534. Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
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Hi everybody, welcome to The Rest Is History. Tom, today we're going to tell the listeners about an absolutely thrilling new venture from Goldhanger, aren't we? The Rest Is Classified, telling the very best stories from the world of espionage. And it's presented, or I should say co-presented, by somebody who is incredibly close to your heart. He absolutely is. So one of the presenters is a former CIA analyst who now writes spy novels, and that's David McCloskey.

But the man who is also presenting it, man very close to my heart, is Gordon Carrera. So, yeah.

BBC security correspondent, but more germainly, massive enthusiast for pigeons, who first alerted me to the massive role that pigeons have played in history. You will then remember I nagged you for days, weeks, months. Was it a year? No, there was no nagging required. To do a whole episode on pigeons, which I think everyone would agree was a complete triumph. I bargained him down from a series.

And Gordon alerted us to the pigeon gap, the fact that China is way ahead of us when it comes to pigeons, pigeon communications. And it'd be interesting to find out from him whether he thinks that we've managed to close the pigeon gap. But more germanely, Gordon, welcome to the show and congratulations on The Rest Is Classified. Clearly, both of you were massive experts on the world of espionage. But how did you come to find yourselves doing this podcast? Gordon?

Pigeons, Tom. It all comes back to pigeons, the superheroes of history. I think if I hadn't appeared on The Rest is History doing pigeons, I don't think I'd have understood the power of podcasting, not least, and enjoyed it so much. And it was fascinating. After a career, 20-odd years broadcasting at the BBC, I appear on The Rest is History to talk about pigeons. And that is all anyone wants to talk to me about.

They go, I heard you. I heard you on The Rest is History. So I suddenly realized I think the power of podcasting came to life at that moment, brought to life through the superheroes and pigeons. And I think that was one of the foundational reasons for The Rest is Classified coming into being. There are a few others as well, which is people do love stories about spies and secrets. And me and David enjoy a good spy story as well.

Well, on that issue of spies and secrets, so tell us a little bit about the kind of spy stories that we can expect when we tune into The Rest is Classified. Well, we've got a rich array from history right up to the present. So we started off with a coup in Iran in 1953, engineered by Britain and America and the MI6 and the CIA to overthrow Mossadegh in Iran. We've also looked at the first chief of MI6, a wonderful character called Mansfield Cumming,

who was founding MI6, the British Secret Service, around the time of the First World War. Famously, he had a wooden leg and he wouldn't tell new recruits that he had a wooden leg. And they'd come into his office and he would stab himself with a penknife in the wooden leg to test whether or not they'd flinch. And if they flinched, he knew they weren't good enough for the British Secret Service. Very Kingsman. So it's a bit of a character there. You've got a brilliant series on North Korean...

espionage haven't you yeah or more recently we've done north korean espionage done a bit about syria got a series going out around now about anna chapman who was a rather famous female agent from russia who infiltrated both london and new york society on behalf of the russian security services in around 2010 so we've got a kind of rich array i think of different stories for people who just love spy stories so my favorite spy stories are probably gordievsky and vassal

So John Vassal, who was a kind of great traitor, and Gordievsky, who the amazing story about him in the 1980s, kind of getting out of the Soviet Union and giving all this amazing information to the West. So you're going to do those at some point? Absolutely. Vassal is a fascinating story about a honey trap in Moscow, actually, you know, and he gets trapped there while he's serving with a British embassy. And Gordievsky is one of the great spy stories. I've met Gordievsky a few times, and he's an amazing character, still alive, living in kind of semi-hiding in Britain,

But he's a great example where you've got all the excitement of a spy story of his exfiltration from Moscow under the kind of watching eyes of the KGB and the drama of it. But you've also got a figure who is quite consequential in history because the intelligence he provided helped him

especially Thatcher and Reagan, kind of inform them how to deal with the Soviet Union, how to deal with Gorbachev and how to manage the end of the Cold War. And I think that's really interesting when you get a spy story, which isn't just an exciting story, but actually tells you something about history. Because Gordon, I guess the question is, does spying matter? Does it influence history? And for so long, the ability to answer that question has been locked up in archives or governed by the Official Secrets Act.

But that's slightly changing, isn't it? And I guess that you and David, of all the people in the world, are the best qualified to kind of tease that question out. And that's right. I think that's one of the things we want to answer is as well as the kind of human side of things. But when did it matter? And I think Gordievsky is an example. Philby is another figure who mattered enormously.

in terms of the early Cold War, but also shaping, you know, I think Dominic knows, you know, shaping British institutions and British culture, actually, for many decades. That one person's betrayal and what it did, I think, is really interesting. So I

I do think spies matter, and you can look at that right up to the recent invasion of Ukraine in 2022 by Russia and the way in which Western intelligence was declassifying information about what Russia was up to to try and disrupt that invasion. So you can see the way intelligence is often used in the public domain. Think about the justification of the war in Iraq using intelligence about weapons of mass destruction.

All of that shows that it does matter. So you're going to have Alistair Campbell as a guest on your show. Alistair and Rory may want to comment on some of these matters. They may have knowledge about these affairs, given their backgrounds in the diplomatic and governmental world. So, yeah, I think there's plenty of room. As touches our own podcast, of course, we...

We all know and love you as a great enthusiast for the role of pigeons in espionage. Can we just end by asking you, is Britain closing the pigeon gap? Since our podcast a while back, I have been asking that high and low in the British state. And I had some assurances from security officials that they were looking at it.

But I fear... That's meaningless. But that's what I fear, Dominic. I fear you're right. I feel they're fobbing me off. And so, you know, I'd hope that perhaps collectively we could make another push on the pigeon gap. Maybe the rest is classified could become a great campaigning podcast. Campaigning podcast, yeah. If Churchill, you know, in the 30s could campaign on the gap with, you know, Nazi rearmament,

I think, you know, if he was alive today, I'd like to think Churchill might have a podcast and he'd be, you know, podcasting about that. So perhaps we can do our bit to close that pigeon gap. On that splendid note of Gordon likening himself to Winston Churchill. Thank you, Gordon. Now for our listeners, we have a great treat. We have a clip from today's episode.

I'll say, Gordon, I think her process of becoming an intelligence officer, I see it as kind of a more organic step-by-step process because that's a bit of how the Russians operate. We tend to think of the categories of like, are you an asset or are you not? Or are you an intelligence officer? What type are you? I think in the West, particularly in the States with CIA, we tend to think of the categories of like, are you an asset or are you not?

We have more rigid categories for these types of people. I think the Russians are pretty fluid with it. And the Russians, really what they care about is do you produce? They care less about whether are they a formally recruited asset or are they not? At CIA, we cared a lot about that. And the words mattered for what you called somebody. But I think with the Russians, it's a little bit more like,

can she give us interesting things? Yeah, I think that's a really interesting way of seeing it because rather than thinking she is someone who is trained as a spy and recruited, put through a year or two of training and then sent to do this...

She's someone who they go, you've got access, you've got influence, you've proved that in London. Let's start using you and training you up as you go to become a spy. And I think it's worth reflecting here about the way Russia spies, which is slightly different as well, in that one of the things that they do is use these people under what they call illegal cover, which it's kind of odd phrase.

But the contrast is they think of someone who's under diplomatic cover. So a spy who's working at the embassy, they have legal cover because they've got diplomatic immunity. And if they get arrested, they can't be arrested. They just get expelled. But an illegal is someone who doesn't have, if you like, diplomatic cover, but is blending into a society.

and who is moving around with it, kind of swimming in the waters, hopefully unseen. And it's a particular type of spy which the Russians specialize in. Well, and she'll be a particular type, won't she? Because when you think of an illegal, I mean, the show that really captures this dynamic is called The Americans. And the premise is it's sort of Reagan era, United States in the 80s, height of the Cold War. And the premise is that there are two Russians who come to the States. They're living together.

under assumed identities, typically gleaned from fabricating kind of a passport based off a real person who may have passed away when they were two or three or something like that, taking the identity. I think the Russians call it tombstoning. But living under a false name. And Anna isn't going to do that, although she's got that great last name Chapman, which can kind of mask the fact that she's Russian.

She's not hiding who she is, right, at any point. So in some respect, she's a little bit like a CIA officer who'd be under a commercial cover, who is probably operating with their real name, but hiding the fact that they're working for CIA, right? But she's sort of not your illegal who's taken Argentinian documents and come up with a new identity. Exactly. And I think the Russians were famous, and the Soviets, for using these deep cover illegals who they trained for years.

And they train them to actually pose as being another nationality. So you take a Russian and you'd make them into being a Canadian or a Briton or an American and insert them with the identity of a real, you know, maybe a Briton or an American who died and have them kind of embed themselves deep in society. The idea was that they could then do things which a Russian couldn't do. You know, they could move in circles and not be as suspicious.

And so that was your classic deep cover illegal. But what I think we're seeing here in the 90s and 2000s is a recognition by Russia that times have changed.

For two reasons, I think one is that it's harder to do that kind of deep cover stuff. One of the reasons is biometrics because you've got kind of passports, you've got databases. It's harder to kind of create a fake identity and then sustain it when you know whether it's fingerprints or DNA or facial recognition to use different names and different types of cover.

But also, one of the reasons that they needed to do this in the kind of 20s and 30s and in the Cold War onwards and use these illegals was because Russians couldn't move easily in Western society. Where suddenly you've got this period where, as we said, from the 90s to the 2000s, Russians can come into London. They can move around London. That's not suspicious. There's not a kind of barrier to it. So Anna, I think, is emblematic of this new type of spying that Russia can do.

which is no need to do the deep training for some illegal spy, but take someone who's already moving in between the two societies or has got links in London or somewhere and just train them up, use them, make the most of them because they're there. They've got the ability to kind of meet people and talk to people and move in interesting circles. Thanks for listening. Listen to The Rest is Classified wherever you get your podcasts.