Latest news with #SecretIntelligenceService
The Irish Sun
10-05-2025
- Politics
- The Irish Sun
Spy agency MI6 set to appointment first female boss branded ‘sympathetic to China' by critics
A WOMAN is set to take charge of MI6 for the first time in the Secret Intelligence Service's history. Interviews took place last week and the final three candidates were all women, The Sunday Times reports. However, the appointment is controversial because critics say the runaway favourite for the job is too sympathetic to China. She was dubbed 'Beijing Barbara' in Whitehall because she was reluctant to speak out about the Chinese regime as ambassador in Beijing between 2015 and 2020. Ex-Tory leader Read More on UK News Current The other two finalists have not yet been named. Most read in The Sun The winner will be decided by Downing Street declined to comment. 1 Dame Barbara Woodward, ambassador to the UN, is the Foreign Office's most senior woman Credit: Rex Inside top-secret tunnel used by Brit spies before inspiring James Bond films
The Sun
10-05-2025
- Politics
- The Sun
Spy agency MI6 set to appointment first female boss branded ‘sympathetic to China' by critics
A WOMAN is set to take charge of MI6 for the first time in the Secret Intelligence Service's history. Interviews took place last week and the final three candidates were all women, The Sunday Times reports. However, the appointment is controversial because critics say the runaway favourite for the job is too sympathetic to China. Dame Barbara Woodward, 63, ambassador to the UN, is the Foreign Office's most senior woman. She was dubbed 'Beijing Barbara' in Whitehall because she was reluctant to speak out about the Chinese regime as ambassador in Beijing between 2015 and 2020. Ex-Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said: 'Any ambivalence towards the threat China poses will end in disaster for the UK.' Current MI6 chief Sir Richard Moore is due to stand down in the autumn after five years in charge. MI6 has had 17 male bosses, each of whom has been referred to as 'C'. Ian Fleming renamed the spy chief 'M' for his Bond books. The other two finalists have not yet been named. The winner will be decided by the PM. Downing Street declined to comment. 1
The Independent
05-04-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Britain must boost its military to counter the growing threat from Russia
In an exclusive interview with The Independent, Sir Alex Younger, the former head of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, says that the United Kingdom needs to rearm. He is right. As he says, the threat from Vladimir Putin's Russia is real. 'Putin and Trump together have done their best to persuade us that the rules have changed,' he said. He captures the sense of unease that Britain, having 'for many years been completely free of any form of existential threat', has allowed itself to assume that war is something that we can choose to take part in or not – rather than something that may sometimes come to us and for which we have to be prepared. 'We're more comfortable thinking about the army as like the England football team,' said Sir Alex. 'They go and do their thing over there and we watch it on telly – and that can't happen anymore.' Part of his suggested policy response, apart from the increase in defence spending that the government has already planned, is to build up the military reserves – that is, paying people to train with the armed forces outside working hours. This, said Sir Alex, 'needs to be a more integrated feature of everyday life'. Again, he is right, but the shift that is required in popular attitudes towards military service is dramatic. We only have to recall how Rishi Sunak's proposed return of national service went down at the general election last year to realise that. But the world has changed. Or, rather, Donald Trump's alignment with Putin has crystallised a change that has been happening for some time. We thought that the existence of nuclear weapons meant that conventional warfare could not threaten us in Europe, but the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the attempted advance on Kyiv in 2022 should have opened our eyes. We should keep as much of the special relationship with America as we can, but we should recognise that the United States's guarantee of Europe's security has expired. Mr Trump will not always be president, and his successors may take a different view, but the assumption that the US will always back us up cannot be relied on in future. That means that not only must Britain rearm, but the rest of Europe must too, and that Europe will have to take responsibility for its own collective security, in alliance with the US where possible but without the US if necessary. To his credit, Sir Keir Starmer understood this new reality earlier than most. He sought to maintain good relations with President Trump while taking a leading role in the collective stiffening of the European defence posture. In a way, however, the big policy change was too easy, in that the increase in UK defence spending will be achieved by a straight switch from the foreign aid budget, which requires no sacrifice from the British people. Hence the importance of the wider change in attitudes towards national defence that is implied by Sir Alex's mention of the word 'conscription'. He suggests that there is 'great cynicism about this idea of collective effort to defend your country'. If that is true, it needs to change. We should all be clear by now that Putin's intentions towards eastern Europe in particular, but also towards the rest of Europe, are malign. We should be sceptical that his friend Mr Trump can persuade him to give up his war of aggression in Ukraine. Even if there is a pause in the fighting there, Putin will continue to 'chip away' at the other countries on Russia's border, as Dr Rachel Ellehuus, the director general of the Royal United Services Institute, said in her joint interview with Sir Alex for The Independent. This means a 'remilitarisation' of society that will be as unfamiliar as it may be unwelcome to many British citizens, but it is necessary.
Yahoo
21-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Oleg Gordievsky, KGB colonel whose brave spying for Britain changed the course of the Cold War
Oleg Gordievsky, who has died aged 86, was a colonel in the KGB who served as an agent for MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, from 1974 to 1985, when he defected to Britain; his reporting was important not only in intelligence terms, but also as a significant political influence on East-West relations during the later stages of the Cold War. The fact that he was a good KGB officer made him a good MI6 spy – being gifted with a retentive memory, adept at sifting fact from opinion and always clear about what he did not know. The son of Anton, an officer in the NKVD, forerunner of the KGB, and his wife Olga, a trained statistician, Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky was born in Moscow on October 10 1938. He grew up with his parents, an older brother and a younger sister in a tiny flat sharing a kitchen with two other families. His father had joined the Communist Party soon after the Revolution and was an ardent believer, but his mother was more sceptical. Gordievsky would credit her with his later decision to collaborate with the West, in 1995 telling Professor Anthony Clare on Radio 4's In the Psychiatrist's Chair: 'It was the influence of my mother, with her common sense, with her peasant attitude, with her normality, who taught me or helped me to take the reality of the Soviet life in its proper light and dimension.' She was also, he said, 'possessive' and 'jealous' and, like many Russian matriarchs, she wielded all the power in the Gordievsky home. Oleg attended School No 130, where he was marked out as a bright boy with a flair for languages. From there he went in 1956 to the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, where he joined the track and field club, learnt German and started reading western newspapers. In 1962 he was recruited to the KGB, assigned (like his brother, Vasilko) to the foreign intelligence department, whose officers operated abroad posing as diplomats or journalists to recruit western informers. 'Life was exciting,' he remembered. He was thrilled by the rituals of undercover work – the dead-letter boxes, disguises, and outwitting surveillance. He was posted first to East Germany, where, as he later explained it, attending a performance of Bach's Christmas Oratorio helped to draw him to the European world and to realise that Communist Russia was a 'spiritual desert'. He then served two tours as part of the KGB rezidentura in Copenhagen, during the second forming a badminton-playing relationship with the local MI6 head of station which led, with help from the Danish security service, to his recruitment in 1974. In common with many of the best secret agents, Gordievsky was more a volunteer, ideologically motivated, than a target who was cultivated, and he attributed the beginnings of his political disaffection with the Soviet Union to disgust at the Red Army's 'outrageous' crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968. (The KGB rezident for whom he worked alleged instead that it was his warning Gordievsky about the possible career consequences of an affair with an embassy secretary that prompted him to work for the British.) While in Copenhagen, Gordievsky identified a number of Russian spies, including Arne Treholt, a senior official in the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Once back in Moscow – by now briefed on a possible exfiltration plan, in case of discovery – he was appointed to the KGB's British desk in preparation for a London posting, giving him the opportunity to review past and present British cases. This yielded valuable information for MI5's counter-espionage arm, particularly with regard to historic cases. Gordievsky confirmed that John Cairncross was the so-called Fifth Man of the notorious Cambridge spies (although Cairncross had secretly confessed to MI5 in 1964, his importance was not fully recognised until later). He also convincingly refuted wholly inaccurate press conspiracy theories – originated by the disaffected MI5 officer, Peter Wright, and the journalist Chapman Pincher – to the effect that Roger Hollis, former head of MI5, was a Soviet spy. Gordievsky's most intense reporting period began in June 1982, when he arrived in London as an undercover KGB officer. Apart from identifying many Russian intelligence officers in Britain and other Western countries, leading to their removal or frustration, he also identified active cases and various KGB plans and operations. Among the latter was a putative scheme for 'neutralising' Pope John Paul II. Agent cases on which he reported included some on the Left wing of the Labour Party and trade unions, such as Jack Jones, the former union leader who had been a paid agent from 1964 to 1968 and who in the 1980s was still providing political gossip on colleagues. Gordievsky also summarised the KGB's file on their relations with Michael Foot, another (albeit possibly unwitting) source of personal and political gossip whom they code-named BOOT. The Guardian's then literary editor, Richard Gott, was identified as an agent of influence funded by the KGB. Among Gordievsky's more important identifications was Michael Bettaney, an MI5 officer who tried to spy for the KGB by making clandestine contact with Arkady Guk, the rezident in London. Bettaney posted through Guk's letter-box details of MI5's counter-measures against the KGB in London and suggested contact arrangements. Luckily, Guk suspected British provocation, and confided his misgivings to his deputy, Gordievsky. Bettaney was subsequently arrested and imprisoned. Gordievsky's value as an agent, however, extended well beyond his counter-espionage reporting, important though that was. His curiosity, charm and natural political acumen enabled him to report on contemporary issues ranging from covert Russian funding of the National Union of Mineworkers to Libyan terrorism (including the murder of PC Yvonne Fletcher) and to Russian views on exploiting the British anti-nuclear campaign. Most importantly, he reported on Operation RYAN, the KGB's largest-ever peacetime operation, launched by the Soviet leadership to gather intelligence on what it believed to be US and Nato plans for a surprise nuclear first strike against Russia. No such plans existed, but sceptical KGB officers in Western countries dared not challenge the assumptions of Moscow Centre, which took President Reagan's anti-Communist rhetoric as evidence of aggressive intent. Soviet leaders increasingly became victims of their own propaganda, dangerously interpreting a Nato command-post exercise, ABLE ARCHER, in November 1983, as preparations for a real attack. Gordievsky's reporting of this rising paranoia persuaded the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, and President Reagan discreetly to reassure the Russians. Mrs Thatcher took a detailed personal interest in Gordievsky's welfare as an agent, keen to ensure that he was not regarded simply as an 'intelligence egg-layer'. When he identified the as yet little-known Mikhail Gorbachev as the likely next leader, she took good care to court Gorbachev, giving him status and credit. His visit to Britain in December 1984 proved a turning point in Anglo-Soviet relations, aided not a little by the fact that MI6 had effectively written – via Gordievsky – part of his brief. When Mrs Thatcher announced to the press that Gorbachev was 'someone we can do business with', she spoke with well-founded confidence. In April 1985 Gordievsky was confirmed as Guk's successor as rezident and in May he was suddenly recalled to Moscow for briefing and formal confirmation. He was suspicious about this, and considered defecting, but bravely decided to return. Once there, he was suspended and his London posting cancelled. He was interrogated with the help of drugs and accused of spying for the British. He held out – the KGB did not have conclusive proof, and he was probably not the only one under suspicion – and was allowed to go on leave, presumably while the KGB searched for firm evidence of treachery. This gave him the chance to send an SOS to the MI6 Moscow station, and a well-rehearsed exfiltration plan was put into operation; the instructions for it were concealed on Cellophane embedded in the hard covers of Shakespeare's Sonnets, which Gordievsky released by soaking it in soapy water in his kitchen sink. To warn the British that his cover had been blown, he appeared, according to agreed protocol, at 7pm on a particular street corner holding a Safeway bag. Twenty-four minutes later a man walked past him carrying a Harrods bag and eating a Mars bar. The man stared directly into Gordievsky's eyes before walking on. Contact had been made. Gordievsky made his way to a remote layby on the road between Leningrad and Vyborg, north-west of Leningrad, where he was met by British intelligence officers who spirited him across the Finnish border in the boot of a Ford Sierra. He was given water and sedatives, and an aluminium space blanket to conceal his presence from infra-red heat detectors used by the guards at checkpoints. When the driver played a tape of Sibelius's Finlandia, Gordievsky recognised the signal that they had arrived safely. It was later surmised that he might have been betrayed by Aldrich Ames, the CIA officer who spied for the Russians (the SIS had decided to share Gordievsky's political intelligence with the Americans). Most agents who defect have no subsequent career, but Gordievsky's abilities, personal charm and passion for democratic freedom ensured many years of productive usefulness, during which he personally briefed not only Mrs Thatcher and President Reagan but many other influential figures. He continued to advise the British intelligence services and, despite the death sentence passed on him, gave interviews, broadcast and participated in public events. Aided by a former SIS officer, he triumphed in an Oxford Union debate on whether democracies should have intelligence services. He wrote several books with the historian Christopher Andrew and published his own memoir, Next Stop Execution, which would later be a source for Ben Macintyre's non-fiction bestseller The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War. Uniquely among former agents, Gordievsky was appointed CMG, in 2007. Gordievsky's marriage became a casualty of his defection. After years of lobbying by the British government and personal interventions by Mrs Thatcher ('Having children of my own,' she wrote to him, 'I know the kind of thoughts and feelings which are going through your mind each and every day'), the Russians permitted his wife and two daughters to join him in 1991. His daughters were educated in Britain but he and his wife, Leila, divorced. His more recent relationship, with a British woman, endured, and she survives him with his daughters. Oleg Gordievsky, born October 10 1938, death announced March 21 2025 Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
What's On
12-03-2025
- Entertainment
- What's On
What's On in conversation with: The stars of Black Bag
We speak to Michael Fassbender, Naomie Harris, Regé-Jean Page and Marisa Abela… Most spy movies make the espionage career path look incredibly alluring. 'I could do that' you convince yourself, as the suavely-kempt individual on-screen slips from private jet to the non-ejector sear of an Aston Martin via the sole medium of niche blended beverages. The reality of course is far less glamourous. You're the front line of real and perceived threat prevention; scrabbling in the murky, ethically asymmetrical waters of statecraft; constantly pretending you're something you're not. I once introduced myself to someone at a bar with an Irish accent, and had to spend the rest of the evening sounding like a startled leprechaun, before being interrogated by the original mark's Irish friend about where exactly in Dublin I was supposedly from. It was all incredibly stressful, I unravelled immediately, and as far as I know, an international incident was never even on the cards. Although the accent was pretty bad. 3 of 12 (L to R) Regé-Jean Page as Col. James Stokes, Naomie Harris as Dr. Zoe Vaughn, Michael Fassbender as George Woodhouse, Cate Blanchett as Kathryn St. Jean, Tom Burke as Freddie Smalls, and Marisa Abela as Clarissa Dubose in director Steven Soderbergh's BLACK BAG, a Focus Features release. Credit: Claudette Barius/Focus Features © 2025 All Rights Reserved. (L to R) Tom Burke as Freddie Smalls and Michael Fassbender as George Woodhouse in director Steven Soderbergh's BLACK BAG, a Focus Features release. Credit: Claudette Barius/Focus Features © 2025 All Rights Reserved. (L to R) Michael Fassbender as George Woodhouse and Marisa Abela as Clarissa Dubose in director Steven Soderbergh's BLACK BAG, a Focus Features release. Credit: Claudette Barius/Focus Features © 2025 All Rights Reserved. (L to R) Naomie Harris as Dr. Zoe Vaughn and Cate Blanchett as Kathryn St. Jean in director Steven Soderbergh's BLACK BAG, a Focus Features release. Credit: Claudette Barius/Focus Features © 2025 All Rights Reserved. (L to R) Regé-Jean Page as Col. James Stokes, Naomie Harris as Dr. Zoe Vaughn and Michael Fassbender as George Woodhouse in director Steven Soderbergh's BLACK BAG, a Focus Features release. Credit: Claudette Barius/Focus Features © 2025 All Rights Reserved. Director Steven Soderbergh on the set of BLACK BAG, a Focus Features release. Credit: Claudette Barius/Focus Features © 2025 All Rights Reserved. This is the world waded through by Steven Soderbergh's Black Bag , hitting UAE cinemas on March 14. It's a mille-feuille of malevolous motivations, of shadows and mistrust, love, lies, conspiracies, loyalties and lust. Shot in that trademark, visually vacuumous, hauntingly-framed Soderbergh fashion, Black Bag follows a small cadre of interconnected Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) operatives. It's a 4D whodunnit played out on a rigged chessboard, Arch spy and stoic mole-hunter, George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) must uncover a rogue element within an umbral ring of fellow agents that includes his wife, Kathryn St. Jean (Cate Blanchett). 007 problems A mysterious digital weapon, Severus, has gone missing, it has the potential to cause a pretty hefty death toll – and more worryingly for SIS direct reports, red-faced politicians. Also implicated as potential Black Bag rats, are agents Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela) – her partner and veteran spook Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke), the agency's rising star Col. James Stokes (Regé-Jean Page) and his (HR would have a meltdown) current squeeze, the office shrink, Dr. Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris). An incestuous viper's nest indeed. The dialogue in Black Bag is another one of the movie's most compelling components, perhaps most concisely demonstrated at a dinner party held towards the start of the film. George and Kathryn host the other two Cluedo couples in what becomes a tense exchange of barbs, recriminations, and intoxicated muck flinging. George, the human polygraph, scrutinises each guest methodically. Was it, Col. Stokes in the meeting room with an encrypted thumb drive? Or perhaps the ambitious Madamoiselle Dubose in the surveillance suite with the satellite imaging? The Scarlet wife, Kathryn St. Jean, with a steak knife right through George's heart? And how exactly do you uncover the truth from a highly trained unit of professional bloggers? How do these professional liars stop telling tales in their personal lies, when it's what they do all day long at work? These are poignant questions in a post-truth world. Dual lives It's not just real life spies that have it rough. Spy roles have to be amongst the hardest to get right in the acting profession, because not only are you portraying a character's cover story, but you're also obliged to give away subtle flickering of authenticity and agenda beneath. On this subject, Marisa Abela who plays Clarissa told What's On : 'I think everyone has two versions of themselves. One that they present to the world, and one that's the most authentic version of themselves. In this [the movie's] world, maybe the one they present is much more fully formed, and they're better at hiding that vulnerable person.' 'Clarissa hasn't been doing this for long enough to be that good at hiding who she really is and what it is that she really wants. So I think Clarissa is probably, more than any other character, the most authentic version of who she is'. Micheal Fassbender (George Woodhouse) phrased it this way: 'I think we all do it, you know, and we learn from a young age how to do it. With George … he's just observing and gathering information. And I think because he is, as stated in the script, so hard to read. Whatever response he is having to something or what his emotional content is, It's so hard to read from him. He's just a consistent analytic mind and that's all he's doing.' 'He's truth-seeking. these aren't spies that are out in the field that have to have a cover story, keeping their own identity to the side. But I think, having spoken to people a bit about this, as close as you can make it to yourself in some respects that the lie will be easier. Obviously, the more lies you tell, the harder it is to keep track of them all.' Service secrets People are naturally keen to draw comparisons between actors and spies, after all both groups of people have to inhabit cultivated personas. So is acting a transferrable skill? Could there be a market for 'thespianage'? Micheal Fassbender had this to say: 'I would make a terrible spy, but I think the ability to compartmentalise is probably a good one to have. I can do that to some respect. I'm very good at doing one thing. I'm not very good at multitasking I don't know if spies need to multitask probably But that compartmentalisation I think is a key one.' 'But not telling anyone what I actually do for a living would be completely bizarre. I don't think I could do that. I can't imagine not telling my partner, or my mom, or my brother.' 'To be able to think clearly in very stressful scenarios and to think differently than most people would think, you know, to come up with a solution to a situation that seems counterintuitive. I remember hearing a story about a woman that got recruited during World War II and there were German planes flying over this train and obviously, because the train was moving – they were targets. And this one woman went around each carriage and started smashing out all the lights on the train. Because you can't see it in the dark from above. That's the kind of thinking that's like, okay you know, you're interesting. You know how to operate under a high-stress scenario and think of a solution.' Down to the wire The job of portraying these characters is undoubtedly made easier by having a killer script to read from. Writer David Koepp – the scribe behind Jurassic Park (in collaboration with Michael Chrichton), Carlito's Way, Panic Room, Spider-Man, Presence and an upcoming as-yet-untitled Steven Spielberg project set for release in 2026 – crafted such an airtight piece of art with Black Bag, that when asked about how much ad-libbing went on, Regé-Jean Page had this to say: 'Not none, but very little. Not none, but yeah, yeah. Very tiny targeted ad-libs.' 'I think throughout the cast, everyone was in awe of how well written the movie was to begin with, and so you're very, very reticent to, to adapt that in any way because there are enough subtleties within the way it's written that you can play every line ten different ways and still come out with something incredibly rich.' 'And then very occasionally you might get something in a reaction, it'll be the tiniest thing. It makes life a lot easier. Because all you have to do is get outta the way of the script. Yeah. Let the script through. The better the script, the easier your job is.' No stranger to the 'IP' in ripping spy yarns, Naomie Harris (Miss Moneypenny in the Bond franchise, Gail MacKendrick in Our Kind of Traitor) explained: 'It's so rare to get a script like this. When I read it, I was so excited to be part of it because to get so many layered Characters and that have so much depth, it's a true ensemble piece. Everybody has their moment.' 'Everybody has their story and a different agenda and that's really unique. To have a lead with that level of depth is rare. So to have that in so many different characters in the movie, that's what makes it so rich and incredible. Watching the level of conflict in George, and then getting to interact with that and try and push his buttons is a rare treat.' Black Bag might not be your average spy thriller, but it is an incredibly rewarding watch. It's beautifully shot, forensically studied and masterfully told. Available to watch in screens across the UAE from March 14, 2025. Images: Provided
