The word spy, specially a British spy, invariably evokes images of James Bond. You are thinking fast cars, glamorous women, assassinations. This book tells us that the reality is much more mundane and also far more sinister.
Peter Wright's father worked on radio technology directly with Marconi. From that privileged background somehow he meandered into poverty, working on a farm to landing at Oxford and eventually starting his life as a scientist for MI5 working on gadgets, specially radio devices. Eventually he rose up the ranks to be the assistant director.
This book is an overtly frank memoir of his times in the british secret services. On release, the book was banned in England, but not scotland.
The first thing that the book lays bare is the sheer scale of the govt snooping in Britain. It was not episodic or targetted but pervasive. The british intelligence services tried to plant listening devices in as many embassies , hotels conference rooms as possible. For e.g. when a former colonial state was negotiating its independence it was par for course for their british counterparts to expect MI5 to get a transcript of the other side's internal discussions. Things like breaking and entering also seem to be standard operating procedure.
The book spends a significant amount of time discussing the Cambridge Five and the impact of that scandal on the british intelligence services and their relations with the US intelligence services CIA and FBI. The author makes the explosive claim that his boss and MI5 head Roger Hollis was also a soviet spy. He , strangely enough, seems to have shared his suspicions of his boss with the Americans. This should provide some perspective to those who think that their office environment is toxic.
Largely the picture of the intelligence services that emerges from this book is less James Bond and more petty office politics - a la The Office.
This is an OK read , the rating I have given is more for the explosive nature of the contents in the book.
No comments:
Post a Comment