Episode Info
- Season7
- Episode4
Hosted by Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove
Guest
John Sipher
John Sipher served three decades in the CIA's Clandestine Service, was posted on the ground in Moscow, and ran the Agency's Russia operations.
Episode Summary
The UK and US governments have declassified unprecedented intelligence on Moscow’s bloody campaign in Ukraine. Lifting the veil on Putin’s strategy and how it is playing out is having an impact on events on the ground - and has taken the Kremlin by surprise. Two perspectives from two veterans of Western intelligence. John Sipher served three decades in the CIA’s Clandestine Service, and during his career he was posted on the ground in Moscow, before eventually running the Agency’s Russia operations. He also served as Chief of several stations abroad. And our regular co-host Sir Richard Dearlove was the former Chief of MI6, Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service.
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Transcript
INTRODUCTION
Lockwood: Welcome to One Decision, the show that looks at key decisions and their consequences from the perspective of those at the center of global events. Today, we have two voices on how the world of intelligence has been rocked by the events in Ukraine. Perspectives from careers served at the CIA and Britain's MI6. Sir Richard Dearlove, formerly chief of MI6, Britain's secret intelligence service. And John Cipher, a senior veteran of the CIA.
Lockwood: He ran the agency's Russia operations and served as chief of several stations across Europe and Asia.
Cipher: Did we ever meet professionally? I'm not sure we did, but I don't know if we did. I certainly know a lot about you and a lot of your people, but.
Dearlove: Oh, that's good. Always good to avoid the brass. Anyway, I think we probably have professionally quite a lot in common over time.
Cipher: Yeah, this whole thing is bringing it all back around, isn't it? It's been a long time in Russia, then I was in the Balkans for quite a bit.
Dearlove: Yeah, yeah. And some of this actually resonates with Milošević. Well, and I was in Moscow during the sort of brief honeymoon period around 9/11 on a number of visits. So I dealt with some of the current people who are still around, but that was a rather extreme.
Cipher: I don't know if you saw this recent interview with Patrushev. My gosh, he sounds insane. And I know our services have dealt with him for all these years, you know?
Dearlove: I gave an interview a couple of days back and someone asked me about Patrushev and I said he was really one of the key Praetorian guard and really quite a sinister individual. But I used to meet him when he was head of the FSB, so, I mean, I had direct dealings with him.
INTERVIEW
Lockwood: I wanted to ask both of you something that I think has really defined this conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and that is the extraordinary series of unprecedented and really rapid intelligence disclosures both by the US and the British governments with regard to Russia's strategy in Ukraine. In December, there were details of Russia's plan to invade involving 175,000 troops that was published in the Washington Post. The British government also shared details of Russian plans to install specific individuals as part of a puppet government in Kyiv. And there were also various details of plans to stage false flag pretext for war, all of this in the lead up to the invasion. So I wanted to ask both of you. John, let's hear from you first. What did you make of the decision to disclose all of this intelligence at all? I mean, clearly, there was quite a painful awareness of the legacy of Iraq and how intelligence was handled. But also, we also had this far more immediate failure of intelligence regarding the Taliban and Afghanistan. So do you think those previous seminal moments played a role in how Western governments handled the intelligence they received and then what they went on to do with it?
Cipher: Yeah, I don't know if those had played a role, but I think there's a number of things that came together and actually give the administration and, you know, our partners credit for using intelligence in a more public way. And I think there's some things that allow that to happen now that in the past might not have been, really gone against our culture, have been tough to do. And I think sort of the wider access to open source intelligence. There's now these commercial satellite companies, there's the Bellingcats of the world, there's these companies that pull together big data. I think intelligence services now, you know, maybe through a sensitive source, a technical or human source, can be aimed at some real intelligence and then use sort of open source means to pull together information to sort of bolster their point of view and then use that. So I think, you know, it sort of goes against the culture of my old business and Richard's business. But I think, you know, the intention was originally to probably deter Putin to get inside his head, make him realize that we are on to what he was up to. And when that didn't work, I do think it ended up providing, you know, really useful to sort of coalesce partners and allies together more than we might, more faster and more successfully than we might have otherwise. And there's some issues we need to deal with here. I mean, I think the fact that we have somebody like Bill Burns and we have this White House who have a lot of practitioners and professionals that have been involved in this for quite a long time, it doesn't necessarily mean in the future we're going to have administrations that are that professional. And so as long as I think the intelligence services themselves are the ultimate ones who declassify information, I think we'll be okay. But there are some problems. Also, sometimes the intelligence may be wrong, like Iraq intelligence was wrong. And it will then be seen as an effort by Western allies to use disinformation or misinformation to make their case when in fact, they're just wrong.
Lockwood: I totally agree. What was your, there was that really interesting, rather testy moment when a veteran AP journalist got into a little bit of a scrap with Ned Price. You're smiling because you already know what I'm talking about. That's because the journalist was asking for evidence of this intelligence. Because we all remember in the lead up to the invasion of Ukraine on the February 24, when the US government was making these warnings, saying Putin is gonna invade, Putin is gonna, you know, employ all these tactics, and not really showing the receipts.
Cipher: Yeah. I mean, I think journalists should always push and press for more. And that's gonna be a tough thing as the administration tries to figure out how best to use this new tool if they're gonna continue to use it. And so there's natural friction there between obviously journalists who rightfully wanna push to get more and more information and the government who needs to protect it. And that's why it's gotta be used judiciously. The notion that we use this more and more, and then suggest that more and more we might put some mistaken intelligence out there. And then we're in this trouble that you mentioned, you know, Iraq and these other types of things where it looks like the government is using information or misinformation. And part of the problem here is one of the things that troubles me, I see some media outlets suggesting, oh, finally the United States is playing in the information warfare game like the Russians do. And that troubles me a little bit because it is a different game. The Russians can play disinformation and misinformation. Western allies, if they're going to use intelligence, have to do their best to make sure that intelligence is accurate and real. In fact, in the United States, in our early years, the CIA late 40s and 50s, we would sometimes use disinformation, misinformation around the world. But that was at a time when we could put out some false information for psyops purposes in Bangladesh or somewhere, and it would never make its way back into the Western media. Nowadays with social media and stuff, there's no way that an intelligence service can put out false information and have it not get back into the media food chain. And that's against our regulations and our laws. So we're sort of playing a different game here. The West, if they're going to use intelligence publicly, have to back it up and have to use what they believe to be accurate intelligence. And they should be very careful about that. Whereas the Russians can use it essentially as a weapon, as a tool, as misinformation. So, you know, most people are praising the way that the administration used it, but I think we need to be careful going forward. There are some real potholes here.
Lockwood: You touched upon transparency, that actually leads me very nicely onto something I would like to ask you, Richard, because you ran the secret intelligence service in the UK. And so you are the only person at MI6 who is allowed to say that they used to work at MI6. Only the chief is able to be avowed, as it's known. And so, I wanted to ask you, the difference between the Russians using disinformation in all these tactics versus Western government agencies is that our agencies are ostensibly accountable. So in terms of declassification of intelligence and decisions about what you make public, how transparent was it wise to be with intelligence when you are trying to inform the government, inform the public about things that are happening overseas?
Dearlove: Well I think I'd start by making the basic point that you know all intelligence is designed to be used. You collect it in order to use it. The restraints on use are largely, as it were, the restraints of the collectors in order to protect sources. So every piece of intelligence has conditions attached to it. But when you get into the area of, as it were, use of intelligence, you're moving more into policy areas that are, to an extent under the control of the services, but on the other hand you know you're serving the purpose of the government. I mean in my experience the situation in Ukraine is only unusual because of the extent to which the material has been used, and in a way that's a reflection of what John's talking about, and I agree with him absolutely. The sort of variability of sources and corroboration there, particularly open source intelligence, you know, allows you probably to place much more material in the public domain. And it's clear, you know, the US and UK governments, I mean this is an inference, took a decision that it was going to be a better policy to use this stuff and to use it broadly in order to, as it were, warn Putin that they were informed about his intentions, but also maybe direct political audiences for the events that were to come. I mean I must say you know I was very surprised that Putin, whatever the preparations, actually carried out the invasion because it was such a stupid decision as we can now see, and I thought he wouldn't take such a stupid decision, but, you know, one underestimated, as it were, the motivation and pressure operating on him to take this extraordinary step. He was grossly misled and grossly misinformed, and there's certainly evidence to suggest that that was the case. But I mean, I can think of lots of situations which I don't particularly want to go into in detail. I mean, for example, during the Balkans war, and John even knew the Balkans well, I mean during the bombing of Serbia, when there's all sorts of discussions about what material should be released by Western governments in those circumstances, because there was a feeling of urgency on the part of the United States, the UK and others, you know, that the policy was actually working and you know to indicate that it was working you would have needed to release lots of intelligence with the era to show that it was going to achieve its objectives. And there are so many examples going right back. I mean, the most famous, that none of you remember, I was a schoolboy in the United States at the time, was the Cuba crisis, you know, when the US government released massive amounts of material to show what the Russians were doing in Cuba and to justify taking the world to the brink of nuclear warfare. I mean I recently found the letters I wrote as a schoolboy in the United States to my parents saying you know quite casually, the belief here is that nuclear war may break out next week. It's extraordinary, the sort of almost naivety. I was 16, 17, 18 years old at the time, so it's quite interesting to look back at those events. And I think it's important to see these events in context. The crucial issue in relation to Ukraine really is the extent to which you can use the material without prejudicing your sources. You know, we're outsiders, we don't know what's human, we don't know what's overhead, we don't know what's intercept, we don't know what signals analysis. But I mean, I think John and I could surmise by looking at it what might come from where, but there's no question that it makes it a hell of a lot easier. Organisations like Bellingcat and then commercial satellites are taking shots, you know, which are relevant to the material. It makes it much, much easier to use it. And in a way we are in new circumstances because you know it lets the services off the hook in terms of having to lay down very very tight rules about how their intelligence is used in order to preserve the sources.
Lockwood: I think social media has really changed the game because even during the Crimea invasion at the start back in 2014, when Russia was denying the whole little green men situation, they were popping up on Instagram and geotagging their location, and people were able to say, yeah, you do have troops or contractors or, you know, Russians, and they're tagging themselves inside Ukrainian territory, and that was just extraordinary. But I think that's interesting you point to the Cuban Missile Crisis to say that a lot of these intelligence disclosures is nothing new. And I just wanted to ask, you know, some of the things that we've learned, that for example, the head of GCHQ, one of the UK's intelligence agencies, he recently made a speech at an Australian university and he said, we've seen Russian soldiers short of weapons and morale, refusing to carry out orders, sabotaging their own equipment, and even accidentally shooting down their own aircraft. And he also made the point of how extraordinary the intelligence disclosures have been in this war. Those were extraordinary. Do you find that information extraordinary?
Dearlove: In a way yes, but in a way no, because I think what happened was that the Russian cipher communications didn't really work particularly well. And I mean I'm guessing now, but you know what was happening was that they were using mobile phones, that everybody you know with any capability was listening to the mobile phone conversations and what you were hearing from the head of GCHQ probably was extremely well corroborated by people using open source, you know, because if your cipher systems fail you or don't work and some of this material, if you're not used to using it or it's not being used, could be quite clunky and difficult. Remember we were in a battlefield situation, you're going to say oh hell, I'm in, you know, and you pick your mobile phone up because they've all got mobile phones and start talking on them. And I'm just giving you a hypothetical explanation which I see John is nodding his head and I think that's a possible explanation. Yeah, on the other hand it's pretty extraordinary for the head of GCHQ to stand up and say something like that, but I mean the reason he said it is probably because he could say it because of the special circumstances of what was happening in Ukraine. It was chaotic by all accounts and we know that some of the armoured columns, they couldn't communicate and the officers were getting out their mobile phones and talking to each other.
Lockwood: And shortwave radio that was being picked up by Ukrainians and posted on social media as well.
Cipher: I can think of two things here. I think one is sort of unusual that the head of GCHQ would put this out as perhaps even to message to Putin, right? So if we truly believe, you know, he's like Stalin in the lead up to World War II, he's not, people are telling him what he wants to hear. He's had this dictatorship for years. Everybody knows what he believes and they're gonna tell him what he believes. You know, by putting this information out there, I guarantee it's gonna be getting to the leadership in the Kremlin. And so I think some of that's happening. And I think, again, I've been out of the agency for a few years now and I don't have access to secrets, but I think someday we may find out that some of our special operators and cyber sleuths and NSA folks and others have done some work here to make it harder for the Russians to do some of the things that they have wanted to do. Therefore, they've had to communicate in a way that's been easier to pick up by others. And so, yeah, I think there's a method to sort of the madness of putting out some of this information because they're trying to get it into Putin's head.
Lockwood: Can I suppose that given all of these intelligence disclosures and all these predictions about what Putin was going to do, do you think maybe it's possible that given the number of experts such as yourself, Richard, who really did not think that Putin would make such a strategic blunder as to actually launch an invasion? You think maybe that wasn't ever his intention until the West sort of called his bluff, and to not have launched an invasion may have made it look like he had bottled it?
Dearlove: That's a good question. But I really don't think so. I mean what I thought was that his strategic objective was to bite off more of Luhansk and the Donbas, which is in fact where we've ended up, that's exactly what they're now trying to do because they failed in the broader objective. But I think the broader objective was the primary objective originally, it was to change the government in Ukraine and to put in a government that was seen as sympathetic to the Russians. So there's no question that if you're suffering from serious post imperial angst, the loss of Ukraine to the West is for the Russians of fundamental importance. If you're trying to preserve the whole concept of the Russias in the plural, I mean bearing in mind that a lot of Russian identity historically is actually attached to Kyiv and the sort of culture of Ukraine. So this is for them, I mean I'm not trying to sort of explain the Russian case, but there is a sort of seminal issue of identity here as far as Russia goes, and you know that Ukraine is becoming a democratic country and joining, as it were, the Western tradition and moving out of Moscow's orbit, it's fundamental to their greater identity.
Cipher: I think it shows Putin's mania that if you think about the need to have Kyiv drawn closer to Moscow, the fact that it never occurred to them to do that by actually working with Ukraine, by actually trying to be a good partner with Ukraine, as opposed to needing to destroy it and take it over. And so when you have that mentality, there's not much option. I think we all agree that his actions are mad. They've achieved just the opposite of all the things that he's wanted. He wants the US out of Europe. He wants NATO dead. He wants Ukraine to be essentially a vassal of Russia, if not part of Russia. All of those things have been knocked away. It's gonna be in Ukrainian textbooks for years and years, the heroic Ukraine fighting off, you know, being taken over by the Russians and NATO is in a better state than it's been in years and years. And there's more American troops in Europe than there's been in years. And so, you know, I like Sir Richard, I just thought, I always acknowledge it as I'm a Westerner and therefore my mentality is such that it's idiotic to invade. But here we are and Putin's done this. He's got this strange view of history and geography. And Russia's never really come to terms of this repressive past. It's always been an expansionist kind of power. It's never really a real Russia with clear and stable borders for a long period of time has not existed.
Lockwood: But I think few of us thought that he would go to this extent. Yeah, I think the civilian term for what he's done is called an own goal here in the UK. There you go. On that topic, John, you recently revised an assessment you made a few years ago that Putin was more a product of his KGB background than acting in the longer cultural and historical tradition of Russian czars and Soviet party bosses. And I think you wrote this on the Cipher Brief website. And you said that you revised this because in recent years, he has increasingly acted in a nationalist, and I would argue imperialist manner. Talk to me about your thinking on that.
Cipher: Yeah, early on, I sort of looked in and I saw him as someone who is, you know, I tend to see him, his mentality as this Chekist mentality, the mentality of a Russian intelligence officer, you know, this proud use of subversion and sabotage and assassination, all the sort of dirty tricks of the KGB. And I thought that is the main thing that sort of impels him and makes him thinking. But we've seen in the last couple of years, he's moved much more to some of these sort of traditional Russian views. He's following some of these older Russian philosophers about this need for this sort of great, great Russia and all these types of things. That, I thought as a KGB officer, he was using Russian history just to sort of keep the people on moving forward, to sort of make himself appear sort of the modern czar, what have you. But recently I think it's more than that. We're seeing essentially the same kind of mentality as both the communist commissars and the Russian czars.
Lockwood: Yeah. So, I mean, we recently spoke to a Lithuanian lawmaker, Matas Maldeikis, and he said something very interesting. He thinks that Russia slash Putin has a messianic complex. And he mentioned this theory called the Third Rome theory. And this thinking that first, there was Rome, then there was Constantinople, and then Moscow is going to be the center of civilization. And it sounds wacky. It sounds like an old theory. Do you think that people in Russia, and do you think Putin himself, could actually subscribe to this?
Cipher: Yeah, I think there's always been this sort of messianic streak in Russian sort of mentality and foreign policy. Some of it is due to, you know, what's happened to them historically. You know, it's a large massive landmass that has few borders that are sort of naturally protect them. And so they've had Mongol invasions, native invasions by the Nazis and others and such. So their notion, they can never be strong enough. They can never defend themselves enough against potential outside threats. And so they've protected themselves by essentially growing and invading others and making sure countries on their periphery are sort of vassal states. Writers like George Kennan and others have constantly said this, if you're a neighbor of Russia, you're either an enemy or a vassal. You can't be anything other, you know, if you're not one or the other. And so some of this stuff is very Russian, you know, that some of the Russian, you know, nineteenth century was similar. They had, you know, a czar who had full control and they wanted to, you know, move its borders, you know, further to the West and to the east back then. And so some of this stuff is a Russian mentality, but we often think that history moves not always in an upward direction, but sort of generally in an upward direction. And we think that at this point in modernity, it would be easier to understand where threats are coming from and it would be easier to understand the importance of an economy and the strength of a country's national security and these types of things. And so the fact that so much of this is sort of backward looking is really, really kind of troubling.
Dearlove: Yeah, I think if Russia was prospering, these issues would not be as evident as they are today. I mean, there's no question that, I mean, I've said to you before that you know we're in a period of post imperial decline, which in a way you know the British probably recognise themselves. We've been through the process and as it were re-accommodated ourselves in a different world, you know, with a different global vision of what the country might be. But I think that Russia is still hanging on to these sort of historic concepts that John describes so well and so accurately, and there's no question that, you know, the way that Russia has over time, and this goes right back to the czars, assured its security, is by destabilising and dominating the nations on its periphery. And as you say, they're either enemies or they're vassal states controlled by the Russians, and you know they haven't had secure borders in the sense that you know we would understand them. And I think that because of Russia's political economic decline from this extraordinary period of the Soviet Union, which in the post war period you know is sort of unique in Russian history when it dominated so much of Europe. Anyone who's sort of knowledgeable about Russia's past would almost understand this crisis that they're going through, and I think what's happened in Ukraine is an extreme expression of this anxiety. Maybe with a different set of leaders it wouldn't have happened because they would have made the judgment that this was a step too far, but I mean it seems that Putin has failed to make that connection himself, and he is no question dominant, and I think that's what's worrying the current situation, the irrationality of his decision making and the weakness of Russia at the moment and the failure of its military, I think makes them more dangerous than if they weren't being successful.
Lockwood: Like that cornered rat that he famously mentioned in that interview that people are bringing up again and again. One thing I wanted to get your reaction to was the expelling of more than 300 Russian diplomatic and embassy staff from various US embassies since the invasion of Ukraine. And many of them were ordered after the killings and atrocities were reported in the town of Bucha. German intelligence sources informed German media that those due to be expelled from that country included people who posed a direct threat to Ukrainian activists based in Germany, as well as thousands who had arrived as refugees. And so the Germans, they expelled around 40 Russians in total. But I read that various assessments of the true number of Russian spies operating in Germany numbers up to 2,000. France, Spain, and a few other EU nations expelled a few dozen Russians from their embassies. So I wanted to ask, are these expulsions, I mean, we saw similar moves during the Skripal incident here in England. Are they mostly symbolic, given that the number of expulsions likely dwarfs the number of actual Russian spies in any country during a particular moment in time? Or do those expulsions actually have a tangible impact on Russian intelligence operations in Europe?
Cipher: I think usually I don't think they have a large impact. There's been a few times in history where enough operatives were kicked out that it was tough for the other side. I think when Margaret Thatcher kicked out after, I think, Gordievsky, I can't remember. I think it was after the Gordievsky defection, a number of Russian diplomats and intelligence officers in London. And I think that had sort of an effect on Russia's intelligence. But in general, the Russians are much more focused on these things. Putin's a career KGB officer. The KGB was the sword and shield of the Soviet state. Intelligence, covert intelligence, offensive intelligence is a much more central part of the Russian state than it is of Western states. It's not just collection and analysis. It's also this covert active measures of subversion and sabotage and deception and assassination, all these other kinds of things that they're trying, disinformation that they're trying to push. And so I think the Russian state relies on their operatives more than most Western states do. In fact, the United States is probably the largest and richest country in the history of the world. And we probably have fewer intelligence officers around the world than Russia does. And there's far more Russian intelligence officers in the United States than there are Western intelligence officers in Moscow, for example. And so in the past, when we've had these tit for tat expulsions, I think our political leadership thinks we're striking a blow. And I think professionals realize that rarely works that way because the Russians often respond. They take it more seriously and they respond in kind. And so we end up often suffering more than the Russians do, even though we're trying to punish them. And so I think in this case, however, the fact that Putin's gone so far out that there's probably more appetite in the West to deal, to look at the real problem, look at what the Russians have been up to interfering in elections, supporting violent right wing groups, spreading disinformation, weaponizing oil, weaponizing information, all these other kinds of things that I think there's more of an appetite to push out some of these intelligence operatives. But like you said, you gotta look at the numbers and you gotta look at exactly who's there and who's not there. I suspect that there's plenty of Russian intelligence officers still in Europe and in Germany and these kinds of places. So 40 may sound like a lot, but it's probably not a lot in this case.
Dearlove: There have always been these sort of mass expulsions. I mean, the UK in the sixties expelled 100 KGB officers, you know, KGB and GRU. GRU is the military intelligence organization. When I was on the post in Paris in the 80s, the French security service identified and chucked out, I think, 60 from France. I mean John's right that the Russians have large numbers of these people, mostly in diplomatic or quasi diplomatic establishments undercover, and you know some of them are GRU, some of them SVR, what was the first chief directorate of the KGB. And I mean it is disruptive and it also denies these people a very nice lifestyle in the West. A lot of it, you know, it's very annoying if you're a Russian intelligence officer living in Switzerland with your family, having nice outings to Swiss restaurants and going skiing and everything, just find yourself back in a dingy little flat in Moscow. So there's no question that it does have a personal impact on individuals and their families, but you know it's been going on for a long time and every time there's a crisis in relations with Russia you know we hit back, chuck a lot of them out. Difficulty then comes from them because they want to reciprocate and they chuck, but they're mostly chucking out real diplomats from the embassies because they've run out of intelligence personnel.
Lockwood: Does that make it easier for defections? Just that clash in lifestyles you mentioned?
Dearlove: Well, you know, there are all sorts of reasons for defections, there's no question that during a period of political crisis as we're going through now with Russia, there will be individual Russians who are deeply disturbed by what is happening in Ukraine, and I very much hope, and I'm sure that John does, that our former services are making hay as it were, maybe that's an inappropriate simile, but you see what I mean. I mean for example that during the period of invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Russians in '68, there were a number of very significant intelligence recruitments by the West because of, you know, Russians disapproving ideologically at what the hell was going on, and it'll be happening again for sure.
Lockwood: You're not biting on what I'm really asking, which is how many Russians have you led to defect, Richard? But anyways.
Dearlove: No comment.
Cipher: Hey, the one thing we wanna point out is that the goal of Western intelligence services is not to have them defect, it's to have them go back and work in place. Defection is useful for a period of time, depending on what the information they have, but then it sort of peters out. What you wanna do is you want people for personal motivations, personal reasons to stay in place and report and work their way up the chain so that someday you have people in senior positions that can provide you with this sort of warning that you need for these types of things. And I think that's one of the reasons you see people like Skripal, the Russians try to kill someone like Sergei Skripal with weapons grade nerve agent. So they know, if it works and the nerve agent goes out of his body, people will suspect it's the Russians. If it doesn't work and you figure out what it is, it sends a signal to everybody in the Russian foreign ministry and intelligence services that, yeah, yeah, play footsie with the West, but at some point we're coming for you and we'll kill you and your family no matter how long you've been away. And so in the old days, they sort of had ideology, Soviet communist ideology to back up. Now when the leadership is corrupt and they're all making tons of money and everybody's sort of taken their cut, you know, they have to sort of rule by fear. And I think that's one of the reasons why we're seeing some of these assassination attempts.
Lockwood: A defection in allegiance, I guess, is the ideal. Back to the intelligence disclosures, do you think that has set a new bar for what's going to happen in future conflicts?
Dearlove: I'm sure it establishes a pattern that, you know, for reasons we've already discussed it may be easier in the future to use intelligence in this manner. But I mean the basic rules still apply and that is protection of sources and the extent to which you know the collectors insist on certain rules, and it's usually the collectors that do have this word or this authority that you know how their material is used because they understand the risk to the sources. So if you've got corroboration then you can be pretty free and easy with it wherever it comes from. And the frequency of corroboration because of social media, the internet, OSINT, open source intelligence, it's going to be much greater in the future than it's been in the past.
Cipher: I think that some of that's gonna depend on the seriousness of politicians that we elect. I think this administration is like a traditional administration in the United States, professional national security operatives. But I worry about a Donald Trump winning again. And so if they believe that, hey, previous administrations used intelligence publicly, there's no reason why we shouldn't do it. And we're seeing hints that the administration in its last days were often trying to mess with director of national intelligence and the CIA and the FBI to try to use it for their own personal and partisan purposes. I worry about that.
Lockwood: On that, given how various parts of the US government declassified sources to the FBI informants. I'm referring specifically to people who were unmasked in relation to the Steele dossier inquiry. Do you think that that has damaged America's ability to recruit sources and the CIA's ability to get human intelligence from sources who will be risking their lives for a government who may not be able to guarantee that their identities will always be protected?
Cipher: I think the unmasking was, these were FBI sources or CIs, call them confidential informants, whatever, which is a little different than the way the CIA and foreign intelligence services run their sources. But yes, I mean, whenever this comes out publicly, who's gonna wanna work for a Western intelligence service if you worry that it can become public any day, or it's going to be taken for partisan purposes as opposed to national security purposes for the reason you're working. So yeah, I do think, we saw in the previous administration, some of these important protections starting to sort of wear away.
Dearlove: Yeah, you do not want the integrity of your services to be damaged and prejudiced over time. That's important.
Lockwood: On that ominous note, I think we're out of time. But, John, that was fascinating. Thank you so much, and thank you, Richard, for joining us. And thank you for tuning in. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss the next episode of One Decision. We'll have a new one for you every Thursday. From me and the team, see you next time.
