Secret Intelligence Service (MI-6) Officer | Charles Beaumont | Ep. 356 - The Team House

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Special Operations Cobert Sbiona The Team House with your hosts
Jack Murphy and David Park.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hey, everyone, this is episode three hundred and fifty six
of The Team House. I'm Jack here with Dave and
our guest on tonight's show is Charles Beaumont. You will
notice that his identity is concealed. Charles is not his
real name. That's not just because this gentleman is trying
to be mysterious. It has to do with the laws,
the British laws around former and current intelligence officials. And

(00:43):
Charles is a former member of the Secret Intelligence Service
better known to the public as I six, served as
a British intelligence officer, went through the War on Terra
Era with time.

Speaker 3 (00:56):
Spent in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
And now he does some consulting and you write spy
novels and we're really excited to have them on the show.
This is the first time we've had a British intelligence
official or former official on the show.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
Thank you for joining us, Charles.

Speaker 4 (01:11):
Well, thank you for having me. It's my pleasure.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
Well, before we really jump into it, maybe like could
I ask you to expand a little bit on that,
Like the the notion of you know, in the United States,
when a CIA officer comes out of the service and retires,
their cover gets rolled back oftentimes and they can appear publicly,
as many have on this show. What are the what
are the British laws like these restrictions that really kind

(01:36):
of prevent you guys from being like public.

Speaker 5 (01:39):
Yeah, well, it's it's a it's a good question, because
you're right. You know, we're quite used to seeing former
CIA officers. You know, you see their faces, you hear
their names, you hear about some details of their careers,
maybe not operational details, but certainly a bit of detail.

Speaker 4 (01:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:56):
In the UK, the rules are very different for people
who served in intelligence agencies. The identities and therefore, you know,
checkable things such as your face remain things that are
not to be disclosed unless you are given specific authorization to.

Speaker 4 (02:14):
Do so, and that would be very unusual.

Speaker 5 (02:16):
So the one exception, ordinarily is the chief, which is
what we call our director, that the head of the
secret Intelligence Service, which is a publicly named and identified person,
although not much else is known about them.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
Another interesting thing that I just learned personally last week
was that the term I six is really only used
in the movies and the spy novels that everyone refers
to it either SIS or simply as Tame's House.

Speaker 4 (02:45):
Is that correct, Yeah, well so M I six. Yes,
it's definitely.

Speaker 5 (02:50):
That's a sort of an unofficial nickname for the for
the service. And yeah, SIS is the formal name which
stands for the Secret Intelligence Service, and that was a
it's an organization that was founded if I'm not mistaken
in nineteen oh twelve, I think as nineteen twelve, so

(03:11):
you know, a good time ago.

Speaker 4 (03:12):
And it is it is.

Speaker 5 (03:16):
This six name is a nickname that appeared I believe
during World War Two when there were different the M
and the I military intelligence.

Speaker 4 (03:24):
There were different sort of bureaus of military intelligence.

Speaker 5 (03:27):
But it's kind of ironic because six is a civilian organization,
just of course as the CIA is, but I would
argue it's kind of more civilians.

Speaker 4 (03:36):
It has a less obvious connection with the military world.

Speaker 3 (03:41):
So let's talk a little bit about you.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
You tell us a little bit about yourself, about how
you grew up and how that sort of like took
you towards service with the government.

Speaker 4 (03:52):
Yeah, well, thank you.

Speaker 5 (03:54):
I mean in a way that my childhood sort of
wouldn't have taken me there at all. I grew up
in a in a kind of nice middle class environment
in the south of England, which for those familiar with England,
that's kind of my accent. I didn't have any family
connections to people really in well, certainly in this line

(04:14):
of work. But actually I would say in the more
general if we were going to talk about kind of
military service or or public service, foreign service, that kind
of thing, I don't I didn't really have people I
knew well from that that world. But I was somebody
as a child, I was very curious about the world,
you know. I read a lot of books about kind
of foreign adventures.

Speaker 4 (04:36):
I was.

Speaker 5 (04:36):
I was interested in explorers and people who would travel
to remote places. And I guess, I guess for me
that there was this idea that there was a kind
of adventure that was there somehow that you know, somehow.

Speaker 4 (04:51):
My life might lead in that direction.

Speaker 5 (04:55):
But again that the way that the s I recruits
and the way that you join the organization when I.

Speaker 4 (05:03):
Did, it's different now, but when I did, there was.

Speaker 5 (05:05):
No way in you know, you you might be invited
to apply, but but it was really so it was
a series of unexpected you know, pathways that led me
to it really, but.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
Before you get there, you know, what I read about
you was, you know, allegedly you studied history at Oxford.

Speaker 5 (05:24):
Yes, that is that is true, and yeah, so Oxford
is obviously, you know, is one of the kind of
ancient universities of the UK and it has it has
a big sort of hold on British culture, I would say,
So it's obviously, you know, it's a it's a it's
I guess it's like an Ivy League or something like that.
But it's got this real hold on books and movies

(05:48):
and TV shows and also spy stories. So there's this
sort of sense that in the British system that you
kind of expect the British spies to have either have
gone to Oxford or Cambridge University, and those are the
two kind of ancient universities of the country. Now, of course,
like all these things, it's a little bit cliched. You know,

(06:11):
clearly there are plenty of great people who've gone through
other schools and ended up in sis, but certainly Oxford
I think, I mean, for example, I think almost every
single Prime Minister of Britain, even to this date attended
Oxford University, so it has this kind of weird hold
on the country.

Speaker 4 (06:29):
And that's true also for the intelligence services.

Speaker 5 (06:33):
And in the era that I was involved, these services
would recruit by having a network of what they call
talent spotters, who would identify young people, you know, undergraduates
or whatever, who they thought might have capability, might show
some promise, and then those people would be invited to

(06:54):
apply through indirect means. And so, as I say you,
you would never have set out thinking that this is
what I want to do and how do I get there?

Speaker 4 (07:03):
You know, it was something that happened to you.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
Is that how you got recruited, because it sounds like
you could have been potentially, you know, in academic or
something of that nature.

Speaker 5 (07:13):
Yeah, And in fact that was what kind of I
think Originally I thought I might do that.

Speaker 4 (07:17):
I was.

Speaker 5 (07:18):
I was a history major, as you've said, and I
was I was very interested in that, and I was
thinking about staying on doing post grad work, maybe you know,
doctorate or postdoc all that stuff. And then I got
I got a strange letter one day, and I mean
it really it's it sounds like something from a book
or a movie.

Speaker 4 (07:36):
But that's how it would work.

Speaker 5 (07:37):
Then you'd get a letter from it didn't even say
it was from a government agency or anything. It would
just say that there are certain positions which exist something
like outside the normal framework of government recruitment or something.
And you were invited to and of course it's a
pre Internet era, no email or anything like that. You're
invited to respond by writing and sending a resume.

Speaker 4 (08:03):
And I at the time, I thought, well, maybe this
is just a joke.

Speaker 5 (08:06):
You know, maybe some some mates of mine are just
trying to wind me up, and you know, and and
and send a kind of joke letter, because there was
always this rumor, there was a rumor on campus, you know,
oh there's one or two people in their recruiting. But
to be honest, I thought the rumor was a joke,
and until I got that letter, I didn't believe in it.

Speaker 2 (08:24):
It's so the letter impors you to show up at
like a recruitment pitch.

Speaker 3 (08:28):
I take it.

Speaker 5 (08:30):
But basically, yeah, it effectively, once you've received this letter,
you eventually you get invited to London to a to
a grand anonymous building in central London, quite near Buckingham Palace.

Speaker 4 (08:43):
And again there's no marking there's no you know.

Speaker 5 (08:45):
And and up until that point, I think a lot
of people think this whole thing is some kind of
elaborate hopes. And then you go through the door and
you realize this is real, you know, And there was
a guard and it was it was not the main building.
So the main office of the Secret Intelligence Service, as
is well known from the Bond movies, is a kind

(09:06):
of quite iconic building on the River Thames in an
area called Vauxhall. This is in another part of the
of London, as I mentioned, near Buckham Palace, a very
kind of smart district of town. And until that moment,
you don't know what you're doing, and until the moment
that you're you're sort of summoned into the meeting with
the recruiter. I mean, obviously at that point I knew

(09:30):
it was some kind of government entity, but I.

Speaker 4 (09:32):
Really didn't have an understanding of what it was.

Speaker 5 (09:34):
And of course, as you said right at the outset, Jack,
you know, most people don't know what the Secret Intelligence
Service is.

Speaker 4 (09:40):
People have heard of m I six.

Speaker 5 (09:42):
So even when the guy said to me, well, this
is the Secret Intelligence Service, I wasn't one hundred percent
sure I knew what organization he was talking about.

Speaker 2 (09:51):
And what was that like when you got into the meeting?
I mean, how do they entice you to sign up?

Speaker 4 (09:58):
Yeah, I mean, it's it.

Speaker 5 (10:01):
It was a very memorable experience because in a way,
as as you'll be aware, and I'm sure a lot
of people watching this would be aware, you know that
we're talking about an agency which is a human intelligence agency,
So it's about recruiting and running sources. And people who
are good at that, of course, are people who have
a certain character, a certain persuasiveness, a perhaps a certain charm,

(10:24):
And in a way that's what you You know you're
being recruited in a way a bit like you're you're
going to be a source for the organization. Of course,
not you're going to be a full employee, but in
that sense that you're being drawn in and as a
mixture of flattery, you know that you're being told that
you're there because you've been identified to have special qualities
or have certain skills or attributes. But ultimately, I think,

(10:51):
as I mentioned, you know that for a young man
in his early twenties who had had a sort of
a first for adventure but not really any any particular
means of pursuing it. You know, I just thought, well,
this is this is incredible. You know, you'd be mad
not to do this job. You know, I could be
sitting in Oxford studying medieval history for ten years, or

(11:12):
I could be signing up for this, And for me,
it wasn't a hard sell at all.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
And once you accept was the security checks a pretty
long drawn out process. I hear people who apply for
the CIA sometimes spend years in this sort of like
state of limbo.

Speaker 5 (11:31):
Yeah, so I don't think it's quite as I've heard
those stories with the CIA, but yeah, literally you might
need to get another job while you're trying to do this.
It's a little bit quicker, But basically there's a there's
a series of recruitment. You know, that initial meeting is
that it is more of a kind of exploratory conversation.
There's a series of recruitment you can imagine, there's tests,
written tests and other tests and then eventually a yes,

(11:54):
quite intrusive security process. One thing that the UK services
really don't do very often and certainly don't do with
prospective employees is they don't tend to use polygraphs, and
that's quite surprising, I think on the American side, because
I know that you guys do quite a lot of that.

(12:16):
So the security will be about people interviewing members of
your family or acquaintances of yours and that kind of thing.
And obviously, I mean, my own background is very boring. Basically,
I have, you know, my ancestors all seem to be English,
and there's not much to discover. I guess for people
who have a more diverse background than it might.

Speaker 4 (12:37):
Take a bit longer to get through all that.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
So you decided to take the plunge. Before we get
into like your training and what you went through, let's
talk a minute about the history of the Secret Intelligence Service,
which I believe you said goes back to nineteen two.

Speaker 4 (12:55):
Yeah, I did. It's the beginning of the twentieth century.

Speaker 5 (12:58):
And basically this it all begins at a time when
you have the British Empire, of course, as a as
a huge global superpower, and it's its kind of main
global antagonist is is Germany, which of course was rapidly

(13:20):
catching up, building its navy, expanding its its military and
so on, and and you know, to give the very
crude history, and of course I'm sure most people are
well aware of this. You know, Germany kind of came
late to the imperial game, and there was that kind
of resentment and and and there was I think that
there was there was this idea in Britain that that

(13:40):
Germany was the newly united country of Germany, was was
a threat to Britain's naval supremacy. And so the the
Secret Intelligence Service was established as as an organization whose
job was to spy overseas, to collect intelligence overseas, and
as I say, at the beginning very much focused on

(14:01):
the German threat. But because these are not the first
spies that have existed in our history. At the time
of the first Queen Elizabeth, so we're talking you know,
in the fifteen hundreds, there was there was a guy
called Francis Walsingham who ran what was a sophisticated intelligence
service and they were sending agents overseas into France and
so on at that time. So I guess that there's

(14:23):
a long history of spying in a country.

Speaker 4 (14:25):
You know, written has a lot of history.

Speaker 5 (14:28):
But the formal organization was founded, I just checked his
nineteen oh nine is that first foundation. So just in
the run up to World War One and it's the
same organization to this day. Obviously changed massively over time,
but the same structure.

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Speaker 2 (17:16):
And then let's talk a little bit about after you
put in your application get accepted. What is sort of
the training process like for a SIS officer.

Speaker 5 (17:26):
Yeah, so, as I mentioned, you know, it's a human
organization analogous to the CIA, distinct from you know, the
NSA obviously, which which the equivalent in the UK would
be g c h Q for the on the sing
in side. As a human organization, the focus is on

(17:46):
certainly amongst the sort of intelligence officer case handlers. It's
about recruiting and running human intelligence sources. So there is
there is a training induction which which is all about
those skills. Now, over time, of course, these these training

(18:09):
programs change change, you know.

Speaker 4 (18:11):
Over history.

Speaker 5 (18:12):
But but I think that the basic ideas about agent motivation,
about you know what, what are the factors that cause
people to be willing to be recruited to to spy
for another country, to betray their country for our country.
You know, these are these are things that are in
some sense is universal. You know, the idea of betrayal,

(18:34):
of espionage, of all these things, we can find it
in the Bible, you know, we can find it in
throughout human history. But but equally, you know, these are
any sort of complex operations to to to organize and
to run successfully. So there's a lot of emphasis on
on I guess, the dynamics of of agent relationships. And
when we talk about agents, I'm talking about sources obviously,

(18:56):
I'm not.

Speaker 4 (18:56):
Talking about, uh, the the officers of the.

Speaker 5 (19:00):
This there's a lot of a lot of a lot
of work clearly on security, and I guess if you're
coming new to that world, the the issues of security
and protective security, the idea of need to know of
security of operations, that's all very new if you're coming
fresh from you know, university or whatever. And then there's
there is a little bit in the training which is

(19:23):
about that kind of overlap with the world of special
operations of covert operations, technical operations, those kinds of things.
I would say in general that the balance of the
British services is much more heavily towards the human human
intelligence sources, whereas clearly you know, the CIA is a

(19:43):
much bigger organization. It has its covert action, it has
its paramilitary that sort of thing is it doesn't exist
really as an equivalent in the UK systems.

Speaker 3 (19:54):
You guys have the says to do all that. Right, Well,
that's right.

Speaker 5 (19:57):
We've we've got we've got, as you know very well,
a very very well established special forces community and in
a way they fulfill that function and it hasn't been
seen necessary to sort of try and replicate it within
within the civilian intelligence agencies.

Speaker 8 (20:13):
So out of curiosity, are you familiar with our Title
ten and Title fifty authorities?

Speaker 4 (20:20):
I'm not. You must enlightened me. I might know when
you start telling me, they might ring bells.

Speaker 8 (20:24):
So basically, just the idea of the split between intelligence
operations and military operations, and how you know, like for
the CIA to sort of have some of those paramilitary
capabilities for things that don't fall under like the military authorities,

(20:48):
but you know, for but but may take that kind
of action. Do you know if you guys have a
similar I know you don't have like a paramilitary, but
do you have authorities set out like that? Or is
your military more like the sas or whatever. Are they
more free to conduct, say covert or clandestine operations that

(21:09):
you know, like maybe our military.

Speaker 5 (21:13):
Wouldn't be Yeah, I think actually there might be a
bit more flexibility. And I think it's partly because obviously
you guys have a constitution and then the way that
is interpreted is the sort of basis of how the
country functions, or at least that's my best understanding of it,
whereas Britain famously does not have a written constitution. So

(21:34):
there's this kind of flexibility that exists for the government.
Typically for both covert operations and espionage operations, there is
effectively what we would call a submission process, so that
some government minister on obviously, depending on how the level
of risk, it might be the Prime Minister, or it
might be the Foreign Secretary who superintends the intelligence services,

(21:59):
we'll have signed off on an operational, you know, a
direction effectively. So I guess, you know, the case study
might be the war in Ukraine. You know that the
Prime Minister has almost certainly signed off because of the
importance of that on the role that might be played
by special forces or by intelligence services that in that context.

(22:20):
And then and then that obviously provides that the legal
framework in which in which these operations are carried out
very interesting.

Speaker 2 (22:28):
One of the things this sort of does relate to
your training, I think, but also just larger culturally within
the sis, do you think the Brits kind of have
a leg up on this whole human intelligence thing because
of this long history and intelligence gathering and because of
this history of colonialism, and I know a lot of

(22:50):
bad things happen because of that, but nonetheless that experience exists, right, Yeah.

Speaker 5 (22:55):
It's a great question, I think, I think it can
be valuable. So one thing is that the points of
connection for Britain with other countries are so numerous, partly
because of the colonial history. So you know, obviously we
can talk about India or Sub Saharan Africa, or there
are many many countries that have a historic link to Britain.

(23:16):
And as you rightly identify, Jack, that's not always a
positive story, but it often brings with it positivity.

Speaker 4 (23:22):
Whether it's university links.

Speaker 5 (23:24):
You know, people will come to study at London, Oxford, Cambridge, whatever,
things like that, sporting links, cultural you know the countries
that play cricket, you know that those that's a list
of countries is very specific and all in some way
linked to Britain. So you have those things that if
when we what is the task of a human intelligence recruitment,

(23:44):
it is to find points of connection with someone and
and and sort of you know, build a relationship where
you which crosses a national divide and you convince someone
of the validity of of what your objective is.

Speaker 4 (24:00):
So I think it can be helpful.

Speaker 5 (24:02):
I think it's also there's a possibility that there's a
slightly British, I would say, a British sort of disease
of thinking that we were better at everything because we
might have done it five hundred years ago, and of
course the world keeps moving forwards, and as a kind
of British arrogance that goes with that, It doesn't you know,
the fact that we had spies in fifteen hundred doesn't

(24:24):
mean that our spies now are necessarily better.

Speaker 4 (24:26):
You know, we always have to keep adapting.

Speaker 5 (24:27):
So I think I think that those are perhaps the
two tensions that exist in our culture.

Speaker 2 (24:33):
And about how long did the training process last before
you were qualified to do your job, So.

Speaker 4 (24:40):
It's basically about half a year.

Speaker 5 (24:42):
And I think it's I think it's analogous to I
know about the CIA have the famous farm and you know,
and there are similarities to that, so you know, lots
of sort of role playing and exercises and simulations that
feel very real, particularly again if if you're a young
person with no experien of that that world, it can

(25:03):
feel very real indeed.

Speaker 4 (25:05):
And then at the end of that typically people.

Speaker 5 (25:07):
Would would start off working in in the UK, you know,
in London in some kind of probably more of a
desk based role, and of course there's always that tension
that you you join thinking you're going to travel the
world and have these big adventures and and the first
bit of your career you're you're running a desk somewhere
and you're not earning very much money, and you probably

(25:27):
have buddies who went to Oxford University are now is
becoming bankers and lawyers and you know, making big money
and you're thinking what am I doing? But then you know,
things change over time and and at a certain point,
people are likely to go overseas almost always in the
context of an embassy, you know, where they have a
diplomatic cover role. And then of course your your your

(25:48):
your career takes a really different pathway.

Speaker 2 (25:51):
So you can confirm then that Ian Fleming was not
being entirely truthful about the life of an intelligence officer.

Speaker 5 (25:59):
Well, certainly, you know, the James Bond lifestyle, the Aston Martin,
you know that the gambling or all the other stuff.
It certainly was not sustainable on the salary that I
was turning.

Speaker 4 (26:12):
You know, I was taking the bus.

Speaker 5 (26:14):
To work and you know, living in an unnglamorous part
of town.

Speaker 4 (26:19):
So there we go.

Speaker 2 (26:20):
So one of the things you had mentioned to me
before we started the interview was being a part of
the generation that joins the intelligence service in the nineteen
nineties sort of an unprecedented era of peace in many ways,
and then that transition into the Global War on Terror.
Could you tell us a little bit about that from
your perspective.

Speaker 5 (26:40):
Yeah, sure, and I think it was it was, you know,
the transformational event basically of my professional life, because as
you said, there, you know, you have the nineteen nineties,
the Cold wars ended the wester as one, and we
can argue about that, but you know, basically that's what happened.

Speaker 4 (26:56):
Remember that the First Gulf War.

Speaker 5 (26:58):
Again, this kind of this reminder of the power of
America and its allies.

Speaker 4 (27:04):
Everything is hunky dory.

Speaker 5 (27:05):
And in fact, there was even debates I don't know
if this happened in the US, but there were certainly
debates in the YUK about whether we even needed an
intelligence service. You know, what's what's the point of it.
We don't have enemies now, we've we've it's the end
of history. Do you remember that history had ended?

Speaker 4 (27:19):
We had won? And then nine to eleven happened.

Speaker 5 (27:22):
Obviously terrible, terrible event targeting targeting America, of course, but
but by definition, any any country that allied with America,
that had a vision of liberal democracy, of a of
a you know, secular freedoms, freedom of religion, all those
things just went out of the window overnight, and all
of a sudden, the need for intelligence agencies became very clear.

(27:45):
But of course the role being played, and I'm sure
this was similar in the CIA that of course, yes,
SIS had a counter terrorism team. Yes, it wasn't that,
it was it was an unknown capacity, but it was
it was not the main effort, you know, it was
not the thing that was seen as the biggest, the
biggest activity for an intelligence agency. So going very quickly

(28:07):
from an organization that post Cold Wars, slightly seeking to
define its role, maybe dabbling in sort of organized crime,
counter narcotics.

Speaker 4 (28:17):
There was obviously there were wars in the Balkans.

Speaker 5 (28:19):
It's not you know, the nineties were not without conflict,
but these were kind of small, containable wars and then
suddenly overnight transitioning to an extraordinary series of events that
the tragedy of nine to eleven.

Speaker 4 (28:31):
But then the response.

Speaker 5 (28:34):
And of course SIS was very quickly involved with you
guys in Afghanistan in that field of conflict and then
subsequently in the war in Iraq as well.

Speaker 3 (28:47):
And could you.

Speaker 2 (28:48):
Talk a little bit about your personal experience of like
where you were in the Secret Intelligence Service, Like I imagine,
you know, you're in sub basement five working on a
computer and then the war happens in your life changed.

Speaker 3 (29:00):
But I mean, what what was it like really for you? Yeah?

Speaker 5 (29:03):
I mean it was, it was, it was really, it was.
It was dramatic. I was I was on an overseas posting.
I probably can't say where I was, but let's just
say I was. I was not near New York or Washington,
d c uh and and it was it was very disorientating,
as you can imagine. And then very quickly it was
clear that that this world was changing rapidly and there

(29:25):
were there was a call for recruits, uh, you know,
people who were able to go directly to Afghanistan. I
wasn't in that in that particular cohort, but you know
other people who would who quite quickly transition to serve
in the Middle East, and that's something that I ended
up doing. So so you you quite quickly move from

(29:45):
a situation where you're you're you're working on on sort
of classic political intelligence targeting or maybe running sources in
that in that framework, and then const rorism, which again
it was an area I hadn't worked in, but it
was very clearly you know, this was a priority.

Speaker 4 (30:05):
And of course in those.

Speaker 5 (30:05):
Early days after nine to eleven, we really didn't know.
People didn't know where bin Laden was, people didn't know
whether there'll be a series of copycat attacks, whether this
was the start of a whole, you know, range of
massive attacks on the nature of nine to eleven, and

(30:26):
you know that there there was an amazing amount of
people having to make things up as they went.

Speaker 4 (30:32):
Along in those early phases. And I remember.

Speaker 5 (30:36):
That sense of disorientation, but I admit also, you know,
excitement and feeling well, actually I wanted to serve my country,
and up until now, I wasn't sure what I was
doing was really mattered that much. You know, not that
it was pointless, but it just didn't didn't necessarily feel.

Speaker 4 (30:52):
Like it was really so important.

Speaker 5 (30:54):
Now we're seeing the feeling I had in you know,
September two thousand and one was now understand why it matters,
you know, why it might be doing this stuff?

Speaker 8 (31:03):
Did how how did the sis deal with you know,
going from like the CIA strategic level intelligence, right embassies, parties,
uh universities, you know, looking for people with access to
the things you want, you know, and you might be
in uh, you know, countries where maybe the foreign service

(31:24):
or there's a criminal element or a hostel or whatever.
But then you go to this very narrow, very limited
environment where you're.

Speaker 4 (31:32):
Inside a base.

Speaker 8 (31:34):
You know, even going out is risky, and and it's
like it's you're you're not just going to go spot,
assess and recruit some guy at a party. Now, so like,
how how does how did the SIS like manage that
kind of growth?

Speaker 4 (31:51):
Yeah, it was a very challenging transition. You're absolutely right.

Speaker 5 (31:53):
And the classic as you say, the classic sort of
Cold War style intel. You know, you're at the embassy
cocktail function and you sidle up to the Russian you know,
attache or whatever.

Speaker 4 (32:04):
All that obviously doesn't work.

Speaker 5 (32:06):
There's no way you're going to meet the al Qaeda
facilitator that way. I think, you know, I think a lot,
probably similar to what the CI ended up doing, was
a lot was through existing agents or recruiting agents who
were kind of the middlemen, so maybe the sort of
Arab businessman or someone who had had a foot in
more than one world. And some of it was actually

(32:30):
just trial and error and finding ways. And as you say,
you know, you go from being in an embassy, and
yes there are risks, and you would you might do
anti surveillance routes and those sorts of things, but the
risks are very different from being inside a military base,
and the times you leave that base in order to

(32:51):
carry out a debrief or a source meeting are kept
to a bare minimum, and there's a lot of security
arrangements go around with it, and so it's yeah, this
idea that you can sort of cultivate someone taken to
a bar getting drunk, maybe, you know, taken to a
you know, find some women somewhere or whatever, you know,
naughty thing that floats about.

Speaker 4 (33:10):
You know that that kind of stuff was very.

Speaker 5 (33:11):
Difficult to do, but interestingly, I think we learned over time,
so you would maybe you in the theater of conflict
you can't do that, but maybe you can find a
way to get someone to another city in the region
where security is good, where there are there is nightlife
where you can and you're both your your guard is
down a little because you're not you're not fearing that,

(33:33):
you know, that immediate threat. So I think I think
there was there was a lot of trial and error
and gradually, you.

Speaker 4 (33:38):
Know, successes, successes were made.

Speaker 3 (33:43):
And you spent quite a bit of time in the
Middle East.

Speaker 2 (33:46):
Can you tell us a little bit about that first
trip and what that experience was like for you.

Speaker 4 (33:51):
Yeah, so obviously that you know, the UK.

Speaker 5 (33:56):
Stood alongside the US in in those wars and and
ended up being involved both in Afghanistan and Iraq. A
lot of people then sort of passed through those places.
I think, you know, for someone like myself, going back
to sort of what I said earlier on being in
an environment which is a militarized environment, was a completely

(34:17):
new experience for me. So, you know, SIS is a
civilian organization and most of its work, particularly before nine
to eleven, took place either in offices in you know,
in London or in embassies in capital cities around the world.
And so deploying to an environment where you arrive in
a military helicopter, taking evasive maneuvers to avoid you know,

(34:41):
ground fire or whatever. You know that all those things,
it's just it's a completely baffling and shocking, you know,
sort of change of change of scene. Now again, in
many ways, it was incredibly exciting, very very rewarding. But
another thing which happens is, of course militaries speak a language.

(35:02):
You know that that there's there's a terminology, and if
you've if you've joined as a recruit and you've served
for years, this is it's a language like French or German.

Speaker 4 (35:09):
You know that.

Speaker 5 (35:11):
And again people would assume that because you come from
an intelligence service that you understand what they're talking about.
I remember plenty of times just just not not literally
not understanding what all these different acronyms meant. So there
were there, you know, steep learning curve. And of course,
you you're there to be useful.

Speaker 4 (35:27):
You know, you're not there just to sort of sit
around and watch what's going on.

Speaker 5 (35:30):
You're there to give to identify target, recruit develop sources,
provide intelligence that can stop terrorist attacks or you know,
cause leaders of terror groups to be to be captured,
or maybe to help you know, hostage rescues, you know,
in that. And so the other thing is that tempo
that the classic diplomatic intelligence type recruitment. You know, you've

(35:54):
got a sort of one year cycle and and at
the end of it, this guy might might you know,
give you the briefing docum for the ministerial visit or
something along those lines, whereas you're here in a we've
got five days and we've got to get these people
otherwise they're going to blow something up. And so it's
a completely different mind frame, and you basically it's sink
or swim, And I think a lot of people have

(36:15):
found that quite challenging.

Speaker 2 (36:20):
Any particular stories even if you're able to have to
be a little vague about exactly where or when they
took place from that timeframe that you could share.

Speaker 4 (36:30):
Yeah, I mean, I think a couple. I think there
were times.

Speaker 5 (36:33):
There were times when we were involved with some of
the hostage cases, so you know, Westerners working in those environments,
taken hostage by militant groups. And then obviously you feel
viscerally that sense of if we succeed, we know.

Speaker 4 (36:50):
What we've done.

Speaker 5 (36:51):
If we fail, that the outcome is horrific. And you know,
we all recall those awful videos of the decapitations and
so on, and Mike experience with those.

Speaker 4 (37:01):
You know, some some ended well, some did not.

Speaker 5 (37:05):
The seeing actually the personal effects of a British female
hostage who sadly did not survive was actually one of
it's harder than even seeing these videos. There's something about
seeing someone just their private, mundane possessions, uh, you know,
and we weren't able to save her. But then you
know on another occasion that you know, sometimes there's as

(37:25):
you guys will know, there's a lot of humor in
this world.

Speaker 4 (37:27):
You know, it's kind of dark humor, but it's.

Speaker 5 (37:29):
There that you you people that maybe this intel that
you find out that that the people you're working against
can be quite stupid, can be you know that there's
a sort of comic aspect to it, which I remember
there was there was a case where there was this
sort of intercepted communication which seemed to suggest that that

(37:49):
two people were planning to move a group of hostages
from one location to another. So there was a huge
ramp up to try and intercept this, and then it
turned out that there'd been a complete mistake in the translation.
Whoever was you know, intercepted the call and they were
moving like a truckload of building materials and I guess
someone thought that that was a code word, but it

(38:10):
was actually it was actual building materials. And you know,
half the sas had been sent in to intercept. So that,
you know, there's a lot of that kind of stuff
where you're you're you're just constantly trying to stay alert,
trying to figure out if you know what you're doing.
You know, another thing that would happen a lot would
be that the volunteers, so people would come volunteering information

(38:34):
and and of course you know it's a bit of
a mug's game, you know, they know that if if
they can persuade you that their information is good, they're
going to leave with with with some US dollars in
their pocket. Inevitably, there'll be people who come with ridiculous stories.
And you know, I remember a guy claiming that he'd
had one of the Stinger missiles famously back in the eighties,

(38:57):
of course that you know, the CIA had had rightly,
you know, provided Stinger missiles to the Afghans to shoot
down Russian helicopters. And you'll probably know this that there
are so many people claim to have Stinger missiles that
the CIA must have handed out millions of them. And
this guy, you know, he went back to some forwards
and he would have the Stinger missile and he'd provide
it to us for millions of millions of dollars. And eventually,

(39:20):
you know, we persuaded him, well, we needs to see
a photo of this thing.

Speaker 4 (39:24):
And it was a.

Speaker 5 (39:25):
Photo of like the oldest, most basic Russian RPG that
you could pick up for sort of fifty dollars anywhere,
and you just sort of think.

Speaker 4 (39:33):
Well, why are you wasting you know, what, what was
your plan? When did you think that this was going
to turn intillions of dollars.

Speaker 3 (39:40):
Nigerian prince scandal in your email box.

Speaker 5 (39:43):
Basically, it's the same deal. It's the same deal. And
I guess there's always some u gullible enough, you know.

Speaker 8 (39:49):
How was it for you guys in terms of working environment?
Were you tied to like the CIA because they had robust,
you know, a rock back presence out there, or would
you guys set up your own kind of like small
elements and.

Speaker 3 (40:07):
You know, secure those on your own and stuff like that.

Speaker 7 (40:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (40:10):
No, generally we've tried to sort of do our own thing.
We'd obviously coordinate a lot with with with the CIA,
and of course with other allies Australia, Kindada, you know,
some other European players, depending on who's in theater. But yeah,
we would generally try to operate as sort of a
fairly small, kind of low profile and.

Speaker 4 (40:31):
I guess to the extent.

Speaker 5 (40:34):
That if there's a usp you know, the CIA, certainly
in places like sort of Iraq and Afghanistan would have
a huge presence of understandably and and we we would
probably as a British want to feel that we were
much less kind of obvious, and maybe it gave us
an ability to be more subtle in some ways, but

(40:56):
of course that means we had fewer resources, and sometimes
we would steel or borrow from the CIA, and and
you know, most of the time it was a productive relationship,
but of course there's always that competitive thing. Sure, and
it's not unusual that you're chasing the same target.

Speaker 9 (41:12):
Sure.

Speaker 7 (41:13):
Sure.

Speaker 2 (41:15):
As far as keeping safe over there, I mean, did
you guys usually have military dudes of security?

Speaker 3 (41:20):
Is that how that works?

Speaker 5 (41:22):
Yeah? So so, and normally that that people came from
the special forces community, so people who had a prior
understanding of the intel world and so so that there
would be that that kind of you know, sort of
strong strong sense of camaraderie and so on and and
and as you'll know, you know, these are very unsafe environments,

(41:43):
particularly if you're if you're trying to do something unnoticed.
You know, it's one thing to drive out of out
of say the green zoning Baghdad in armored vehicles, but
you might not be able to do that if you're
trying to have a have a source meeting or something
like that. Right, So, so you had to had to
find ways to do that subtly and safely, and sometimes

(42:05):
that was a bit of attention.

Speaker 8 (42:06):
Well, then I would ask because you know, you mentioned
the Green Zone, and you know, like the the agency,
by what we've been told, had a difficult time, like
a lot of their sources were from walkins because when
they would go out, they were required to go out
and up armored, you know, two vehicles.

Speaker 3 (42:24):
Things like that.

Speaker 8 (42:26):
So I is it safe to assume that you guys
were kind of out there and like in thin skins,
like going low profile, trying not to draw any attention. Yeah,
what did you think? I mean, did you did you
look at the CIA and go like, well, that's amateur hour.

Speaker 4 (42:43):
Well I would never.

Speaker 5 (42:44):
Do that because genuinely, not just because I'm trying to
be polite to you know, Transatlantic colleagues, but I think
I think a lot of organizations were struggling with the
challenge of converting themselves from a civilian based organization. Yes,
of course, there would be you know, military veterans serving
in a CIA, and then as we both know that

(43:07):
the the.

Speaker 4 (43:08):
The paramilitary wing.

Speaker 5 (43:10):
But ultimately, you know, your average CIA case officer is
someone who's probably been to university, might have a master's degree,
and and there's you know, no more military experience than
than your postman, you know, and and so in that sense,
I think it. I think all these organizations were struggling
to find the way round round those objectives. And yeah,

(43:36):
at the beginning, probably that there was some amateurism on
all sides. But I think if you look at the results,
I mean, if you look at the way that the
obviously not the CIA on its own, but the CIA
working with the you know, the sort of Special Operations
Command and so on. By the time you had like
General McCrystal in place and that kind of man hunt

(43:57):
for Zakawi in Iraq, you know, it was clear a
pretty pretty well well old machine.

Speaker 2 (44:03):
Yeah, And I mean it sounds like you spent about
roughly a decade and a half as sort of a
wartime intelligence officer. It's just curious, like, how did the
war and how did your job evolve in time? How
did it change? I mean a lot happened. There is
seven to seven attacks that been widen made. I mean,
there's a lot of things that happened during that time space.

Speaker 4 (44:24):
Yeah, a lot of things. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (44:26):
So obviously the seven to seven attacks, you know, and
I was overseas in a theater of war at the time,
and that was very you know, a very strange experience
where the war was on the streets of London rather
than you know, in this Middle Eastern city where I
was working, you know, So that was odd.

Speaker 4 (44:41):
And yeah, I think a lot involved.

Speaker 5 (44:43):
I think also, you know, we have to be honest
that I think the perception of of the utility of
the Iraq War, you know, changed changed rapidly clearly, both
in the US and in the UK. It became politically
very toxic, both for Tony Blair, for George W. Bush
and and after seven seven a lot of people I

(45:05):
think were not unreasonably asking well, what would this have
happened if we hadn't joined this war?

Speaker 4 (45:12):
Whose whole basis you know, can be questioned.

Speaker 5 (45:16):
And obviously there was the whole saga of the w
m D, which again was an intelligence led operation that
we were promised that the w m D Iraq would
would this would all be found and of course, as
we all know, it didn't work out that way. So
I think, I mean know, for me personally, obviously, there's
also that process of just becoming older and more experienced,

(45:36):
and you spend less time in the theater of conflict
and more time, maybe in a in a sort of
head office role or in some kind of you know,
team leader type thing.

Speaker 4 (45:47):
So that so that for me, But towards the end of.

Speaker 5 (45:49):
That period, I mean, I'll admit that I had a
measure of cynicism about about the whole War on Terror. Clearly,
you know, the the both the hunt for Zarkari which
is less well known, but they've bin lad and rated.
You know, these are spectacularly successful intelligence operations and there's
no there's no other way to look at those and
and you know they are they are ones that anyone

(46:12):
involved with could rightly be proud of.

Speaker 4 (46:15):
But when we look at that sort of long.

Speaker 5 (46:18):
Period of our of our shared history, the US and
the UK, I think it's.

Speaker 4 (46:23):
Hard hard to conclude sort.

Speaker 5 (46:26):
Of exactly what, you know, what the positive outcomes were.
And clearly you know that the that they withdrawal from
Carbell at the end of the Afghan experience, again, you know,
the costs of that war.

Speaker 4 (46:37):
The numbers are staggering, aren't there.

Speaker 5 (46:39):
You could have given every Afghan is it half a
million dollars each or something. You know, by the time
you've spent the crazy sums of money and we haven't
even talked about the losses of lives.

Speaker 4 (46:48):
And so on.

Speaker 5 (46:49):
So I think it's it's it's an interesting period, but
it's a difficult period, and I think a lot of
people from from the community, certainly in the UK and
I wouldn't suppied in the US, have have their questions about that,
you know, about what what ultimately were we achieving.

Speaker 2 (47:04):
Tell us a little about your career kind of or
your intelligence career kind of winding down, what that last
year or so was like, and what made you decide
to leave.

Speaker 5 (47:14):
Yeah, well, it was partly sort of some of those
things I've alluded to there, and I think particularly also
because what happened is that, you know that the war
on Terror kind of morphed into the Arab spring, and
in a way, that was a.

Speaker 4 (47:27):
Promise that never delivered.

Speaker 5 (47:29):
You know that, having spent time in the Middle East,
the idea that these countries could be democracies from their
own volition, not not because we'd gone in and imposed that,
but that they find it themselves, and then.

Speaker 4 (47:40):
Seeing that that sort of.

Speaker 5 (47:42):
Promise be snatched away from them, I think that was
quite difficult to see. And I think I also, you know,
I make it sound like it was already depressing and on.
But there's another way, which is just that actually you're
a young man. You can have incredible experiences. It's exciting,
you have the adrenaline, there's all those things, but actually,
really you're pretty hard to sustain a relationship.

Speaker 4 (48:04):
You know, a lot of marriages don't survive.

Speaker 5 (48:06):
That kind of thing. You want to have kids, you
want to have foundly, you know, all those just normal stuff.
So I felt that I had i'd had the experiences,
that I was unlikely ever to sort of have experiences
of that kind of intensity again, and I would just
you know, try something else to you know, leave that

(48:27):
well behind, be very happy that I was part of it,
feel proud that I did something, you know, for my country.

Speaker 4 (48:34):
But ultimately, you know, there are other things to do
with your life.

Speaker 2 (48:39):
What was that like, transitioning from this very secret and
secretive world to becoming a civilian so to speak. Yeah, because,
as we mentioned earlier, you can't necessarily take your resume
out there and be like, hey, I was in the sis.

Speaker 5 (48:55):
No, no, So there is that problem and trying to
sort of explain to people what it was you were
up to.

Speaker 4 (49:00):
You know, it can be difficult, but I think.

Speaker 5 (49:04):
I you know, I as I think I mentioned earlier. Jack,
you know, I did some work in consulting and as
a world which which is again will be familiar to
people in the US, a world where there's quite a
lot of people who've come from the world of intel
or maybe.

Speaker 4 (49:17):
Special ops or or a bit of both.

Speaker 5 (49:19):
So you're you're not You're not just kind of walking
into the you know, the job center and and and
sort of just checking out any old job.

Speaker 4 (49:26):
So, you know, I started.

Speaker 5 (49:28):
Out in roles where there were plenty of people who
kind of had an idea of that world, maybe sometimes
from a slightly earlier period. And I guess that's a
sort of It's just like a soft landing, isn't it.
And so I, yeah, I was sort of security consulting,
corporate intel, those kinds of those kinds of jobs.

Speaker 2 (49:46):
This is the city of London consulting that you read
about and like a Frederick Forsyth novel.

Speaker 5 (49:52):
Yeah, absolutely, And it's interesting because, yeah, the city of
London has become this kind of global capital for spo
for hire basically, and I think there's there's something about,
you know, Britain does have a sort of high quality
intelligence agencies, but it also has this culture of the
kind of.

Speaker 4 (50:13):
Financial services and sort.

Speaker 5 (50:15):
Of old school banking and you know, guys with nice
tailored suits and all that sort of thing. So I
think you've sort of meld those two worlds together. And
you're quite right. It's a world that is familiar from
the pages of a kind of Frederick ful Scyth novel,
but actually, you know, in a way quite realistic.

Speaker 2 (50:34):
And so you're in consulting. When does the idea kind
of come about? And how does it come about that
you want to try your hand at writing spy novels.

Speaker 5 (50:45):
Yeah, well, for me, it was very much the experience
of COVID actually, which I guess a lot of people
sort of reexamined their life a bit, and you know,
forced idleness from not not being in the office every
day and maybe having having a bit of time off.
And I'd always I'd always thought I might have a

(51:07):
novel in me. You know, there's that I obviously lots
of people think that, but I guess that because of
that time away from normal work, I thought, right now,
you know, I've got to give it a go. And
then a couple of other things sort of inspired me
or just gave me the impetus. One was actually the
passing of John Lecarey, who's obviously a great possibly the

(51:30):
greatest English spywriter, and and you know, just reading his
obituaries and all of that, he'd sort of achieved as
a writer, and I thought, well, look, you know, if
you're ever.

Speaker 4 (51:40):
Going to do this, you've just got to You've just
got to get on with it.

Speaker 5 (51:42):
You know, you can't, you can't always it's that classic thing,
you have an ambition. Well if if you always talk
about it to your mates and never do it, then yeah,
it's just pointless.

Speaker 4 (51:51):
So so it just gave me that kind of inspiration.

Speaker 5 (51:54):
And the other thing was that, having spent a fair
bit of time outside the service but experience this world
of the sort of private spying, I realized that there
could be a novel to be written where the protagonist
is not a current government intelligence officer, but that there's somebody.

Speaker 4 (52:10):
On the outside.

Speaker 5 (52:11):
And I quite like that idea of an outsider, as
opposed to setting an office setting a novel inside you know,
the government office, which is a sort of more I guess.

Speaker 2 (52:22):
A more classic setting, and your novels are called a
spy alone and a spy at war. I want to
tell us a little bit about what they're about.

Speaker 5 (52:31):
Yeah, sure, So that one is a sequel of the other,
so that it's a series, and I'm currently working on
the third, so.

Speaker 4 (52:38):
It will be a trilogy.

Speaker 5 (52:39):
So what we have in the first novel, the first
thing is they're all set in the present day, So
it's that the events in the Spy alone, I think
it's unfolded twenty twenty two, so just in the light
of Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine. And what I
have is the protagonist is he is a consultant, a

(53:00):
former intelligence officer, somebody who's working in that kind of
private intelligence world in London, and he is given a
commission to investigate a Russian oligarch who wants to give
a big donation to Oxford University. Now, these are all
things that are happening all the time in real life,
and you guys might be very familiar with this London

(53:22):
grad phenomenon where a lot of dirty Russian money flowed
through institutions in the UK and you know, in my view,
quite disgracefully really, both in terms of high end prime
property central London or like Big manor houses out in
the countryside. But also, yeah, this kind of this laundering

(53:42):
of money through institutions, whether it was sort of football clubs,
university endowments, you know, it's that way that we are.
We sort of let our institutions be wide open to
this money. So I have this idea that the protagonists
starts investigating what he believes is as a purely commercial project,

(54:05):
and then he starts to imagine that there might be
something sitting under this and it's more than simply an
assessment of the you know, the compliance risks of this money,
but actually that there's a there's an espionage operation. And
effectively this endowment was a cover for a Russian espionage

(54:25):
operation targeting the British establishment. So the other thing that
I tried to do in this novel is is get
back to a very classic British idea that the sort
of British establishment had had Russian double agents in it.
And of course, during the Cold War, you know, we
had that whole Kim Yeah, Kim Philby the most famous.

Speaker 4 (54:45):
One, but there was others.

Speaker 5 (54:46):
There was Guy Burgess, a guy called Anthony Blunt, with
the whole series of these guys, and of course Britain
has this kind of class thing going on, these kind
of posh guys, privately, privately educated Cambridge and Oxford University,
and they went into the institutions I six, Foreign Office,
other government institutions and ended up as Russian spies or

(55:07):
in fact, they've been recruited as young men. So I
had this idea that what if the Russians had managed
to recruit people even in the nineteen nineties at a
time when we imagine they couldn't recruit anyone because their
country was collapsing, But you know, there were in a
kind of post ideological, cynical world that we inhabit, it
doesn't seem so impossible. And what's kind of interesting is
the way that on you know, both sides of the Atlantic,

(55:30):
there are lots of questions about some individuals and their
relationships with Russia, which perhaps suggests that, you know, maybe
the Russians have been able to recruit people even up
to the current time. So that's basically the setting of
the of the first novel.

Speaker 10 (55:46):
In the second one, Yeah, so the second one is
a sequel, and it actually most of it takes place
in Ukraine in the war in Ukraine, and effectively the
protagonist Simon Sharman is his name.

Speaker 5 (55:59):
He he follows a Chechen assassin to Ukraine, where he
believes that person was responsible for the death of one
of his colleagues, as it happens in real life. I've
spent some time in Ukraine since twenty twenty two, so
I've got a bit of an understanding of sort of
what's been.

Speaker 4 (56:19):
Going on there.

Speaker 5 (56:19):
But also I have many friends who've worked there, whether
they're being journalists or you know, people supporting Ukrainians one
way or another, driving trucks.

Speaker 4 (56:28):
All kinds of things like that.

Speaker 5 (56:30):
So I did my best to try to give an
impression of what Ukraine is like at the moment.

Speaker 4 (56:37):
And of course.

Speaker 5 (56:39):
One of the interesting things about it is that you
can go to Kiev and it's a charming European city,
you know, and most of the time it feels normal,
and the restaurants are good and the bars are good,
and it all feels great, and then the sirens go,
and of course the Russian drones and missile attacks come in.
So it's this very strange dichotomy that I think we
grew up thinking of places at war or being cities

(57:01):
like Beirut or Bagdad, everything's destroyed and bombed out, whereas
we're now seeing it happen in a European city that,
depending which direction you look in, can look charming, like
a place you take your wife on holiday, and then
you look the other way and it's devastation. So it's
a it's a very strange dichotomy, I think.

Speaker 3 (57:19):
And can you tell us anything about the third book?

Speaker 5 (57:22):
Well that, yeah, the third book I have to have
to write some of it, but it's my hope is
to kind of to conclude the story and bring it
back really sort of bring it back to the UK,
but also to this idea of the kind of the
hybrid war that Russia's fighting is in a way I've
written about the kind of the political interference in terms

(57:45):
of the money flowing through our institutions. I've written about
the war in Ukraine, and it seems to me that
where we're going now is these these gray zone operations.

Speaker 4 (57:56):
You know, when when.

Speaker 5 (57:57):
A there's a fire at Heathrow Airport with no no
one's really sure anymore, are they Is that Russia or
is it just you know, bad wiring. And so I
think we're living in this era where there's there's so
much uncertainty which can be weaponized, and it's weaponized through
disinformation cynical politicians. But equally, you know, Russia probably would

(58:19):
like to test NATO, would like to interfere in elections,
would like to see the kind of cynical opportunists elected.
So the idea of this novel, it will be set
in twenty twenty six, so the readers will read it
in the year that it comes out, and I.

Speaker 4 (58:37):
Hope it will.

Speaker 5 (58:38):
It will give us sense of this kind of very
uncertain world that we feel we're now living in.

Speaker 2 (58:45):
One other kind of like side topic that you had
mentioned earlier than what just wanted to come back to,
is the first female chief of the Supreme Intelligence Service
was appointed just this week.

Speaker 5 (58:57):
I think that's correct, Yeah, literally just the last few
day is yeah.

Speaker 4 (59:02):
Yeah, I think.

Speaker 5 (59:02):
I mean that's a really historic moment. As we've mentioned,
you know, this is an organization is more than one
hundred years old, and inevitably part of this is just
a function of history at a certain point that there
were women in the service from early on, but there
were all kinds of stupid rules about once you got
married you had to resign or you know, you can

(59:23):
imagine these kinds of things.

Speaker 4 (59:25):
And obviously most of those rules disappeared probably.

Speaker 5 (59:28):
In the nineteen eighties at the latest, but it still
took time for then a cadre of really talented operational
officers to move through the service. Because the thing about
this is that this is this role is it's a
political appointment. Yes, of course the Prime Minister makes the appointment,
but it is almost always a person recruited, has has

(59:51):
had a career in intelligence, so so blaise matchveli who
is the appointee, as has been you know, stated publicly,
has had a lengthy operational career, including most recently in
in the Q branch because of Q from the Bomb
movies with all the gadgets, is actually a real a
real person and a real division. It's a sort of

(01:00:12):
technical technical division of of S I S.

Speaker 3 (01:00:16):
That's pretty interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:00:17):
Yeah, anything else, Charles that you know, I failed to
ask that you'd like to talk about today?

Speaker 5 (01:00:25):
Well, I was, I was just going to say, I
think we touched on it a bit before that. There's
there's this kind of a little bit of a trend
at the moment for UH former Intel officers to write
novels and I know that you've had Ilana Berry is
Berry on on this show a brilliant, brilliant book, The
Peacock on the Sparrow. I don't need to recommend it

(01:00:47):
to all your know it already. And then and then
of course there's there's also David McCloskey, who again came
through the c i A. And I think in the
UK there's there's been a little bit less of that,
partly because of the funny rules, which is why I

(01:01:08):
know one could be my face and all that.

Speaker 4 (01:01:10):
But I think there is something about how.

Speaker 5 (01:01:14):
In books, spy books, even when they're fictitious, books can
be helpful that help us understand the world we're in.
And you know what, John Lecarey's books were so popular
during the Cold War because readers started to understand the
Cold War was a much more complex and kind of
cynical story than just this kind of you know, simplistic
good versus evil, East versus West kind of thing. And

(01:01:37):
I think in a way, you know, we're living in
a very confusing and uncertain era and we just think
the last few days with the conflicts raging Iran Israel,
the US getting involved, all those kinds of things, it's
a very very difficult sort of time to get your
head around, and I feel that spy novels aren't a
bad way to sort of help help sort of open
a window onto that.

Speaker 2 (01:01:57):
Yeah, I was gonna ask. I mean that brings up
you know, I have this interesting question. I've I've now
at this point, met quite a few authors, and I
noticed that different authors are trying to say different things
with their books, even in this spy genre. Yeah, I've
met people who write in this genre, but they're not

(01:02:21):
It's almost like they're using espionage as a vehicle to
say something larger about culture, about these sorts of you know,
bigger picture, maybe about international politics, whereas people who actually
served in this position maybe have an opportunity to I
don't want to use the word reveal, like they're revealing
a secret, but to you know, reveal something about this

(01:02:42):
inner world. But for you, I mean, what are you
trying to say with your books?

Speaker 5 (01:02:46):
Yeah, well that's a great question, I guess. I mean,
I suppose there is something about letting people understand because
one of the things that the protagonist of my books
is I've tried very hard to make it normal person,
you know, so Obviously, you watch a James Bond movie
or Jason Bourne or whatever. These people are incredible, you know,

(01:03:07):
even by the standards of special operations. They can do
everything that They've never fired a shot that didn't hit
its target, they've never lost a fight. They can jump
from buildings and do all these things. And you know,
I wanted a protagonist who was a kind of regular guy,
who who might swing a punch and then find that
his hand hurts and the person these punch is still standing,
you know, and those sorts of things. And so that

(01:03:31):
was one thing about the normality, that you know, normal
people have these jobs.

Speaker 4 (01:03:35):
And then the second thing.

Speaker 5 (01:03:37):
Was that that there is excitement and drama and jeopardy,
but not not in the sense of Mission Impossible or
Jason Bourne, but because it's the jeopardy is often emotional,
you know, it's the drama of not knowing if you
trust the people around you, that you don't know if
you're being followed, you don't know if someone's doing the

(01:03:57):
double on you. So I think again, it's sort of
understanding more that a lot of these things take place
sort of inside your head rather than you know, in
a kind of action setting. But equally, as you said, Jack,
you know, there is something what are we saying about
the world, And certainly for me, I mean I felt
quite strongly that I think Britain made some bad mistakes,
particularly with this thing with the sort of allowing Russian

(01:04:19):
money and Russian.

Speaker 4 (01:04:20):
Influence into our country.

Speaker 5 (01:04:21):
And of course, you know, once the Ukraine War had started,
I feel that we did the right thing as a
country that we you know, picked up.

Speaker 4 (01:04:30):
We've been a very.

Speaker 5 (01:04:31):
Strong support to Ukraine and and you know, most British
people it's a very popular thing and Britain people fly
the flag of Ukraine everywhere. But I think there is
that thing about how explaining to people why it matters,
why it's important. So it certainly, particularly in my second book,
which is you know, set in Ukraine, trying to kind
of make sure that people understand why it matters that

(01:04:53):
we continue to support them.

Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
There is that book. It was written by a British journalist,
I believe money Land.

Speaker 4 (01:05:00):
Oh, yes, that's a great book, very very good book. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:05:04):
I recall the author points out that you know, there's
the City of London banking and we have this problem
here in the States too. Not a lot of corrupt
regimes wander their money through our countries, and we have
some responsibility for that.

Speaker 4 (01:05:17):
Absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:05:18):
So so Oliver Bullow is the name of the author,
and in fact I did an event with him, I
think it was last year, and it was interesting because
he had obviously written this very factual, brilliant work of reportage.
I'd created a very fictitious story, but in a way
we were telling the same story about this thing of
how we've we we we took our institutions, and of

(01:05:40):
course the people it's this classic thing that they want
a laund of money and own property in Manhattan or
central London because then they have the rule of law
and no one's going to steal it from it. So
you know, we're kind of that they've stolen the money
off the citizens of Russia or Kazakhstan or wherever.

Speaker 4 (01:05:57):
And now that that they're coming to the UK.

Speaker 5 (01:06:00):
You know, there are so many contradictions and and there's
there's so much sort of hypocrisy loaded into these things,
and of course you can see why it drives cynicism.
You know a lot of people in both of our
countries feel very cynical about politics, and this is one
of the reasons. They see this happening, They see that
the the you know, the fancy parts of of the
big cities are owned by kleptocratic foreigners. That that doesn't

(01:06:23):
make you feel good about where you're living.

Speaker 2 (01:06:25):
Yeah, I think that's Do we have any questions, Steve,
We got some questions from our viewership on patreons, right,
they will bring those up for you.

Speaker 6 (01:06:40):
Uh, Charles, what's your opinion on the whole Richard Thomlinson
affair From the inside.

Speaker 7 (01:06:47):
How does his book look seen?

Speaker 4 (01:06:50):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (01:06:51):
So Richard Thomlinson, just for those who aren't familiar, was
a was an SIS officer whose career began well, he
was a successful kind of junior officer, and then there
was a he fell out, you know, in a catastrophic
way with the organization.

Speaker 4 (01:07:06):
Uh, he was, he was fired.

Speaker 5 (01:07:08):
He then released a whole series of names online of.

Speaker 4 (01:07:13):
Of serving officers.

Speaker 5 (01:07:14):
So it was a it was a really toxic situation.
And then and he published a book which the British
government attempted to block. Ultimately it did it was published,
which in itself is interesting because it's a reminder that
governments often, you know, think they can stop something coming
out and it normally comes out eventually. Now my understanding
is that Tomlinson is now he's kind of made peace

(01:07:37):
literally and and and sort of emotionally with that whole
period of his life, and he's he's living in France
and there's no kind of legal cloud over him.

Speaker 4 (01:07:45):
I mean, clearly it was. It was badly managed.

Speaker 5 (01:07:48):
I mean, I'm not blaming any one individual, and I
don't claim to have a direct knowledge, but but you
can't what seemed to have been like a disagreement of
almost like a human resources properly turned into an international
espionage problem. But it's a reminder also that ultimately, you know,
trust in in these organizations. I mean, I guess we

(01:08:08):
could talk about Edward Snowden. People have a huge amount
of trust placed in them, and sometimes you make mistakes
and then they have that information and they can't, you know,
you can't remove it from their brains and if they
want to go rogue with it, they will.

Speaker 7 (01:08:21):
Yeah, all right.

Speaker 9 (01:08:27):
We got a couple more from Tom's curious how the
am I how am I six views their role between
SADA and the Palestinian Authorities Intelligence UK seems to have
more a more supportive stance with the PA than we
do historically we I'm assuming being America.

Speaker 4 (01:08:45):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think obviously.

Speaker 5 (01:08:47):
The UK has a historic position there, having been the
sort of colonial administrator of what was Palestine, out of
which came the State of Israel and then the Palestinian territories.
I think there's there's been an attempt by the UK
to try to maintain positive relationships with both sides. I

(01:09:11):
think we have to be blunt, that has been extremely difficult,
particularly in recent years, and and certainly the the the
sort of post Gaza it's been. I mean, I know
it's been politically toxic in the US as well, but certainly,
you know, things like the way certain communities within our
country are now voting understandably in my view, in response

(01:09:32):
to what they're seeing happening in Gaza.

Speaker 4 (01:09:35):
I think it's made it very difficult. But in terms of.

Speaker 5 (01:09:37):
Operationally, my understanding is that, yeah, that they've they've they've
managed to keep a fairly strong kind of operational coordination going.
And and but of course you know, we we we work. Obviously,
Israel has been an ally of the UK for a
long time. It's sometimes these relationships have can be quite turbulent.

(01:09:58):
I guess, and I can imagine there's been some turbulence
in recent years.

Speaker 2 (01:10:02):
I just on a side note, I recently read Our
Agents of Innocence by David Ignatius. Oh yeah, that's and
it's about the CIA recruiting Palestinians in like the nineteen
seventies into the eighties. And I've been told that it's
based on very much a true story.

Speaker 3 (01:10:20):
It was a good book.

Speaker 4 (01:10:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:10:22):
Now I've read that too, and I've also I'd heard
that that it's based on some sort of real case histories,
And yeah, I think it's it's a great book. And
in fact, I think if people are interested in the
real craft of human intelligence, you know, completely separated from
special operations, COVID ops and all that, but just the
thing of who is who is playing, who who is
running who the complexities, I think it's a really great

(01:10:46):
book and I can highly recommend it.

Speaker 7 (01:10:50):
We got one more from Mark.

Speaker 6 (01:10:53):
Is it true that the Sis has never once lost
an officer on the job and what do you attribute
that to.

Speaker 4 (01:11:00):
I believe that to be the case. I obviously couldn't
confirm it.

Speaker 5 (01:11:03):
I attribute it to I think taking a very serious
attitude to you know, operational security, but also you know,
planning and those sorts of things. And I think I
think the point is that coming back to the sort
of some of the things we're talking about.

Speaker 4 (01:11:23):
Right at the beginning that obviously you you might work
in some very.

Speaker 5 (01:11:28):
Challenging theaters of operation, but if you know, if, if
you if you have a very kind of professional approach
to planning to security, and it's not just about security
in terms of you know the weapons or the you know,
the vehicles you're using, but actually how many people know

(01:11:49):
the identities?

Speaker 4 (01:11:50):
What?

Speaker 6 (01:11:50):
What?

Speaker 5 (01:11:51):
That kind of protective security and someone so I, you know,
I think that's that's something that the service has taken
very seriously.

Speaker 4 (01:11:59):
And and come be proud of.

Speaker 3 (01:12:02):
Charles. That's all we got.

Speaker 2 (01:12:04):
If you stick with us after the show, please, But
everyone else, we will let you go and we will.

Speaker 3 (01:12:11):
See you on the next episode.

Speaker 7 (01:12:14):
Jack, Why don't we let them know why Charles is
sticking with us?

Speaker 2 (01:12:17):
Well, because we're gonna have bonus segments on the Patreon
with many of our guests. So if you are interested,
look for links down the description to sign up for
Patreon and support the show and get access to all
of these episodes ad free.

Speaker 4 (01:12:31):
When you do that.

Speaker 3 (01:12:34):
What else am I supposed to tell people about Charles's books?

Speaker 7 (01:12:36):
Those links will be in the description as well.

Speaker 2 (01:12:39):
All of Charles's information will be down in the description
as well.

Speaker 3 (01:12:42):
So thank you guys, and we will see you next time. Hey, guys,
it's Jack.

Speaker 2 (01:12:49):
I just want to talk to you for a moment
about how you can support the show. If you've been
watching it enjoying it, but you'd like to get a
little bit more involved and help us continue to do this,
you can check out our Patreon is patreon dot com
slash the Teamhouse, and for five dollars a month you
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Teamhouse ad free. The same goes with our affiliated podcast

(01:13:12):
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And you support the channel and the show, and we
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(01:13:35):
this thing going even as we navigate the turbulent world
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Speaker 3 (01:13:41):
So we really appreciate all of you guys.

Speaker 2 (01:13:43):
There's going to be a link down in the description
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be a link to our new merch shop, so if
you guys want to go and get some Teamhouse merchandise,
we got stickers and we also have patches, and I
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(01:14:07):
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Secret Intelligence Service (MI-6) Officer | Charles Beaumont | Ep. 356

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Secret Intelligence Service (MI-6) Officer | Charles Beaumont | Ep. 356