Running from Spies MI5 - P1

Espionage, or intelligence gathering, is the active obtaining secret or confidential information.

A personal person who commit espionage are referred to as a spy.

“The word of spies and secret government agencies has long been a fascination to many.”

Much like with the word of crime and the underworld, it's the unknown, the secrecy. A world that not many will ever get to experience. Animacron did experience this world. Not only did she work for one of the world's most famous government spy agencies, but she was also pursued by them.

It was casually if we had to grab some money in a city.

We would then leave that city and move as far as we could on some intercity train.

It was quickly secured so that they would miss us. My name's Jack Lawrence. Welcome to Wanted. I'm a warrior of the soul, before the end, I plan to be whole. But I know how old is myself along the way.

What's gone is gone? What's past is past? I believe the belongs is the best. [MUSIC] [MUSIC]

“The British Secret Service was founded in the early 1900s, where its main concentration”

was focused on the activities of the Imperial German government. The Bureau was initially split into naval and army sections, which over time specialised in foreign target espionage and internal counter espionage. Prior to the beginning of World War I, due to a number of administrative changes, the home section became known as Directorate of Military Intelligence Section 5. And of course, it's abbreviation, M.I.5.

Later on down the track, the foreign naval section of the service was to become known as M.I.6. Of course, made famous by British spy, Commander James Bond, 007. The headquarters for the British Secret Service is located in the heart of London. It's situated right on the banks of the River Thames. Other than its imposing size, it's a very unassuming building, and it's situated almost 300 kilometers away from a small channel island known as Gernsey.

And Gernsey, in 1968, was the birthplace of Annie McCron. She was born into a family that had no real government ties, and in fact, quite the opposite, as she had journalists in her family. So Gernsey is a weird history.

It all the channel islands do, because they were occupied by the Germans during the Second World War.

It's the only part of Britain that was seized by the Germans, and it went through five years of hell. And both my grandfather's left and served one within the midget submarines, sorting out stuff in place of that single harbor. And my other grandfather was the Spitfire pilots. They both served a lot of very hard years in the forces. And when they went back to Gernsey, both of them, the one who'd been in midget submarines became a grower, which was the big singing in Gernsey at that time. You don't find really easy British martyrs, you exported them.

And my other grandfather had started working as a journalist, the Spitfire pilot. So when he went back to Gernsey, he married and settled down, had a family, and became a journalist again, and became the editor of the local newspaper. My father, his son, then also went into journalism after having been a pilot, also. So he became the editor of the local paper, too. So yes, it's not government, actually much more the force of status that he's called, which was trying to hold power to account.

And the way that Gernsey went from tomata growing in tourism in the 50/60/70s to being a renowned rather dodgy sounding tax haven, which started in the 80s onwards. This is what my father particularly, when he was editor in the 90s, was trying to expose. So I grew up with these, my grandpa and my poor, both inculcating with the idea that, you know, the force of status, there's the truth to power. You have to hold power to account. So that was quite the antipysis of any sort of government connection.

Yeah.

“And little did you know how much of an impact that would have on you in later life?”

Quite. Any would end up gaining a very rich education through her high school and would, in fact, when a scholarship to attend the prestigious Cambridge University. It's a gateway into the British establishment with many high profile individuals having being educated here. In fact, many spies having their start at Cambridge.

And it was while studying here that Annie would get her first contact from the world of espionage. You know, going there, obviously, as you said, it's kind of a goals and ticket, you know, your world is, the world sort of opens up to you. There's lots of connections of people that go there. Did you have any aspirations of what you thought you might want to do? I did. I wanted to be a diplomat.

Your draw rather than war war is always the best approach.

Yes. It's a quote. I think Winston Churchill and this is something that I found very fascinating. So I applied to the front office in the UK and then had a weird anonymous letter from the Ministry of Defence saying there may be other jobs you found more interesting. If you are interested, ring this number. And that was it. As all it said, I opened it. I was back at home, actually, with my par. I opened it. And when, as soon as I saw it, it's instinctive, I said, "Oh, fuck, it's in my fire." This would be a lady-like education I had. My father because he was a journalist and because he was a spy novel fan.

He just said, "Please ring this number, and see if it is in my fire."

“So it's all my past fold. That's how ended up in my fire.”

Because he just said he desperately wanted to hear what that conversation, how that conversation went.

And how did it go? I mean, do you call them? They don't obviously answer, "Hi, am I in my fire?"

No, they just said, "Oh, it's good to hear from you. Come along, we'll set up the travel, and you can come up with an interview on this date of this address in London." So I did. The next station is my land chain here for the district of Hanusman and the city line. It's around July, 1990, and a young Annie McCron makes the trip to London for her interview. She thinks she knows who she's meeting with, but she's still not 100% sure.

Nonetheless, she would arrive at an unassuming building, which was completely unmarked and also totally empty. I went into this room and there was this sort of hippie chick.

“Seriously, that's what she looked like, paired down to her waist and tiered skirts, more rest of it.”

Turned out, she was highly regarded officer in I-5, because I ended up working with her when I was in I-5. But she just did not look the part. And we had a three-hour conversation all about my life from the age of 12. And then halfway through that conversation, she said, "Why do you think you're here? Who do you think we are?" And I said, "Well, are you in my fire?" I thought, "I've got this wrong going to sound like a thief."

Yes, I hate it. And she said, "Yes, we are." And she signed this, which was the notification of official secret sex. Right, so that's why I had to go on your process. The weird thing was, this hippie chick, was so unexpected. And also very clear thinking, and very reassuring about exactly what the position of I-5 was at that time. They were trying, you know, they were on the table footing. They did have to obey laws for the first time in the 80s history at that stage.

And, um, my lighter. So, you know, people always say, if they work in sales,

you don't buy the product, you buy from the person who's selling it, because you trust them. But I got on very well with her. And she saw me through the entire process, and because I said,

“I ended up working with her. But yeah, that's how I ended up sort of falling into their grip.”

The British Secret Service is just that secret. In fact, for these organisations, which are in every country around the world, secrecy is the biggest thing. You could have passed someone from an intelligence agency this morning, stood behind them as they ordered their coffee, or looked over at them, in the commute to the office. That's the point. They are just ordinary people doing an extra ordinary job.

And one that Annie says, "You can't share with people. Not even the ones around you." I mean, um, I'm talking about Christ's 33 years ago. And at that point, they were beginning to open up a little bit. So, they were beginning to think about more open recruitment. And in fact, they started implementing it only a couple of years later. But it was very strange. So, my recruiter said, "You can tell that you're in the process of being recruited by this organisation to your husband,

partner, whatever, all your best friend, or very close family members." So, I did tell my power. I did tell my partner at the time, and I did tell my best friend. But I all like to say, "This is your organisation that I'm talking to. Like I can't say anything more." So, from that point, it's like a sort of blast shot that comes down between you and even the people you most trust. And it becomes very difficult to maintain and foster the open sort of relationships you'd have.

I was going to say, it would be potentially quite isolating. Because most people, when they go

about it to partner, or your friends, or whatever. You know, you go out for drinks with people, everyone winches about their work, and the boss and blah, blah, but you can't. When I started working there, yes, that did become a huge problem. And this is why there are so many sort of incestuous relationships between offices within these types of organisations. Because it becomes very difficult to maintain a relationship if one of you is on the outside. And so a lot of

people end up in relationships on the inside. Because you can just let it all hang out. You can talk about your actions, your working on. And it's not a problem. It's not Alice down the rabbit hole.

“It's more Alice through the looking glass, I think I would say. That's what it felt like.”

And if you were a criminal process, yeah, that was the beginning of it. It was a very odd time. So Annie has had her first interview, which she successfully gets through, and signs the

official secret act, something that at the time of signing, I'm sure she would have never thought

that she would eventually break. After that, it's in to the recruitment process. So you have the first three hour interview, sign on the dotted line. Then you have, if you get through that, you go through a two-day intensive recruitment process. And it's psychometric tests, it's analytical tests, it's written tests, it's role play, all the rest of it. It's really hard. And most people don't get through that. I mean, they might get one out of every batch, so to speak.

A strangely in my batch, two of us got through. And we remained very good friends all the way through our years and my five. But yeah, it's really, really hard. If you get through that, then you go through a final selection board with the grace and the good. If you get through that,

“that's when they start setting it, which takes months. So you have to nominate four people from different”

phases of your life, like a school friend, a uni friend, work, friend, whatever. And then you get into you, they get into you, and then they have to nominate another four people at each. So the ripples go out very widely. And of course, at that point, everyone knows that you're being recruited by something spooky. So, you know, the whole idea about being really discreet about it is rather blown out of the window. And then if you get through that, do you start work?

And start work, she does. At the age of just 22 years old, Annie heads off to her first day

as an intelligence officer for one of the worlds, most secretive government agencies. Do you remember your very first day walking through those doors? vividly. It's a very unusual experience, I don't imagine. It was surreal. It was not in their HQ. So when I joined, they were scattered at various little offices across London. And the recruitment or the training sector, with right next to Bonstreet, a very nice location. So yeah, you walk through the door, you don't want

to expect, you know, you've got two weeks of being inducted, as they call it. And you get your two weeks training. And then you're logged off to whichever section you're assigned to. And you have, I think it was six months probation, with a so-called mentor, most of them were crap actually. And then once you go through that, you are assigned to your worker and other desks, desks being subject areas. Sorry, that sounds really boring. That was going to be one of my questions. What

is it like in there? Is it just a normal office, the cubicles? And, you know, the coffee and tea machines and all the rest of it? Oh, God, back in the day, back in the old offices. It was pretty crap. I mean, if you think sort of British civil service, threaded carpets and, you know, duct tape holding down wires and all that sort of shit, it was really, really bad. When they moved to the new HQ, back in the old HQ, you know, back in 1994, it was all terribly high tech and

very nice. But yeah, it was civil service great. I think specifically putting it. It is not

“ostensibly a glamorous job, which is the best way of putting it. But the weirdness is when you”

suddenly start having to deploy secret techniques to investigate people and you start, you know, reading their communications or listening or getting agent reports coming across your desk and all that sort of thing.

So for the first few weeks when you're learning that, it is really genuinely odd. And after a few weeks,

a couple months, it's fine. Just the job, right? Yeah. It's weird how people can climateise themselves so quickly. Yeah, two or three times the normal. Yeah. Now she's in. What exactly is she going to be tasked with? Well, from the very start, Annie is unsure about just how ethical her first task really is. As she sent to section F2, which handled counter-subversion. It's the aspect of counterintelligence designed to detect, destroy, neutralize or prevent subversive activities through the identification,

exploitation, manipulation, and deception of individuals, groups, or organisations.

counter-subversion was the fact that there had been this thing called the Cambridge spiring in the 50s and 60s, it was a huge scandal where the Soviets had actually turned a number of various very senior-her establishment figures to subvert the British state from within. So we're talking

“about, "Gabberges, Kimphilby, Donald McLean," people like that. I think we're five of them in total.”

And this rocked the British establishment back in the early 60s, particularly when Kimphilby escaped to Russia. The Cambridge spiring, all Cambridge 5, was a ring of spies in the UK that passed

information to the Soviet Union during the Second World War. The five men would be identified

as Donald McLean and Guy Burgess. Both of whom would flee to Russia in 1951. Everybody considered you and McLean to be traitors. What have you to say to that, Mr. Burgess? It's now used me saying, "I'm not a traitor." That means nothing. Of course, I'm not. That's any. I don't know that. Kimphilby, who was actually questioned on television regarding his involvement, which he denied.

I was asked to resign from the foreign office because of an impudent association with Burgess, and as a result of his disappearance. Beyond that, I'm afraid I've got no further comment to make.

“Can you say when your communist associations ended, if I assume they didn't?”

The last time I spoke to a communist knowing that he was a communist was sometime in 1934.

He would later flee to the Soviet Union in 1963. Every evening I left the office with a big briefcase full of reports arrived with myself full of files taking out the actual documents of the actual archives. I used to hand them to my Soviet contact in the evening. Next morning I'd get the file back, the contents having been put in roughed and take them back earlier in the morning and put the files back in that place.

British intelligence would later obtain confessions from two other men whose involvement was kept secret for many years. In 1979, Anthony Blunt was outed, and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher

would break the news to Parliament. In the early part of last week, Professor Blunt was publicly

identified as having been a suspect Soviet agent. Professor Blunt has admitted that he was recruited for Russian intelligence when he was at Cambridge before the war. And in 1990, John King Cross would be revealed and round out the fifth member of the Cambridge Five. And they became incredibly paranoid about what they called reds under the bed and subversion. So this ramped up the huge scale investigation into people who might potentially

be subversive. This meant that hundreds of thousands of British citizens were investigated for their affiliations to not just the Communist Party, but also things like Trotsky's groups or other subversive leading groups, WRP, International Socialists, Socialist Workers Party, all the rest of it. So this went on for about three decades. And it was only, but we only began to shut the down in the 1990s. And I had, I'm very happy to say, I was one of the people who wrote

all the reports that said, "This is crap, we need to shut the down." Yeah. They are not a threat, especially after the Soviet block fell apart, you know, the bill more came down in 1989. So the whole justification investigating any of these groups was completely blown out of the war for anyway. And most of the groups were Trotsky's, not Communist, so they had nothing to do with the Soviet Union anyway. So the whole thing was fairly surreal for a 22-year-old

going to the section and looking at this degree of surveillance and this manipulation of history and the impact it had on democracy was astonishing. But what has frightened me more since moving forward is the fact that MI5 did shut down this area in investigation in 1995. They then offloaded it to

“the Metropolitan Police Special Branch as it was called then, the secret police. And they continued”

to do this work. And then they were out as in the scandal in 2010 with the undercover cops scandal, where they were still infiltrating these groups and animal rights groups and environmental groups were arrested in the most infidious ways. And this scandal is still rumbling on. Around the end of 2010 and during 2011, it was disclosed in the UK media that it

relationships with members of targeted groups. Here's one of the several left-wing organisations

“infiltrated by covert officers from this new squad in the Met Special Branch, one in inquiry,”

today said should have been shut down. Now the next part is quite astounding. As some of these officers, in some cases, proposed marriage or even fathered children with protesters who were unaware their partner was a police officer in a role as part of their official duties. This was Bob Lambert in 1985 holding his newborn son. Only then he was Bob Robinson to the mother and child. Two years later, he suddenly disappeared and left a son to grow up believing his father had gone

on the run. This is a unit that operated until 2008, although today's report which focuses on its first 14 years says it should have been disbanded in its infancy that is ends couldn't conceivably justify its means. There are remarkable new revelations in our lead story tonight. Bob Lambert, a former undercover police officer, has told channel for news of the full extent of his clandestine infiltration of pressure groups like the animal liberation front,

seducing women who are among his targets, using false identities taken from dead children. Various legal actions followed including eight women who would take action against the metropolitan police stating they were deceived into long-term intimate relationships by five

officers. I suppose the lesson here is never think that just because your an activist and you're trying

to improve the world or win a cause or do something for the better, but you're not going to be

“spied on. Do you think people understand or realise how much they are being used to spied on?”

Do you think people understand how much access these organisations can have on your day-to-day life and your communications? No, they bloody should. Look at what Edward Snowden revealed and that's a decade ago. There's this huge intersection between the government and the nation state of the actors and the corporations who can be back dalled and also the criminal hackers who can get the hands-on spy weapon, cyber weapons. The whole thing intermishes all the time and people should be

aware of this and should be concerned about it. The fact that there's still sort of activist groups authorising of Facebook and it just makes you want to weak as a way to keep your plans or strategies safe. Yeah, it's pretty good to live in such an area. Exactly, I mean all this stuff was there. I mean all the capabilities were there from the 80s, 90s onwards. It was just much more labor intensive to do it. Now, of course, with the internet and with social media and all the rest of it, it's just

kick-a-switch. Anyone can be watched at any time. And this is what people need to be aware of. If they want to activate, if they want to get involved in campaigning or they want to try make a difference. Or they just want to get the privacy basic, you would write. How did you feel about, you know, while you were working there doing that, did you suddenly where you have the mindset that, you know, I'm loving this. This is, you know,

obviously, as you said, it starts off weed and then it becomes just every day job.

“Did you, did you find yourself really enjoying the work you were doing?”

Or did you, were you already a bit sort of like, I'm not sure about this about how much, you know, we are looking into people. Very much the latter. In fact, I got to the point in 1992. Yeah, so I'd have been about 18 months. And I'd just been looking at this stuff and writing these papers and saying, you know, this is not worth doing. We should not be looking at these people. And I was being ignored. So I was actually on the brink of risk patients. It was at that point

that I met a guy called David Shaler. He became my not only colleague, but also my partner at the time. And we fell in love and I didn't resign and we stayed there for another five years. So,

you know, there's always to the personal as well as the professional isn't there to interleave and

overlapped. David Shaler was born in Middlesbrough in the United Kingdom on December 24 of 1965. And even from a young age was described by one of his teachers as a born rebel who sailed close to the wind and did not suffer fools gladly. David's early life was actually in journalism and at university, he would take on the role of editor of the student newspaper, where he would in fact publish excerpts from the book Spike Hatcher from another MI5 officer Peter Wright. This book

was in fact banned in Britain at the time. David would graduate university with second-class honours at the upper division with a degree in English and would later take a job at the Sunday Times newspaper. In 1991, he would join MI5 after responding to an obscure job advertisement calling for

some form of media-related position he applied. Much like Annie, David began his career in F-Brunch

“and Counter-Supportion, where he worked vetting Labour Party politicians prior to the 1992 election.”

He would later be transferred to T-Brunch, which hadled the threat of Irish terrorism, which is also an area that Annie worked and again would find herself in a situation which troubled her. I was given the desk to investigate Irish terrorist logistics, so it wasn't just the Republicans, it was also the loyalists too. So we were trying to stop the infiltration

excultration of personnel and material into an out of the UK. So I had to work a lot with

organisations like the Customs and Sports Police and people like that.

I would imagine that's extremely high pressure, because obviously when you're dealing with a terrorist organization, especially one who was as active as the IRA was around that time with bombings and all the rest of it, was there that sense of, as I said, pressure was making sure that you were on top of everything, and I know you've mentioned that there was a bombing that happened that shouldn't have happened or could have been avoided.

Yes, Bishop Skate in 1993. It was a lorry bomb that decimated the city of London, and there were opportunities to stop the attack before it happened, and they were missed.

And therefore the bomb went off and the person died and many people injured, terrible.

That's a huge explosion. That's a big one. That is a huge bomb. Good evening, a tipper truck packed with explosives, went off in the city of London this morning. It killed one man and injured more than 40 other people. The bomb exploded in bishops gate near the northwest tar. The column of smoke rising above the city skyline left Londoners in little

doubt about the size of the blast. The shockwave was felt over a wide area, the explosion heard several miles away. The key points that really perturbed my partner as well as me was the fact that they lied about it afterwards in my five because they are supposed to be accountable to the home secretary who is supposed to sign them off to do walls and stuff, and they covered

“up the mistakes they made. So I think thereby you don't, the unorganisation cannot learn from”

their mistakes, and by learning from your stage you can improve how you work rather than just brushing your mind's coffee. So that was the key problem there. So what happens with that sort of information came in, it could have been avoided. What happens is it tip-offs is it listening in and hearing certain things and they just didn't act on the information that they were discovering.

Pretty much. And that's I'm assuming through sources and whatnot that I suppose deal with MI5. Pretty much. [Music]

“The issues around the efficacy and unaccountability of the British Secret Services”

would continue to build for David and Annie, and it would be a failed assassination attempt involving MI6, which would be the straw that broke the camel's back. But back in 1996, this was seen as super secret, because it's illegal to assassinate foreign heads of state. David would tell Annie, he believed it was time that they not only left the organisation,

but in fact, out them to the public. It would be decision which would make them wanted, by the very team they once worked with. So I was left with the happy task of trying to organize the actual tracing as the UK, which I did. Next time, unwanted. I'm a warrior of the soul before the end, I plan to be whole, but I've no ailments myself along the way.

What's God? What's God? What's best? Is this place? I believe the belongs to God.