Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00It is the headquarters of the world's most famous spy organization.
00:11The legendary home of agent 007, James Bond.
00:16This is MI6, otherwise known as Her Majesty's Secret Service.
00:23Now with unprecedented access to the major players in British espionage.
00:28It's exciting, and the adrenaline is pumping around.
00:34We reveal the truth behind the covert operations, the secret missions, and the double agents.
00:42I was playing with death every day.
00:46We expose the dangerous secret world of real life spies.
00:51There are far more spies in London now than there were during the Cold War.
00:58London. A cosmopolitan metropolis of eight million inhabitants.
01:13And home to the world-renowned British Secret Service.
01:18For decades, cunning games of espionage have been played out on the city streets.
01:25Assassinations. Treason. And betrayal.
01:34London has always been a crossroads, a global city.
01:39You've always had lots of exiles and dissidents here.
01:42That means it's a real meeting place for spies.
01:45British spies, spies from other countries trying to recruit people, trying to run operations.
01:50And I think it's meant that London is one of the great spy cities in the world.
01:54Entering the high-stakes world of spying, we learn what's really going on in the shadows.
02:01From the highest echelons of MI6.
02:08The best form of defense against plots and attacks is to know about it in advance.
02:14It was all about collecting intelligence and recruiting and running sources.
02:19To field operatives who risked their lives.
02:23PCAR's operating under about 14 or 15 different aliases.
02:26Unsung heroes of Britain's most secret code-breaking station.
02:31We broke a message that said, today's the day minus three.
02:36The KGB double agents who fought the Cold War.
02:40They expected the Americans might carry out a sudden nuclear attack.
02:46But this crisis was stopped.
02:57The secret intelligence service exists to defend and protect the security and interests of the United Kingdom.
03:03It's known by its World War I designation as Military Intelligence Section 6, or MI6.
03:13This green and cream building behind me is the headquarters of MI6.
03:18That's the secret intelligence service, Britain's foreign intelligence service, the equivalent of the CIA.
03:24Within intelligence circles, the building is known as VX,
03:29after its location at Vauxhall Cross on the banks of the River Thames.
03:35It became even more identifiable to millions of cinema fans around the globe,
03:39when it was famously blown up in the Bond movie Skyfall.
03:45It is probably the most famous secret service building in the world, thanks to the James Bond films.
03:52The fictional world of 007 may be glamorous and entertaining, but the reality of life in MI6 is far more serious.
04:01Someone who knows this dark world better than most is Sir John Scarlet.
04:10For 38 years, he was one of MI6's top operatives, rising to Chief of the Service in 2004.
04:19MI6 is essentially an information gathering agency.
04:24It collects intelligence. That is his job, and he is very good at it.
04:29During his five-year tenure as Chief, Sir John authorised many dangerous and daring intelligence operations.
04:35There's not much I can share, but I think like many of my colleagues over a long period of time,
04:42have quite often been in situations where it's exciting,
04:45and the best way of describing it is the adrenaline, you know, is pumping round.
04:50To preserve secrecy and security, MI6 never acknowledges its missions or spies.
04:57But one spy has outed himself and talked.
05:03Former undercover MI6 officer and now author, Matthew Dunn.
05:08The majority of what I did was recruiting foreign spies,
05:11typically nationals who were placed in positions that gave them access to secrets,
05:16and targeting senior echelons within rogue states, and that was the core of my work.
05:22In MI6 speak, those passing on secret intelligence are called agents.
05:29While men such as Dunn, who run the agents, are called officers.
05:34Both are commonly referred to as spies.
05:39Dunn typically met his agents in the bars and rooms of London's top hotels.
05:44Glossy surroundings that are far more dangerous than they seem to the average tourist.
05:51The biggest concerns a case officer has when attending a covert meeting with an agent
05:55is fear that he is being followed by a hostile surveillance team.
06:00In order to address that, the officer will walk an anti-surveillance route.
06:04Officers will establish what's called a theme.
06:07And in this case, I'm walking down German Street and my theme is shirt shopping.
06:12If a team's following me, they will think I am shirt shopping.
06:17If an officer spots the same face more than once on his anti-surveillance route,
06:23this is called a double sighting.
06:26This person may well be enemy surveillance,
06:29in which case the officer has to abort the meeting.
06:33I've often felt when operating that there was a threat to me.
06:38That I could be snatched or the person you're with could be snatched.
06:44And that threat could include death.
06:48Today, MI6 has over 3,200 officers operating across the globe.
06:55They run covert operations, infiltrate terrorist organizations, and foil international plots.
07:05They need to extract information from the most sensitive of sources.
07:09One of the core strengths of MI6 is our agent running skills.
07:15And that is world renowned.
07:16Other agencies, the CIA, European agencies,
07:19do recognize that our agent handling abilities are second to none.
07:24MI6 will use any tool in its arsenal, including blackmail and bribery,
07:29to persuade foreign agents to betray their country,
07:32and hand over top secret information.
07:35This is what happens in this sort of business,
07:38and there was a great skill there.
07:40I mean, you have to talent spot the people in the first place.
07:42You have to spot them, see their potential,
07:44and then bring them under control.
07:47These skills have been perfected over the agency's 100-year history.
07:54Britain's Secret Service was founded on 1 October 1909,
07:58to gather intelligence about the growing military threat from Imperial Germany.
08:02Tensions were rising in Europe,
08:06and people feared German spies were infiltrating Britain.
08:09The Daily Mail told its readers to refuse to be served by German waiters.
08:16If your waiter says he's Swiss, demand to see his passport.
08:21MI6's first headquarters were near the corridors of power in Whitehall.
08:26But few in government knew the agency even existed.
08:31Where we are now is where the earliest headquarters of MI6 is,
08:37and that's up in that tower.
08:39To Whitehall Court is the foreign section of the Secret Service Bureau.
08:43It's where Mansfield Cumming set up his early headquarters,
08:48and throughout the First World War that's where what we now call MI6 was based.
08:53Mansfield Cumming was the first chief of the service.
08:58He was a naval officer who would go on spying missions wearing rather bizarre disguises.
09:04His office was a laboratory of strange gadgets and devices.
09:09He was very innovative.
09:12He was one of the first people in Britain to take his pilot's licence.
09:16He had a special licence plate for his Rolls Royce,
09:19which allowed him to drive up and down London streets at any speed he wanted to,
09:24without being stopped by the police.
09:26He was a real character.
09:30His staffing and interview methods were uniquely gruesome.
09:34He had a wooden leg, and when he was recruiting new officers,
09:40he would frequently take his penknife and stab it into this wooden leg.
09:48If the officer didn't flinch,
09:50he was just the right man to work for Britain's Secret Service.
09:55Cumming knew that good agents were the most important tool in the spying game.
10:00It was the most important tool in Britain.
10:03From the very beginning,
10:04he understood it was all about collecting intelligence
10:07and recruiting and running sources.
10:10From the very beginning, that's what he did.
10:12It's just in the bloodstream.
10:17Cumming disguised his organisation's true activity
10:20by pretending it was an import-export business called Raisin, Falcon & Co.
10:24To this day, MI6 uses fake companies as a cover for its clandestine operations abroad.
10:35Cumming also created other traditions, still maintained by his MI6 successors.
10:41He brought with him the naval tradition of the captain, writing his log in green ink.
10:46Even now, the chief of MI6 still writes in green ink because Cumming did.
10:54His most famous legacy, however, is his signature.
10:58Cumming was given the title of C as a cover.
11:02It was simply the first letter of his name.
11:04It's obviously where M in James Bond comes from.
11:09And even now, the chief of MI6, as he's now called, signs his letter with a C.
11:16Signing yourself a C is a reminder that we have a continuing tradition.
11:21Everything leads to everything else.
11:23There's been no break. That's what's exceptional.
11:26In 1918, Cumming recruited his most brilliant agent, the infamous Sidney Riley, ace of spies.
11:37Riley, who could speak seven languages fluently, was utterly fearless.
11:43A hardened gambler and a famous seducer of women.
11:46In some ways, he was the perfect spy because he was a bit of a con man.
11:51And he was able to persuade people to do things, just like any con man, that they wouldn't normally do.
11:58So, he is a great collector of intelligence and he has these daring operations.
12:03Riley's adventures are straight out of the pages of a novel.
12:07In France, he poses as a priest to win Britain important oil concessions.
12:12In the Far East, he steals Russian naval plans to sell to the highest bidder.
12:21He was operating as a film agent and as a Greek businessman, changing his identity at various stages.
12:30After his death, the Evening Standard newspaper serializes his memoirs.
12:35He is at once immortalized as a master of deception.
12:39He was the ace of spies. He was brilliant.
12:43In 1926, MI6 moves to new headquarters opposite St. James's Park underground station in London.
12:52It grows quickly into a sophisticated organization, collecting intelligence, running agents and mounting covert operations overseas.
13:02Within 15 years, it has a spy network stretching across the globe.
13:10It won't be long before the organization's capabilities are tested to their limits.
13:15The German foe begins its ruthless march of conquest.
13:22On the 1st of September 1939, Germany invades Poland. Europe is at war.
13:31Now more than ever, Britain's Secret Service needs to know what its enemy is up to.
13:38Europe's freedom depends on it.
13:42One of MI6's new recruits is Mavis Beatty, a 19-year-old student studying German literature.
13:49Little does she know what lies in store.
13:56I was told that I was wanted at a place in the country, and they wouldn't tell you where you were going,
14:01but they told you to go to Euston Station, and you would be met with a ticket.
14:06They thought I was going to be Matahari, or I was going to be a spy. I was terribly excited.
14:15Mavis' mystery destination is Bletchley Park, an old manor house hidden 50 miles north of London.
14:23It's the home of a top-secret department within MI6 that is decrypting enemy coded communications.
14:30Mavis' boss, chief cryptographer Dilly Knox, is an eccentric chain-smoking classics scholar.
14:40He was sitting with smoke all round him, and he just looked up and said,
14:46We're breaking machines. Have you got a pencil?
14:49And that was my introduction to breaking Enigma.
14:52In 1939, Enigma is the world's most secure encryption machine, and the Germans are using it to encode all their war communications.
15:05The machine uses a clever combination of interchangeable rotors, moving rings, and switchable plugs to scramble its messages.
15:15The Germans believe its codes to be unbreakable.
15:18The number of ways the operator could set this thing up was roughly 158.9 million, million, million.
15:26The daily setting was known as the key, and the setting changed every day at midnight Greenwich Mean Time.
15:35Breaking the Enigma codes will be key to winning the war.
15:39Mathematicians may be an obvious choice for the work, but the unsung heroes of Bletchley were a unique group of young women.
15:46There was one actress, one who'd been to a drama school, and of all things, a speech therapist.
15:55And they were all people who knew patterns of language and picking it apart.
16:04Armed with only pencils, paper, and bits of card, it takes the codebreakers five months of ceaseless work to decipher their first Enigma message.
16:13Sir.
16:16Mavis's big moment would come a year later, during a critical period of the war.
16:24The British learn the enemy are planning a surprise attack on the Allied fleet in the Mediterranean.
16:29But they don't know when it's coming.
16:33Then, on the 25th of March 1941, Mavis decodes an extraordinary message.
16:40We broke a message that said, today's the day minus three.
16:47We then knew what they were planning.
16:49Everybody was so excited about that.
16:56For want of the impending offensive, the British call in backup and turn the tables on the enemy.
17:01Thousands of lives are saved, thanks to Mavis and her colleagues.
17:11Well, we were very good at it, I suppose very cunning, because it was largely a strange mixture of logic and guesswork by which you broke things.
17:19So we were all a bit dotty afterwards, and very good at scrabble, of course.
17:26Churchill considered the codebreakers' work so vital to the war effort that he famously called them the geese that laid the golden egg.
17:34It is extremely unusual to get such comprehensive, if unprecedented in my experience, to get such comprehensive coverage of your opponent, especially in a war, both at the operational level and also at the level of their top-level thinking and strategic intentions.
17:53As the number of enemy communications increases, Bletchley Park lacks the money and manpower to decipher all of them.
17:59The only people in a position to help are the Americans.
18:10So in February 1941, a secret delegation from the USA is invited to Bletchley Park for an historic meeting.
18:19Britain reveals its most guarded wartime secret, the cracking of the Enigma codes.
18:24But it has an ulterior motive, to draw the US into the war.
18:32By bringing the Americans across, by confiding in them about breaking the German codes,
18:38we try to make them partners in the effort, even though the Americans are not formally in the war.
18:43We try to give the idea that somehow we are both in this together against Hitler.
18:48This is the first time that any two nations have agreed to share such vital secret intelligence.
18:55It's the beginning of what will become known as the special relationship.
18:58At that particular time, we had no formal treaty allowance between us.
19:05There wasn't the history of cooperation which subsequently developed.
19:09And if you're looking for a sort of single symbolic event which captures that rather remarkable situation,
19:17then it is here we were, prepared to talk to each other about the most secret things that we were doing.
19:24The relationship gradually deepens as the two allies work together.
19:31Eventually, American codebreakers are even stationed alongside the British at Bletchley.
19:37The Americans were absolutely fascinated because when they came and saw us with these things in jam jars,
19:44they just couldn't believe what we were doing.
19:49One of them said, my goodness, if they were the Pentagon, there'd be rows and rows of shiny files and nothing in them,
19:57and you'd do everything in these goddamn shoeboxes.
20:00The methods might be basic, but the Americans are still impressed by the Brits' ingenuity.
20:07They recognize how well MI6 coordinates all its various sections from its London headquarters.
20:14Everything from cryptography to counter-espionage is under this central control.
20:19The US has nothing like it.
20:21In the words of Henry Stemson, who was the Secretary of Defence in the US, gentlemen don't read each other's mail.
20:29So the Americans didn't see the need for a peacetime intelligence service.
20:34In 1942, the Office of Strategic Services, America's very first centralised intelligence organisation,
20:41is set up at Rockefeller Center in New York City.
20:43Heading the agency is former Army Colonel William Donovan.
20:49Because he was an Anglophile, he said, we'll structure it the way that the British have set up MI6.
20:55We'll set it up for intelligence and analysis, and also covert operations,
21:00British brains to guide American brawn.
21:04The British let the Americans use both their espionage network
21:08and covert listening stations across Europe.
21:10The Americans are rapidly trying to catch up with the British.
21:15So we have the development of a special relationship of structures,
21:18but we also have the development of a special relationship of people.
21:22People who get to know each other during the war,
21:25and who after the war ends in 1945, continue to be in contact with each other.
21:29By 1947, the OSS is reformed as the world-renowned CIA.
21:34American cooperation with British intelligence continues to grow closer.
21:41That initial move lies at the very heart of the quite unique defence and security relationship
21:49that the United Kingdom has had with the United States ever since 1941.
21:53In the early days of the war, Churchill sees that he'll need to fight dirty to stand any chance of winning.
22:03MI6 runs secret sabotage missions abroad from a small unit that is aptly named the Destruction Department.
22:10In July 1940, they join forces with government propaganda and research departments to create the Special Operations Executive.
22:19Its mission is to sabotage the German army and set Europe ablaze.
22:24To do this, it adopts the guerrilla warfare tactics used so successfully by the IRA.
22:35This secret army has its beginnings in the most unlikely of elegant and refined surroundings.
22:44Author Jill Bennett has documented official government history for more than 30 years.
22:49Well, this is the St. Hermann's Hotel, which has definitely strong intelligence connections, particularly from the Second World War.
22:59It's only around the corner from the headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service at the time, SIS, very near to Whitehall, very near to Westminster.
23:08And so you could just go across St. James's Park to wherever Churchill was, to what are now called the Cabinet War Rooms.
23:14Part of the Special Operations Executive, SOE, was formed here and had its offices upstairs.
23:21It looks very beautiful and light and romantic, but it was nevertheless a place where a lot of clandestine meetings took place.
23:29Most SOE operatives are foreigners who have fled occupied Europe.
23:35French, Spaniards, Danes and Poles are recruited for their language skills and knowledge of occupied territories.
23:42All are united by their desire to liberate their homeland from the Germans.
23:47They were often called a bunch of amateurs.
23:49Well, actually, a lot of them were a bunch of amateurs.
23:52But it was not a universally liked part of the intelligence establishment, even though, of course, in retrospect, it is seen as having had a major impact.
24:00Like any other MI6 operative, preparation is key to their survival.
24:07Before being parachuted into enemy territory, SOE agents undergo months of intense commando training.
24:12They would learn how to do self-defense, silent killing, using their bare hands, and also close combat using a variety of weapons.
24:24Machine guns, daggers, silk escape maps, and even cleverly disguised suitcase radios are all part of their spy kit.
24:31So this is a well-rod pistol. This is a silenced weapon, so it's very, very effective for assassination when you need things to be quieter.
24:41It's a very iconic SOE weapon.
24:43Women would, of course, be seen out wearing their hats all of the time.
24:47So, take your hat pin, make it thicker, stronger, and with a very, very sharp point.
24:53And as long as you know where you're aiming for, this dagger is going to be extremely effective.
24:59SOE, use plastic explosive.
25:02This is a very malleable type of explosive.
25:05A famous SOE weapon is the rat.
25:08Get a desiccated rat, scoop out its insides, stuff it with plastic explosive.
25:12A German sentry in a factory would think nothing of kicking aside a dead rat.
25:16The explosive will blow up the entire factory.
25:21The SOE are hugely successful.
25:2413,000 agents rally over a million local resistance fighters to cause chaos for the German occupiers.
25:33On the night of D-Day itself, in France alone, there were 960 acts of sabotage
25:39carried out by the French resistance against rail networks and on the roads
25:44to prevent Germans moving forwards towards Normandy.
25:49After the war, Ian Fleming is inspired by the daring exploits of SOE and MI6,
25:56and uses them as plot lines for the elaborate missions of his master spy, James Bond.
26:00The James Bond stories are uniquely influential in defining the image of MI6 and its spies.
26:09They sell the public a world of espionage that is glamorous and sexy.
26:13Exotic cocktails shaken not stirred, beautiful women at every turn, and sharp-suited spies.
26:24Fleming's fictional version of British espionage is so convincing,
26:29the Egyptian secret service are completely taken in by it.
26:32Actually, in the 1950s, the Egyptians believed everything that was in the James Bond book must be based on reality.
26:44And the Egyptian secret service had their man in London buy up copies of every one of the James Bond books,
26:52so they could analyse it and try and work out what bits were real and what bits weren't real.
26:56Even today, MI6 is inextricable from the Bond mythology.
27:03Much of the public's knowledge of the secret service comes solely from Fleming's creation.
27:08MI6, which is a secret organisation, also happens to be one of the most famous organisations in the world.
27:15But it's the result, obviously, of the literature.
27:17And that can bring problems, because people sort of misunderstand what intelligence work is all about.
27:22I mean, I was in service for a long time, and I have plenty of exciting moments.
27:28But they weren't James Bond moments.
27:32The reality is that espionage work is neither loud nor high-profile.
27:38For MI6, discretion and secrecy are key.
27:42Unlike James Bond, I wasn't able to walk into a swanky bar in a hotel and announce that I was Matthew Dunn and had women flocking all around me.
27:53We want to work in the shadows. We don't want the flashbang aspects of a James Bond movie.
27:57As an MI6 officer, Matthew Dunn was trained in unarmed combat, explosives, firearms, exfiltration, and a host of other intelligence techniques.
28:08He's had to use all these skills at one time or another.
28:11Everything I did was under what we call alias, assumed identity, and then assumed identity is not just a name.
28:19It would mean you'd have a passport, bank details. You'd have to have in here a complete background to that alias identity.
28:27You could be stopped going through customs just randomly.
28:32So if you're taken into an interview room, you've got to be able to convince the person sat opposite you that you are the person you say you are.
28:39So that can include which schools you went to, what's your local pub, you know, a small menu shy that is actually very important.
28:46So that's what I did, and at peak I was operating under about 14 or 15 different aliases.
28:51Dunn was recruited from university.
28:53For most of its history, the British Secret Service has recruited its spies from the upper classes.
29:01It's an elitism which would prove a critical mistake for MI6, and cost the lives of countless British agents.
29:09It would also severely damage Britain's special relationship with the US.
29:16In the 1930s and 40s, exclusive St. James' clubs such as Whites, Brookses, and Boothles,
29:22are renowned for their links with British intelligence.
29:26Well, this is Clubland. This is what we call Clubland. It's just off Piccadilly.
29:32Buckingham Palace is just over there.
29:34It's the heart of the establishment of this period in the early 20th century.
29:39This was the recruiting ground for MI6.
29:42This was also the high society hangout for James Bond's creator Ian Fleming.
29:48He incorporated his favourite clubs and upper-class bars into the 007 stories.
29:53Right, well, this is Boothles. This is essentially James Bond's club.
29:58In the books, it's called Blades, but Ian Fleming was a member of Boothles,
30:04and he used Boothles as the backdrop, if you like, for the Bond books.
30:09Officers would conduct secret meetings behind the closed shutters of these private clubs.
30:16Even today, members of the intelligence community use these private spaces.
30:21This is the reform. This is one of these hallowed clubs.
30:30You know, places where gentlemen used to gather.
30:33You can imagine people meeting behind these pillars,
30:37or over lunch in a restaurant,
30:39because they were from the establishment.
30:42They were regarded as people who could be trusted.
30:45They were gentlemen. They knew what they were doing.
30:48In the 1930s, the KGB realised that they can take advantage of the cosy relationship
30:56between the British Secret Service and the British upper-classes.
31:00They begin to recruit Englishmen willing to betray their country.
31:05If someone said you were the right kind of person, a good chap, then you were in.
31:09There were no more security checks than that.
31:11No-one bothered to look into your background.
31:13But people said, he's one of us. Well, they were wrong.
31:14And the Soviet Union very, very effectively exploited this
31:18by recruiting people and turning them against the British establishment.
31:22Cambridge University was one of the KGB's most successful hunting grounds
31:27for potential British traitors.
31:29And the most famous of all was Kim Philby.
31:33Kim Philby became converted to communism in Cambridge in the early 1930s.
31:37He believed that the choice the world faced was between fascism on the one hand
31:42or communism on the other, and he chose communism.
31:46Philby was instructed by the KGB to join the British Secret Service
31:51and then to work his way up into a position of great influence,
31:55all the time passing secrets to his Russian contacts.
31:58He proved remarkably effective.
32:02He was the liaison with Washington at the start of the Cold War,
32:07where he was privy to an enormous range of secrets of joint operations
32:11that Britain and America were running against the Soviet Union.
32:13In October 1949, MI6 and the CIA send a team into Albania to try and topple the communist regime.
32:24The Albanian army is waiting for them.
32:28Kim Philby was able to tell the Soviet Union that these operations were going on
32:33and it meant that the people who were dropped were effectively rounded up
32:36and in some cases executed.
32:37You only have to have one person like that on the inside betraying you,
32:45and a huge amount of what you do and your colleagues do is simply undermined.
32:50So, you know, it's extremely damaging and a high vulnerability point
32:54for a service engaged in this kind of work.
33:00Philby meets his KGB contacts in the exclusive and rarefied London suburb of Kensington.
33:05This area of West London is just a mile and a half from the Soviet Embassy.
33:12The Russians are confident their meetings with the traitor Philby won't be discovered.
33:17They're running rings around MI6.
33:20Around here, one of the most famous spy sites is Café de Quays.
33:25It's a restaurant where the Cambridge spies are thought to have come to eat and to drink.
33:29Near to the café is Holy Trinity Church, another location that the KGB used for their dirty work.
33:39So, this statue of St Francis of Assisi was used as a dead letter drop by the KGB during the Cold War.
33:47It's a place where a message would have been hidden round the back of the statue,
33:52which could then have been picked up by a KGB officer.
33:55So the two people would never have to meet, but information could be exchanged containing secret intelligence.
34:00Another famous dead letter drop was at Mount Street Park in Westminster, yards from the US Embassy.
34:10A KGB agent would draw a chalk mark on a nearby lamp post to indicate that he was leaving a message in the park.
34:17A second KGB officer would remove the mark and head to the park to collect the message.
34:29The KGB is far more adept. It's far more cunning in some ways.
34:34It's far better at putting agents inside Britain.
34:38The Britain doesn't have any agents inside the KGB.
34:41It's not able to listen to their communications in the same way, so it's effectively blind and deaf against its enemy.
34:49And that's a real disadvantage.
34:51By the 1950s, Kim Philby comes under suspicion.
34:55Questions are even asked in the Houses of Parliament about his loyalty.
34:59He holds a press conference in which he publicly denies being a traitor.
35:05It was a very capable performance by one of the great liars in British intelligence.
35:13Philby protests his innocence for another ten years.
35:17But by 1965, the weight of evidence against him is too great, and he finally flees to the Soviet Union.
35:24Instead of receiving the hero's welcome he expects for all his hard years of service to the KGB,
35:30he is met with suspicion.
35:34Stalin actually thought that they probably might not be what they seemed.
35:39He actually thought that the Cambridge spies were so good they couldn't be true.
35:45In Moscow, Philby finds himself under virtual house arrest.
35:49The KGB won't employ him.
35:51The disappointment is too much and he turns to drink.
35:55In 1988, he dies a broken man.
35:57Philby's betrayal is an enormous blow to MI6's relationship with the United States,
36:03because Philby had enjoyed such an important position as the MI6 liaison with the CIA with Washington,
36:10that suddenly America becomes distrustful of MI6.
36:14It thinks to itself, hang on a sec, how many more traitors might there be?
36:18Should we be sharing as much information with MI6 as we were in the past?
36:22Are these guys really as good as we thought they were?
36:24The British government cover up the entire Philby fiasco.
36:30As far as the public are concerned, MI6 and its spies are still the brilliantly heroic characters of the James Bond stories.
36:38Tuxedoed men armed with guns and clever gadgets.
36:43The glamorous exploits might be fictional, but the spy gadgets are a reality.
36:48MI6 has a whole department that's dedicated to producing ingenious gadgets in many cases.
36:56For example, I was given a briefcase that if I flick the switches one way, it would turn on a sealed recorder.
37:03But the ingenuity of MI6 is nothing compared to the deadly gadgets of the KGB.
37:10On the 7th of September 1978, London witnesses the use of a lethal device in a plot that is stranger than fiction.
37:20Georgi Markov was an ambitious writer in Bulgaria who became dissatisfied with the Bulgarian regime.
37:30In spite of having been at its topmost level, he went hunting with the communist dictator Todor Zhivkov, but defected and came to London.
37:38Markov was riling the communist leadership in Bulgaria with his deeply critical writings and broadcasts.
37:52For the Bulgarian regime, Georgi Markov was probably their number one public enemy.
38:01It's just another routine day for Markov as he makes his way to work across Waterloo Bridge in London.
38:06But within a few hours, he begins to feel unwell.
38:11The following day, he is admitted to hospital suffering massive organ failure.
38:16His doctors have no explanation.
38:19Markov, though, is certain he has been poisoned.
38:23I went in and saw him and his word of their out to get me.
38:27I'd been poisoned by the KGB. There's nothing you can do about it. I'm going to die.
38:31Dr. Riley is chief medical officer on call at the time.
38:36His colleagues think Markov is paranoid and crazy.
38:40Only Dr. Riley believes his fantastic claims.
38:44He just was so convincing and he seemed so genuine that I thought, I'd better take this seriously.
38:52Markov desperately tries to work out how he's been poisoned.
38:55The only strange thing he can remember happening is at a bus stop on the way to work that morning.
39:04He just told me about how he was waiting at a bus stop at the south end of Waterloo Bridge.
39:09And he said that he suddenly felt like a sharp stabbing feeling in the back of his right thigh.
39:18And he turned around to see someone there who'd accidentally prodded him with an umbrella.
39:24Markov's condition deteriorates quickly and within three days he is dead.
39:33For the first time MI6 fear the worst.
39:37Has a foreign agent carried out an assassination on British soil?
39:41Has someone been given a real life license to kill?
39:47Everything you're doing overseas as an operative is illegal because espionage is illegal.
39:52So the concept of having a license to kill is irrelevant.
39:56If you kill somebody you can't suddenly pull out of a license and that's going to be fine.
40:00So the reality is there's no need to have a license to kill.
40:06License or not Markov believes he's been targeted.
40:12And whoever has attacked him has left a trace.
40:16When I examined him and found on the back of his thigh sort of this puncture wound I thought well perhaps he has been poisoned.
40:25Buried inside Markov's leg the pathologist discovers a tiny round pellet the size of a pin.
40:31The microscopic holes drilled into it are so small that there's only one toxin powerful enough to have killed in such a miniscule dose.
40:38Ricin.
40:40You can imagine this is the pellet.
40:44The theory is that the holes were sealed with something like gelatin which would melt at body temperature.
40:52So that once the pellet is beneath the skin the gelatin dissolves and the toxin leaks out.
41:01The pellet was fired into Markov's leg by an elaborate mechanism most probably hidden inside the umbrella he saw dropped at the bus stop.
41:08You need a lot of knowledge a lot of skill and a lot of expertise to engineer something like the pellet containing the ricin that killed Mr Markov.
41:20MI6 believe the sophisticated nature of the pellet and umbrella device point to a state ordered assassination.
41:27Probably the work of the Bulgarian secret service with help from the KGB.
41:32Our own secret intelligence service must have been extremely embarrassed as well as concerned that this sort of attack had been carried out on Waterloo Bridge in broad daylight in the centre of London.
41:46It was an incredible affront.
41:49The Markov murder hits the headlines and suddenly MI6 finds its business splashed across the newspapers.
41:56Its secrets are being laid bare in full public view.
41:59By the late 1970s it seems Britain's secret service isn't very secret anymore.
42:07It was an open secret where the offices of MI6 were based at Century House just over the river in Lambeth.
42:12I mean it was supposed to be secret there was no plaque outside saying MI6 but all the bus conductors in Lambeth would used to say spies alight here, spies get off the bus here as a joke because everyone knew where MI6 was based.
42:27After the disasters of the early Cold War MI6's luck finally changes.
42:32They persuade senior KGB member Oleg Gordievsky to turn double agent and leak Russian secrets to the British.
42:47I wanted to fight against the anti-human brutal communist regime so I decided to work as an agent of the British intelligence service.
42:59Gordievsky quickly climbs the KGB career ladder and in 1982 he's posted to a prime position at the Soviet Embassy in London.
43:10Oleg Gordievsky was recruited by the British at an important moment when Britain and America did not have many spies who could reveal the inner thoughts and inner workings of the KGB leadership and of the leadership of the Soviet Union as a whole.
43:24The MI6 officer in charge of handling Gordievsky is none other than John Scarlett.
43:31He was turned into a really allowable and effective and committed agent if you like or double agent.
43:39Because you can only do it if you trust the double agent concerned and by definition trusting double agents is not a straightforward business.
43:50But the British become convinced that Gordievsky is genuine.
43:55During his lunch breaks he slips out of the Soviet Embassy to meet with Scarlett.
43:59Very occasionally he's also able to smuggle out top secret documents.
44:06It was very dangerous and only five, six times I was able to take documents into this pocket and take it for one hour only to show it to the British.
44:22Gordievsky is risking his life meeting Scarlett.
44:29If the KGB catch a traitor there is no reprieve.
44:33They will execute him.
44:36And the British service photographed my documents.
44:43Gave them back to me and I drove back like mad to the embassy to return the documents.
44:55I was playing with death every day.
44:58Gordievsky's most important moment is to come in late 1983.
45:05Unknown to the public for a brief moment the world is on the brink of nuclear war.
45:12Tension was increasing between the West and the Soviet Union when Ronald Reagan was talking about the evil empire and when the Soviet Union feared that there could be a surprise attack.
45:25NATO forces are preparing for a Europe wide exercise that simulates a nuclear attack.
45:32Everyone from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the President is to be involved.
45:36But the Soviet Union thinks the exercise is merely cover for the West to launch a real strike against them.
45:44The world is unwittingly heading towards nuclear war.
45:48Messages went out to the KGB station saying you must be on high alert for the possibility of the West launching a strike against us.
46:00And the Soviet Union actually raised its state of alert and readiness.
46:04In London, Gordievsky sees the aggressive messages from the Russian leadership and immediately warns MI6.
46:16And this information passed on to the British and the American intelligence officers.
46:23The Americans took it very seriously.
46:25To pacify Moscow, the US immediately scaled down the exercise and remove any involvement by the President.
46:36The West suddenly realised just how edgy the situation was and just how volatile and dangerous things were.
46:43That really helped London and Washington think much more carefully about how they managed that period of quite high tension during the latter part of the Cold War.
46:56Gordievsky has proved his worth.
47:01But in 1985 his luck runs out.
47:04I was betrayed by an American traitor, taken to Moscow and was prepared to be executed.
47:13Though free to return to his Moscow home, Gordievsky knows his days are numbered.
47:19He is closely watched at every turn.
47:22In desperation, he asks MI6 to smuggle him out of the country.
47:28His request goes straight to Number 10 Downing Street.
47:33Where Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher authorises MI6 to engineer a daring escape plan.
47:41The rescue date is set.
47:42On the 20th of July 1985, Gordievsky waits at a pre-arranged spot near the Soviet-Finnish border.
47:53At precisely 2pm, a car pulls up on the isolated road.
47:58It is the British Secret Service.
48:01Inside are a man and two women with a child.
48:05MI6 is hoping a family outing will provide the perfect cover for the escape.
48:10I jumped immediately to the boot of one car.
48:16If they caught me, you are dead.
48:19With Gordievsky in the trunk, the car speeds towards the border.
48:24The Soviet frontier is heavily guarded.
48:29And Alya can hear search dogs outside.
48:34If the dogs sniff him out, he is done for.
48:38If the dogs sniff him out, he is done for.
48:43One of these dogs, real dogs, to smell who is in the car.
48:51And the ladies, very cleverly, they threw nappies.
48:56And the dogs' sense of smell was entirely disturbed.
49:04The strong smell from the diapers distracts the dogs.
49:09And Gordievsky remains undetected.
49:11Finally, after two-tenths hours, he hears the signal he has been waiting for.
49:18The chap in the car changed the music to show that we are now free.
49:35The car has reached neutral Finland and safety.
49:39They were entirely free.
49:42MI6 has repaid Gordievsky's loyalty and ensured his freedom.
49:48Erlik Antonovich Gordievsky is a well-known public case.
49:52And it is hard and not possible to overstate the contribution he made to our national well-being and interests.
49:59When the Soviet Union crumbles after the fall of the Berlin Wall,
50:06it seems like Britain and the West's game of cat and mouse with Russia is over.
50:12But only 20 years later, the Russians are back and playing the spying game with a vengeance.
50:20On the 1st of November 2006, dissident Alexander Litvinenko is fatally poisoned at the Millennium Hotel in London.
50:29When his tea is laced with polonium-210, a radioactive substance.
50:34It's become clear that some of the old threats and some of the old dangers remain.
50:39You've seen the resurgence of some of the concerns about Russian intelligence operating in London,
50:45about Russia recruiting spies.
50:47Even, it's thought, the Russian state killing dissidents on the streets of London,
50:51in the case of Alexander Litvinenko.
50:53The murder of Litvinenko wasn't just the KGB executing a troublesome dissident.
50:59It was the start of an entirely new level of violence in the world of espionage.
51:03Information came out showing that Alexander Litvinenko had actually been a paid agent of MI6,
51:12and he'd then been assassinated, it thought, on the orders of the Russian state,
51:17by the Russian intelligence services using radioactive polonium.
51:19So, in a way, you can see that even though the Cold War is gone,
51:24the spy games between Britain and Russia are still going on today.
51:29The Russians have broken an unwritten rule in the spy game.
51:33They have killed another country's spy, an MI6 agent.
51:36The KGB maybe no more, but the new Russian intelligence service is just as deadly,
51:43and operating on the streets of London.
51:46The people are saying,
51:49oh, Russian espionage is not dangerous.
51:53It's very, very dangerous.
51:55It's huge.
51:59It's bigger than it was in the Soviet time.
52:02Today, MI6 finds itself with a wider mission,
52:07preventing cyber attacks on government organisations,
52:10stopping the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons,
52:14as well as fighting terrorism.
52:17It gradually became clear that there was a new problem out there
52:21from international terrorism,
52:23which wasn't just a theoretical problem, it was actually a physical threat.
52:27At least 20 foreign states are known to be actively targeting the United States.
52:32the United Kingdom.
52:34MI6 is needed now more than ever.
52:36My entire experience, up until the present day,
52:40is that we face situations where we need to be well informed.
52:43And self-evidently, the best form of defence against plots and attacks
52:49is to know about it in advance.
52:51And that is a matter of good intelligence.
52:53As long as there are people who want to do Britain harm,
52:57Britain will need a secret service.
52:58As long as there are threats out there,
53:01whether those threats are now from cyberspace and terrorists,
53:04rather than the Soviet Union,
53:06then we'll need spies to try and understand those threats,
53:09to get inside them, to understand what your enemies' intentions are.
53:12Because the United Kingdom is such a high priority target,
53:16the British intelligence and security services have a budget in excess of $3 billion to fight hostile forces.
53:24I largely suspect there are far more spies in London and in Europe now than there were during the Cold War.
53:36London will always be the perfect place for spies to hide and pass unseen among the millions of visitors.
53:42Well, of course, I would say this, wouldn't I, but I genuinely, honestly cannot envisage a circumstance where our country will not need an effective and intelligent service.
53:53And I've seen the importance of the service and the role it plays increase, rather than the other way around.
54:00The service has continued to work day in, day out, since the 1st of October 1909.
54:06One operation leads to another operation leads to another operation.
54:09That's how it is.
54:10That's how it is.
54:40That's how it is.
54:41That's how it is.
54:44Okay.
54:46That's what we highlight here, my angel has linked to his 2011.
54:50Bye.
54:52That you should marry weeks.
54:55Bye.
54:56Bye.
54:58Bye.
55:00Bye.
55:02Bye.
55:05Bye.