The Secret Intelligence Service Has Lost Its Way

Mystique is a powerful thing. It can assist you in projecting strength you don’t have. It can also weaken you, because the people you work for can’t sympathise if they don’t know what you do. Secrecy is not always sinister; nor is it particularly sexy. Like a magic trick, it's boring once you know how it's done. There’s a reason our motto is “Semper Occultus”: we don’t want people knowing how we do it, but we do want the people we protect to know why. A secret intelligence service shouldn’t even have a name at all.

Intelligence is a messy, dirty business, and at the heart of it lies a difficult paradox: we need people who would never betray their country able to persuade others to betray theirs. It can be a calculated chess game; bad players left on the board to set up the next move to strike the fatal blow, or refusing the celebration of victories to protect greater secrets of how we got what we did.

Mansfield-Cummings' original instructions were clear.

He should be a gentleman, and a capable one, absolutely honest with considerable tact and at the same time force of character… experience shows that any amount of brilliance or low cunning will not make up for lack of scrupulous personal honesty. In the long run, it is only the honest man who can defeat the ruffian.

Old Myths For New Days

The first thing to say is the name most people know the service by, “MI6” is a nickname. The formal name for the organisation is His Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service, or “SIS.” Most use this acronym, as this article will. There are, of course, many others: Six, the Circus, PO Box 850. Staff work at “The Office,” whereas, to more cynical veterans, it is the “executive branch” of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO). To those we speak to quietly, we are merely, “friends” or “birdwatchers.” The boss isn’t “M’, it’s “C,” and xe/xim/xir is on Twitter.

No, you can’t take your mobile with you at work and must check it into a locker, because radio devices are vulnerable to interception. The same is true of those clunky green windows on the Vauxhall building (“Legoland”, the “Trollop”, “Ceaușescu Towers”, “Babylon-on-Thames”), which are specially reinforced. Yes, there is a bar in the building, which goes down several floors. Yes, staff have covert car parks, special police-recognised cards/plates, and can’t just walk in off the Tube. The “culture” has been getting ever more absurd, like an adult playpark. We have a DEI policy, LGBT support, and trans flags. 

You should only tell your adult next-of-kin what you do, like your mum, dad, wife, or husband. To everyone else, you’re a civil servant who typically works in a boring position for the Foreign Office. Careless admissions to strangers will land you two years under the Official Secrets Act (OSA). You don’t “sign” it; you sign an affirmation certifying you’re aware you’re bound by it. The SIS guidance on this has also been getting worse and worse for years as the HRification continues. Are you sure you're OK with this? Would you like an emotional support teddy while you read the scary document?

No, there isn't a licence to kill. There was a carve out in the 1994 law, which publicised the organisation's existence, giving the minister powers to provide immunity for criminal behaviour overseas. Now it's been superseded by a full law which authorises criminal behaviour and criminalises foreigners spying in the UK. Yes, people spying on our own country wasn't actually illegal until four years ago.

SIS staff aren’t actually spies themselves, which can be confusing. We “manage” spies and “handle” them as information collectors. Nor do SIS carry out assassinations or military operations you see in the movies. If we need action heroes, we call UK Special Forces (UKSF) command. And when they need information on an environment they are going into, they call us. Yes, there’s a “Q” department: it’s stuffed with crossword-loving English nerds tinkering with ordinary objects to see if they have unknown features we can use.

The Language of Espionage

Spies talk in vague abstract terms with their own vernacular, which doesn't help anyone understand us. There are things and people we’re following and want information on (“targets”). Then there are things and people who can give the information we want (“sources’). Finally, there are the ways we get the information (“methods” or “craft”), and the tools we've built to extract it ("capabilities"). In the press, you’ll occasionally hear this jargon about not wanting to give away “sources and methods.” Translated, what it means is someone from another intelligence agency across the world is reading what’s been put out, and we don’t want to give them clues on what we’re currently doing or who is involved.

The spy capitals of the world are the conflict zones, military facilities, and diplomatic centres: the DC lobby mill, Wall Street and the United Nations in New York, Silicon Valley, the IAEA in Vienna, the Caribbean money laundering mill, and the City of London financial district. The hubs of activity people are very interested in.

Information comes from lots of different places in the “IC” (intelligence community). If it comes from a person you have a “relationship” with (whatever that means), it is “human”, or HUMINT. If it comes from an electronic device like radio waves or internet cabling (i.e. a “signal”), it is SIGINT or MASINT. If it’s pictures from satellites, it’s GEOINT or IMGINT. This lingo goes on and on. 

Hostile Environments Are Day One

Part one of understanding what has gone so terribly wrong at SIS is knowing what the job actually is. Although there are an endless maze of departments, the traditional layout was always relatively simple. Like any corporate organisation, there’s a fixed budget, a fixed workforce of 3000-ish people with limited time, and roles are divided. 

There are those who work on figuring out who or what we should look at (targeting); others who figure out how we should approach them (planning); people who read those ridiculous telegrams and put the big picture together (analysts), and those in the middle (desk jockeys). The “glue” in the middle who talk to the other agencies (liaisons) talk to the technical services types (Q). It’s like any other exhausting bureaucracy.

Case officers have always been posted – usually for three years or so – with dual job titles at British embassies (“stations”) across the world, historically as the “passport control officer.” This of course makes sense, because you’re processing visas with sensitive personal information and printing travel documents which allow people access through the UK border. All officers used to be declared on the Diplomatic List, as diplomats. The list of officers was publicly available for any foreign agency to print off for themselves. Not every station is the same: Moscow is much higher risk than Gaborone. 

And that’s your first problem: if you’re working in a foreign country, you have to go through the immigration process like anyone else, even with diplomatic status, which means a visa. The moment your application is underway, the host country knows everything about you. If you’re lucky, you’ll get full cover (your “legend” or “bona fides”) doing a boring geology project for a university working with an oil company, or a doctor assigned to a rural paediatric clinic. Being embassy staff isn’t as flexible as other cover work, such as a passing consultant for a bank, or a water purification specialist.

When you arrive in the country on your diplomatic passport, often having been publicly declared as an official diplomatic officer of HM Government (HMG), you are under surveillance. Your wife and children, who upset their ordinary lives to come with you, are too. This is where the tedium begins: your job is to discover people in that country who want to tell you things they shouldn’t, and your days are spent wasting hours of productive time commuting to meet them (“dry cleaning”) when you know six guys waiting across the street are following you wherever you go. Your mail is being intercepted; your kids have eyes on them as they leave the international school.

Many people just walk right through the front door. Which means a lot of time and background research working out if they’re up to no good (“dangling”), sent by someone who wants you expelled, or want to recruit you instead. But a good many of them come from referrals of long-term relationships other officers have already built. The documents they provide typically went home in the diplomatic bag, although now they are simply scanned electronically over the wire. Your job is to write it all up and send the report (“CX” for us, “FX” for the other two) back to base, on a specialised laptop adapted to have secret access in case they confiscate it at the border. These things are unreadable ASCII-text telegrams with endless acronyms like a doctor’s notes: a message from a junior officer at Paris station to the head of Mexico city station ends up FM PA1 or R/ME/C at CX PARIS to H/MEX status ROUTINE.

If they could, the Old Guard would still use telegrams, like the NHS still uses fax machines. It’s difficult to eavesdrop on a typewriter, although it’s been done. This is now an email job for millennials.

Finding The Right People

Despite all the marketing agency nonsense about there being no “spy type,” of course there is. You know it when you see it. Our work is clandestine, which means we need people who fit in and nobody will notice or suspect; the one person no-one is looking at, and no-one is looking for. Someone so utterly boring and bland you wouldn’t even notice they were there at all. We’re talking dry, tedious, routine, — imagine a commuter on a train with no features, or an office worker in a stock photo. 

This is part two of understanding where SIS has gone so wrong. If you spend any time being suckered in to the HR campaigns, you’ll notice the absurd emphasis on “emotional intelligence.” Dear God, Mary, Lord in Heaven. We now have an HR department who wants to know about your feelings and will answer a call from the headmaster to an 0207 number if your kid is playing up at school.

There are common sense traits anyone working in a confidential undercover role needs.

• Discretion: are you a blabbermouth who wants to impress people, or a drunk who sends confessional texts at 2am?
• Integrity: will you betray your country, given your job is to help others betray theirs?
• Perceptiveness: can you read people and intuit them?
• Physiognomy: do you stick out like a sore thumb?
• Maturity: are you a serious person, or do you just want a thrill?
• Self-control: are you easily provoked to lose your temper, and/or is someone going to photograph you in a motel with a woman you met at a bar?
• Intelligence: can you recognise patterns and anomalies?
• Gullibility: are you easily fooled?
• Conscientiousness: do you care about the small details?

Then of course, there’s the work itself.

• Languages: you’re going to a foreign country and need to be able to speak the dialect.
• Politics: you’re going to a foreign country where they might not have a Parliament.
• History: can you absorb a huge amount of background information, and/or understand the political context of where we send you?
• Mathematics: you’re going to be using communication which involves numbers.
• Specialisms: we might send you to pose as a geologist. 

The traditional method at SIS, if not borrowing from other organisations like UKSF or GCHQ, was always to use talent-spotters at redbrick universities, either senior staff or veteran professors who could quietly recognise these natural characteristics in exceptional graduates and refer them. Your history professor at Oxford or Cambridge would look for a quiet moment to enquire about your career plans, then gently suggest working for your country instead. During the fifties, these would often be those known to be involved in secretive clubs (dad was a freemason, etc.), or even underground gay networks because they were already living double lives under sodomy laws.

At that point, you’d be invited to a non-descrript building in St James for an initial screening interview with a person providing you a false name. A piece of paper to remind you of the OSA, a plastic folder explaining the role, and an application to do the civil service fast stream examinations. Imagine the sterility of a hospital corridor, but with old furniture.

Assuming you didn’t run screaming after that, it’s a six-month process of vetting which comes in two or three forms, renewable every seven years: developed vetting (DV), and enhanced positive vetting (EPV, now called EDV). In reality what this means is an SIS expert – usually a retired officer – goes around discretely background checking your life, family, and friends to look for any serious problems. And interviews with some exceptionally intrusive questions after you provide your bank statements.

During the Cold War, the USSR invested enormous effort in placing students in the service through decades of their lives. The vetting is simple common sense, and looks for:

• Debt: can you be bribed?
• Sexual proclivities: can you be blackmailed?
• Psychiatry: are you a nut?
• Family: do you have grievances?
• Integrity: have you betrayed people before?
• Ideology: are you a radical?
• Friends: see all of the above.
• Criminality: see all of the above.

Right or wrong, this process evolved like special forces selection out of the wisdom of previous generations. It's a process built out of common sense and discretion, not a Bond-esque hero's journey.

This is now overseen by a quango. Anyone can apply online, and you can make complaints to HR about your email job.

And there’s another reason you need the right person: the pay is crap. SIS staff are just civil servants who get a payslip from the FCO like anyone else, on the five main bands. B1/B2 junior (£25-35k); C1/EO trainee (£35-42k); C2/HEO officer (£42-55k); D1/G7 senior (£55-70k); D2/G6 head of section (£70-90k); SCS/Director (£100-200k).

School Is The Best Part

Everyone, even senior military transferees, need to go to training to learn classic techniques and the discipline of covert practices, which are known as “tradecraft.” There have always been a small collection of centres, but the main one was always a spell at the “Rookery” near Portsmouth (due to SIS’s pre-WWI roots surveilling the German navy), with occasional spells in a boring building in residential Westminster, Chicksands army base, and Hanslope Park near Milton Keynes.

There’s nothing really interesting about these months, as there isn’t when starting university and making new friends. The business of SIS is communicating secretly with other people when interested opponents are trying to catch you at it, so the goal of your entry course indoctrination is to embed the discipline and methodology of the 11th Commandment: not getting caught.

These things are life-saving tools rather than fun gadgets for movies. One of the first invisible inks, briefly used by the SOE in World War II, was semen. Yes, they really had to shake one out to write a message.

Part of the tests you undergo are being released “into the wild” at nearby marinas, pubs, train stations, golf courses, and shopping centres to extract personal information from strangers, like their DVLA number, mother’s maiden name, debit card number, and so on. As time goes on, the tasks get harder and counter-intelligence is deployed against you by police officers and older graduates.

Despite the glamorous torture porn of “The Farm” in CIA movies, Rookery time is about boring human things for the day-to-day job:

• How SIS works and its history
• Preparing detailed cover stories
• Recognising other officers with covert signals
• Officer equipment
• Memorisation techniques
• Recruitment processes and background checking
• Leaving messages for your informants
• Covert messaging back home
• Collecting information from informants without being in the same place at the same time as them while the counter-intel are watching with cameras
• Emergency protocols (embassy invasion, basic firearms, etc)

But you might meet your husband or wife. Officers tend to marry each other, and end up with the worst divorce rate in the world. 

Walking Through An Example Operation

The third part in understanding SIS work is learning how things unfold. SIS is a civil service department under the Foreign Office, and is accountable to Parliament under the ISA 1994. What that means is ministers set the priorities – what the government wants to know – , and our “product” we return for them is the information we obtain to help them in making political decisions.

A minister might want to know:

• How much enriched uranium a country has stockpiled;
• How many British citizens have arrived in a country to join ISIS;
• How a country is bypassing international money controls or blacklists;
• How much another country knows about what we’re up to;
• Where a competitor is intending to overtake or usurp our country’s plans;
• Who is smuggling things into the country for an attack.

The job of SIS is to obtain this information quietly, and despite the Americans having ten bazlllion dollars to build entire satellite networks covering a weird corner of Africa, we are the best in the world at what we do because we specialise in human networks. SIS excels at relationships, and understanding the people behind the problems. Our empire commonwealth history provides the backdrop and heritage where much of this clandestine activity goes on. For example, shell companies registered anonymously (hah!) within British Overseas Territories in the Caribbean are often the first place to route money through. 

We don’t jaunt around the world assassinating people, assaulting buildings after car chases, or flashing cards in swanky hotel bars. Our business is human information.

The reason for pointing this out is there is a common misunderstanding here: handling spies is not about “burning” people and “using” them manipulatively. It can take years upon years to gain a successful approach or entry to a high-priority target, and when you’re in, you want to secure it for twenty years - not ten days. For a massive investment, you want high reward: a constant stream of excellent, detailed information on a regular basis.

The way you get that kind of information isn’t by manipulating people, lying to them, abusing them, or treating them like pawns.

Suppose the minister, in our first example, wants to know how much uranium is being held in North Korea. Perhaps because the FCO wants to use the information to gain favour with a nearby country they are negotiating with, and offer it for better concessions on a deal. The first point of contact for a desk officer after they have researched their archive data is the embassy station in Seoul, who will have a good layout of the land.

Targeting at Vauxhall identity a nuclear scientist who could provide the information, and believe if the conditions were right, he’d be tempted to defect for a better life given the opportunity. He has a wife and two children. 

An SIS officer flies to Seoul under a persuasive cover and passport from HMPO, knowing he or she will stick out. A little Korean language is going to be useful; as will getting quickly familiar with the customs and geography (hence languages and politics at university). Their job, when they arrive on the ground, is to fit in seamlessly and begin to devise ways, with their support team in London, of how to approach this scientist and access the information. In our example, he will work for a friendly bank as a senior executive, passing by for six months as an inter-company transferee (which officer came out of Oxon with that accounting degree, again?). Preferably with his wife or girlfriend. 

Our scientist is occasionally allowed to cross the border (this is obviously the DPRK so it isn’t realistic, but not the point). Once the officer has identified his daily patterns and position in the hierarchy, his operational team must devise the optimal way to approach him, and the best time. Seoul station believes he works under coercion: you work for the government making nuclear weapons whether you like it or not, or we kill your family.

Do we bug him? Do we steal his briefcase? Do we intimidate him?

Where the SIS recruitment comes in here is the badly-named idea of “emotional intelligence.” which is really just perceptiveness. Understanding this man is a hostage: his motivations aren’t about getting rich, overthrowing the government, or resentment. We can get more out of him by befriending and helping him. Genuine friendship gives us access to what we need. Every person in every operation is different, as are their circumstances. Intelligence is not a sweeping blanket thing: it is specific and targeted forensically according to what it is we want to know.

Desk world and planning at HQ both suggest we exfiltrate him and his family, in exchange for him bringing all the documents he has with him, including all those we ask for. Sanctuary and safety is what motivates this man.

But there’s a problem: being a high-profile person to the regime in Pyongyang, he is followed by counter-intelligence (“nursemaids”) everywhere he goes, twenty-four hours a day. The SIS officer must find ways to meet with him covertly to have all these conversations, and relay messages between himself and the scientist to explain what the plan is. We need to know what he has access to, how and when he can access it, what gadgetry we can give him to help him get more, and we need to do it all while dodging his invisible babysitters. 

Suppose we concoct an elaborate reason for him to visit Seoul or another large city, and approach him discretely in his hotel. Perhaps we give his assistant a message, or pay off one of his bodyguards. It’s crucial to know what to say, and not to say it in a room with 3mm microphones drilled into the walls ahead of time. We’ll need access to the hotel and its owner, and assistance from technical services.

Deeper and deeper the onion unravels.

Two years later, when our scientist finally trusts us, his bank account has sixteen deposits, and his family feel safe to leave without their extended relatives being executed or sent to a labour camp, things get complicated. It may be liaison needs to speak to the MOD because the safest way is to bring an SBS team on a tactical navy submarine twenty miles off the coast at four am to sweep the whole family from a beach.

This all pales in comparison to what happens if an officer is discovered on active operations in a hostile area. Not only will he be executed after days of torture, so will his wife and children. Then his sources and everyone he was in contact with. If he’s lucky, he’ll simply be diplomatically expelled with 48 hours to leave the country.

Diverse Hiring vs Diversity Quotas

You know what would really have helped in the previous scenario? That’s right, an officer who could pass for Korean. SIS has a genuine need for diverse hiring in the field, especially when it comes to foreign operations. As the army is measured by its lethality, we are measured by our effectiveness and capabilities. We can only do what we do if we are able to deploy into situations well enough not to be noticed or interrupted.

If we need to look at Saudi Arabia, we need people who look and speak Arabic on their way to prayers at mosque. If we need to understand what levels of industrial espionage the Chinese are up to in San Francisco, we need people who can fit into Silicon Valley. If something’s off in West Africa, it’s helpful if an officer is visiting family in Ghana.

However, diverse hiring for operational purposes is not the same as diversity-mandated hiring. Which is where we get to another aspect of deteriorating problems at Vauxhall: the need to placate the rest of the civil service in its HRification of the planet.

Ironically, the first chiefs of SIS despised university recruitment, and were strongly biased towards military and police officers. They saw academia as intellectually elite, and a hotbed of communist infiltration. They were ruthless, cold, and highly effective men leading an imperfect organisation with limited funds.

SIS recruitment has always been on the basis of exceptional ability and field effectiveness. We simply cannot operate with mediocre people because the constraints are too tough. 

C himself – the original – is affectionately remembered as an eccentric English lunatic whose recruitment practices weren't exactly HR-friendly by today's avocado toast email job standards:

Cumming is remembered for his gold-rimmed monocle and eye for the ladies. He also loved gadgets, codes, practical jokes and was brimming with stories. Apparently, he like to take children for rides in his personal tank. He had a serious side, however, When his Rolls-Royce crashed in France in 1914, he reportedly had to amputate his own leg to help his son. Afterward, Cumming tested potential recruits by stabbing his wooden leg through his trousers with a paper-knife. If the applicant winced, C said: "Well, I'm afraid you won't do."

C wouldn't have entertained HR. He would have shot them. Or run them over in his personal tank.

Women have been core to intelligence from day one, not only for their sexuality, but because they are more socially sensitive and are natural intelligence gatherers. Homosexuals have been traditionally over-represented in intelligence due to their need for discretion in their activities (despite their susceptibility to blackmail). There's no reason whatsoever someone in a wheelchair can't design specialist microphones or circuit boards in technical services.

These individuals represent a perceptive class in society. We have no need for useless pseudoscience like "emotional intelligence" fielded by the Cabinet Office and Capita's HR team.

There is a reason our hiring is so sensitive. One doesn't have to understand much about the nation's intelligence capabilities before one runs into its worst failure, the Cambridge Five, discovered by US cable intercepts. It's a long story, but the head of the anti-Soviet division, Kim Philby, was a Soviet spy and Britain's worst traitor. That's correct: the head of section for Russia, during the Cold War, was a communist spy.

The lesson we continue to fail to learn: political people from political environments are a serious internal risk. Every one of these political movements and civil service projects are partisan and politically-influenced by Soviet history, and they all incubate in universities. They may produce graduates with the knowledge we need, but it depends on what they graduate in – radicalism may well be their thesis.

Then, there's China. And Iran. Countries which are exceptionally hostile to racial minorities, women, homosexuals, and every quota category HR wants to chase for imaginary "equity." The more we follow these lists and "policies," the less effective we become in the most important theatres in the world today. Exactly what role is a gay black sociology graduate going to play in the Tehran embassy, other than a flashing beacon for their morality police to expel?

Scope Creep: Becoming The NHS

SIS was born as a military organisation in the Great War. It earned its infamous nickname during the Second World War. Its exploits were dramatised most infamously about the Cold War. Our role has always been associated with military activity and tactical military goals.

Over time, each one of the agencies has become more specialised and that's to be welcomed. If it has anything to do with wires, mathematics, or technology, it's handled by the crossword boffins at GCHQ or Hanslope Park. If it's to do with domestic problems or internal extremism, it is handled by the Security Service and counter-terrorism. If it's military, defence intelligence are available. For nuclear, there's AWE. Biological and chemical weapons are Porton Down's business.

Neither SIS or the Security Service have powers of arrest. We are not law enforcement. Our sister agency is tasked with internal security (wiretapping, molehunting, etc.), whereas we operate outside the country looking at forward threats. These things cross over: chemicals diverted overseas via shell companies might be for smuggling into the UK for an attack which counter-terrorism need to respond to. Our role is to respond to requests from ministers to obtain information.

Which leaves a blaring question: what exactly is it SIS now do, without a Cold War to fight? And do we really have to maintain this absurd policy about our "successes being private and failures being public" forever, when it provides a long stream of failures for critics to cite? Do we really need a ridiculous Lego building? Does the boss really need to be on Twitter or giving TED talks about his sadness over Brexit?

Do we really need quangoes taking over our most sensitive machinery?

After the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, there were war criminals to find in the Balkans and Asian countries developing nuclear weapons. Then it switched to Afghan terrorist camps after 9/11, mutating into games played through the Libyan and Syrian civil wars. Apparently we're now into policing drug trafficking networks, and soon to be human trafficking. All this while China is building a massive spy base in the middle of London it calls an "embassy." SIS has become a welfare employer like the NHS, functioning as a support unit for the American project.

This has gone so far we're now resorting to HR programmes and training courses for the world's worst regimes. Presumably to explain the ethics of human rights while they are torturing dissidents or copying out the names of hundreds of officers leaked by the MOD. Maybe it has something to with Russian bots and Brexit, who knows.

But we have a female chief. Because she's female, and it's a first. It's a powerful symbol of social justice in a tough man's world. Never mind the massive Chinese spy base, the criminal behaviour being authorised, the officers being caught by farm guards,or Russians smuggling chemical weapons across the border.