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What we know about MI6 · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
0:13
Speaker 2: Chuck and there's Jerry, and this is stuff you should Know.
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Speaker 2: And I had to say we didn't have the most
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Speaker 2: auspicious start. Just now, Chuck, I stepped on you at
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Speaker 2: the countdown for us to sink that's not a good sign.
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Speaker 2: Don't you think that's not a good sign.
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Speaker 1: I think if you look at it another way, we
0:32
Speaker 1: were in sync because we were both kind of trying
0:35
Speaker 1: to say the same thing.
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Speaker 2: Wow, that was a silver lining.
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Speaker 1: How's that?
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Speaker 2: There's not been any better in sync since lant Spass
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Speaker 2: and justin Timberlake. We're running around together.
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Speaker 1: We should preface this, by the way, we're doing an
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Speaker 1: episode today on six, the United Kingdom's Secret Intelligence Service.
0:55
Speaker 2: Is that how you pronounce it?
0:57
Speaker 1: Six? What do you say?
0:59
Speaker 2: Mix? That's what I've been saying in my head at least.
1:03
Speaker 1: Oh no, yeah, that is an inauspicious beginning then, for sure.
1:08
Speaker 1: But you know, this is a little at risk being
1:14
Speaker 1: a little disjointed, because if you kind of went down
1:16
Speaker 1: every rabbit hole that we speak about here, we'd be
1:18
Speaker 1: here for days.
1:20
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, one of the things that lets us off
1:23
Speaker 2: the hook though, that I found and I'm sure Kyle
1:25
Speaker 2: who helped us with this. We had our man in
1:28
Speaker 2: Britain to make him an agent in US officers, right,
1:32
Speaker 2: because he was given US intel on six. If you
1:36
Speaker 2: go and just start researching it, especially if you just
1:39
Speaker 2: type in six, they've done a pretty good job of
1:43
Speaker 2: keeping search results pretty sanitized. Yeah, Like I would say,
1:48
Speaker 2: out of the top twenty results, two are not official
1:53
Speaker 2: six pages, So it's kind of hard to research them,
1:57
Speaker 2: especially considering they've only been publicly recoged nineties. Is actually
2:01
Speaker 2: existing since the mid.
2:03
Speaker 1: Nineties, Yeah, nineteen nineties. That is, they were the there
2:06
Speaker 1: are the oldest operating continuously, that is, operating foreign intelligence
2:12
Speaker 1: gathering organization anywhere in the world. And like I said,
2:16
Speaker 1: they they're you know, if you're American, you can think
2:18
Speaker 1: of I six as sort of their CIA. And in fact,
2:22
Speaker 1: our own CIA was born out of not out of
2:27
Speaker 1: I six, but they had a lot to do with
2:29
Speaker 1: how we did things.
2:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, we use them as a kind of a model.
2:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go. That's a very clean way to
2:34
Speaker 1: say that.
2:36
Speaker 2: So there's two things that I six does and that
2:39
Speaker 2: really does kind of get it across. They're like the
2:42
Speaker 2: Britain's equivalent of the CIA, or better yet, the CIA
2:44
Speaker 2: is America's equivalent of I six. So they gather intelligence,
2:48
Speaker 2: and they gather internationally abroad. There's also MI I five,
2:52
Speaker 2: which you could say is roughly equivalent in the US
2:55
Speaker 2: to the FBI. They do domestic stuff, but I six
2:59
Speaker 2: is concerned about everything else in the world. And by
3:02
Speaker 2: gathering intelligence, they usually use two methods or they gather Yeah,
3:06
Speaker 2: two methods. Once human intelligence, which is good old fashioned
3:09
Speaker 2: spying using people who are secretly spying on their own
3:13
Speaker 2: governments or whatever. And then the other signal intelligence, which
3:17
Speaker 2: is intercepting communications. And I saw that another intelligence firm,
3:24
Speaker 2: I guess in the UK, the Government Communications Headquarters GHQ.
3:29
Speaker 2: They seem to do most of the signals intelligence, while
3:32
Speaker 2: six still does most of the human intelligence. Yeah, but
3:35
Speaker 2: I think like if they capture an email or something,
3:38
Speaker 2: they don't just delete it because they don't do signals intelligence.
3:41
Speaker 2: They're still going to use it.
3:45
Speaker 1: Not my office delete right now, my job. We call
3:49
Speaker 1: them six. The official name, like I said at the beginning,
3:52
Speaker 1: is the Secret Intelligence Service or the SIS. That's what
3:58
Speaker 1: they became in nineteen twenty, but we call it because
4:01
Speaker 1: that was the call sign that they adopted in World
4:04
Speaker 1: War Two, And you know, let's be honest people here
4:08
Speaker 1: I six and they identify it with intelligence a lot
4:12
Speaker 1: because of Ian Fleming and James Bond and lacarr and
4:15
Speaker 1: Smiley a couple of you know, in James Bond's case,
4:21
Speaker 1: maybe thinly veiled literary figures. I'm not sure about Smiley.
4:25
Speaker 1: I don't know much about lacar Is Smiley based on
4:27
Speaker 1: someone that you know of.
4:28
Speaker 2: I don't know. My dad was big time into John leccaray,
4:32
Speaker 2: but I never have been.
4:34
Speaker 1: Is it Lacara? I don't know.
4:35
Speaker 2: I've heard it. I think it's probably both ways. I mean,
4:38
Speaker 2: unless you're his mom. I'm sure there's just one way
4:40
Speaker 2: to say. If you're his mom, but you know he's dead,
4:43
Speaker 2: he doesn't care.
4:44
Speaker 1: How about Lee Carrey? No perfect But I, like you
4:51
Speaker 1: said earlier, you know, it's kind of challenging to gather
4:54
Speaker 1: intelligence on I six as a podcaster because for the
4:57
Speaker 1: longest time, they would just story any documents they had that,
5:02
Speaker 1: you know, weren't still useful to them. They weren't like, hey,
5:04
Speaker 1: let's keep this on file, because one day somebody might
5:09
Speaker 1: ask for this and maybe want to see it. They'll
5:11
Speaker 1: be like, no, we don't need that anymore, and we're
5:13
Speaker 1: a secret organization, so let's just throw it in the
5:16
Speaker 1: old burner. And in the nineteen sixties they started officially
5:20
Speaker 1: keeping historical records, and then eventually in the two thousands,
5:24
Speaker 1: for their one hundredth anniversary, they hired a guy named
5:27
Speaker 1: Keith Jeffrey to write its history up to nineteen forty nine.
5:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, and apparently even still today, that's where their official
5:35
Speaker 2: history ends, nineteen forty nine. Anything after that, don't ask
5:38
Speaker 2: Jack or else. They'll take you somewhere and render you. Yeah,
5:42
Speaker 2: politely they will. So we should probably say that I
5:48
Speaker 2: six started and I think when we did our Kim
5:51
Speaker 2: Philby episode, yeah, I said that six stood for the
5:54
Speaker 2: Ministry of Intelligence, but it actually is military intelligence, which
5:58
Speaker 2: is I think, like you said, what it grew out
6:01
Speaker 2: of originally. But the whole thing started there was a scare,
6:05
Speaker 2: a German spy scare in Great Britain in the turn
6:10
Speaker 2: of the last century. Germany was this imperial power that
6:13
Speaker 2: was rising, so there was reason to be scared of them.
6:16
Speaker 2: But really the whole reason came down to this guy
6:20
Speaker 2: named William Lechwe. He was a totally made up adventurer
6:28
Speaker 2: soldier of fortune who was just as patriotic as you
6:31
Speaker 2: could get. He made up this huge backstory for himself
6:34
Speaker 2: to give himself legitimacy, but really he was just weaving
6:38
Speaker 2: these yarns saying essentially that Britain is sleeping right now
6:41
Speaker 2: and it's loaded with German spies and if we don't
6:45
Speaker 2: wake up, we're gonna get taken over by Germany. And
6:47
Speaker 2: it just hit this perfect nerve in the British public,
6:51
Speaker 2: so much so that it directly led to the formation
6:55
Speaker 2: of what would become six and five.
6:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, all in Unison they heard this and went, well,
7:00
Speaker 1: we can't have that, so they got going the Secret
7:04
Speaker 1: Service bureaus who originally housed both including I five, and
7:10
Speaker 1: they were pretty important, you know, aka the Bureau known
7:13
Speaker 1: as the Bureau because they had complete autonomy and they
7:17
Speaker 1: also had plausible deniability, so they would sort of act
7:21
Speaker 1: as a go between. If there was a government official
7:24
Speaker 1: doing some you know, spy business, the Bureau could step
7:28
Speaker 1: in and kind of provide cover as a screen for them.
7:32
Speaker 2: Yeah. Apparently, even though they are now publicly acknowledged by
7:36
Speaker 2: the government as existing that hasn't changed very much still today,
7:41
Speaker 2: Like they do not. You can't, as a government official
7:44
Speaker 2: go to MI six and be like, I demand these
7:47
Speaker 2: records of your torture program in the Iraq war, right,
7:51
Speaker 2: They'll just say, we don't know what you're talking about. Yeah,
7:54
Speaker 2: we're not even having this conversation. And that's what. They
7:57
Speaker 2: don't have the kind of political and legal hamstringing that
8:02
Speaker 2: the CIA has. It's much less of a bureaucracy, and
8:05
Speaker 2: so they can do things that say, like the CIA
8:09
Speaker 2: legally couldn't do it. They have a lot of legal
8:12
Speaker 2: cover in Great Britain.
8:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wonder what their version of FOYA is, like
8:17
Speaker 1: a Freedom of Information Act request or even if they
8:19
Speaker 1: even have that, or if they're just like, sorry, don't ask.
8:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, they just call it fo right.
8:27
Speaker 1: Oh boy, I wish that was a man. If we
8:30
Speaker 1: had written that out as a comedy duo, it couldn't
8:32
Speaker 1: have been more perfect.
8:33
Speaker 2: Thanks. I think we did really good too.
8:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, So let's talk a little bit about their first chief,
8:39
Speaker 1: Sir Mansfield. Coming. It was pretty much a one person
8:43
Speaker 1: show at the beginning of the operation, and Coming was
8:45
Speaker 1: that guy staffed fully, you know, with gentlemen, as they
8:50
Speaker 1: called him. If you were a woman at the time,
8:53
Speaker 1: you might get work as a typist or secretary. But
8:55
Speaker 1: although that would change in not too long.
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Speaker 2: After, maybe like fifty years.
9:00
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly, I guess so. But he was sort of
9:03
Speaker 1: a the kind of guy you would make a movie about.
9:05
Speaker 1: He was a race car driver, he was a pilot,
9:09
Speaker 1: He could drive a boat with a plum. He loved spycraft.
9:14
Speaker 1: He got into it. He signed off his C for
9:17
Speaker 1: his last name. He apparently he wrote in Green Inc.
9:19
Speaker 1: Which his successors have continued doing today, writing in that
9:23
Speaker 1: Green Inc.
9:24
Speaker 2: And they're all called C too. It's the title for
9:27
Speaker 2: the chief of I six.
9:29
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. And they it was like like M and Q,
9:34
Speaker 1: like all those things from James Bond, Like most of
9:36
Speaker 1: those things are real. They use numbers and letters and
9:39
Speaker 1: it's not just made up for fictional purposes. No.
9:43
Speaker 2: In Q, that was the scientist who would come up
9:46
Speaker 2: with all these amazing devices and gadgets and everything. And
9:50
Speaker 2: as we'll see, I six has gotten way more talkative publicly.
9:54
Speaker 2: They're trying to like kind of recruit more and more people,
9:56
Speaker 2: so they're giving, you know, interviews, even though their names
9:59
Speaker 2: are anonymous and one of them said, like, we have
10:03
Speaker 2: those gadgets, but they're even better than what James Bond has.
10:07
Speaker 1: No, It's like really, yeah, So this guy coming, he
10:12
Speaker 1: had an incident in nineteen fourteen where he earned this
10:16
Speaker 1: probably sounds like lore to me, but he had a
10:18
Speaker 1: car crash in France in nineteen fourteen, very sadly, his
10:21
Speaker 1: son was killed, and this is how he lost his
10:24
Speaker 1: left foot. And the reason the lore was so important
10:27
Speaker 1: was because the legend was the only way he escaped
10:30
Speaker 1: was by amputating that foot himself. Sort of like who
10:36
Speaker 1: was the guy in real life that they made the
10:38
Speaker 1: Danny Boil It was stuck in the rock.
10:40
Speaker 2: I don't remember his name, but yeah.
10:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, but supposedly he you know, as the story goes,
10:44
Speaker 1: he cut off his own foot with a pen knife
10:46
Speaker 1: just to escape.
10:47
Speaker 2: I think just the fact that people that became a
10:50
Speaker 2: legend around him says a lot about who he is.
10:53
Speaker 1: Oh totally.
10:54
Speaker 2: If I were in a car wreck and I lost
10:55
Speaker 2: my foot, no one made a legend that said I
10:58
Speaker 2: cut my own foot off with a pen knife to escape,
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Speaker 2: Like it just he just wouldn't make that up, and
11:02
Speaker 2: I would believe it. This guy at least it was believable.
11:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, legend had has it. Josh wailed and cried for
11:08
Speaker 1: hours until the ambulance finally arrived and they said, you know,
11:11
Speaker 1: you could probably just have backed out of this thing
11:13
Speaker 1: on your own, right.
11:14
Speaker 2: They're like, it's really just gonna bruise, is all right.
11:19
Speaker 2: So there's one other thing. There's there's a lot to
11:22
Speaker 2: talk about. Like you said, the guy could definitely deserve
11:24
Speaker 2: his own movie if it hasn't been made multiple times already.
11:27
Speaker 2: But one of the other legendary things associated with him
11:30
Speaker 2: is like he was really into spycraft, Like he came
11:34
Speaker 2: up with disguises. He would like disguise himself and go
11:37
Speaker 2: walk around London and see if any of his people
11:40
Speaker 2: would recognize him. And he was I don't want to
11:43
Speaker 2: say obsessed, but he was really into the idea of
11:45
Speaker 2: invisible ink, and he searched high and low to find
11:48
Speaker 2: a good invisible ink that couldn't be detected through standard methods.
11:52
Speaker 2: I don't know who came up with this idea, but
11:56
Speaker 2: somehow it came around that seaman can be used very
12:01
Speaker 2: effectively as an invisible ink. And I saw that somebody
12:05
Speaker 2: put it. The supply is renewable.
12:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, so he must have just searched high and not low, right, yeah, renewable.
12:15
Speaker 1: There's some I mean, it gets a little grosser. Shall
12:17
Speaker 1: we even cover this in more detail?
12:19
Speaker 2: Yes?
12:20
Speaker 1: Okay. Apparently he had a colleague that reported about the
12:24
Speaker 1: man in. One of our men in Copenhagen stocked it
12:27
Speaker 1: in a bottle for his letters, and it stanks so
12:30
Speaker 1: bad that they had to tell him that a fresh
12:33
Speaker 1: operation was necessary for each letter. Wow.
12:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, we had to say that, and.
12:40
Speaker 1: He said, no problem.
12:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, Wow, thank you exactly. So you want to
12:48
Speaker 2: take a break, or you want to dive into World
12:50
Speaker 2: War one era.
12:51
Speaker 1: Let's take a break. That's a good little table setting.
12:53
Speaker 1: So we'll come back and talk about talk about World
12:56
Speaker 1: War one right after this.
13:21
Speaker 2: So, by the time World War one rolled around, what
13:25
Speaker 2: was it, nineteen eleven? I think I'm sure I'm wrong,
13:28
Speaker 2: and we're going to get a bunch of emails. But
13:30
Speaker 2: let's just say for sake of argument, it was nineteen eleven.
13:33
Speaker 2: This is just a couple of years after the Bureau
13:36
Speaker 2: was formed and Circumbing was, you know, running around doing
13:40
Speaker 2: his thing. But by this time, he yeah, writing letters
13:46
Speaker 2: of invisible ink all over the place. By this time, though,
13:50
Speaker 2: he cultivated some sources already in Germany. He had one
13:55
Speaker 2: guy named B. He was seeing this first source, B,
14:01
Speaker 2: who would report on you know, comings and goings on
14:04
Speaker 2: the coast and the harbor and their ship sizes and
14:07
Speaker 2: how many ships are in their fleet. And although they
14:11
Speaker 2: totally dropped the ball on Germany invading neutral Belgium, which
14:16
Speaker 2: was a big deal, Yeah, they still managed to give
14:18
Speaker 2: them a lot of like really important intel that basically
14:21
Speaker 2: proved the idea that Britain could really use MI six
14:27
Speaker 2: or something like it.
14:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it seemed to be. The way I
14:30
Speaker 1: read this was like these are just sort of the
14:32
Speaker 1: baby steps. They didn't have like kind of the authority
14:36
Speaker 1: they would have later on, and they were kind of
14:38
Speaker 1: sessing out how valuable they might be. So they were
14:41
Speaker 1: just sort of getting established. After World War One was
14:44
Speaker 1: when they were fully established as the SIS, but they were,
14:48
Speaker 1: you know, they were monitoring Russia, trying to keep them
14:51
Speaker 1: in the war. They were like, what are the Americans
14:53
Speaker 1: thinking right now, what's going on in the Oval Office,
14:55
Speaker 1: because we'd like to bring them into the war, and
14:58
Speaker 1: they were doing Yemen's work, you know, providing you know,
15:02
Speaker 1: the kind of stuff you would see in like the
15:05
Speaker 1: Great Escape, even though that was World War Two, Like
15:08
Speaker 1: if you're a pow, you might get a map and
15:10
Speaker 1: a compass smuggled into you, stuff like that, trying to
15:13
Speaker 1: foil bombing plots and things like that. So they were like,
15:18
Speaker 1: you know, what do you think of us? Now? How
15:19
Speaker 1: are you doing? And apparently good enough to be official
15:21
Speaker 1: after the war.
15:23
Speaker 2: Yeah. So by the time the Inner War period comes along,
15:26
Speaker 2: the twenties thirties, they well, there are some more legendary people.
15:32
Speaker 2: This is a time where it was just like the
15:34
Speaker 2: Wild West in Great Britain as far as spycrafts and
15:37
Speaker 2: intelligence goes. And there's this one guy who's definitely worth mentioning.
15:41
Speaker 2: He was an early agent. And we should say most
15:45
Speaker 2: people call anybody who would be working for six an
15:49
Speaker 2: agent with the CIA. You'd be correct. With I six,
15:52
Speaker 2: you'd be wrong. An agent, as far as I six
15:54
Speaker 2: is concerned, is one of those sources who has turned
15:58
Speaker 2: turncoat on their country, is supplying six with secrets.
16:03
Speaker 1: Right, that's a double agent, yeah, or just.
16:06
Speaker 2: A plane old agent. A double agent would be somebody
16:08
Speaker 2: who was actually spying for their country but posing as
16:12
Speaker 2: a spy for MI six. This is just a plain
16:14
Speaker 2: old agent. Officers are the people who are employees of
16:18
Speaker 2: MI six that run and handle agents in the field.
16:23
Speaker 1: Right, So that would make Cyril Bertram Mills an agent.
16:27
Speaker 2: Correct, Yes, that's what I was getting to.
16:30
Speaker 1: All right, So before World War Two, this guy was
16:33
Speaker 1: a circus director and he ended up working for six
16:37
Speaker 1: for about four decades, known only to his family, you know,
16:41
Speaker 1: for doing this work because as a circus director, he
16:46
Speaker 1: could get in a little buy wing plane and he
16:49
Speaker 1: could fly all over the place under cover of doing
16:52
Speaker 1: circus business. I don't think he was like standing on
16:55
Speaker 1: the plane and eating a banana, like on the wings
16:57
Speaker 1: of the planary, like doing tricks. He had to get
17:00
Speaker 1: around as a circus guy, and this was pretty good cover.
17:03
Speaker 1: And he had some pretty dangerous missions with these flights
17:07
Speaker 1: as well. Right.
17:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a couple where he was giving like six
17:13
Speaker 2: like really valuable intelligence from flying over like aircraft factories
17:18
Speaker 2: in Germany. Apparently there was one particular piece of information
17:24
Speaker 2: or I guess a bunch of information that really formed
17:27
Speaker 2: a good picture of the size of Germany's Luftwaffa, their
17:31
Speaker 2: air force, and Winston Churchill apparently used that to decide
17:36
Speaker 2: whether he was on the side of appeasing Hitler or
17:39
Speaker 2: fighting Hitler. And I guess because of the build up
17:42
Speaker 2: of this air force, he was like, we can't let
17:45
Speaker 2: this guy keep continuing. So he was against appeasement, thanks
17:48
Speaker 2: largely to Bertram Mills intel that he was directly giving him.
17:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this was you know, this is dangerous work.
17:54
Speaker 1: He wasn't just flying around. I think in nineteen thirty six,
17:58
Speaker 1: which was the year he started the Naze courts executed
18:03
Speaker 1: by decapitation, usually with an axe, six spies that were caught.
18:07
Speaker 1: So he had a lot on the line as a
18:10
Speaker 1: circus director, but he was doing it for I guess
18:12
Speaker 1: love of country.
18:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a circus director is understating it. He was
18:16
Speaker 2: known as King of the Modern Circus, like he was
18:19
Speaker 2: a really big deal outside of his spying activities. It
18:22
Speaker 2: would have astounded anybody who had ever heard of him
18:25
Speaker 2: that he was a spy.
18:26
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think circus director fit better on a card
18:28
Speaker 1: than King of the Modern Circus, right, probably. And he
18:32
Speaker 1: was an understated guy, you know, he didn't he wasn't
18:33
Speaker 1: playing boyant.
18:34
Speaker 2: No there you ca Yeah. It would have been one
18:37
Speaker 2: of those things where it starts out normal, but as
18:39
Speaker 2: it gets closer to the edge of the card, they
18:41
Speaker 2: start cramping letters together.
18:43
Speaker 1: Like a poster made for elementary school.
18:46
Speaker 2: Right for the science fair, exactly what happens with vinegar
18:50
Speaker 2: and baking soda.
18:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, I still do that sometimes when I have to.
18:56
Speaker 1: I don't. I'm not great at spacing like that. It
18:57
Speaker 1: has to do with your brain, I think specialwareness and stuff.
19:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not that good at it either. Don't worry.
19:03
Speaker 2: All right, good, So for a long time, not a
19:06
Speaker 2: lot happened, and then World War two broke out, and
19:10
Speaker 2: World War two. By this time, remember m I six
19:13
Speaker 2: had proved its metal and worth in World War One.
19:16
Speaker 2: You had a whole decade or two where it just
19:18
Speaker 2: kept proving it's worth, and so by the time the
19:21
Speaker 2: war broke out, you would think that they would be
19:24
Speaker 2: totally ready for this. But I don't know if it
19:26
Speaker 2: caught them off guard or they were just allowed to
19:31
Speaker 2: kind of be pruned in peacetime. I don't know. But
19:35
Speaker 2: it took them a minute to get their footing and
19:37
Speaker 2: regenerate intelligent like human intelligence networks in Europe. But they
19:44
Speaker 2: apparently got their footing fairly quickly and were very successful
19:47
Speaker 2: and basically generating a lot of intelligence coming out of
19:51
Speaker 2: different countries, including occupied countries in Europe during World War Two.
19:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems like that was the slower part. Where
19:59
Speaker 1: we know they did a lot better was at Bletchley
20:02
Speaker 1: Park with their signals intelligence. You know, we talked about
20:06
Speaker 1: the code breaking and Alan Turing and the what was
20:10
Speaker 1: it a Enigma machine? Yes, that's right, some great episodes
20:14
Speaker 1: from our distant past. But they were kind of crushing
20:18
Speaker 1: it over there. They did, finally during this period, start
20:22
Speaker 1: to have some women working there that were not just secretaries.
20:27
Speaker 1: There was one overseen by a woman named Kathleen pettigrew
20:30
Speaker 1: communications at least between home and field agents. She was
20:34
Speaker 1: very proud of her work and said I was basically
20:36
Speaker 1: Miss Moneypenny, but with more power. Yeah.
20:38
Speaker 2: She was the chief at the time secretary and he
20:42
Speaker 2: imbued her with enough power to run a program. So
20:45
Speaker 2: a lot of people say she was probably the inspiration
20:48
Speaker 2: for Ian Fleming's Miss Moneypenny, who James Bond used to
20:51
Speaker 2: like to flirt with.
20:52
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people from this age were like,
20:55
Speaker 1: basically or I'm Cue or I'm Miss money Penny.
20:58
Speaker 2: Right. My dad used to go around telling people he
21:00
Speaker 2: was Q.
21:02
Speaker 1: Are you serious?
21:03
Speaker 2: No, that would have been so impairsed.
21:08
Speaker 1: Well, see, that was a tough one. I'm giving myself
21:10
Speaker 1: a break there because I believe in almost anything you
21:13
Speaker 1: tell me about your dad.
21:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true, the herbal Elvis.
21:16
Speaker 1: Yeah.
21:16
Speaker 2: Yeah. And speaking of Q, it turns out that so
21:20
Speaker 2: they were. They did kind of develop devices, like you said,
21:23
Speaker 2: figuring out ways to hide compasses and maps to get
21:26
Speaker 2: to POW's in World War One. But the idea of
21:29
Speaker 2: their research and development and technology branch that produced someone
21:33
Speaker 2: like Q that we all who know that James Bond
21:36
Speaker 2: movies are familiar with, that actually came from them absorbing
21:40
Speaker 2: a rival agency that was developed in World War Two
21:44
Speaker 2: that m I six did not like one bit at first,
21:47
Speaker 2: the Special Operations Executive or the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.
21:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seemed like and it may just be like
21:58
Speaker 1: teenage boying this thing, but it seemed like they got
22:01
Speaker 1: under I six's skin because they got to do more
22:03
Speaker 1: fun stuff. Yeah, for sure, like kind of more dangerous
22:07
Speaker 1: ops went to them, and six were like, you know,
22:10
Speaker 1: we've been around a while, and these are I think
22:12
Speaker 1: they thought in them the way Kyle put it as
22:15
Speaker 1: dangerous amateurs, but then they started saying, but you got
22:18
Speaker 1: to take us along at least.
22:20
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean they definitely did have their fun
22:23
Speaker 2: stuff curtailed because I six had a department called D
22:27
Speaker 2: section and D stood for destruction, like they were supposedly
22:32
Speaker 2: perfectly capable of doing sabotage. I don't know enough about
22:35
Speaker 2: World War two British military history to understand why they
22:38
Speaker 2: felt a Special Operations Executive was needed, or if somebody
22:43
Speaker 2: just managed to have enough power that they developed their
22:45
Speaker 2: own thing and it just became so we I don't know,
22:49
Speaker 2: but eventually m I six prevailed, especially after World War Two,
22:54
Speaker 2: and they absorbed the Special Operations as Executive, including a
22:58
Speaker 2: lot of their really interesting useful stuff, like their research
23:01
Speaker 2: and development group that produced people like Q.
23:05
Speaker 1: Yeah. I got the feeling, and maybe we'll get a
23:08
Speaker 1: real you know, British history buff that can let us know.
23:11
Speaker 1: But it sounded to me like a Churchill directive kind
23:14
Speaker 1: of like I know, we've got our Section D and
23:18
Speaker 1: m I six, but we need a really super secret
23:21
Speaker 1: special sabage our team, and like let's create.
23:25
Speaker 2: One, right. He was waiting for that last part.
23:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's kind of what it sounded like. But back
23:30
Speaker 1: to Q, that was based again on a real person,
23:34
Speaker 1: and I think we said, but Q stands for quartermaster,
23:36
Speaker 1: and this guy was Charles Fraser Smith, and he was
23:40
Speaker 1: the one that made like literal miniature cameras inside cigarette
23:44
Speaker 1: lighters and steal shoelaces to choke someone out with. Yeah,
23:50
Speaker 1: a cigarette holder telescope. Kyle said that these weren't as
23:56
Speaker 1: we're a little more hum drum. But I think a
23:58
Speaker 1: bullet shaped device to stick up your butt that holds
24:02
Speaker 1: vital information maybe humdrum, but it's pretty useful.
24:05
Speaker 2: I'll bet it doesn't feel hum drum going in.
24:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, it depends on what kind of bullet too.
24:11
Speaker 2: For sure. Yeah. So I mean that there's a lot
24:15
Speaker 2: of what we understand about I six and like the
24:18
Speaker 2: movies and all that, it does apparently bear some resemblance
24:22
Speaker 2: because I don't know if we said or not. Ian
24:23
Speaker 2: Fleming worked for six during the during World War Two,
24:28
Speaker 2: so he had firsthand knowledge about all this stuff, which
24:31
Speaker 2: is why there are real life people who these characters
24:34
Speaker 2: were based on. So our understanding of what I six
24:38
Speaker 2: does and has, that it's disposal on the way it
24:40
Speaker 2: runs is not that far off. But one of the
24:44
Speaker 2: big differences I saw was the idea of a lone,
24:49
Speaker 2: loose canon running his own operations out there is totally incorrect.
24:55
Speaker 2: It's just backwards. I've seen current employees say, like that
25:00
Speaker 2: guy wouldn't even make it through the door, Like he
25:02
Speaker 2: would get voted out so quickly that he wouldn't even
25:05
Speaker 2: have a chance. You need somebody who's not a loose cannon, yeah,
25:09
Speaker 2: you rather than solo missions. Apparently, it's all teamwork. Yeah,
25:14
Speaker 2: And it's not one person coming up with one giant
25:17
Speaker 2: piece of information, like there's a super villain who's created
25:21
Speaker 2: a layer at the bottom of the sea that he's
25:24
Speaker 2: been shooting their missiles from. That usually doesn't come up
25:27
Speaker 2: in one big package. It takes thousands of people to
25:30
Speaker 2: work together to piece little pieces of information, and they
25:33
Speaker 2: go back and double check and triple check with other
25:36
Speaker 2: sources whether those pieces of information are correct, and then
25:39
Speaker 2: eventually you create a whole picture and you hope, hope
25:43
Speaker 2: that it's true and accurate.
25:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you hope there's a secret layer right with
25:49
Speaker 1: like trained sharks in a mote.
25:51
Speaker 2: That you can get a membership to.
25:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So speeding along up to the Cold War.
25:59
Speaker 1: We are now out of place where like the USA,
26:02
Speaker 1: the Cold War was dominated in m I six by
26:07
Speaker 1: the Soviets and communism, the spread of communism agents, double agents,
26:12
Speaker 1: secret agents, triple agents. They were doing the same work
26:15
Speaker 1: we were. They partnered up with the CIA in nineteen
26:19
Speaker 1: forty eight, again which was modeled on I six, and
26:23
Speaker 1: they were trying to sort of at this point balance
26:25
Speaker 1: intelligence with covert actions because it wasn't like an active war,
26:30
Speaker 1: so they had to approach it differently. And they said
26:33
Speaker 1: that at the time there were a couple of different
26:35
Speaker 1: types of I guess what officers working there, Almost an
26:41
Speaker 1: agent but Moscow men who are apparently very careful and
26:46
Speaker 1: you know, gathering that intelligence. And then camel drivers, who
26:50
Speaker 1: were people they would send in to like on the
26:52
Speaker 1: ground in the field at a local place to ally
26:55
Speaker 1: themselves with locals to maybe mountain insurrection or something like that.
27:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I'm guessing the camel drivers came from the
27:03
Speaker 2: Special Operations executive heritage, because that's exactly the kind of
27:07
Speaker 2: guerrilla warfare the so we engaged in World War Two.
27:11
Speaker 2: So I'm guessing that's how that survived into the Cold War.
27:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, and of course, because it's the Cold War, a
27:18
Speaker 1: lot of the intelligence that these Moscow men were gathering
27:21
Speaker 1: was like, hey, we're not at war, but in case
27:24
Speaker 1: something happens, we know that they've got these airfields, they've
27:28
Speaker 1: got this many tanks, this many soldiers on the ground
27:30
Speaker 1: that could move here in this amount of time. So
27:33
Speaker 1: you know, it was sort of a readiness operation at
27:36
Speaker 1: that point.
27:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, and not just like Okay, they have a huge
27:40
Speaker 2: stockpile of these weapons. The opposite could be just as
27:44
Speaker 2: valuable too, like, actually, they don't have that many missiles,
27:47
Speaker 2: so all this bluster about them blowing the UK into
27:50
Speaker 2: the ocean is actually full of hot air, so we
27:53
Speaker 2: don't need to be quite as scared about it.
27:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, good point.
27:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's I mean, that's really important too. But
27:59
Speaker 2: like you said, also, I mean they got caught maybe
28:03
Speaker 2: a little off guard with World War Two. I get
28:05
Speaker 2: the impression that they didn't let that happen during the
28:07
Speaker 2: Cold War. They were still keeping up with Soviets like capabilities.
28:13
Speaker 2: I think what else made it easy too, was you
28:15
Speaker 2: had one nation really to spy on the Soviet Union
28:19
Speaker 2: as a whole. It was massive and it was made
28:22
Speaker 2: up of what are now a bunch of independent nations.
28:24
Speaker 2: But at the time you had one big enemy, rather
28:26
Speaker 2: than today where you have like terrorism, nonstate bad actors. Like,
28:31
Speaker 2: it's just much more dilute, whereas before it was like
28:35
Speaker 2: those guys, those are our enemy, that's who we need
28:37
Speaker 2: to spy on.
28:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, train all ears towards Moscow basically.
28:40
Speaker 2: Yeah.
28:41
Speaker 1: So they were also still recruiting intelligence officers, you know,
28:46
Speaker 1: to use on their side. And this is did I
28:50
Speaker 1: read this right? The KGB their acronym MICE stood for money, ideology, coercion,
28:55
Speaker 1: and ego. Were they identifying people within their own that
29:00
Speaker 1: might be, you know, susceptible to being turned.
29:03
Speaker 2: I'm sure you could apply it to that, But the
29:05
Speaker 2: impression I had is that was just how they decided
29:08
Speaker 2: if somebody was worth approaching to recruit as a spy
29:11
Speaker 2: for them, Oh okay, pay it would apply, yeah, for sure.
29:16
Speaker 2: So if you're recruiting people, that's one way to do it.
29:19
Speaker 2: You can flatter them, make them just be like, this
29:22
Speaker 2: person clearly wants to feel like they're important or helping
29:25
Speaker 2: their country or something like that. You can have stuff
29:30
Speaker 2: that to blackmail them with. Apparently am I six is
29:32
Speaker 2: more than willing to blackmail agents into working for them.
29:36
Speaker 2: Bribery is another one too. It's how a lot of
29:39
Speaker 2: very famous and prolific spies have been brought on to
29:43
Speaker 2: being a spy is just getting paid. Although in the
29:46
Speaker 2: end when you when they're being executed, you like, you
29:48
Speaker 2: did all this for three hundred thousand dollars, really, yeah,
29:51
Speaker 2: you know, it just never quite adds up, and it's
29:54
Speaker 2: like and also it's like three hundred thousand dollars over
29:57
Speaker 2: like twelve years or something like that. It just I
29:59
Speaker 2: never quite get it. So maybe there's like they're really
30:02
Speaker 2: in it for the thrill. The money was just the
30:04
Speaker 2: extra bonus. I don't know.
30:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, they'd be like, why don't you just try to
30:08
Speaker 1: scratch off tickets, right if you want to make forty
30:10
Speaker 1: grand a year for the next fifteen years.
30:12
Speaker 2: Right. And then another gambit is called the dangle. It's
30:18
Speaker 2: not dirty, it's just this way of getting somebody as
30:21
Speaker 2: spy for you, oh okay, Or actually it's a way
30:24
Speaker 2: of creating a double agent, like you were talking about.
30:27
Speaker 1: So that's when you recruit somebody but for the purposes
30:31
Speaker 1: of exposing them. Right.
30:32
Speaker 2: So a dangle is where you say, like you have
30:36
Speaker 2: somebody in Moscow that you've turned into an agent for you.
30:40
Speaker 2: You try to make them attractive to say the kgb
30:44
Speaker 2: AH to recruit them as a spy. So now you
30:47
Speaker 2: have a double agent working inside Okay?
30:50
Speaker 1: And is that? Who is that? How they got Oleg Pinkowski?
30:54
Speaker 2: I don't know. He came to them, No, he came
30:58
Speaker 2: to them. He became disillusioned with the Soviet Union and
31:01
Speaker 2: he's like, I think I'm going to start helping the UK.
31:05
Speaker 1: Oh Okay, because he worked with both six and CIA,
31:09
Speaker 1: and again this is during the Cold War, so he
31:12
Speaker 1: was one of the key players and sort of or
31:15
Speaker 1: I guess, getting and giving information on Soviet missiles in
31:19
Speaker 1: Cuba during the Cuban missile crisis.
31:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is pretty useful as a matter of fact. Yeah,
31:25
Speaker 2: he was hugely helpful, just over like eighteen months and
31:28
Speaker 2: then he was caught and executed. But I think at
31:30
Speaker 2: that time he gave up five thousand photos of Soviet
31:34
Speaker 2: documents to six.
31:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know you mentioned the CIA earlier having
31:39
Speaker 1: sort of more legal hands being tied than they do
31:45
Speaker 1: apparently in the Cold War, and who knows, maybe this
31:49
Speaker 1: still happens today. But if there was a CIA officer
31:52
Speaker 1: that couldn't get something done on the down low that
31:56
Speaker 1: was maybe untoured or violent or illegal. They could call
32:00
Speaker 1: m I six and say, hey, we can't get this done,
32:03
Speaker 1: could you?
32:05
Speaker 2: And they say yes, yes, Wait can you say I
32:08
Speaker 2: can't do a very good British accent?
32:10
Speaker 1: Yes? That was Murray from New Zealand.
32:13
Speaker 2: Again almost always is. So I say we take a
32:18
Speaker 2: break and we come back and talk about one of
32:20
Speaker 2: the most thrilling moments in I six history.
32:48
Speaker 1: Are you talking about Oleg Gordievski.
32:51
Speaker 2: Yes, that's exactly who I'm talking about, a KGB colonel.
32:56
Speaker 1: That's right. Apparently this guy. And this is how you can,
32:59
Speaker 1: you know, get someone on your side from the or
33:03
Speaker 1: at least at the time from that side, is if
33:06
Speaker 1: they really like Western.
33:07
Speaker 2: Culture, yeah, the Cowabunga lifestyle.
33:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're like, I really like, I don't know, American
33:13
Speaker 1: sports and music and fashion. Then that could be enough.
33:17
Speaker 1: And apparently he was on assignment in Copenhagen and they
33:21
Speaker 1: were like, this guy loves Western culture and he might
33:24
Speaker 1: be worth you know, getting in touch with. And sure
33:26
Speaker 1: enough it actually worked.
33:28
Speaker 2: I don't know where they'd fall in the mice acronym money, ideology, coercion, ego.
33:34
Speaker 1: Taty ideology and ego.
33:36
Speaker 2: I don't know, I'm not sure, but yes, he definitely turned,
33:41
Speaker 2: but he was caught, he was found out, so he
33:43
Speaker 2: was he became the station chief for working out of
33:47
Speaker 2: the embassy as a KGB agent in London, so he
33:52
Speaker 2: was able to actually kind of easily pass secrets to
33:55
Speaker 2: the Brits because he was there already. He was found
33:59
Speaker 2: out by Aldrich Ames, who was a famous American trader
34:04
Speaker 2: who spied for the Soviets in I think the eighties
34:07
Speaker 2: or maybe even into the nineties, and he told them
34:11
Speaker 2: about Gordievsky spying for the Brits. Gordievsky was not immediately jailed,
34:18
Speaker 2: which is weird. He was definitely taken back to Moscow
34:22
Speaker 2: and held like basically under surveillance. But he was going
34:26
Speaker 2: to be jailed. He was going to be executed. So
34:30
Speaker 2: he started what had been planned seven years before and
34:34
Speaker 2: named Operation Pimlico. And by standing in a Moscow bakery
34:40
Speaker 2: or outside of a Moscow bakery holding a plastic Safeway bag,
34:45
Speaker 2: he was signaling MI, I six, like, get me out
34:47
Speaker 2: of here right now.
34:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he said, how am I going to know?
34:51
Speaker 1: If you've gotten the message. And they says, well, how
34:53
Speaker 1: about this, a man's going to walk by you carrying
34:56
Speaker 1: a Herod's bag And then he said that could be anybody, right,
35:00
Speaker 1: And he said, all right, how about this carrying a
35:01
Speaker 1: Herod's bag and eating a Mars candy bar, right, And
35:05
Speaker 1: he said, I guess that narrows it down enough.
35:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is really showing off because I think you
35:10
Speaker 2: could trade a Mars bar for a car in Moscow
35:13
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty five.
35:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, yeah, that's a good point.
35:15
Speaker 2: Actually, at least that's what they told us in school.
35:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. They don't have toilet paper either. So he
35:22
Speaker 1: evaded surveillance was making a run for the Finished border
35:26
Speaker 1: and am I six scrabbed him and put him in
35:29
Speaker 1: a car trunk. But they have like, you know, sniffing
35:32
Speaker 1: dogs inspecting cars and things, so they had the brilliant
35:36
Speaker 1: idea to change a poopy diaper on the trunk of
35:39
Speaker 1: the car that he was stuffed inside. And apparently it worked.
35:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, those dogs were like, oh god and just went
35:46
Speaker 2: back to their post.
35:47
Speaker 1: No, thank you.
35:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, isn't that amazing? So then they got him across
35:51
Speaker 2: the Finish border. Finland is neutral and he was safe.
35:55
Speaker 2: But I mean, like that is real deal spy stuff,
35:58
Speaker 2: you know. Oh yeah, for sure, holding a Safeway bag.
36:01
Speaker 2: That's awesome. The mars Bar I love every part of that.
36:05
Speaker 2: So he actually he was actually tried in absentia and
36:09
Speaker 2: sentenced to death by the Soviet Union, but he had
36:12
Speaker 2: defected to the UK and they protected him and he
36:15
Speaker 2: died an old man, I think age eighty six last
36:18
Speaker 2: March at his home in Great Britain.
36:21
Speaker 1: Incredible they never got a hold of him.
36:24
Speaker 2: No. But one thing that we really should say, and
36:26
Speaker 2: I was kind of touching on it earlier, one of
36:28
Speaker 2: the really valuable things he provided was he could understand
36:32
Speaker 2: the state of mind of the Soviet government and Soviet military,
36:37
Speaker 2: and he fed this information of the UK to six,
36:41
Speaker 2: who turned around and said, Margaret thatcher Ronald Reagan, you
36:45
Speaker 2: guys need to tone down this evil empire rhetoric, right
36:48
Speaker 2: because you are scaring the Soviets so bad. They're plotting
36:53
Speaker 2: a first strike because they think you're going to strike
36:57
Speaker 2: out of nowhere, So you actually might trigger a first
37:00
Speaker 2: strike from the Soviets if you keep talking like this.
37:02
Speaker 2: And as a result, they really dialed it back quite
37:05
Speaker 2: a bit.
37:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, they said, he said, have you seen more games? Yeah,
37:08
Speaker 1: He's like that could happen.
37:10
Speaker 2: In that sense, he kind of saved the world.
37:13
Speaker 1: Yeah.
37:13
Speaker 2: I think that's great.
37:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think saving the world is totally great.
37:17
Speaker 2: I'm all for it.
37:19
Speaker 1: If we're talking about modern times, and you mentioned the
37:22
Speaker 1: nineties is when things sort of went official, and that
37:24
Speaker 1: was nineteen ninety four. They officially went public due to
37:28
Speaker 1: the nineteen ninety four Intelligence Services Act, And basically this
37:34
Speaker 1: had happened to five in nineteen eighty nine, and it's
37:38
Speaker 1: kind of seemed like they had to kind of bring
37:42
Speaker 1: in some bureaucracy for legal reasons. Among others, they the
37:47
Speaker 1: staff of I five and I guess later I six
37:50
Speaker 1: wanted better legal basis for things like tapping phones. They
37:54
Speaker 1: had to be a little little more on the up
37:56
Speaker 1: and up. I think that it was the European Court
38:00
Speaker 1: of Human Rights said that if you're an intelligence service,
38:03
Speaker 1: you have to have legal footing and a complaints system,
38:06
Speaker 1: so like you have to become official for all this
38:08
Speaker 1: stuff to be official.
38:10
Speaker 2: Right, there's so that law that essentially acknowledged that there
38:17
Speaker 2: was such a thing as six back in nineteen ninety four.
38:21
Speaker 2: It had a section called Section seven, and it basically
38:24
Speaker 2: said if one of our agents is off running around
38:27
Speaker 2: committing crimes in another country that they could be tried
38:31
Speaker 2: for back in the UK, they cannot be held liable
38:34
Speaker 2: for that. They'll never be tried for this. Yeah, And
38:36
Speaker 2: some people have taken that as admission that there's such
38:39
Speaker 2: a thing as a license to kill, and that makes sense.
38:42
Speaker 2: I mean the apparently there is a new law that's
38:45
Speaker 2: being talked about right now and is making its way
38:48
Speaker 2: through the Supreme Court there that basically says yes, and
38:52
Speaker 2: pretty much murder too, We're not going to try them
38:54
Speaker 2: for murder. And it actually extends to agents too, So
38:58
Speaker 2: if somebody murders somebody for mi I six and then
39:02
Speaker 2: they defect to the UK, the UK is never going
39:05
Speaker 2: to try them for that murder. So it's a lot
39:08
Speaker 2: so people are like, that's a license to kill. And
39:10
Speaker 2: I saw an agent say on I think a PBS
39:13
Speaker 2: or BBC documentary a license to kill doesn't make any sense,
39:16
Speaker 2: Like if you're in another country and you kill somebody there,
39:20
Speaker 2: like when the cops come, you're not going to show
39:22
Speaker 2: them your license to kill and they'll let you go,
39:24
Speaker 2: Like this is not You're breaking that country's law. You've
39:26
Speaker 2: murdered someone in that country, your toast if you get caught. Yeah,
39:30
Speaker 2: So there is no license to kill, but symbolic these
39:34
Speaker 2: laws essentially kind of potentially give something like a license
39:39
Speaker 2: to kill.
39:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you just don't whip out your double O card.
39:43
Speaker 2: No.
39:43
Speaker 1: No. The other things that happened in nineteen ninety four
39:47
Speaker 1: as far as the organization goes is they were the
39:52
Speaker 1: chief was all I was about to say, exposed technically,
39:54
Speaker 1: that's right, but they voluntarily said, all right, we have
39:57
Speaker 1: to be official. Now here's who our chief is. They
40:01
Speaker 1: moved offices to some fancy headquarters on the Thames, designed
40:06
Speaker 1: by Terry Ferrell. It's a very secure, sort of secretive building.
40:10
Speaker 1: And you know it's while they did go public. You know,
40:14
Speaker 1: technically it's still m I six and they still have
40:18
Speaker 1: a culture of secrecy because of what they do. It's
40:21
Speaker 1: not like, you know, they just sort of made some
40:23
Speaker 1: things a little more public to make things official. I
40:27
Speaker 1: guess right.
40:30
Speaker 2: That building too, It is secure, but it was blown up,
40:33
Speaker 2: not once but twice. Well, not blown up. The first
40:37
Speaker 2: time it was attacked by the IRA They shot an
40:40
Speaker 2: anti tank rocket launcher at the building. On September twentieth,
40:44
Speaker 2: two thousand, and that building just like shook it off
40:47
Speaker 2: immediately did like it did almost no damage to it whatsoever,
40:51
Speaker 2: and really kind of showed just how crazy reinforced that
40:55
Speaker 2: building is. But it suffered a much different fate in
40:59
Speaker 2: James on Skyfall where it blew up.
41:02
Speaker 1: Oh was that what that building?
41:04
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
41:05
Speaker 1: Skyfall was good. It was as a matter of fact,
41:08
Speaker 1: quite liked it. I'm curious what's gonna happen next with
41:09
Speaker 1: that franchise?
41:11
Speaker 2: Did Yeah, they haven't named any James Bond yet.
41:13
Speaker 1: I don't think so. And they sold you know, the
41:15
Speaker 1: Broccoli family, I think sold sold everything. Oh really to god,
41:19
Speaker 1: it may have been Amazon even I don't know. Wow,
41:22
Speaker 1: not sure, but we'll see.
41:23
Speaker 2: Well, if it's not Idris Elba, I'm going to be
41:26
Speaker 2: really surprised.
41:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, they've been talking about him for years. That would
41:29
Speaker 1: be too good to be true. There, no one's smart
41:31
Speaker 1: enough to do that in movie making. Yeah, I don't
41:36
Speaker 1: have great faith. We should talk a little bit about
41:38
Speaker 1: the more modern day stuff because you know, starting in
41:42
Speaker 1: the early two thousands, leading up to the Iraq War
41:45
Speaker 1: in two thousand and three, obviously they were going to
41:49
Speaker 1: be working with hunting down terrorists and maybe weapons of
41:53
Speaker 1: mass destruction, and that was one of their big black eyes.
41:57
Speaker 1: Actually was bogus information that got through apparently, you know,
42:02
Speaker 1: it wasn't vetted like it should have been, and that
42:05
Speaker 1: was one of the reasons that the US and the
42:08
Speaker 1: rest of the world got and believed bad information about
42:11
Speaker 1: weapons of mass destruction. Interract.
42:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's said that that is the lowest moment in
42:17
Speaker 2: sixth history since Kim Philby was discovered as a trader
42:21
Speaker 2: and longtime spy, which is really saying something if you've
42:24
Speaker 2: heard our episode on Kim Philby. But I would say
42:28
Speaker 2: that this was even much much worse because of how
42:31
Speaker 2: many people died in the Iraq War. Yeah, And the
42:34
Speaker 2: reason why it was such a big deal, this bad
42:37
Speaker 2: intelligence is because the US and the UK essentially made
42:40
Speaker 2: a pact like we're going to invade a rock together
42:43
Speaker 2: to topple this regime. We just want to get rid
42:46
Speaker 2: of Saddam Hussein. That's not legal. If Saddam had weapons
42:50
Speaker 2: of mass destruction. Now it's legal under basically international law.
42:55
Speaker 2: So they really went to a lot of trouble to
42:57
Speaker 2: try to find anything that suggested that and then the
43:00
Speaker 2: and they just relied on these sources that just were
43:03
Speaker 2: totally untrustworthy. And I don't remember where we talked about it,
43:08
Speaker 2: but one of the sources that the US and the
43:10
Speaker 2: UK relied on to invader Rock with said they have
43:13
Speaker 2: weapons of mass destruction. They keep them in these glass
43:15
Speaker 2: canisters and in these like little glass balls, and the
43:20
Speaker 2: glass balls are green, and Nicholas Cage protects them with
43:24
Speaker 2: Sean Connery.
43:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean learned people just really genuinely suspect that
43:31
Speaker 1: that could have been misinformation based on the Rock.
43:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that the handful of British ministers and politicians
43:39
Speaker 2: who saw this intel had not seen the Rock apparently,
43:43
Speaker 2: and it just didn't ring any bells. If they had seen.
43:45
Speaker 1: It, well, they had better taste in that.
43:47
Speaker 2: I guess it wasn't that good. But you know, it's
43:51
Speaker 2: not just like a you know, shoot them up bang
43:55
Speaker 2: kind of thing, action movie. I guess, yeah, it's all right. Yeah.
43:59
Speaker 2: So today, I six they're realizing openly in interviews and stuff,
44:05
Speaker 2: that they really need to start keeping up with technology
44:08
Speaker 2: because of like facial recognition and surveillance states like that
44:11
Speaker 2: China has and the UK. It's basically impossible to create
44:16
Speaker 2: an agent somewhere like human intelligence is really hard to
44:20
Speaker 2: do now, especially yes, and apparently they're starting to use
44:24
Speaker 2: AI to run scenarios and situations to predict how somebody
44:28
Speaker 2: will behave in different situations. That's a new one they're
44:31
Speaker 2: starting to do too. So I don't know how ahead
44:35
Speaker 2: of the curve they are, and it sounds to me
44:37
Speaker 2: a little bit like they're behind the curve. But at
44:39
Speaker 2: least they're realizing they need to they need to wake
44:41
Speaker 2: up and smell the hard drives. Sorry thought you're gonna
44:47
Speaker 2: say English breakfast team. Oh that's even better, So we
44:50
Speaker 2: just edit that in.
44:51
Speaker 1: But you say it Beijing, mister Hermann. So the you know,
44:57
Speaker 1: the other obvious thing. As far as modern day recruit goes,
45:00
Speaker 1: it's not like the old days where they would just
45:03
Speaker 1: sort of source someone out and very you know, quietly,
45:06
Speaker 1: have someone walk by and drop a note on their
45:08
Speaker 1: dinner table that says, are you interested in a job?
45:12
Speaker 1: You know, come by this office tomorrow alone, that kind
45:14
Speaker 1: of thing. It's a modern organization now with you know,
45:18
Speaker 1: job listings and things like that. Again, still very secretive
45:21
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, I'm sure in what they
45:23
Speaker 1: do but they you know, starting in nineteen ninety four
45:26
Speaker 1: is when they really were brought into the sort of
45:28
Speaker 1: modern era. It's a little less James Bondy and just
45:33
Speaker 1: a little more you know, fill out this application and
45:35
Speaker 1: we'll do our background checks.
45:37
Speaker 2: Right. It is still risky, though, is I can't remember
45:40
Speaker 2: what year it was. In the twenty tens, I believe
45:45
Speaker 2: there was a codebreaker for I six named Gareth Williams
45:48
Speaker 2: who was found dead in his bathroom inside a tote
45:52
Speaker 2: bag that was locked from the outside.
45:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's hard to do on your own, but that
45:56
Speaker 1: wouldn't that The excuse is like he did this himself.
45:59
Speaker 2: Either that or that it it was like a sex
46:00
Speaker 2: game gone wrong and the partner took off, freaked out
46:04
Speaker 2: and took off. I think that's the official explanation. But
46:08
Speaker 2: there was a former KGB agent who came forward in
46:10
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen and said, no, that guy would they The
46:13
Speaker 2: Russians tried to recruit him, and he said no, and
46:15
Speaker 2: so they killed him.
46:17
Speaker 1: I wonder if it was a sex game gone wrong
46:19
Speaker 1: and they just were extracting invisibly.
46:23
Speaker 2: Oh my god. I think that's a pretty good way
46:25
Speaker 2: to wrap up this episode. If not have wrapped it
46:28
Speaker 2: up thirty seconds before you said that agreed. Well, since
46:32
Speaker 2: we both agreed that this episode is wrapped up, then
46:35
Speaker 2: that means it's time for listener mail.
46:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a I got a couple of two
46:41
Speaker 1: parteris on these next ones about disaster films, because boy,
46:44
Speaker 1: we heard from a lot of people that really enjoyed
46:46
Speaker 1: that one, and these two are from Maria and Kirk. Hey, guys,
46:50
Speaker 1: love the disaster movie. But I'm surprised you to mention
46:53
Speaker 1: the movie Testament. I have not heard of this, Maria,
46:56
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna check it out. It's from nineteen eighty
46:58
Speaker 1: three by Lynn Littmann, starring Jane Alexander, one of the
47:02
Speaker 1: few with a female lead closest thing to a hero
47:05
Speaker 1: in this post apocalyptic movie, and one of the few
47:08
Speaker 1: directed by a woman. You were focusing more escapist action
47:12
Speaker 1: disaster type things, but you did mention a few that
47:15
Speaker 1: were a little author raider, so I thought I would
47:16
Speaker 1: mention this one. And another one that you could have
47:19
Speaker 1: mentioned that was a little off the radar was Melancholia,
47:22
Speaker 1: a pre apocalyptic film. So have we not mentioned that,
47:26
Speaker 1: I swear to god we did. I don't think we did.
47:28
Speaker 1: In that episode, but we did talk about it recently,
47:31
Speaker 1: because we've talked about it a few times for some reason.
47:33
Speaker 2: I think that qualifies.
47:35
Speaker 1: And then also from Kirk Hey from Beautiful Astoria, Oregon,
47:40
Speaker 1: a longtime listener, and I love disaster films and you
47:43
Speaker 1: guys did a great job. I'm surprised though, that you
47:46
Speaker 1: didn't mention Jurassic Park because I believe that fits all
47:49
Speaker 1: the criteria and pre dates Twister by three years, and
47:53
Speaker 1: it also fits at your conversation on the early use
47:55
Speaker 1: of CGI with some of the greatest special effects of
47:57
Speaker 1: the time. I have a feeling it won't be the
47:59
Speaker 1: only person mentioning this. Love the podcast, guys, And that
48:05
Speaker 1: is from Kirk Klinger. Now, we had a few people
48:07
Speaker 1: right in about Jurassic Park. But I don't know about
48:11
Speaker 1: disaster movie. To me, that's maybe a subgenre of monster movie.
48:15
Speaker 1: I don't know, what do you think.
48:16
Speaker 2: It did have a Hoffman in the form of Wayne Knight,
48:22
Speaker 2: who played Newman. True he was even wearing a Hawaiian
48:26
Speaker 2: shirt like he couldn't get more obviously Hoffman.
48:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point.
48:30
Speaker 2: So I don't I don't think it is a disaster
48:33
Speaker 2: movie though, But that's just my opinion.
48:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we're not the I mean, what do we know.
48:37
Speaker 1: If you think it's a disaster movie, then go with it.
48:39
Speaker 2: I did say some people agreed with me though, that
48:41
Speaker 2: Godzilla minus one is definitely a disaster, so I was right.
48:46
Speaker 1: Well, the scale of destruction in Jurassic Park one was
48:50
Speaker 1: limited to e is La, Newbar, so I don't know
48:54
Speaker 1: though other things were localized too, So maybe I'm just
48:56
Speaker 1: wrong about everything in life.
48:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, like that that tunnel collapse was alone.
49:00
Speaker 1: That was Yeah, that's true. That's true.
49:02
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, well, Kirk, thank you for starting this conversation.
49:05
Speaker 2: It's a great one. Like I said, we love that
49:07
Speaker 2: kind of thing. Send us an email. Send it off
49:09
Speaker 2: to stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
49:14
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49:22
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