Mirror : Intelligence expert Crispin Black says a spy’s life includes danger, hard graft and a dash of glamour

Intelligence expert Crispin Black says a spy’s life includes danger, hard graft and a dash of glamour

By Crispin Black | August 28, 2010

Discretion and the principle of “need to know” govern every aspect of an intelligence officer’s life.

They are allowed to reveal to their families their real job although this is a relatively recent concession.Selected close friends are also allowed to be in on the secret but only in the most generalised terms.

To the rest of the world spooks assume a false identity usually pretending to work for the Foreign Office or the Ministry of Defence.

Whatever the cover story it is well backed up. If a spook is pretending to work as a commercial attaché his or her name will appear in the Diplomatic List as just that.

There are three intelligence ­agencies. The first, MI6 or the Secret Intelligence Service, deals with acquiring intelligence abroad.

Usually, they operate from “stations” inside British embassies – speaking their own jargon. The senior spook is Head of Station or H.

Sir John Scarlett, who was at the centre of the controversies over the Iraq dossiers was famously “H Moscow”, smuggling a top defector out of Russia in the boot of an embassy car under the very noses of the very angry KGB.

After the invasion of Iraq Tony Blair promoted him to be Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service or C. Its biggest stations are now in Islamabad and Kabul, where conditions are tough. Elsewhere the James Bond lifestyle is still maintained.

The second agency, MI5 or the Security Service, is responsible for security at home. The job is more high-level complex police work than anything else. The most difficult and demanding aspects of the job are the surveillance operations mounted on unfolding terrorist plots.

If an intelligence officer is part of such a team he may not see friends and family for weeks on end and will subsist on coffee and takeaways.Things have improved slightly over the past few years as MI5 has developed regional stations with proper accommodation for its agents.

The third agency, GCHQ, are the listeners – direct descendants of the talented folk who broke codes at Bletchley Park in the Second World War. They have a hi-tech headquarters in Cheltenham known as the Doughnut because of its shape.

Tasked with breaking enemy codes and protecting our own electronic secrets they stare for long hours at computer screens trying to make sense of garbled conversations in foreign languages. They are serious and secretive people but they do let their hair down at Cheltenham Races, especially on Gold Cup Day.

Life in all three agencies is about detailed hard work. On every desk there are reminders of its importance. The most secret intelligence is contained in brightly coloured folders. As in nature, where the most dangerous animals are brightly coloured, the brighter the colour the more secret the intelligence. The ones for the Prime Minister and the Queen are bound in scarlet and gold.

In the dark hours all three agencies take comfort in the reflected glory from their fictional counterparts. James Bond was/is an MI6 agent. Traditionally every Bond film has a For Spooks Eyes Only premiere.

Film magnates and spies mingle at a cocktail party beforehand. In 1999 at the first showing of The World Is Not Enough the audience cheered as their Vauxhall Cross HQ was blown up. Senior management was apparently not amused.

MI5 are lucky enough to have the BBC TV hit Spooks which has done wonders for recruitment and morale. There was always a feeling before that they were in some way “poor relations” to their counterparts south of the river.

Their real Albert Embankment HQ is even more hi-tech and glossy than the BBC studio mock up. But officers tend to dress down in case they have to drop everything and hit the street on some urgent surveillance.

GCHQ has its own heroes from the past – principally the Bletchley Park geniuses who broke the secret German codes so vividly brought to life in the film Enigma.

But it is not all hard work. One of the most glamorous parts of being a spy is the visits to the US. MI5 go to FBI headquarters in downtown Washington and MI6 to the CIA base in Langley. No alcohol is served at Langley dinners – except when the British are in town.

The closest relationship is between GCHQ and the National Security Agency who have a formal arrangement splitting responsibility for the world. There is a constant stream of British visitors to its Fort Meade HQ in Maryland, known as the Puzzle Palace.

The world’s most powerful computers are there and the most brilliant mathematical minds. Gareth Williams visited often and would no doubt have been at home with his fellow maths whizz-kids.

The exchange of information is free and frank. He would have been privy to US as well as British secrets.

That is why the Americans are taking such a strong interest in his death.