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On Her Majesty's Not So Secret Service
Former KGB agent Alexander Lebedev has made a bid to take over the London daily newspaper the Evening Standard.
The former spook has already admitted using the paper to dig out information when he was a young spy based in Britain. Now he is reported to have made an offer for a 76 per cent share in the paper.
Its owner, the hereditary peer the 4th Viscount Rothermere, chairman of the Daily Mail and General Trust, now has to decide whether the staunchly right wing Daily Mail, founded by the first Viscount Rothermere, should sell one of its finest assets to a former Red spook. But old politics is just about all that stands in the way of such a deal. Today spies are far more likely to read papers or log on to Facebook to find the intelligence they want than to bug, burgle or blackmail.
Among the most valuable sources today are blogs, MySpace and other web 2.0 hallmarks. `We're looking now at YouTube, which carries some unique and honest-to-goodness intelligence,' said Doug Naquin, director off the CIA's Open Source center last year in a speech to CIA retirees.
Why risk infiltrating an agent behind enemy lines to gather intelligence when, for instance, pictures of Iran's nuclear capabilities were found on the Internet? The CIA and MI6 used to prefer to HUMINT, human intelligence. Now their favourite is OSINT, Open Source Intelligence.
In September last year MI6 revealed it was using Facebook to recruit agents. `The secret intelligence service's open recruitment campaign continues to target wide pools of talent representative of British society,' said a spokesperson. `A number of channels are used to promote job opportunities in the organisation. Facebook is a recent example.'
In 2007 the government's intelligence organisation GCHQ revealed it was to run an ad campaign in on-line games, including Electronic Arts' Need for Speed Carbon, Unisoft's Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six and Splinter Cell Double Agent, and Activision's Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.
A spokesman said GCHQ needed to reach `an internet-savvy generation of graduates.' The Xbox generation are being recruited because it's not only the West that has gone on-line. Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organisations use the internet and other open channels to put out misinformation. It takes one gamer to outwit another.
It has hit the older generation of spooks hard. Once intelligence had to have a top secret stamp on it to have any credence. Unless it was classified it was thought worthless. They have problems respecting information taken from open sources, and some now want to classify publicly available information as secret.
`The information might be unclassified but our interest in it is not,' said General Michael Hayden, head of the CIA last year.
Sometimes it is just much easier for a government's own people to access information through the web than to go to its own intelligence agencies. In the Iraq war soldiers have logged on to Google Earth to plan operations in Baghdad when their own maps have proved ineffective.
If the information is general knowledge, then it makes some kind of sense for the intelligence agencies to at least become partners in the modern media. They can even manage a little profitable marketing.
In December 2000 Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service admitted it was making a CD of agent's favourite songs.
`You see, it's like this,' wheedled the FIS's own press spokesman Boris Labusov. `When our intelligence officers get together - and this is a rare opportunity for them - at some point they feel like a bit of a sing-song. `And so they sing their favourite songs, including songs about their work.'
Songs include This Difficult Job Called Spying, and Profession: Espionage. How long before we get the Agent X Factor reality show?
About the Author Samantha is an expert Research and Theatre consultant. She is currently writing for Show and Stay and is very excited about the upcoming West End revival of Oliver!
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