Must spy harder

According to the BBC, the new spy drama Spooks lifts the lid on life in the British secret services. But with its silly plotlines and cool, Armani-suited agents it couldn't be further from reality, says former MI5 man David Shayler

David Shayler Guardian
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4413622,00.html

Wednesday May 15, 2002

They say that James Bond is a 15-year-old boy's idea of the height of sophistication: martinis shaken not stirred, souped-up cars, beautiful women with alluring foreign accents, exotic casinos, microscopic gadgets
that can kill a man at 10 paces and all the intrigue of espionage.

Unfortunately the life of the average intelligence officer (IO) - or "spy", in the popular parlance - whether he works for MI5 or its sister service, MI6, is much more mundane. It is more cheap plonk at tedious Whitehall receptions than martinis shaken not stirred in Monte Carlo casinos; more
pushing paper between an IN and an OUT tray than pushing drugs in a sting operation; and more sleepless nights worrying about paying the mortgage on the meagre pay of a desk officer than nuits blanches with überbabes and
innuendo ("Fancy a refill, darling?"). If the IO is burning the midnight oil, it is much more likely that he is preparing a memorandum for his group leader than spying on suspected members of al-Qaida.

Publicity for Spooks, the BBC's latest offering about the world of intelligence, claims that it captures the workaday realism of a job at the heart of Britain's secret state. Looming out of the schedules and plugged in the Radio Times with the strapline: "MI5, not nine to five", the BBC's
latest attempt at original drama is blighted from the start because the work of the routine desk officer is just that: nine to five. Or to be more precise, nine to five fifteen.

In other puff material, the programme boasts that the verisimilitude of its portrayal of our domestic security service - or Box, as it is known in the trade - was vouched for by a former MI5 officer, Nick Day, who acted as
consultant. What they don't mention is that Day worked for the service for less than two years and has begun to appear in public as the face of MI5 to counter-act what it no doubt sees as my scurrilous disclosures. In fact, I
was the original consultant for the programme when Kudos, the producers, first came up with the idea two years ago. I even came up with the title Spooks - as a joke.

I also advised Kudos that their proposed plotlines of violent anti-abortionists and international rightwing extremist conspiracies were the stuff of liberal-left fantasy rather than any reflection of the real
and vital work MI5 does in protection of our security and our democracy. Quite simply, there is minimal sympathy for anti-abortionists in Britain and even if that weren't the case, the Metropolitan police special branch would be much more likely to carry out this work alongside its investigations into animal rights extremists and eco-warriors.

Of course, no drama can accurately and comprehensively depict real life. It would be too tedious, too incoherent. Drama has to be more exciting than real life. The murder rate in Inspector Morse's Oxford makes New York and
Johannesburg look like the tranquil backwaters of Tunbridge Wells. Yet that series makes us suspend our disbelief because such characters as Morse and Lewis are believable, peculiarly English coppers and, in reality, people do
get murdered in Oxford (just not at the rate in the programme). Having witnessed the work of the intelligence services first-hand, I find it very hard to suspend disbelief when reading Le Carré - George Smiley is far too
intelligent and principled to work for MI6. Yet in the absence of any official disclosure about the work of our services, I can see why the characters and plots in Le Carr seem to capture the reality of spy work to those who have not worked on the inside.

But Spooks has none of this. It lamely rehashes every cliche in the book, while introducing dangerous misconceptions about MI5. The first episode saw
MI5 officers making arrests. In reality, MI5 has no such power. Special branch or the anti-terrorist squad take over investigations when executive action, as it is known in the trade, is imminent. Similarly, MI5 is not stupid enough to put out misinformation on the record, yet the first
episode showed the service trying to cover up a terrorist attack on the part of anti-abortionists by bizarrely claiming it was an unexploded second world war bomb.

At the same time, all the characters in Spooks are attractive, cool, bright young things dressed in designer togs, taking snap operational decisions.
In reality, even operational decisions are made by committees of senior grey men - think the Cabinet Office briefing room (Cobra) - who are more likely to wear Marks & Sparks than Gucci suits. And this is nothing to do
with English aversion to stylish dress. It is rather the product of mundane economics. It is never explained in Spooks how officers living in central London can afford such lavish designer labels and cosmopolitan lifestyles
on a salary 10% higher than a civil servant of equivalent grade. On a similar subject, all the young male characters wear open-necked shirts. They wouldn't get far in the real MI5, where a tie - and a sober one at that - is de rigueur. I should know. I was once pulled up in my annual report for ties said to be "too loud".

Spooks shows us a world of hi-tech, flat-screen, super-fast computers. When I left MI5 in 1996, officers used to court colleagues leaving the section for their laptops (usually Toshibas the size of a desk, rather than the natty little matt-black machines we know today); or else they would spend
their lives laboriously drafting their briefs in longhand for secretaries to type up on typewriters. Well, at least they were electric.

Even the colour scheme of the TV version of MI5 headquarters has been glossed up - all cool black, light wood and glass tables, instead of the sombre greys and frosted glass of Thames House. And Spooks plays up to the
worst element of Britain's intelligence services: their excessive and unnecessary secrecy, prompting jokes in the trade about Secret Squirrel. In the first episode, the officers used aliases for routine work and kept the
real nature of their employment from their spouses. In this day and age, MI5 officers are advised to tell spouses, family and close friends where they work because it is simpler than concocting a needless cover story that
requires time, effort and endless discipline to maintain. (Many an officer's cover has been blown by him or her signing a credit-card slip in their real name and signature.)

So despite all its claims, Spooks is just another routine drama, more Saturday teatime kids' stuff, like Bugs, than the late-night sophistication of Sopranos or 24, the US's drama based around a day in the life of the CIA
anti-terrorist unit. If the producers of the programme think they are offering verisimilitude then they've been had. Once again, we find ourselves looking across the Atlantic for new and challenging drama, stuff that was once the preserve of the Beeb.

· David Shayler worked for MI5 between 1991 and 1996. He offered advice to the producers of Spooks, and a rival intelligence programme which was not commissioned.