personal and professional life, friends, finanacial security, family, marriage, career and reputation," Redgrave said. "The building blocks of life have all gone with no hope of recovery."
Nightshade was an Anglo-American police sting across three continents. It had three lines of inquiry - a cocaine shipment from Venezuela to the UK, a money laundering scam and an illegal arms deal.
Nightshade started in June 1993 from information provided by a Kent businessman Geoffrey Brennan, who had unusual contacts with some notorious south-east London gangsters. Brennan became an informant for the Met and was handled by Charman.
Brennan was then contacted by a group of Texas-based criminals who boasted of high political connections. They involved him in the money laundering scam and asked if he could find a buyer for arms worth millions of dollars.
Brennan was authorised to introduce two British undercover officers posing as representatives of Protestant terrorists from Northern Ireland. After bugging meetings in London and Houston, Red grave's team had strong evidence against the gang. They were taped saying the weapons would be stolen from an army base in the US and shipped to Ireland via Sierra Leone.
But at a delicate point in the arms negotiations Nightshade began to fall apart. In August 1993, two months into the sting, Brennan was charged with the theft of £400,000. This money had been deposited in his business account by the Texan gang as part of their money laundering scam.
Police documents seen by the Guardian show the arms dealers continued to do business with the undercover officers, faxing them price lists and equipment details. The documents also show that Redgrave and his American counterparts were close to arresting the Texan gang.
But in late 1994, with negotiations almost finalised, the gang suddenly backed off and Nightshade, which had cost millions of pounds, collapsed with no arrests.
Redgrave and Charman went on to other Met operations against organised crime. They believed that Brennan, the informant, was still under investigation for the theft. In fact it was the two detectives who were under investigation.
In June 1994, while Redgrave was still trying to arrest the arms dealers, Brennan began a series of secret meetings with Superintendent Roger Gaspar, head of the Met's complaints investigation branch (CIB), the anti-corruption squad.
Gaspar was also in charge of a highly secret intelligence cell - dubbed the Ghost Squad - which had begun looking at police officers suspected of major corruption. He taped an interview with Brennan over two days while CIB kept him in hiding. In the transcripts seen by the Guardian Brennan admits stealing £400,000 during Nightshade and claims he also bunged Redgrave and Charman £50,000 to turn a blind eye.
Brennan was introduced to CIB by Detective Sergeant Chris Smith of the Flying Squad. Brennan had been an informant registered to him for 20 years before Operation Nightshade began.
As a result of Brennan's allegations, the Ghost Squad targeted Redgrave and Charman using covert surveillance and bugging. This CIB operation was called Cornwall.
CIB had plans to turn Brennan into its first supergrass in the anti-corruption crusade. Brennan and his family were put into a witness protection programme with new identities. The theft charges were quietly dropped.
For two-and-a-half years from June 1994 to early 1997 the Ghost Squad secretly monitored every move and financial transaction by Redgrave and Charman.
Redgrave, 46, had joined the Met in 1970. One commanding officer remarked in an early appraisal: "When [Redgrave] leaves the division many an east end criminal will breathe a sigh of relief." Charman, 47 had joined when he was 19. One of his senior commanders who spoke to the Guardian considers him to be an honest cop who was "always first through the door".
The Ghost Squad allowed Redgrave and Charman to carry out difficult operations with access to very sensitive material and large sums of money, hoping to catch them in the act.
Both detectives received outstanding reports from their line managers. One on Redgrave noted that "his one desire in life was to arrest and convict major criminals within the law and by ethical means". There were also commendations from senior Scotland Yard commanders.
One of the most bemusing aspects of the affair came in 1996 when the Ghost Squad watched John Redgrave receive a long service and good conduct medal from the then Met Commissioner, Sir Paul Condon, the man who had set up its secret operation.
Meanwhile, by August that year, Brennan was completing his second year in CIB's witness protection programme. In September 1996 he was passed to a new CIB controller, Superintendent Dave Bailey, recently appointed head of the Ghost Squad.
The Guardian has spoken extensively to Brennan about what happened after this changeover. He was re-arrested for the original theft allegations.
Soon after this, Brennan tried to extricate himself by contacting Charman for the first time in over two years. Brennan told Charman that he and his partner had been the targets of a CIB corruption investigation since June 1994. He also gave Charman an extract of a secret tape recording he had made of his conversation with Bailey.
Brennan's visit set off a chain of events that was to rock CIB to its core. Shocked at what they had heard, Charman and Redgrave informed their superiors who advised them to write a report to the overall head of CIB, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Roy Clark, and Met commanders. Between November 1996 and January 1997 they wrote six reports. The reports, seen by the Guardian, summarised Brennan's explosive claims about the Bailey tape and included a partial transcript.
According to the detectives, Clark did not respond to any of their reports. But undoubtedly CIB now knew that the existence of the Ghost Squad and its methods had been exposed to two of its principal targets.
Then on January 29 1997, the deputy chairman of the police complaints authority, John Cartwright, received a letter from Brennan. In the letter, obtained by the Guardian, Brennan withdrew the allegations against Redgrave and Charman which he had made almost 28 months earlier.
Brennan told the PCA his interview with CIB in June 1994 was "evidentially worthless" and contained "false allegations" against the detectives.
He said Smith, his handler for 20 years, "moonlighted" with Brennan doing private security work and enlisted three other named, serving, officers to work with him for money.
Brennan reaffirmed his statements in the withdrawal letter when interviewed this week by the Guardian. He alleges that Smith "rehearsed" him for the taped interview with CIB.
Smith later told a court that Brennan was motivated by malice and was hostile towards him after he was rearrested for the theft in late 1996.
Brennan's letter to the PCA was received on the same day by CIB. But seven days later, on February 4 1997, CIB still arrested and suspended Redgrave and Charman on the basis of allegations it knew had been withdrawn. Correspondence in the Guardian's possession shows that for almost two years CIB and the PCA insisted to lawyers representing the detectives that there had been no withdrawal of the complaint by Brennan.
CIB admitted to the Guardian that it received the withdrawal letter from Brennan seven days before it raided the detectives' homes.
CIB investigated Smith after he was exposed in the trial of an armed robber at the Old Bailey in February 1998 for lying on oath about his relationship with Brennan. CIB officers escorted Smith to court during the five day cross-examination and witnessed his evidence at first hand. Smith told the judge his relationship with Brennan was part of a "very secret inquiry" and he had acted with the knowledge of the former head of the Ghost Squad, Gaspar, now the director of the national criminal intelligence service.
Fifteen months after Brennan made his allegations against Smith, CIB interviewed the officer under caution. The transcript, seen by the Guardian, shows he admitted receiving money for moonlighting through Brennan and by implication confessed to misleading the court.
The Guardian has learned that in September 1996, when Smith officially "retired" from the Met, a rumour was already doing the rounds of the private security business. Three company directors, all former policemen, told the Guardian they were warned not to do business with a company Smith had set up called Esher Investigations. They were told it was an undercover CIB operation designed to catch ex-policemen paying for illegal police computer checks.
CIB would not comment on whether Smith was one of its covert officers. In a statement it said Smith was told in July 1999 there was "insufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction for any criminal offences".
In 1985 Charman and his inspector at the time formally reported Smith over his allegedly "corrupt relationship" with Brennan. Smith denied that his relationship with Brennan was corrupt.
Approached at home, Smith refused to discuss this, Brennan or Nightshade but he did deny working for CIB.
CIB told the Guardian that Bailey was under investigation in relation to allegations by Brennan. But the Guardian has learned from a former CIB source that Bailey was not suspended or investigated when the allegations were made against him.
According to the source, Bailey left the Ghost Squad and went to work for the security service MI5, where he still is. CIB itself is the subject of an internal investigation over allegations from Redgrave and Charman that it tried to "entrap" them in an unsuccessful operation mounted after the collapse of Operation Cornwall.
The case was thrown out last May by a magistrate after a brief committal hearing. A judge threw out CIB's attempt to overturn this decision.
Finally, last December, after almost six years of investigation, CIB told Redgrave and Charman they would not face criminal charges over the original corruption allegations. They are still suspended and face one disciplinary charge which they say has no foundation.
Redgrave's MP, Andrew Mackinlay, has written to the PCA and Met commissioner, Sir John Stevens, describing the affair as "a very unsavoury can of worms". CIB refuses to disclose how many millions of pounds Operation Cornwall cost the public but claims its investigation was "even handed".