Erstellt am: 28. 11. 2015 - 13:47 Uhr

The spectre of real spying

Does the British Secret Service give its spies a licence to kill? A Reality Check on what goes on in spying agencies in 2015.....

James Bond has been conquering cinemas again. But behind the glitz and the glamour, what is it like to work in the real world of spying? Do spies ever have a licence to kill? And what current conversations are going on at spy agencies today in places like London, Washington & Moscow?

That was the subject of our Reality Check Special, broadcast on Saturday 28th November, all about the spectre of real spying.

007 - The Man with the Golden Gun.

Nigel West is an author who has written many novels to do with espionage and the secret intelligence services. In fact, the Sunday Times in London has said this of Nigel West and his spying novels:

"His information is often so precise that many people believe he is the unofficial historian of the secret Services."

So, when we decided we wanted to know more about spying, we felt Nigel West was our go to person to open our eyes into what's really going on in this shadowy world.

People intelligence, people skills - How important is that still?

There is a pendulum that swings from time to time. In one direction, it goes for human intelligence. And that’s the business of case officers being able to identify people that can help them, cultivating them, recruiting them and managing them. And of course testing them, making sure of their integrity and that they are not fabricating information. Then, at the other end of the pendulum there are the technical resources. And that ranges from signals/telecommunications resources (listening in to telephone conversations, reading Emails, interception of every kind of communication, right the way through to overhead reconnaissance. That might be a drone, a satellite or some kind of aircraft being able to monitor the movement of an individual or cell phone. So that is the spectrum of intelligence collection. The favourites change from time to time and the targets become conscious of a particular action and take appropriate counter measures.

I guess it’s no good being a handsome figure wearing a tuxedo and winning big on the roulette table. Being James Bond isn’t a help here?

On the contrary, I remember the head of the (UK's) secret intelligence service telling me that James Bond was his best recruiting tool. More than half the world has seen a James Bond movie. And therefore when you are recruiting an agent, the issue of reputation is very important. If someone were to approach you and tell you that there are terrorists operating in your neighbourhood and would you be kind enough to support the local security apparatus, most likely, as a good citizen you’d like to help the authorities but you may wonder about their reputation. Do they abduct people of the streets, do they give them enhanced interrogation treatment, do their informants become identified in the New York Times? Are there leaks from Congress? So you’ll think about reputation. And I’m afraid that half the world’s population, when you try to recruit them for the secret intelligence service, they immediately think of James Bond, wearing a tuxedo, black tie, who is a tall, slim, good looking man.

You must have met a few spies in your time. What are they generally like?

Well, I would distinguish between officers and agents. Officers are the staff who have great interpersonal skills who are trying to persuade people to do things they wouldn’t normally do – go against their background, their friends, family, country. You have to persuade people that once they have marched down this path, you will be always be there. You can get them out of whatever situation or problem their family members find themselves in, if they get into difficulties. And you will support them for the rest of their lives. The agent on the other hand is somebody who is willing to betray that kind of information. And it may well be that they are quite self centered, egotistical, they may have money demands, talents that they feel have not received recognition. So there are personality traits both for the officer (who may be slightly manipulative and sociopathic) to the agent who may be very narcissistic indeed).

In the spy agencies you’ve come across, there’s really no James Bond figure in there and there’s no "licence to kill" or is there?

It is true that the British secret intelligence service does not have a licence to kill. But it is also true that, on at least two occasions, a former Prime Minister ordered the assassination of particular individuals. One was George Grivas the EOKA terrorist leader in Cyprus. The other was President Nasser of Egypt. On neither occasion did SIS (the Secret Intelligence Service) complete their assignment.

And famously it was claimed that David Owen (the former British Foreign Secretary) perhaps jokingly asked Morris Oldfield, who was a rather saintly head of the Secret Intelligence Service, "what are we going to do about President Idi Amin of Uganda. He’s terrorising his own people. He’s a despot and dictator, can we bump him off"? Morris Oldfield, who played the organ at his local church on Sundays was mortified and reportedly said "we are a very cerebral organisation Secretary of State, we do not go in for bumping people off. That’s not our approach to these problems."