A quick historical detour

From the brilliant Gladwell:

The absurdity of such expression games has been wittily explored in the spy novels of Robert Littell and, with particular brio, in Peter Ustinov’s 1956 play, “Romanoff and Juliet.” In the latter, a crafty general is the head of a tiny European country being squabbled over by the United States and the Soviet Union, and is determined to play one off against the other. He tells the U.S. Ambassador that the Soviets have broken the Americans’ secret code. “We know they know our code,” the Ambassador, Moulsworth, replies, beaming. “We only give them things we want them to know.” The general pauses, during which, the play’s stage directions say, “he tries to make head or tail of this intelligence.” Then he crosses the street to the Russian Embassy, where he tells the Soviet Ambassador, Romanoff, “They know you know their code.” Romanoff is unfazed: “We have known for some time that they knew we knew their code. We have acted accordingly—by pretending to be duped.” The general returns to the American Embassy and confronts Moulsworth: “They know you know they know you know.” Moulsworth (genuinely alarmed): “What? Are you sure?”

* * * * *

Cicero, it turned out, was the real thing. At least, we think he was the real thing. The Americans had a spy in the German Embassy in Turkey who learned that a servant was spying in the British Embassy. She told her bosses, who told the British. Just before his death, Stewart Menzies, the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service during the war, told an interviewer, “Of course, Cicero was under our control,” meaning that the minute they learned about Cicero they began feeding him false documents. Menzies, it should be pointed out, was a man who spent much of his professional career deceiving other people, and if you had been the wartime head of M.I.6, giving an interview shortly before your death, you probably would say that Cicero was one of yours. Or perhaps, in interviews given shortly before death, people are finally free to tell the truth. Who knows?

In the case of Operation Mincemeat, Germany’s spies told their superiors that something false was actually true (even though, secretly, some of those spies might have known better), and Germany acted on it.

In the case of Cicero, Germany’s spies told their superiors that something was true that may indeed have been true, though maybe wasn’t, or maybe was true for a while and not true for a while, depending on whether you believe the word of someone two decades after the war was over—and in this case Germany didn’t really act on it at all. Looking at that track record, you have to wonder if Germany would have been better off not having any spies at all.

Which pretty much confirms what I have long thought, about most espionage - at least where it passes beyond advanced scouting: once both sides are actively using espionage, it becomes so random as to dependability as to be essentially useless. Not that the intelligence agencies would ever let on that this is the case, even to themselves, naturally.

Oh and this bit I thought marvellous:

The two men coördinated with Dudley Clarke, the head of deception for all the Mediterranean, whom Macintyre describes as “unmarried, nocturnal and allergic to children.” In 1925, Clarke organized a pageant “depicting imperial artillery down the ages, which involved two elephants, thirty-seven guns and ‘fourteen of the biggest Nigerians he could find.’ He loved uniforms, disguises and dressing up.” In 1941, British authorities had to bail him out of a Spanish jail, dressed in “high heels, lipstick, pearls, and a chic cloche hat, his hands, in long opera gloves, demurely folded in his lap. He was not supposed to even be in Spain, but in Egypt.” Macintyre, who has perfect pitch when it comes to matters of British eccentricity, reassures us, “It did his career no long-term damage.”