The Berlin spy case reminds us that real espionage is banal and human

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The author is the director of the consultancy Mayak Intelligence and an honorary professor at UCL

What’s attention-grabbing in regards to the information of the safety guard on the British Embassy in Berlin caught passing labeled paperwork to a Russian handler, is that it’s so banal. As such, it reminds us that trendy espionage continues to be not that far faraway from the world depicted by John le Carré and Len Deighton throughout the Chilly Battle.

We’re conditioned by the high-tech antics of cyber spies’ and intelligence businesses’ keen and early adoption of the newest instruments and methods. However the Berlin case, assuming the costs are confirmed, is an important reminder that human intelligence — humint — stays essentially the most very important of all of the so-called “assortment disciplines”.

A hack can entry paperwork saved on a pc, a cellphone intercept can overhear a dialog and a satellite tv for pc can {photograph} an set up. However all of them have workarounds. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard sends key orders on paper by motorbike courier to keep away from US and Israeli eavesdropping and Russia makes use of inflatable tanks to idiot satellites. People are imaginative, self-propelled, in a position to discover context and inform you stuff you didn’t know you wanted to know. That’s why everybody, from MI6 and the CIA to the Russians, nonetheless spends a lot effort in recruiting them.

As within the Berlin case, most should not the Kim Philbys and even Sergei Skripals of this world, however small fry: clerks and consular officers, drivers and consuming buddies, girlfriends and guards. They are going to typically not have entry to high secrets and techniques, however nor will they’ve gone via the very best ranges of vetting. Nonetheless, they may know one thing, and a motivated supply can at all times get extra.

Right this moment, perhaps they’ll simply be offering low-level intelligence, however they’ll even be giving their handler a wealth of human-level insights. What’s the Wi-Fi password (to allow them to hack in)? Who has a consuming drawback or has once more been missed for promotion (they could be open to recruitment)? Which cultural attaché appears to do nothing cultural (they could be a spy underneath diplomatic cowl)? The supply could get a promotion down the road, and their handlers will have already got their hooks in, or they could be of worth as an “entry agent”, via whom the case officer can get to a extra tempting prospect.

It’s all reasonably humdrum however typically tragic too. When issues go improper, it’s the small fry who face jail or worse, relying on what sort of regime they’re dwelling underneath. Their handler in all probability has diplomatic immunity and faces not more than a visit dwelling and perhaps a middling grade at their subsequent annual assessment. 

Berlin, like every main capital, is a hotbed of intelligence exercise, despite the fact that it isn’t fairly what it was when it was nonetheless divided by the wall. Brokers later mingled in Prague, however that ended with the Czechs’ latest gutting of the outsized Russian embassy and its rezidentura, or intelligence station. As an alternative, Vienna and Brussels are the brand new spying playgrounds, the place the pickings are good, the native counter-intelligence companies underwhelming and the eating places glorious.

Berlin issues as a result of Germany issues — extra so now that Brexit has eliminated one of many poles of energy on the continent. Shortly after the UK’s 2016 referendum, a former officer of the SVR, Russia’s International Intelligence Service, instructed me that “Moscow will now see Europe as being simply Berlin versus Paris” and that they anticipated “much more guys to be studying German”. Whether or not or not that is true, the US, Britain and even China are paying extra consideration to town. Russia’s spies are equally eager to seek out out what their rivals are doing, as this affair illustrates.

The one uncommon side of this case is how public it has turn into. Counter-intelligence officers normally attempt to flip brokers into double brokers. In addition they have a tendency to hide how they grew to become suspicious. The supply would possibly merely discover themselves “routinely” moved to a brand new place removed from labeled supplies, or their contract terminated. 

On this case, although, the German authorities seems particularly bullish in pushing for a public trial. Having raised (shamefully) little fuss when a Russian contract killer with faux paperwork offered by the Federal Safety Service — Moscow’s political police — shot a Georgian Chechen useless in the course of Berlin on the finish of 2019, after which completed its utmost to make sure the Nord Stream 2 gasoline pipeline was constructed, maybe its ministers lastly felt they needed to make a stand.

It received’t cease anybody, although. In at this time’s world, everybody spies on everybody else, and provided that for each technological breakthrough there’s a technological or procedural response, humint will proceed to be on the coronary heart of the intelligence sport.