Richard Seddon

Seddon aided a network of conservative activists trying to discredit perceived enemies of Mr. Trump inside the government, including a planned sting operation in 2018 against Mr. Trump’s national security adviser at the time, H.R. McMaster, and helping set up secret surveillance of F.B.I. employees and other government officials. Erik Prince had set Mr. Seddon’s work in motion, recruiting him around the beginning of the Trump administration to hire former spies to train conservative activists in the basics of espionage, and send them on political sabotage missions. By the end of 2018, Mr. Seddon secured funding from the Wyoming heiress, Susan Gore. He recruited several former operatives from the conservative group Project Veritas, where he had worked previously, to set up the political infiltration operation in the West. Project Veritas has a history of using operatives with fake names to target liberal organizations and make secret recordings to embarrass them. In 2017 Mr. Seddon he ran training for Project Veritas operatives at Mr. Prince’s family ranch in Wapiti, Wyo. Mr. Seddon taught them how to work undercover, build aliases and recruit sources. He lured others to work with him in Wyoming on a new venture — one that would more closely model his time as a British intelligence officer working overseas. Mr. Seddon wanted to run a classic espionage operation in which undercover agents would burrow into organizations and potentially recruit others to help collect information. As in his days at MI-6, the goal was to spy on potential adversaries or targets without getting caught and then quietly use the information to gain an advantage. If conducted correctly, such operations can last for years. And he found someone to pay for it: Susan Gore, the Gore-Tex heiress who for years had supported conservative and libertarian causes.