British ‘USP’
In September 2000 the tragic case of two infants from Malta dominated the headlines.(1) British judges were asked to decide whether it was ‘right’ for doctors to sacrifice one child, joined at the abdomen with her twin, for the sake of the other. As a result of global press coverage, the moral arguments were fretted over in pubs and tavernas across nations. By-products of the international media exposure included fantastic PR for this country, and an opportunity to market the skills of British medics. (2) As importantly, it allowed the Brits to lead the world in a debate of modern, carefully weighted contention. It was one of the finest examples I can think of, in contemporary times, of British ‘USP’ (a retail term meaning ‘Unique Selling Point’). With great sensitivity, the judges took into account the parents’ devout Roman Catholicism. Nevertheless, they set this aside and made a pragmatic, humane, independent and secular decision. The episode was a brilliant definition of the British public’s character, irrespective of where the citizen may have been born or tenets of upbringing, and an example of what could have been a new dominion: moral secular authority that did not segmentalise, over the vast unconquered empire of a zillion minds.
All this potential was trashed when Prime Minister Blair, and the political cadre alongside him, turned parts of this country’s state machine into a badly fitting condom for America’s dick. Against this background, the country’s spooks were expected to rehabilitate their profession and attract appropriate applicants. Government rhetoric was, and remains, that it is important to concentrate on the future since there is no point lamenting that which is done – proactive PR – while the spooks were abandoned to the reactive lowlands: recruiting from the very communities which were not happy with the idea of forgetting and moving on.
Manufactured USP
A country’s USP cannot be set from above. Tony Blair learned this in 1997 when he sought to update British jingoism by re-branding the country ‘Cool Britannia’.(3)His government’s need to fix the limits of public self-definition took on greater urgency as the hypocrisy of its foreign and commercial policy unravelled, and the not wholly unconnected ‘war on terror’ began. (4) It could not ask the citizen to rally behind Britain’s democracy, ideology or parliament, all of which unified in the past, because these have been debased. Therefore it borrowed an inclusive phrase from America: the need ‘to defend our way of life’. This was a brilliant American catchall PR construction, blocking contradiction while obscuring meaning.
‘Our way of life’ is determined predominantly by globalised markets, not terrorism, as horrific and real a threat as the latter is; and ‘our’ government’s true fear is the citizen’s abhorrence of: a) the damage globalised markets have done to others; and b) the corrupt crony clusters of political and commercial power that have made this possible. Lost in all of this are respectable aspects of ‘our way of life’, along with the altruistic decency of many defending it, including the spooks.
Naively, some – including me – pinned hopes of capitalism’s reform, which underpins our society and partially its reputation, on what became known as ‘corporate social responsibility’. This crutch was finally buried by BP’s Lord Browne in a fascinating but little noticed speech earlier this year. (5) With his eye fixed on the far horizon (China ?) he was quoted as saying:’We do not have stakeholders; we do not have corporate social responsibility; we simply have mutual advantage…..’. His comments have specific meaning for SIS: capitalism is the ideology it promotes and protects. The public have no means of knowing whether the organisation’s role is to search for capitalism’s buried bodies or be accessories to whatever crimes may be committed. As a former SIS spook himself, anything that the high profile Lord Browne says informs the citizen, including possible future SIS recruits. (6)
Spook PR
Meantime, in the face of unprecedented tension to get as many secrets as possible into the public domain, serving officials across Britain’s spook community try to grow contemporary roots in civil society.(7) This relationship-building is a long-term process which will take years, punctuated, but not defined by, national elections. Initiatives include last year’s brilliant GCHQ Christmas Quiz(8); MI5’s warnings to frequent travellers ‘to watch out for foreign spies using undercover techniques ranging from the sex trap to lavish hospitality'(9); teaching models for schools: ‘Ask students to chose a spy from history and create a secret fact file on their chosen spy, giving personal details as well as summaries of their main missions’; (10) and a research, publishing and tourism industry growing up around Bletchley Park in Milton Keynes and the National Archives in Kew.(11)
In all of this – with the exception of the new actor chosen to play ‘James Bond’ whooshing up the Thames – there has been very little sign of SIS. One ‘sighting’ was its condemnation of a BBC dramatisation of the early lives of Messrs. Blunt, Burgess, McLean and Philby: the dramatist was blamed for a sensitivity by-pass SIS itself had created.(12) Another was in the Careers Section of London’s Evening Standard when a fiction writer explained SIS’s recruitment process from ten years ago.(13 ) The article was truthful and measured, which is to say it confirmed stereotypes. This brings me back to Lord Browne.(14) People make decisions about where they want to work according to their value systems. If these chime with the straightforward bias of an immensely powerful and privileged SIS alumnus, some could consider a career in espionage along the lines of his prescribed outlook. The result could be recruitment cloning or the employment of people who do not know what they want beyond wanting to be wanted.(15)
SIS has made clear it is not expanding rapidly. Rather, ‘it is looking for scores of extra staff, rather than hundreds’.(16 ) It is not clear whether it is also embracing necessary change. One way of ascertaining whether or not it is, is to scrutinise its recruitment language: organisations engaged in regeneration freshen this.
SIS’s website
For this reason, I looked with interest at coverage of the launch of an SIS website to attract employees from a wider variety of backgrounds. (17) One of the first phrases to leap out was the hackneyed comment that SIS officers ‘seek to persuade their foreign contacts to betray their countries’. (18) This is the lowest common denominator. Espionage at its best does not turn on betrayal but trust: trusting that working for Britain offers other countries or communities a better future than the one they have at present; trusting SIS case officers to take their pastoral responsibilities seriously to protect, so far as is possible, those who are courageously working for change in various locales or groups. Trusting also that their reputations will be safe. (19 ) To use the word ‘betrayal’ confirms people in their existing prejudices. It was sloppy and damaging.
So too, I believe, was the use of the word ‘family’, even though its purpose was merely to illustrate a congenial supportive working environment. (‘The Website paints a picture of exciting – though not too exciting – careers, and of an agency with what it calls a “family” atmosphere.’) (20) So that there could be no confusion, the word was put in quote-marks. Not everybody has an understanding of grammar. Some could have misread the quote-marks and drawn more sinister conclusion: SIS certainly used to set itself up as an ‘alternative’ family. This can conflict with, or usurp, the actual family and could mean that excellent applicants from much needed specific associations are less inclined to put themselves forward. In addition, the use of the word risks linkage with other spook employers: a courageous former British agent who worked inside the IRA has warned that he was ‘dumped’ by the security forces. ‘When you are no longer of use, they leave you high and dry with no regard for your family, your children or you.'(21)
There, too, was that old chestnut: ‘SIS insists it is not dominated by a macho culture – indeed female MI6 officers play on people’s emotions in a way men cannot…’ (22) Yes, some women do. However, only the dated believe this is their unique value to espionage and SIS men have quite a good line in patter themselves. Moreover alpha candidates of both sexes are more likely to be interested in whether the critical disjunction between ‘professionals’ (gifted scientists like the late Dr Kelly) and ‘mainstream’ officials has been addressed.(23 ) The moral of the story is that control-freakery has its place and one of these, if the taxpayer is forking out a huge sum of money for a recruitment/PR campaign – the SIS launch was both – is for the organisation concerned to keep command of ‘the copy’. (24) Winging it is daft.
One reason why SIS language has not evolved is because although the communication cocoon in which it developed has imploded, it lost sight of its USP – which depends on ‘living’ language – long before. One of the triangular relationships that allowed this to thrive was an almost organically engineered fusion between SIS officials, lobbyists and parliament. The following is a fictitious example of how this once worked.
Spooks and Parliament
For the purpose of illustration only, and not to be confused with anything coincidentally similar today, let us say that there was a Westminster All Party Group (APG) looking after the welfare of children traumatised by domestic abuse. In this case, the secretariat was run by a lobbyist – in those days called a parliamentary consultant – and the officers were parliamentarians from both Houses and all political parties, including cross-benchers in the House of Lords.(25) At one time, such was the prestige of Britain’s parliament, those in other countries which were too poor, or had governments that would not prioritise the issue, would ask British parliamentarians, especially in the Lords, to insert parliamentary questions, or, if MPs, to raise matters on the floor of the Commons, such as adjournment debate, stating what the British government was doing about the problem. The Hansards automatically went world-wide to the relevant ministers in their governments. As a result, and keeping in mind this is a false example, senior health professionals overseas, supported by the relevant minister, would be in a position to go to their governments pointing out what the British were doing; making it, if you like, a matter of national pride: if the British are doing it, so should we. This meant that a welfare issue could be prioritised.
At times, it could also mean that the intelligence services could pass a coded message, via Hansard, to, for example, a senior health professional who was a source in another country, without being seen to specifically target the professional or his/her country. Particularly useful were the then parliamentary summaries in The Daily Telegraph and The Times which were sometimes used to flag things up, and which could be spotted in London, perhaps via an associate at a particular country’s embassy. Using the same fictitious APG as an example, a lobbyist could have ensured that, say, a member of the House of Lords participated in a specific debate, in the course of which he mentioned that health officials from all over the world would be attending a prestigious conference in, for example, Geneva. This would appear in the Hansard well before the event to allow for sufficient time, and, as always, circulate across the globe. Again, as a matter of national pride, this could mean that the target health professional was allowed by his/her government to leave their country to attend, enabling SIS to meet him/her in a safe environment.
At no time would SIS have described those who did so as ‘foreign contacts betraying their country’. Some may well have been traitors. However many – perhaps even the majority – betrayed their state, not their country. Espionage is a profession stalked by mortality and deception. The latter is not always the betrayal of the best. To survive, and many do not, those engaged in it have to be beautifully minor key and therefore seldom have a profile. A lot of them are inherently modest anyway. The least that they deserve is an SIS officer-recruitment language that respects their valour and integrity.(26)
Notes
[1] In cruel juxtaposition, SIS HQ on the Thames suffered a terrorist attack at the same time. This meant that the 24/7 news-cycle ran the stories back-to-back. For the media, it was presentationally irresistible: innocent ‘broken’ baby/not-so-innocent ‘broken’ building. Sophisticated PR would have ensured the latter story was better handled.
[2] Most catastrophes are a PR opportunity.
[3] This collapsed, its shallowness exposed, with the London Dome fiasco. However, its fall was also due to its exclusivity: ‘old’ people were banned.
[4] A snapshot of the country emerged following the sad death in Iraq of hostage Ken Bigley. A ‘modern’ Briton turned out to be a grandfather working overseas because he did not have an adequate pension. Another example was the tragedy of the school in Beslan which presented a many-layered picture of a local society. This, presumably, is why President Putin has banned media coverage of any similar event should this unfortunately happen again.
[5] The Guardian, 9 February 2005. Presumably seeking to demonstrate that he has a view of the ground beneath his feet, Lord Browne was also quoted as saying:
‘Setting up internal markets to make hospitals and jails better and cheaper not only does not work but gives capitalism a bad name.'(My italics.)
It was the heavy clunk of the penny dropping in the wrong place. Capitalism’s bad name, despite all the good it has also brought, predates public sector internal markets and not all the latter are bad anyway. The Sunday Times, 30 January 2005.
[6] Lord Browne’s speech, ‘appeared to align him with Chancellor Gordon Brown…… BP later sought to tone down is remarks and dismiss any idea that he was criticising the Prime Minister.’ The Guardian 28 January 2005. It cannot be helpful to British democracy for an ex-spook-cum-industrialist to appear to be anointing a prime minister-in-waiting…..
[7] This scrutiny has inadvertently highlighted other issues. These include ‘facial cloning’ – compare the faces of Dames Pauline Neville-Jones and Stella Rimmington – as well as why one type of face may be preferable to another: e.g. the pleasing, flirty but non-sexually provocative face of MI5’s Eliza Manningham-Buller (EM-B). In SIS, some case-officers had similar features to EM-B so that an asset’s wife could feel secure that her husband was not being ‘led astray’ by a womaniser. Others were staggeringly good-looking: a deliberate magnet for both sexes. This is one reason why spook recruitment can be so difficult: not only do candidates have to have the right skills, they have to have the ‘right’ looks.
[8] The Guardian 16 December 2004
[9] The Times 17 June 2005
[10] The Guardian 17 February 2004. I am not sure where teaching young people about espionage ends and ‘grooming’ may begin. For understandable reasons, the grooming of children is usually seen in terms of pedophilia. It has, if you like, become a single issue. This is unfortunate because it has limited debate.
[11] Spook-reconnection efforts are not exclusive to Britain. The Sunday Telegraph 23 March 2003wrote: ‘In an eccentric attempt to improve its public image, Germany’s secret service has published a cookbook compiled by its spies working in 22 countries.’ Only 22? Well, that’s the EU almost covered; now, for the rest of the world…..
[12] I believe that there has been/is a consensus on ‘agents’ Academics on the left and the right, as well as hacks, have invariably described agents as venal, weak, susceptible to flattery etc. Academics themselves have never questioned this consensus. I believe this consensus was deliberate: it suited SIS that its agents were vilified because it meant that if SIS treated an agent badly, the agent could not, for example, go to the press for assistance because the agent’s reputation was already damned by the consensus. The dramatisation presented the Cambridge spies as idealists and ignored the fact that they were responsible for the deaths of many British agents. The latter were ‘ordinary’ people – bakers, for example – fighting communism.
[13] esJobs 22 August 2005
[14] A first career in public sector espionage can be a good employment springboard, whether this be into ‘democratic’ politics (Presidents Bush Snr. and Putin) or commerce (Lord Browne). In Britain, an industrialist has arguably more power than a prime minister. Akin to a president, perhaps?
[15] All hand-picked professionals, whether these be spooks, management consultants or members of the judiciary, run the risk of being clones.
[16] The Guardian 13 October 2005
[17] Al-Qaeda has ‘achieved’ what parliament could not: the beginnings of SIS diversity and, possibly, the end of SIS nepotism. See the article in The Sunday Times 19 September 2004 which revealed that three brothers-in-law were SIS officers. Note: Nepotism can have a legitimate place in espionage – this is an explanation not a defence – because in some traditional societies espionage can pass through the generations. It can be useful for an SIS officer to bond with a prospective agent on the basis that, for example, their grandfathers worked together. Similarly, espionage ‘toffs’ can translate well overseas. Finally, ‘white’ SIS officers are as important as ‘non-white’: it might not be fashionable to say so, but in some circumstances, some non-white societies are more likely to trust a ‘white’ man than they are their own……
[18]18 Ibid
[19] The spooks handled the launch of the first volume of The Mitrokhin Archive so badly that I only found out from his obituary that former senior KGB Archivist Vasili Mitrokhin had been a KGB dissident years before he started compiling his private archive. (The Guardian, 4 February 2004) In the obituary Professor Andrew writes, ‘…. he was too private a person, and had arrived in Britain too late in life – and with too little experience of the west – to have coped with the glare of publicity….’ My recollection of the fuss at the time includes the fact that the then Parliamentary oversight committee was fiercely condemnatory of the spook-orchestrated publicity not because of its glare, but because it was so one-sided it detracted from Mr Mitrokhin’s achievement.
[20] Ibid
[21] The Independent on Sunday 25 September 2005
[22] 22 The Guardian 13 October 2005. If ‘playing on people’s emotions’ includes on-line persuasion, i.e. no physical contact, SIS should say so. This could encourage candidates whose families might otherwise be anxious about their relative’s sexual reputation, to come forward. If, on the other hand, the phrase could be a euphemism requiring some candidates to participate in honeytraps, SIS should be up-front and say so. Language imprecision is a poor recruitment tool.
[23] So far as I can tell, only GCHQ – in the teeth ridicule – has been brave enough to go public about one of the initiatives it was taking to improve staff management skills. (‘Shakespeare teaches spies to bare their soul’, The Sunday Telegraph 5 December 2004.)
[24] Two out of the three new recruits highlighted in The Guardian 13 October 2005 had spent their gap year teaching overseas. I am not convinced that parents of young people similarly doing so would have been particularly pleased with this admission. At the best of times teaching overseas can be a dangerous occupation. Labelling all as potential prospective spooks could only have added to these dangers.
[25] Readers may be aware that some lobbyists used to ‘plant’ issues in Parliament, or its equivalent, across the world. This ability can be useful to those wishing to raise awkward questions that embarrass various governments individually and/or severally one of espionage’s key roles. In journalism, a similar exercise could be slipping stories into newspapers, across, for example, all EU countries. This is one reason why media fragmentation has been such a disaster for some, including, I would guess, the spooks.
[26] Colonel Oleg Gordiefsky is an example. His heart must bleed to see the KGB running Russia again while corrupt oligarchs, true betrayers of its people, are welcomed in London.