What we know about MI6

MI6 is The UK's version of the CIA. Except they came first and provided the model. But there's still a lot we don't know about this notoriously tight-lipped organization. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:03Speaker 03

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:13Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and there's Jerry, and this is Stuff You Should Know. And I have to say, we didn't have the most auspicious start just now, Chuck. I stepped on you at the countdown for us to sync. That's not a good sign. Don't you think that sounded good sign?

• 1:32Speaker 02

  I think if you look at it another way, we were in sync because we were both kind of trying to say the same thing.

• 1:38Josh Clark?

  Wow, that was a silver lining.

• 1:41Speaker 02

  How's that?

• 1:42Josh Clark?

  There's not been any better in sync since Lance Bass and Justin Timberlake were running around together.

• 1:50Speaker 02

  We should preface this, by the way. We're doing an episode today on MI6, the United Kingdom's secret intelligence service.

• 1:57Josh Clark?

  Is that how you pronounce it?

• 1:59Speaker 02

  MI6, what do you say?

• 2:00Josh Clark?

  Mix?

• 2:03Josh Clark?

  That's what I've been saying in my head, at least.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 2:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  Uh, that is an inauspicious beginning, then, for sure. Uh, but, uh, you know, this is a little, it risks being a little disjointed because if you kind of went down every rabbit hole that we speak about here, we'd be here for days.

• 2:22Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah. One of the things that lets us off the hook, though, that I found, and I'm sure Kyle, who helped us with this, um, we had our man in Britain.

• 2:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:31Josh Clark?

  To make him an agent and us officers.

• 2:33Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 2:34Josh Clark?

  Cause he was giving us intel on MI6. Um, if you go and just start researching it, especially if you just type in MI6, they've done a pretty good job of keeping search results pretty sanitized.

• 2:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:49Josh Clark?

  Like, I would say, out of the top 20 results, um, two are not official MI6 pages. So it's kind of hard to research them, especially considering they've only been publicly recognized as actually existing since the mid 90s.

• 3:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, 1990s, that is. Uh, they are the oldest, um, operating continuously, that is, operating foreign intelligence gathering organization anywhere in the world. And like I said, they, they're, you know, if you're American, you can think of MI6 as sort of their CIA. Um, and in fact, our own CIA was born out of, not out of MI6, but they had a lot to do with how we did things.

• 3:32Josh Clark?

  Yeah, we used them as a kind of a model.

• 3:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, there you go. That's a very clean way to say that.

• 3:38Josh Clark?

  Um, so there's two things that MI6 does. Um, and that really does kind of get it across. They're like, Britain's equivalent of the CIA, or better yet, the CIA is America's equivalent of MI6.

• 3:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:49Josh Clark?

  So they gather intelligence and they gather internationally abroad. There's also MI5, which you could say is roughly equivalent in the US to the FBI. They do domestic stuff, but MI6 is concerned about everything else in the world. And by gathering intelligence, they usually use two methods, or they, they gather, yeah, two methods. One's human intelligence, which is good old fashioned spying, using people who are secretly spying on their own governments or whatever. And then the other is signal intelligence, which is intercepting communications. And I saw that, um, Another intelligence firm, I guess, in the UK, the Government Communications Headquarters, GCHQ, they seem to do most of the signals intelligence,

• 4:33Josh Clark?

  while MI6 still does most of the human intelligence.

• 4:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:37Josh Clark?

  But I think like if they they capture an email or something, they don't just delete it because they don't do signals intelligence. They're still going to use it.

• 4:44Speaker 02

  Right.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  Not my office, delete.

• 4:50Josh Clark?

  Not my job.

• 4:51Speaker 02

  We call them MI6. The official name, like I said at the beginning, is the Secret Intelligence Service or the SIS. That's what they became in 1920. But we call it MI6 because that was the call sign that they adopted in World War II. And, you know, let's be honest. People hear MI6 and they identify it with intelligence a lot because of Ian Fleming and James Bond and Lecar and Smiley, a couple of, you know, in James Bond's case, maybe thinly veiled literary figures. I'm not sure about Smiley. I don't know much about Lecar. Is Smiley based on someone that you know of?

• 5:31Josh Clark?

  I don't know. My dad was big time into John Lecare, but I never have been.

• 5:36Speaker 02

  Is it Lecare? I don't know.

• 5:37Josh Clark?

  I've heard it. I think it's probably both ways. I mean, unless you're his mom. I'm sure there's just one way to say if you're his mom. But, you know, he's dead. He doesn't care.

• 5:46Speaker 02

  How about Lee Carey?

• 5:50Speaker 02

  No?

• 5:50Josh Clark?

  Perfect.

• 5:52Speaker 02

  But if, like you said earlier, you know, it's kind of challenging to gather intelligence on MI6 as a podcaster because for the longest time, they would just destroy any documents they had that, you know, weren't still useful to them. They weren't like, hey, let's keep this on file because one day somebody might ask for this and maybe want to see it. They'll be like, no, we don't need that anymore and we're a secret organization. So let's just throw it in the old burner. And in the 1960s, they started officially keeping historical records. And then eventually in the 2000s, for their 100th anniversary, they hired a guy named Keith Jeffrey to write its history up to 1949.

• 6:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and apparently even still today, that's where their official history ends, 1949. Anything after that? Don't ask, Jack, or else they'll take you somewhere and render you.

• 6:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, politely.

• 6:46Josh Clark?

  They will. So we should probably say that MI6 started, and I think when we did our Kim Philby episode, I said that MI6 stood for Ministry of Intelligence, but it actually is Military Intelligence, which is, I think, like you said, what it grew out of originally. But the whole thing started, there was a scare, a German spy scare in Great Britain in the turn of the last century. Germany was this imperial power that was rising. So there was reason to be scared of them. But really, the whole reason came down to this guy named

• 7:22Josh Clark?

  William Le Cue. He was a totally made up adventurer, soldier of fortune, who was just as patriotic as you could get. He made up this huge backstory for himself to give himself legitimacy. But really, he was just weaving these yarns, saying essentially that Britain is sleeping right now, and it's loaded with German spies. And if we don't wake up, we're going to get taken over by Germany. And it just hit this perfect nerve in the British public, so much so that it directly led to the formation of what would become MI6 and MI5.

• 7:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, all in unison, they heard this and went, well, we can't have that. So they got going. The Secret Service Bureau is who originally housed both, including MI5. And they were pretty important, you know, AKA The Bureau, known as The Bureau, because they had complete autonomy, and they also had plausible deniability. So they would sort of act as a go between if there was a government official doing some, you know, spy business. The Bureau could step in and kind of provide cover as a screen for them.

• 8:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and apparently, even though they are now publicly acknowledged by the government as existing, that hasn't changed very much still today. Like, they do not, you can't, as a government official, go to MI6 and be like, I demand these records of your torture program in the Iraq War. They'll just say, we don't know what you're talking about. We're not even having this conversation. And that's, that's what, they don't have the kind of political and legal hamstringing that the CIA has. It's much less of a bureaucracy. And so they can do things that say like the CIA legally couldn't do. They have a lot of legal cover in Great Britain.

• 9:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I wonder what their version of FOIA is, like a Freedom of Information Act request, or if they even have that, or if they're just like, mm, sorry, don't ask.

• 9:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they just call it FO.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  Oh, boy. I wish that was a, man, if we had written that out as a comedy duo, it couldn't have been more perfect.

• 9:35Josh Clark?

  Thanks. I think we did really good, too.

• 9:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about their first chief, Sir Mansfield Cummings. It was pretty much a one-person show at the beginning of the operation, and Cummings was that guy. Staffed fully, you know, with gentlemen, as they called them. If you were a woman at the time, you might get work as a typist or secretary, but although that would change in not too long after.

• 10:00Josh Clark?

  It'd just give it like 50 years.

• 10:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. I guess so. But he was sort of a, the kind of guy you would make a movie about. He was a race car driver. He was a pilot. He could drive a boat with a plum. He loved spycraft. He got into it. He signed off his C for his last name. Apparently, he wrote in green ink, which his successors have continued doing today, writing in that green ink.

• 10:26Josh Clark?

  And they're all called C, too. It's the, it's the title for the chief of MI6.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. And they, it was like, like M and Q, like all those things from James Bond. Like, most of those things are real. They use numbers and letters, and it's not just made up for fictional purposes.

• 10:45Josh Clark?

  No, and Q, that was the scientist who would come up with all these amazing devices and gadgets and everything. And as we'll see, MI6 has gotten way more talkative publicly. They're trying to like, kind of recruit more and more people. So they're giving, you know, interviews, even though their names are anonymous. And one of them said, like, we have those gadgets, but they're even better than what James Bond has.

• 11:09Speaker 02

  And everyone was like, really?

• 11:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 11:11Speaker 02

  So this guy coming, he had an incident in 1914 where he earned, this probably sounds like lore to me, but he had a car crash in France in 1914. Very sadly, his son was killed. And this is how he lost his left foot. And the reason the lore was so important was because the legend was the only way he escaped was by amputating that foot himself. Sort of like, who was the guy in Real Life that they made the Danny Boyle made the movie about?

• 11:41Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:42Speaker 02

  That was stuck in the rock?

• 11:42Josh Clark?

  I don't remember his name, but yeah.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, but supposedly he, you know, as the story goes, he cut off his own foot with a penknife just to escape.

• 11:49Josh Clark?

  I think just the fact that people, that that became a legend around him says a lot about who he is.

• 11:55Speaker 02

  Oh, totally.

• 11:56Josh Clark?

  If I were in a car wreck and I lost my foot, no one would create a legend that said I cut my own foot off with a penknife to escape. Like, it just, you just wouldn't make that up. No one would believe it. This guy, at least it was believable.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. Legend had, has it Josh wailed and cried for hours until the ambulance finally arrived. And they said, you know, you could probably just have backed out of this thing on your own.

• 12:16Josh Clark?

  Right. And they're like, it's really just gonna bruise is all.

• 12:19Speaker 02

  Right.

• 12:21Josh Clark?

  So there's one other thing. There's, there's a lot to talk about. Like you said, the guy could definitely deserve his own movie if it hasn't been made multiple times already. But one of the other legendary things associated with him is, like, he was really into spy craft. Like, he came up with disguises. He would, like, disguise himself and go walk around London and see if any of his people would recognize him. And he was, I don't want to say obsessed, but he was really into the idea of invisible ink. And he searched high and low to find a good invisible ink that couldn't be detected through standard methods. I don't know who came up with this idea, but somehow it came around that semen

• 13:02Josh Clark?

  can be used very effectively as an invisible ink. And I saw that somebody put it, the supply is renewable.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. So he must have just searched high, but not low.

• 13:13Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 13:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, renewable. There, there's some, I mean, it gets a little grosser. Should we even cover this in more detail?

• 13:21Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 13:22Speaker 02

  Okay. Apparently he had a colleague that reported about the man, one of our men in Copenhagen stocked it in a bottle for his letters, and it stank so bad that they had to tell him that a fresh operation was necessary for each letter.

• 13:40Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 13:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah, we had to say that.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  And he said, no problem.

• 13:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah, exactly. Wow, thank you.

• 13:47Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 13:49Josh Clark?

  So you want to take a break or you want to dive into World War I era?

• 13:53Speaker 02

  Let's take a break. That's a good little table setting. So we'll come back and talk about, talk about World War I right after this.

• 14:16Josh Clark?

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• 16:03Josh Clark?

  So by the time World War I rolled around, what was it, 1911, I think? I'm sure I'm wrong, and we're gonna get a bunch of emails, but let's just say for sake of argument, it was 1911. This is just a couple of years after the Bureau was formed and Sir Cumming was, you know, running around doing his thing. But by this time, he'd, yeah, writing letters with invisible ink all over the place. By this time, though, he cultivated some sources already in Germany. He had one guy named B. He was C, and this first source was B, who would report on, you know, comings and goings

• 16:46Josh Clark?

  on the coast and the harbor and their ship sizes and how many ships were in their fleet. And although they totally dropped the ball on Germany invading neutral Belgium, which was a big deal.

• 16:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:00Josh Clark?

  They still managed to give them a lot of, like, really important intel that basically proved the idea that Britain could really use a MI6 or something like it.

• 17:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it seemed to be, the way I read this was like, these are just sort of the baby steps. They didn't have like, kind of the authority they would have later on, and they were kind of sussing out how valuable they might be. So they were just sort of getting established. After World War I was when they were fully established as the SIS. But they were, you know, they were monitoring Russia, trying to keep them in the war. They were like, what are the Americans thinking right now? What's going on in the Oval Office? Because we'd like to bring them into the war. And they were doing yeoman's work, you know, providing, you know, the kind of stuff you would see in like, The Great Escape, even though that was World War II. Like, if you're POW, you might get a map and a compass smuggled into you.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  Stuff like that, trying to foil bombing plots and things like that. So they were excited, like, you know, what do you think of us now? How are we doing? And apparently, good enough to be official after the war.

• 18:04Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so by the time the interwar period comes along, the 20s, 30s.

• 18:11Josh Clark?

  They, well, there are some more legendary people. This is a time where it was just like the Wild West in Great Britain as far as spycraft and intelligence goes. There's this one guy who's definitely worth mentioning. He was an early agent. And we should say, most people call anybody who would be working for MI6 an agent. With the CIA, you'd be correct. With MI6, you'd be wrong. An agent, as far as MI6 is concerned, is one of those sources who has turned turncoat on their country and is supplying MI6 with secrets.

• 18:45Speaker 02

  Right. Like a double agent.

• 18:47Josh Clark?

  That's an agent. Or just a plain old agent. A double agent would be somebody who is actually spying for their country, but posing as a spy for MI6. This is just a plain old agent. Officers are the people who are employees of MI6 that run and handle agents in the field.

• 19:05Speaker 02

  Right. So that would make Cyril Bertram Mills an agent.

• 19:09Josh Clark?

  Correct. Yes. That's what I was getting to.

• 19:12Speaker 02

  All right. So before World War II, this guy was a circus director. And he ended up working for MI6 for about four decades, known only to his family, you know, for doing this work. Because as a circus director, he could get in a little bi-wing plane and he could fly all over the place undercover of doing circus business. I don't think he was like standing on the plane and eating a banana like on the wings of the plane, like doing tricks. But he had to get around as a circus guy, and this was pretty good cover. And he had some pretty dangerous missions with these flights as well, right?

• 19:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah. There's a couple where he was giving like MI6 like really valuable intelligence from flying over like aircraft factories in Germany. Apparently, there was a one particular piece of information, or I guess a bunch of information that really formed a good picture of the size of Germany's Luftwaffe, their air force. And Winston Churchill apparently used that to decide whether he was on the side of appeasing Hitler or fighting Hitler. And I guess because of the buildup of this air force, he was like, we can't let this guy keep continuing. So he was against appeasement, thanks largely to Bertram Mills intel that he was directly giving him.

• 20:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, and this was, you know, this is dangerous work. He wasn't just flying around. I think in 1936, which was the year he started, the Nazi courts executed by decapitation, usually with an axe, six spies that were caught. So he had a lot on the line as a circus director, but he was doing it for, I guess, love of country.

• 20:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and a circus director is understating it. He was known as king of the modern circus. Like, he was a really big deal outside of his spying activities. It would have astounded anybody who had ever heard of him that he was a spy.

• 21:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think circus director fit better on a card than king of the modern circus.

• 21:12Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  Probably. And he was an understated guy, you know, he wasn't flamboyant.

• 21:16Josh Clark?

  No, there you go. Yeah, it would have been one of those things where it starts out normal, but as it gets closer to the edge of the card, they start cramping letters together.

• 21:25Speaker 02

  Like a poster made for elementary school?

• 21:27Josh Clark?

  Right, for the science fair.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 21:30Josh Clark?

  What happens with vinegar and baking soda?

• 21:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, I still do that sometimes when I have to. I don't, I'm not great at spacing like that. It has to do with your brain, I think, spatial awareness and stuff.

• 21:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I'm not that good at it either, don't worry.

• 21:45Speaker 02

  All right, good.

• 21:46Josh Clark?

  So, for a long time, not a lot happened, and then World War II broke out. And World War II, by this time, remember, MI6 had proved its mettle and worth in World War I. You had a whole decade or two where it just kept proving its worth. And so by the time the war broke out, you would think that they would be totally ready for this, but I don't know if it caught them off guard, or they were just allowed to kind of be pruned in peacetime. I don't know, but it took them a minute to get their footing and regenerate like human intelligence networks in Europe. But they apparently got their footing fairly

• 22:27Josh Clark?

  quickly and were very successful in basically generating a lot of intelligence coming out of different countries, including occupied countries in Europe during World War II.

• 22:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, it seems like that was the slower part. Where we know they did a lot better was at Bletchley Park with their signals intelligence. You know, we talked about the code breaking and Alan Turing and the, what was it? Enigma machine?

• 22:53Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 22:54Speaker 02

  That's right. Some great episodes from our distant past, but they were, they were kind of crushing it over there. They did finally during this period, start to have some women working there that were not just secretaries. There was, there was one overseen by a woman named Kathleen Pettigrew, communications at least between home and field agents. She was very proud of her work and said, I was basically Miss Money Penny, but with more power.

• 23:20Josh Clark?

  Yeah. She was the chief at the time secretary and he imbued her with enough power to run a program. So a lot of people say she was probably the inspiration for Ian Fleming's Miss Money Penny, who James Bond used to like to flirt with.

• 23:34Speaker 02

  I think a lot of people from this age were like, I'm basically M or I'm Q or I'm Miss Money Penny.

• 23:40Josh Clark?

  My dad used to go around telling people he was Q.

• 23:44Speaker 02

  Are you serious?

• 23:45Josh Clark?

  No.

• 23:48Josh Clark?

  I would have been so embarrassed.

• 23:50Speaker 02

  Well, see, that was a tough one. I'm giving myself a break there because I believe in almost anything you tell me about your dad.

• 23:56Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's true. The herbal Elvis.

• 23:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And speaking of Q, it turns out that, so they, they were, they did kind of develop devices, like you said, figuring out ways to hide compasses and maps to get to POWs in World War One. But the idea of their research and development and technology branch that produced someone like Q that we all who know the James Bond movies are familiar with, that actually came from them absorbing a rival agency that was developed in World War Two, that MI6 did not like one bit at first. The Special Operations Executive or the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.

• 24:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, it seemed like, and I may just be like.

• 24:40Speaker 02

  Teenage boying this thing, but it seemed like they got under MI6's skin because they got to do more fun stuff.

• 24:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 24:48Speaker 02

  Like, kind of more dangerous ops went to them. And MI6 were like, you know, we've been around a while and these are, I think they thought of them the way Kyle put it, as dangerous amateurs. But then they started saying, but you got to take us along at least.

• 25:02Josh Clark?

  Well, yeah, I mean, they definitely did have their fun stuff curtailed because MI6 had a department called D-Section. And D stood for destruction, like, they were supposedly perfectly capable of doing sabotage. I don't know enough about World War II British military history to understand why they felt a special operations executive was needed. Or if somebody just managed to have enough power that they developed their own thing and it just became SOE. I don't know. But eventually, MI6 prevailed, especially after World War II. And they absorbed the special operations executive, including a lot of their really interesting, useful stuff, like their research and development group that produced people like Q.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, I got the feeling, and maybe we'll get a real, you know, British history buff that can let us know, but it sounded to me like a Churchill directive, kind of like,

• 25:58Speaker 02

  I know we've got our Section D in MI6, but we need a really super-secret special sabotageware team. And like, let's create one.

• 26:08Josh Clark?

  Right, everybody was waiting for that last part.

• 26:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's kind of what it sounded like. But back to Q, that was based, again, on a real person. And I think we said, but Q stands for quartermaster. And this guy was Charles Fraser Smith. And he was the one that made, like, literal miniature cameras inside cigarette lighters and steel shoelaces to choke someone out with.

• 26:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah, garrote.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  A cigarette holder telescope. Kyle said that these weren't as, were a little more humdrum, but I think a bullet-shaped device to stick up your butt that holds vital information. Maybe humdrum, but it's pretty useful.

• 26:47Josh Clark?

  I'll bet it doesn't feel humdrum going in.

• 26:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, it depends on what kind of bullet, too.

• 26:53Josh Clark?

  For sure.

• 26:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so I mean, there's a lot of what we understand about MI6 in like the movies and all that. It does apparently bear some resemblance because I don't know if we said or not, Ian Fleming worked for MI6 during during World War II. So he had firsthand knowledge about all this stuff, which is why there are real life people who these characters were based on. So our understanding of what MI6 does and has at its disposal and the way it runs is not that far off. But one of the big differences I saw was the idea of a lone loose cannon running his own operations out there is totally incorrect. It's just backwards.

• 27:39Josh Clark?

  I've seen current employees say like, that guy wouldn't even make it through the door. Like he would get vetted out so quickly that he wouldn't even have a chance. You need somebody who's not a loose cannon.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:51Josh Clark?

  You, rather than solo missions, apparently it's all teamwork.

• 27:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:56Josh Clark?

  And it's not one person coming up with one giant piece of information. Like there's a supervillain who's created a layer at the bottom of the sea that he's going to shoot nuclear missiles from. That usually doesn't come up in one big package. It takes thousands of people to work together to piece little pieces of information. And then go back and double check and triple check with other sources, whether those pieces of information are correct. And then eventually you create a whole picture and you hope, hope that it's true and accurate.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you hope there's a secret layer.

• 28:30Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 28:30Speaker 02

  With like trained sharks in a moat.

• 28:33Josh Clark?

  That you can get a membership to.

• 28:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 28:37Speaker 02

  So speeding along up to the Cold War. We are now at a place where, like the USA, the Cold War was dominated in MI6 by the Soviets and communism, the spread of communism. Agents, double agents, secret agents, triple agents. They were doing the same work we were. They partnered up with the CIA in 1948, again, which was modeled on MI6. And they were trying to, at this point, balance intelligence with covert actions because it wasn't like an active war. So they had to approach it differently. And they said that, at the time, there were a couple of different types of, I guess, what, officers working there?

• 29:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  Almost an agent. But Moscow men, who are apparently very careful and gathering that intelligence, and then camel drivers, who were people they would send in to, like, on the ground, in the field, at a local place to ally themselves with locals to maybe mount an insurrection or something like that.

• 29:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and I'm guessing the camel drivers came from the Special Operations Executive Heritage, because that's exactly the kind of guerrilla warfare the SOE engaged in in World War II. So I'm guessing that's how that survived into the Cold War.

• 29:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, and of course, because it's the Cold War, a lot of the intelligence that these Moscow men were gathering was like, hey, we're not at war, but in case something happens, we know that they've got these airfields, they've got this many tanks, this many soldiers on the ground that could move here in this amount of time. So, you know, it was sort of a readiness operation at that point.

• 30:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and not just like, okay, they have a huge stockpile of these weapons. The opposite could be just as valuable, too. Like, actually, they don't have that many missiles. So all this bluster about them blowing the UK into the ocean is actually full of hot air, so we don't need to be quite as scared about it.

• 30:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, good point.

• 30:39Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and that's, I mean, that's really important, too. But like you said, also, I mean, they got caught maybe a little off guard with World War II. I get the impression that they didn't let that happen during the Cold War. They were still keeping up with the Soviets, like capabilities. I think what else made it easy, too, is you had one nation, really, to spy on. The Soviet Union as a whole, it was massive and it's, it was made up of what are now a bunch of independent nations. But at the time, you had one big enemy, rather than today where you have like terrorism, non-state bad actors. You like, it's just much more dilute, whereas before it was like, those guys, those are our enemy. That's who we need to spy on.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, train all ears toward Moscow, basically.

• 31:22Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 31:23Speaker 02

  So they were also still recruiting intelligence officers, you know, to use on their side.

• 31:31Speaker 02

  And this is, did I read this right? The KGB, their acronym MICE, stood for money, ideology, coercion, and ego. Were they identifying people within their own ranks that might be, you know, susceptible to being turned?

• 31:45Josh Clark?

  I'm sure you could apply to that, but the impression I had is that was just how they decided if somebody was worth approaching to recruit as a spy for them.

• 31:53Speaker 02

  Oh, okay, but it could cut both ways, I guess.

• 31:56Josh Clark?

  It would apply, yeah, for sure. So if you're recruiting people, that's one way to do it. You can flatter them, make them, just be like, this person clearly wants to feel like they're important or helping their country or something like that. You can have stuff to blackmail them with. Apparently MI6 is more than willing to blackmail agents into working for them. Bribery is another one, too. It's how a lot of very famous and prolific spies have been brought on to being a spy is just getting paid. Although in the end, when you, when they're being executed, you're like, you did all this for $300,000, really?

• 32:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:33Josh Clark?

  You know, it just never quite adds up. And it's like, and also, it's like $300,000 over like 12 years or something like that. It just, I never quite get it. So maybe there's like, they're really in it for the thrill. The money was just the extra bonus, I don't know.

• 32:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, they'd be like, why don't you just try scratch off tickets? If you want to make 40 grand a year for the next 15 years?

• 32:54Josh Clark?

  Right. And then another gambit is called the dangle.

• 33:00Josh Clark?

  It's not dirty. It's just this way of getting somebody to spy for you.

• 33:04Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 33:04Josh Clark?

  Or actually, it's a way of creating a double agent like you were talking about.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  So that's when you recruit somebody, but for the purposes of exposing them, right?

• 33:14Josh Clark?

  So a dangle is where you say like you have somebody in Moscow that you've turned into an agent for you. You try to make them attractive to, say, the KGB.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  Ah.

• 33:27Josh Clark?

  To recruit them as a spy. So now you have a double agent working inside.

• 33:32Speaker 02

  Okay. And is that who, is that how they got Oleg Pankovsky?

• 33:36Josh Clark?

  I don't know if he came to them. No, he came to them. He became disillusioned with the Soviet Union and he's like, I think I'm going to start helping the UK.

• 33:47Speaker 02

  Oh, okay. Because he worked with both MI6 and CIA. And again, this is during the Cold War. So he was one of the key players in sort of getting or I guess getting and giving information on Soviet missiles in Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

• 34:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah, which is pretty useful as a matter of fact. Yeah, he was hugely helpful just over like 18 months and then he was caught and executed. But I think at that time, he gave up 5,000 photos of Soviet documents to MI6.

• 34:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, you know, you mentioned the CIA earlier, having sort of more

• 34:24Speaker 02

  legal hands being tied than they do, apparently in the Cold War. And who knows, maybe this all happens today. But if there was a CIA officer that couldn't get something done on the down low that was maybe untoward or violent or illegal, they could call MI6 and say, hey, we can't get this done. Could you?

• 34:47Josh Clark?

  And they say, yes.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 34:49Josh Clark?

  Wait, can you say it? I can't do a very good British accent.

• 34:52Speaker 02

  Yes. That was Murray from New Zealand again.

• 34:55Josh Clark?

  Almost always is.

• 34:57Speaker 02

  Oh, well.

• 34:58Josh Clark?

  So I say, we take a break and we come back and talk about one of the most thrilling moments in MI6 history.

• 35:22Josh Clark?

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• 37:26Josh Clark?

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• 38:16Speaker 02

  Are you talking about Oleg Gordievsky?

• 38:20Josh Clark?

  Yes, that's exactly who I'm talking about, a KGB Colonel.

• 38:24Speaker 02

  That's right. Apparently, this guy, and this is how you can, you know, get someone on your side from the, or at least at the time, from that side, is if they really like Western culture.

• 38:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah, the cowabunga lifestyle.

• 38:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, if they're like, I really like, I don't know, American sports and music and fashion, then that could be enough. And apparently, he was on assignment in Copenhagen, and they were like, this guy loves Western culture, and he might be worth, you know, getting in touch with. And sure enough, it actually worked.

• 38:56Josh Clark?

  I don't know where they'd fall in the MICE acronym: Money, Ideology, Coercion, Ego, Taste?

• 39:02Speaker 02

  Maybe Ideology and Ego? I don't know.

• 39:04Josh Clark?

  I'm not sure. But yes, he definitely turned.

• 39:09Josh Clark?

  But he was caught. He was found out. So he was, he became the station chief or working out of the embassy as a KGB agent in London. So he was able to actually kind of easily pass secrets to the Brits, because he was there already. He was found out by Aldrich Ames, who was a famous American trader who spied for the Soviets in, I think, the 80s, or maybe even into the 90s. And he told them about Gordievsky spying for the Brits. Gordievsky was not immediately jailed, which is weird. He was definitely taken back to Moscow and held, like, basically, under surveillance.

• 39:53Josh Clark?

  But he was going to be jailed. He was going to be executed.

• 39:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:57Josh Clark?

  So he started what had been planned seven years before and named Operation Pimlico. And by, by standing in a Moscow bakery or outside of a Moscow bakery, holding a plastic Safeway bag, he was signaling MI6, like, get me out of here right now.

• 40:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. And he said, how am I going to know if you've gotten the message? And they says, well, how about this? A man's going to walk by you carrying a Harrods bag. And they, he said, that could be anybody.

• 40:27Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 40:28Speaker 02

  And he said, all right, how about this? Carrying a Harrods bag and eating a Mars candy bar.

• 40:32Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 40:33Speaker 02

  And he said, I guess that narrows it down enough.

• 40:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Which is really showing off because I think you could trade a Mars bar for a car in Moscow in 1985.

• 40:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, yeah, that's a good point, actually.

• 40:44Josh Clark?

  At least that's what they told us in school.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. They don't have toilet paper either. Uh, so he evaded surveillance, uh, was making a run for the Finnish border. And MI6 grabbed him and put him in a car trunk. But they have like, you know, sniffing dogs, inspecting cars and things. So they had the brilliant idea to change a poopy diaper on the trunk of the car that he was stuffed inside. And apparently it worked.

• 41:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah, those dogs were like, oh God, and just went back to their post.

• 41:15Speaker 02

  No, thank you.

• 41:16Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Isn't that amazing? So then they, they got him across the Finnish border. Finland is neutral and he was safe. But I mean, like, that is real deal spy stuff, you know?

• 41:27Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, for sure.

• 41:27Josh Clark?

  Like, holding a Safeway bag? That's awesome. The Mars bar? I love every part of that. So he actually, he was actually tried in absentia and sentenced to death by the Soviet Union. But he had defected to the UK and they protected him. And he died an old man, I think age 86, last March, at his home in, in Great Britain.

• 41:49Speaker 02

  Incredible.

• 41:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 41:51Speaker 02

  They never got a hold of him.

• 41:52Josh Clark?

  No, but one thing that we really should say, and I was kind of touching on it earlier. One of the really valuable things he provided was he could understand the state of mind of the Soviet government and Soviet military. And he Fed this information to the UK, to MI6, who turned around and said, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, you guys need to tone down this evil empire rhetoric.

• 42:16Speaker 02

  Right.

• 42:16Josh Clark?

  Because you are scaring the Soviets so bad.

• 42:19Speaker 02

  Fanning their flames.

• 42:20Josh Clark?

  They're plotting a first strike because they think you're going to strike out of nowhere. So you actually might trigger a first strike from the Soviets if you keep talking like this. And as a result, they really dialed it back quite a bit.

• 42:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, he said, have you seen War Games?

• 42:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 42:36Speaker 02

  He's like, that could happen.

• 42:38Josh Clark?

  In that sense, he kind of saved the world.

• 42:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:42Josh Clark?

  I think that's great.

• 42:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think saving the world is totally great.

• 42:45Josh Clark?

  I'm all for it.

• 42:47Speaker 02

  If we're talking about modern times, and you mentioned the 90s is when things sort of went official, and that was 1994, they officially went public due to the 1994 Intelligence Services Act. And basically, this had happened to MI5 in 1989. And it's kind of seemed like they had to kind of bring in some bureaucracy for legal reasons, among others. They, the staff of MI5, and I guess later MI6, wanted better legal basis for things like tapping phones. They had to be a little more on the up and up. I think that it was the European Court of Human Rights said that if you're an intelligence service,

• 43:31Speaker 02

  you have to have legal footing and a complaint system. So like, you have to become official for all this stuff to be official.

• 43:38Josh Clark?

  Right. There's, so that law that essentially acknowledged that there was such a thing as MI6 back in 1994, it had a section called Section 7. And it basically said, if one of our agents is off running around committing crimes in another country that they could be tried for back in the UK, they cannot be held liable for that. They'll never be tried for this.

• 44:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:04Josh Clark?

  And some people have taken that as admission that there's such a thing as a license to kill. And that makes sense. I mean, apparently there is a new law that's being talked about right now and is making its way through the Supreme Court there that basically says yes, and pretty much murder too. We're not going to try them for murder. And it actually extends to agents too.

• 44:26Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 44:26Josh Clark?

  So if somebody murders somebody for MI6 and then they defect to the UK, the UK is never going to try them for that murder. So it's a lot. So people are like, that's a license to kill. And I saw an agent say on, I think a PBS or BBC documentary, a license to kill doesn't make any sense. Like if you're in another country and you kill somebody there, like when the cops come, you're not going to show them your license to kill and they'll let you go. Like this is not, you're breaking that country's law. You've murdered someone in that country. You're toast if you get caught.

• 44:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:58Josh Clark?

  So there is no license to kill, but

• 45:01Speaker 02

  Symbolic, perhaps.

• 45:02Josh Clark?

  These laws essentially kind of potentially give something like a license to kill.

• 45:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, but you just don't whip out your double O card.

• 45:11Josh Clark?

  No.

• 45:12Speaker 02

  No. Uh, the other things that happened in 1994, as far as the organization goes is they were, the, the chief was, I was about to say exposed, technically that's right. But they voluntarily said, all right, we have to be official now. Here's who our chief is. They moved offices to some fancy headquarters on the, on the Thames, designed by Terry Farrell. It's a very secure, sort of secretive building. And, you know, it's, while they did go public, you know, technically, it's still MI6 and they still have a culture of secrecy because of what they do. It's not like, you know, they just sort of made things, some things a little more public to make things official, I guess.

• 45:56Josh Clark?

  Right. That, that building too, it is secure, but it was blown up not once, but twice. Well, not blown up. The first time it was attacked by the IRA, they shot an anti-tank rocket launcher at the building on September 20th, 2000. And that building just like shook it off immediately. Like it did almost no damage to it whatsoever and really kind of showed just how crazy reinforced that building is. But it suffered a much different fate in James Bond's Skyfall, where it blew up.

• 46:30Speaker 02

  Oh, was that with that building?

• 46:32Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 46:33Speaker 02

  Skyfall was good.

• 46:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it was, as a matter of fact.

• 46:36Speaker 02

  Quite liked it. I'm curious what's gonna happen next with that franchise.

• 46:39Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they haven't named any James Bond yet?

• 46:41Speaker 02

  I don't think so. And they, they sold, you know, the broccoli family, I think, sold, sold everything.

• 46:45Josh Clark?

  Oh, really?

• 46:47Speaker 02

  God, it may have been Amazon even. I don't know.

• 46:49Josh Clark?

  Wow.

• 46:50Speaker 02

  Not sure, but we'll see.

• 46:51Josh Clark?

  Well, if it's not Idris Elba, I'm gonna be really surprised.

• 46:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, they've been talking about him for years. That, that would be too good to be true. They're, no one's smart enough to do that in, in movie making.

• 47:03Speaker 02

  I don't have great faith. Uh, we should talk a little bit about the more modern day stuff because, um, you know, starting in the early 2000s, uh, leading up to the Iraq war in 2003, uh, obviously, they were gonna be working with hunting down terrorists and maybe, uh, weapons of mass destruction. And that was, one of their big black eyes, actually, was bogus information that got through. Uh, apparently, you know, it wasn't vetted like it should have been. And that was one of the reasons that, uh, the US and the rest of the world, uh, got and believed bad information about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

• 47:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Um, it's said that that is the lowest moment in MI6 history since Kim Philby was discovered as a traitor and longtime spy, which is really saying something if you've heard our episode on Kim Philby. Um, but I would say that this was even much, much worse because of how many people died in the Iraq war.

• 48:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:02Josh Clark?

  And the reason why it was such a big deal, this bad intelligence, is because the US and the UK essentially made a pact, like, we're gonna invade Iraq together, to topple this, this regime. We just wanna get rid of Saddam Hussein. That's not legal. If Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, now it's legal under basically international law. So they really went to a lot of trouble to try to find anything that suggested that. And in the end, they just relied on these sources that just were totally untrustworthy. Um, and I don't remember where we talked about it, but one of the sources that, that the US and the UK relied on to invade Iraq with, said they have weapons of mass destruction. They keep them in these glass canisters and in these like little glass balls.

• 48:47Josh Clark?

  And the glass balls are green.

• 48:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:49Josh Clark?

  And Nicolas Cage protects them with Sean Connery.

• 48:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean. Learned people really genuinely suspect that that could have been misinformation based on The Rock.

• 49:02Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and that the handful of British ministers and politicians who saw this intel had not seen The Rock, apparently, and it just didn't ring any bells if they had seen it.

• 49:14Speaker 02

  Well, they had better taste in that.

• 49:15Josh Clark?

  I guess so. It wasn't that good, but you know.

• 49:18Speaker 02

  It was okay.

• 49:19Josh Clark?

  If you want just like a, you know, shoot them up, bang, kind of thing, action movie, I guess.

• 49:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:26Josh Clark?

  It's all right.

• 49:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:27Josh Clark?

  Um, so today, MI6, uh, they're realizing openly in interviews and stuff that they really need to start keeping up with technology because, because of like facial recognition and surveillance states like that China has and the UK. It's basically impossible to create, um, an agent somewhere, like human intelligence is really hard to do now.

• 49:49Speaker 02

  Especially in China.

• 49:50Josh Clark?

  Yes, and apparently they're starting to use AI to run scenarios and situations to predict how somebody will behave in different situations. That's a new one they're starting to do too. So, um, I don't know how ahead of the curve they are, and it sounds to me a little bit like they're behind the curve, but at least they're realizing they need to, they need to wake up and, and smell the, um, hard drives.

• 50:14Josh Clark?

  Sorry.

• 50:14Speaker 02

  Thought you were gonna say English breakfast tea, but.

• 50:16Josh Clark?

  Oh, that's even better.

• 50:18Speaker 02

  So.

• 50:18Josh Clark?

  Can we just edit that in, but you say it?

• 50:21Speaker 02

  Beijing Mr. Herman. Uh, so the, you know, the other obvious thing as far as modern day recruitment goes, it's not like the old days where they would just sort of source someone out and very, you know, quietly have someone walk by and drop a note on their dinner table that says, are you interested in a job? You know, come by this office tomorrow alone, that kind of thing. Uh, it's a modern organization now with, you know, job listings and things like that. Again, still very secretive in a lot of ways, I'm sure in what they do, but, um, they, you know, starting in 1994 is when they really were brought into the sort of modern era. Uh, it's a little less James Bond-y and just a little more, you know, fill out this application and we'll do our background checks.

• 51:05Josh Clark?

  Right. It is still risky, though, is, I can't remember what year it was. In the 2010s, I believe, there was a codebreaker for MI6 named Gareth Williams, who was found dead in his bathroom, inside a tote bag that was locked from the outside.

• 51:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's hard to do on your own, but wouldn't that be excuses, like, he did this himself?

• 51:27Josh Clark?

  Either that, or that it was like a sex game gone wrong, and the partner, like, took off, freaked out and took off. I think that's the official explanation. But there was a former KGB agent who came forward in 2015 and said, "No." That guy, the Russians tried to recruit him, and he said, "No," and so they killed him.

• 51:44Speaker 02

  Hmm, I wonder if it was a sex game gone wrong, and they just were extracting invisibly?

• 51:51Josh Clark?

  Oh, my God. I think that's a pretty good way to wrap up this episode, if not have wrapped it up 30 seconds before you said that.

• 51:58Speaker 02

  Agreed.

• 51:59Josh Clark?

  Well, since we both agree that this episode is wrapped up, then that means it's time for Listener Mail.

• 52:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've got a couple of two-parters on these next ones about disaster films, because, boy, we heard from a lot of people that really enjoyed that one. And these two are from Maria and Kirk. "Hey, guys, loved the disaster movie, but I'm surprised you didn't mention the movie Testament." I have not heard of this, Maria, but I'm gonna check it out. It's from 1983, by Lynn Litman, starring Jane Alexander, one of the few with a female lead, closest thing to a hero in this post-apocalyptic movie, and one of the few directed by a woman. You were focusing more escapist, action-disaster-type things, but you did mention a few that were a little off the radar, so I thought I would mention this one. And another one that you could have mentioned that was a little off the radar was Melancholia,

• 52:50Speaker 02

  a pre-apocalyptic film, so...

• 52:53Josh Clark?

  Have we not mentioned that? I swear to God, we did.

• 52:55Speaker 02

  I don't think we did in that episode, but we did talk about it recently, because we've talked about it a few times, for some reason.

• 53:02Josh Clark?

  I think that qualifies.

• 53:03Speaker 02

  And then also, from Kirk, "Hey, from beautiful Astoria, Oregon, longtime listener, and I love disaster films, and you guys did a great job." I'm surprised, though, that you didn't mention Jurassic Park, because I believe that fits all the criteria and predates Twister by three years. And it also fits that your conversation on the early use of CGI was some of the greatest special effects of the time. I have a feeling I won't be the only person mentioning this. Uh.

• 53:30Josh Clark?

  Totally were.

• 53:31Speaker 02

  Love the podcast, guys. And that is from Kirk Klinger. Uh, now, we had a few people write in about Jurassic Park, but I don't know about disaster movie. To me, that's maybe a subgenre of monster movie. I don't know. What do you think?

• 53:44Josh Clark?

  It, uh, it did have a Hoffman in the form of, um, Wayne Knight, uh, who played Newman.

• 53:51Speaker 02

  True.

• 53:52Josh Clark?

  He was even wearing a Hawaiian shirt. Like, he couldn't get more, obviously, Hoffman.

• 53:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a good point. So.

• 53:59Josh Clark?

  I just, I don't, I don't think it is a disaster movie, though, but that's just my opinion.

• 54:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. And we're not the, I mean, what do we know? If you think it's a disaster movie, then go with it.

• 54:07Josh Clark?

  I did see some people agreed with me, though, that Godzilla minus one is definitely a disaster.

• 54:12Speaker 02

  No.

• 54:13Josh Clark?

  So I was right.

• 54:14Speaker 02

  Well, the, the scale of destruction in Jurassic Park one was limited to Isla Nubar. So I don't know, though. Other things were localized, too. So maybe I'm just wrong about everything in life.

• 54:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Yeah. Like that, that tunnel collapse with Stallone? That was localized.

• 54:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's true. That's true.

• 54:30Josh Clark?

  Uh, yeah. Well, Kirk, thank you for starting this conversation. It's a great one. Like I said, we love that kind of thing. Send us an email. Send it off to [email protected].

• 54:43Speaker 03

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 54:58Josh Clark?

  Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it starts with a great deal on an off-road-ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest-lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places. Introducing Voices of Vivgard. Vivgard is also known as its generic name, Fgartigamod Alpha F Cam. And this new show features firsthand stories from people living with A rare disease.

• 55:40Josh Clark?

  Hosted by Andrew Stratton, these perspectives highlight that life is more than a moment, a condition, or a tough day. Living with a rare disease can be challenging, but it does not define the voices of Vivgard. In these episodes, they share their stories, from diagnosis to working with their care team on their treatment plan. Listen to Voices of Vivgard on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody. I am here to talk to you about Dude Wipes, who offer fragrance-free wipes that are made with 99% water and plant-based ingredients. So they're gentle enough for sensitive skin, but they're tough enough for even the worst messes. Weather cleans better, and Dude Wipes Flushable Wipes deliver textbook freshness and ultimate clean.

• 56:21Josh Clark?

  And just like human body molecules, Dude Wipes are made with 99% water, plus they're plastic-free. Dude Wipes give the best clean pants down. Dude Wipes, available at major retailers nationwide.

• 56:33Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.