London - "These snooping claims are utterly baseless," the UK's top Spookmaster General said today as news of the field etching's materialization broke.
"We don't need to outsource snooping on British Tea Party taxpayers to some sort of hush-hush, fly-by-night foreign call center, heheh, what with so much indigenous talent available on the national minimum wage."
The row was intensifying this evening as pictures of the Alton Barnes rape seed field crop circle flashed across the internet with the North Face bodybag logo clearly depicted in the giant 500ft square field.
MI6 cryptographer Gareth Williams died three years ago this summer in bizarre circumstances, trussed up naked inside a holdall in a Pimlico safe house close to MI6 HQ.
Several inexplicable elements of his passing were scrutinised by the UK media which speculated that Williams may have worked on a secret US/UK surveillance systems run by NATO's fabled ECHELON military computer - currently suspected of running a US spy program called PRISM.
An inquest into his death said absolutely nothing apart from mentioning the RIP spook was a fan of cross-dressing and had previously cycled on a round Britain tour of interesting crop circles.
Expect more of these etchings to sprout up as the Yanks begin to squirm.
