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Prime attended a technical school before joining the RAF, where he took a Russian language course and was posted to West Berlin. Lonely and with a deep sense of political confusion, Prime daydreamed about the Soviet Union, mistakenly believing that the regime represented the oppressed peoples of the world. Prime suddenly made a decision to work for the Soviets. He made contact with the KGB by simply going to a Soviet checkpoint in Berlin and handing a note to a Russian officer. Two KGB agents contacted him a short time later. Knowing that Prime's enlistment was about to run out after twelve years in the RAF the Soviets encouraged him to use his training to get a job with British code-breaking organization GCHQ. Prime did exactly that, obtaining a job at a GCHQ Language centre in September 1968, where he translated electronic communications intercepts and then sent them on for analysis at the Cheltenham Headquarters. Taking a vacation to West Berlin, Prime slipped into East Berlin where he underwent more espionage training and was given a complete spy kit, which was contained in the false bottom of a briefcase. Inside were invisible inks and specially prepared writing pads on which he was to record his secret messages. He was also given £400 to be used in the purchase of a short-wave radio and a tape recorder. Once back in England, he went to work photographing GCHQ secrets which he sent on to his control in East Berlin in the form of microdots. He also made contact with his handlers through short-wave broadcasts in coded messages made up of figures and numbers in groups of five increments. Meanwhile, Prime rose in stature at GCHQ, becoming a highly regarded translator and processor of SIGINT.
He was transferred to the GCHQ in Cheltenham in 1975, and was asked to work on intelligence information provided by the Rhyolite spy satellites, a CIA operation producing intelligence for the UKUSA network. So sophisticated were the spy satellites that they could monitor all forms of phone conversations and electronic messages inside the Soviet Union. The CIA, through TRW, manufacturers of the satellite, had almost perfected an even more sophisticated satellite, ARGUS, about to go into operation. Prime contacted his KGB control with this news and, at their request, flew to Vienna to confer with them. The KGB agents gave Prime a small sum of money for confirming information they had already received from two young Americans working at TRW. What Prime's control wanted now was the actual information being delivered by these satellites. Prime delivered and quickly, particularly since he now had access to almost all of the information the satellites were producing after being promoted to a section chief at GCHQ. When he learned that Boyce and Lee had been caught in America and sent to prison, Prime became nervous and seriously thought about accepting the Soviet offer to defect. He stayed on at GCHQ, nevertheless. When he suddenly resigned his post, he remembered to take a further 500 secret documents with him out of the GCHQ offices before leaving.
Prime was working as a taxi driver in Cheltenham when he was arrested on charges of sexually molesting young girls. His wife, Rhona, now felt it her patriotic duty to inform security officials that her husband was a spy. Prime was charged with violating the Official Secrets Act (OSA) and tried in November 1982. He was sentenced to thirty-five years in prison for espionage and three years for his sexual offences. Senior officials of both the NSA and CIA went to London to confer with British intelligence and establish methods by which the agencies could better screen those involved with espionage data. Among other procedures, both agreed that all of those involved would be given lie-detector tests before being exposed to sensitive information.
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