WEBVTT - What we know about MI6 0:00:01.440 --> 0:00:07.680 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.160 --> 0:00:13.520 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's 0:00:13.640 --> 0:00:16.920 Chuck and there's Jerry, and this is stuff you should Know. 0:00:17.200 --> 0:00:18.759 And I had to say we didn't have the most 0:00:18.800 --> 0:00:22.560 auspicious start. Just now, Chuck, I stepped on you at 0:00:22.600 --> 0:00:27.280 the countdown for us to sink that's not a good sign. 0:00:28.160 --> 0:00:29.479 Don't you think that's not a good sign. 0:00:30.280 --> 0:00:32.200 I think if you look at it another way, we 0:00:32.200 --> 0:00:35.200 were in sync because we were both kind of trying 0:00:35.200 --> 0:00:35.959 to say the same thing. 0:00:37.520 --> 0:00:39.040 Wow, that was a silver lining. 0:00:39.479 --> 0:00:39.919 How's that? 0:00:40.400 --> 0:00:43.320 There's not been any better in sync since lant Spass 0:00:43.360 --> 0:00:46.280 and justin Timberlake. We're running around together. 0:00:48.280 --> 0:00:50.000 We should preface this, by the way, we're doing an 0:00:50.000 --> 0:00:55.760 episode today on six, the United Kingdom's Secret Intelligence Service. 0:00:55.960 --> 0:00:57.120 Is that how you pronounce it? 0:00:57.840 --> 0:00:58.720 Six? What do you say? 0:00:59.000 --> 0:01:03.400 Mix? That's what I've been saying in my head at least. 0:01:03.440 --> 0:01:07.720 Oh no, yeah, that is an inauspicious beginning then, for sure. 0:01:08.680 --> 0:01:14.520 But you know, this is a little at risk being 0:01:14.520 --> 0:01:16.440 a little disjointed, because if you kind of went down 0:01:16.440 --> 0:01:18.920 every rabbit hole that we speak about here, we'd be 0:01:18.959 --> 0:01:19.920 here for days. 0:01:20.800 --> 0:01:23.000 Oh yeah, one of the things that lets us off 0:01:23.040 --> 0:01:25.400 the hook though, that I found and I'm sure Kyle 0:01:25.400 --> 0:01:28.360 who helped us with this. We had our man in 0:01:28.360 --> 0:01:32.000 Britain to make him an agent in US officers, right, 0:01:32.000 --> 0:01:36.000 because he was given US intel on six. If you 0:01:36.080 --> 0:01:39.160 go and just start researching it, especially if you just 0:01:39.200 --> 0:01:42.240 type in six, they've done a pretty good job of 0:01:43.120 --> 0:01:48.240 keeping search results pretty sanitized. Yeah, Like I would say, 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:53.160 out of the top twenty results, two are not official 0:01:53.520 --> 0:01:57.000 six pages, So it's kind of hard to research them, 0:01:57.080 --> 0:02:01.240 especially considering they've only been publicly recoged nineties. Is actually 0:02:01.280 --> 0:02:03.040 existing since the mid. 0:02:03.000 --> 0:02:06.880 Nineties, Yeah, nineteen nineties. That is, they were the there 0:02:06.920 --> 0:02:12.160 are the oldest operating continuously, that is, operating foreign intelligence 0:02:12.200 --> 0:02:15.960 gathering organization anywhere in the world. And like I said, 0:02:16.000 --> 0:02:18.520 they they're you know, if you're American, you can think 0:02:18.560 --> 0:02:22.680 of I six as sort of their CIA. And in fact, 0:02:22.760 --> 0:02:27.040 our own CIA was born out of not out of 0:02:27.200 --> 0:02:29.160 I six, but they had a lot to do with 0:02:29.240 --> 0:02:30.120 how we did things. 0:02:30.280 --> 0:02:32.360 Yeah, we use them as a kind of a model. 0:02:32.520 --> 0:02:34.600 Yeah, there you go. That's a very clean way to 0:02:34.600 --> 0:02:34.920 say that. 0:02:36.520 --> 0:02:39.640 So there's two things that I six does and that 0:02:39.720 --> 0:02:41.680 really does kind of get it across. They're like the 0:02:42.000 --> 0:02:44.640 Britain's equivalent of the CIA, or better yet, the CIA 0:02:44.760 --> 0:02:48.280 is America's equivalent of I six. So they gather intelligence, 0:02:48.720 --> 0:02:52.440 and they gather internationally abroad. There's also MI I five, 0:02:52.919 --> 0:02:55.480 which you could say is roughly equivalent in the US 0:02:55.560 --> 0:02:58.960 to the FBI. They do domestic stuff, but I six 0:02:59.080 --> 0:03:02.079 is concerned about everything else in the world. And by 0:03:02.120 --> 0:03:06.400 gathering intelligence, they usually use two methods or they gather Yeah, 0:03:06.400 --> 0:03:09.959 two methods. Once human intelligence, which is good old fashioned 0:03:09.960 --> 0:03:13.639 spying using people who are secretly spying on their own 0:03:13.639 --> 0:03:17.239 governments or whatever. And then the other signal intelligence, which 0:03:17.280 --> 0:03:24.440 is intercepting communications. And I saw that another intelligence firm, 0:03:24.639 --> 0:03:28.919 I guess in the UK, the Government Communications Headquarters GHQ. 0:03:29.360 --> 0:03:31.919 They seem to do most of the signals intelligence, while 0:03:32.280 --> 0:03:35.400 six still does most of the human intelligence. Yeah, but 0:03:35.440 --> 0:03:38.760 I think like if they capture an email or something, 0:03:38.760 --> 0:03:41.480 they don't just delete it because they don't do signals intelligence. 0:03:41.520 --> 0:03:42.600 They're still going to use it. 0:03:45.560 --> 0:03:49.880 Not my office delete right now, my job. We call 0:03:49.960 --> 0:03:52.520 them six. The official name, like I said at the beginning, 0:03:52.920 --> 0:03:58.040 is the Secret Intelligence Service or the SIS. That's what 0:03:58.120 --> 0:04:00.880 they became in nineteen twenty, but we call it because 0:04:01.400 --> 0:04:04.040 that was the call sign that they adopted in World 0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:08.160 War Two, And you know, let's be honest people here 0:04:08.440 --> 0:04:12.119 I six and they identify it with intelligence a lot 0:04:12.200 --> 0:04:15.720 because of Ian Fleming and James Bond and lacarr and 0:04:15.840 --> 0:04:21.039 Smiley a couple of you know, in James Bond's case, 0:04:21.080 --> 0:04:25.760 maybe thinly veiled literary figures. I'm not sure about Smiley. 0:04:25.760 --> 0:04:27.760 I don't know much about lacar Is Smiley based on 0:04:27.800 --> 0:04:28.599 someone that you know of. 0:04:28.960 --> 0:04:32.800 I don't know. My dad was big time into John leccaray, 0:04:32.920 --> 0:04:34.320 but I never have been. 0:04:34.640 --> 0:04:35.880 Is it Lacara? I don't know. 0:04:35.920 --> 0:04:38.640 I've heard it. I think it's probably both ways. I mean, 0:04:38.720 --> 0:04:40.839 unless you're his mom. I'm sure there's just one way 0:04:40.880 --> 0:04:43.560 to say. If you're his mom, but you know he's dead, 0:04:43.600 --> 0:04:44.240 he doesn't care. 0:04:44.640 --> 0:04:51.120 How about Lee Carrey? No perfect But I, like you 0:04:51.160 --> 0:04:54.200 said earlier, you know, it's kind of challenging to gather 0:04:54.480 --> 0:04:57.719 intelligence on I six as a podcaster because for the 0:04:57.800 --> 0:05:01.919 longest time, they would just story any documents they had that, 0:05:02.520 --> 0:05:04.600 you know, weren't still useful to them. They weren't like, hey, 0:05:04.680 --> 0:05:07.840 let's keep this on file, because one day somebody might 0:05:09.120 --> 0:05:11.120 ask for this and maybe want to see it. They'll 0:05:11.160 --> 0:05:13.120 be like, no, we don't need that anymore, and we're 0:05:13.160 --> 0:05:16.440 a secret organization, so let's just throw it in the 0:05:16.480 --> 0:05:20.400 old burner. And in the nineteen sixties they started officially 0:05:20.480 --> 0:05:24.320 keeping historical records, and then eventually in the two thousands, 0:05:24.360 --> 0:05:27.440 for their one hundredth anniversary, they hired a guy named 0:05:27.480 --> 0:05:32.440 Keith Jeffrey to write its history up to nineteen forty nine. 0:05:32.800 --> 0:05:35.560 Yeah, and apparently even still today, that's where their official 0:05:35.640 --> 0:05:38.600 history ends, nineteen forty nine. Anything after that, don't ask 0:05:38.680 --> 0:05:42.640 Jack or else. They'll take you somewhere and render you. Yeah, 0:05:42.760 --> 0:05:48.680 politely they will. So we should probably say that I 0:05:48.720 --> 0:05:51.200 six started and I think when we did our Kim 0:05:51.240 --> 0:05:54.840 Philby episode, yeah, I said that six stood for the 0:05:54.880 --> 0:05:58.840 Ministry of Intelligence, but it actually is military intelligence, which 0:05:58.880 --> 0:06:01.120 is I think, like you said, what it grew out 0:06:01.160 --> 0:06:05.480 of originally. But the whole thing started there was a scare, 0:06:05.680 --> 0:06:10.119 a German spy scare in Great Britain in the turn 0:06:10.120 --> 0:06:13.840 of the last century. Germany was this imperial power that 0:06:13.920 --> 0:06:16.720 was rising, so there was reason to be scared of them. 0:06:16.760 --> 0:06:19.839 But really the whole reason came down to this guy 0:06:20.200 --> 0:06:26.920 named William Lechwe. He was a totally made up adventurer 0:06:28.120 --> 0:06:31.680 soldier of fortune who was just as patriotic as you 0:06:31.720 --> 0:06:34.520 could get. He made up this huge backstory for himself 0:06:34.560 --> 0:06:38.120 to give himself legitimacy, but really he was just weaving 0:06:38.160 --> 0:06:41.920 these yarns saying essentially that Britain is sleeping right now 0:06:41.920 --> 0:06:45.000 and it's loaded with German spies and if we don't 0:06:45.040 --> 0:06:47.720 wake up, we're gonna get taken over by Germany. And 0:06:47.760 --> 0:06:50.960 it just hit this perfect nerve in the British public, 0:06:51.040 --> 0:06:54.479 so much so that it directly led to the formation 0:06:55.000 --> 0:06:57.160 of what would become six and five. 0:06:57.640 --> 0:07:00.799 Yeah, all in Unison they heard this and went, well, 0:07:00.839 --> 0:07:04.560 we can't have that, so they got going the Secret 0:07:04.560 --> 0:07:10.200 Service bureaus who originally housed both including I five, and 0:07:10.440 --> 0:07:13.760 they were pretty important, you know, aka the Bureau known 0:07:13.800 --> 0:07:17.880 as the Bureau because they had complete autonomy and they 0:07:17.880 --> 0:07:21.120 also had plausible deniability, so they would sort of act 0:07:21.120 --> 0:07:24.000 as a go between. If there was a government official 0:07:24.960 --> 0:07:28.920 doing some you know, spy business, the Bureau could step 0:07:28.960 --> 0:07:32.480 in and kind of provide cover as a screen for them. 0:07:32.840 --> 0:07:36.400 Yeah. Apparently, even though they are now publicly acknowledged by 0:07:36.400 --> 0:07:41.239 the government as existing that hasn't changed very much still today, 0:07:41.600 --> 0:07:44.720 Like they do not. You can't, as a government official 0:07:44.760 --> 0:07:47.360 go to MI six and be like, I demand these 0:07:47.440 --> 0:07:51.240 records of your torture program in the Iraq war, right, 0:07:51.440 --> 0:07:54.080 They'll just say, we don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, 0:07:54.320 --> 0:07:57.840 we're not even having this conversation. And that's what. They 0:07:57.880 --> 0:08:02.400 don't have the kind of political and legal hamstringing that 0:08:02.560 --> 0:08:05.800 the CIA has. It's much less of a bureaucracy, and 0:08:05.840 --> 0:08:08.800 so they can do things that say, like the CIA 0:08:09.520 --> 0:08:12.120 legally couldn't do it. They have a lot of legal 0:08:12.240 --> 0:08:13.880 cover in Great Britain. 0:08:14.320 --> 0:08:17.160 Yeah, I wonder what their version of FOYA is, like 0:08:17.240 --> 0:08:19.920 a Freedom of Information Act request or even if they 0:08:19.960 --> 0:08:22.520 even have that, or if they're just like, sorry, don't ask. 0:08:22.640 --> 0:08:24.760 Yeah, they just call it fo right. 0:08:27.120 --> 0:08:30.000 Oh boy, I wish that was a man. If we 0:08:30.040 --> 0:08:32.040 had written that out as a comedy duo, it couldn't 0:08:32.040 --> 0:08:32.760 have been more perfect. 0:08:33.040 --> 0:08:35.320 Thanks. I think we did really good too. 0:08:35.679 --> 0:08:38.960 Yeah, So let's talk a little bit about their first chief, 0:08:39.240 --> 0:08:43.000 Sir Mansfield. Coming. It was pretty much a one person 0:08:43.080 --> 0:08:45.920 show at the beginning of the operation, and Coming was 0:08:45.960 --> 0:08:50.600 that guy staffed fully, you know, with gentlemen, as they 0:08:50.640 --> 0:08:52.480 called him. If you were a woman at the time, 0:08:53.080 --> 0:08:55.280 you might get work as a typist or secretary. But 0:08:55.360 --> 0:08:58.079 although that would change in not too long. 0:08:57.920 --> 0:08:59.959 After, maybe like fifty years. 0:09:00.200 --> 0:09:03.320 Yeah exactly, I guess so. But he was sort of 0:09:03.320 --> 0:09:05.880 a the kind of guy you would make a movie about. 0:09:05.880 --> 0:09:08.120 He was a race car driver, he was a pilot, 0:09:09.280 --> 0:09:14.160 He could drive a boat with a plum. He loved spycraft. 0:09:14.200 --> 0:09:16.920 He got into it. He signed off his C for 0:09:17.000 --> 0:09:19.280 his last name. He apparently he wrote in Green Inc. 0:09:19.720 --> 0:09:23.280 Which his successors have continued doing today, writing in that 0:09:23.360 --> 0:09:23.880 Green Inc. 0:09:24.400 --> 0:09:27.800 And they're all called C too. It's the title for 0:09:27.920 --> 0:09:29.520 the chief of I six. 0:09:29.679 --> 0:09:33.599 Yeah exactly. And they it was like like M and Q, 0:09:34.160 --> 0:09:36.760 like all those things from James Bond, Like most of 0:09:36.800 --> 0:09:39.920 those things are real. They use numbers and letters and 0:09:39.960 --> 0:09:43.559 it's not just made up for fictional purposes. No. 0:09:43.720 --> 0:09:46.480 In Q, that was the scientist who would come up 0:09:46.520 --> 0:09:50.320 with all these amazing devices and gadgets and everything. And 0:09:50.400 --> 0:09:53.960 as we'll see, I six has gotten way more talkative publicly. 0:09:54.000 --> 0:09:56.440 They're trying to like kind of recruit more and more people, 0:09:56.480 --> 0:09:59.320 so they're giving, you know, interviews, even though their names 0:09:59.320 --> 0:10:03.560 are anonymous and one of them said, like, we have 0:10:03.640 --> 0:10:06.680 those gadgets, but they're even better than what James Bond has. 0:10:07.640 --> 0:10:11.360 No, It's like really, yeah, So this guy coming, he 0:10:12.720 --> 0:10:15.960 had an incident in nineteen fourteen where he earned this 0:10:16.000 --> 0:10:18.960 probably sounds like lore to me, but he had a 0:10:18.960 --> 0:10:21.400 car crash in France in nineteen fourteen, very sadly, his 0:10:21.480 --> 0:10:24.000 son was killed, and this is how he lost his 0:10:24.080 --> 0:10:27.120 left foot. And the reason the lore was so important 0:10:27.200 --> 0:10:30.400 was because the legend was the only way he escaped 0:10:30.559 --> 0:10:36.360 was by amputating that foot himself. Sort of like who 0:10:36.440 --> 0:10:37.959 was the guy in real life that they made the 0:10:38.080 --> 0:10:40.560 Danny Boil It was stuck in the rock. 0:10:40.760 --> 0:10:42.839 I don't remember his name, but yeah. 0:10:42.600 --> 0:10:44.880 Yeah, but supposedly he you know, as the story goes, 0:10:44.920 --> 0:10:46.520 he cut off his own foot with a pen knife 0:10:46.559 --> 0:10:47.200 just to escape. 0:10:47.720 --> 0:10:50.679 I think just the fact that people that became a 0:10:50.760 --> 0:10:53.080 legend around him says a lot about who he is. 0:10:53.360 --> 0:10:53.959 Oh totally. 0:10:54.000 --> 0:10:55.480 If I were in a car wreck and I lost 0:10:55.520 --> 0:10:58.120 my foot, no one made a legend that said I 0:10:58.240 --> 0:11:00.560 cut my own foot off with a pen knife to escape, 0:11:00.600 --> 0:11:02.679 Like it just he just wouldn't make that up, and 0:11:02.760 --> 0:11:05.400 I would believe it. This guy at least it was believable. 0:11:05.559 --> 0:11:08.599 Yeah, legend had has it. Josh wailed and cried for 0:11:08.679 --> 0:11:11.880 hours until the ambulance finally arrived and they said, you know, 0:11:11.920 --> 0:11:13.640 you could probably just have backed out of this thing 0:11:13.679 --> 0:11:14.560 on your own, right. 0:11:14.720 --> 0:11:17.440 They're like, it's really just gonna bruise, is all right. 0:11:19.679 --> 0:11:21.960 So there's one other thing. There's there's a lot to 0:11:22.000 --> 0:11:24.440 talk about. Like you said, the guy could definitely deserve 0:11:24.600 --> 0:11:27.480 his own movie if it hasn't been made multiple times already. 0:11:27.880 --> 0:11:30.360 But one of the other legendary things associated with him 0:11:30.440 --> 0:11:34.160 is like he was really into spycraft, Like he came 0:11:34.240 --> 0:11:37.640 up with disguises. He would like disguise himself and go 0:11:37.760 --> 0:11:40.240 walk around London and see if any of his people 0:11:40.240 --> 0:11:43.439 would recognize him. And he was I don't want to 0:11:43.440 --> 0:11:45.560 say obsessed, but he was really into the idea of 0:11:45.600 --> 0:11:48.920 invisible ink, and he searched high and low to find 0:11:48.920 --> 0:11:52.160 a good invisible ink that couldn't be detected through standard methods. 0:11:52.760 --> 0:11:55.760 I don't know who came up with this idea, but 0:11:56.400 --> 0:12:01.720 somehow it came around that seaman can be used very 0:12:01.760 --> 0:12:05.760 effectively as an invisible ink. And I saw that somebody 0:12:05.760 --> 0:12:07.560 put it. The supply is renewable. 0:12:08.160 --> 0:12:14.320 Yeah, so he must have just searched high and not low, right, yeah, renewable. 0:12:15.679 --> 0:12:17.840 There's some I mean, it gets a little grosser. Shall 0:12:17.840 --> 0:12:19.319 we even cover this in more detail? 0:12:19.640 --> 0:12:20.000 Yes? 0:12:20.400 --> 0:12:24.880 Okay. Apparently he had a colleague that reported about the 0:12:24.920 --> 0:12:27.920 man in. One of our men in Copenhagen stocked it 0:12:27.920 --> 0:12:30.080 in a bottle for his letters, and it stanks so 0:12:30.200 --> 0:12:33.000 bad that they had to tell him that a fresh 0:12:33.120 --> 0:12:38.320 operation was necessary for each letter. Wow. 0:12:38.760 --> 0:12:40.480 Yeah, we had to say that, and. 0:12:40.440 --> 0:12:42.920 He said, no problem. 0:12:43.240 --> 0:12:48.199 Yeah, exactly, Wow, thank you exactly. So you want to 0:12:48.240 --> 0:12:50.200 take a break, or you want to dive into World 0:12:50.240 --> 0:12:51.120 War one era. 0:12:51.920 --> 0:12:53.880 Let's take a break. That's a good little table setting. 0:12:53.960 --> 0:12:56.440 So we'll come back and talk about talk about World 0:12:56.440 --> 0:12:57.360 War one right after this. 0:13:21.720 --> 0:13:24.920 So, by the time World War one rolled around, what 0:13:25.040 --> 0:13:28.800 was it, nineteen eleven? I think I'm sure I'm wrong, 0:13:28.840 --> 0:13:30.240 and we're going to get a bunch of emails. But 0:13:30.320 --> 0:13:32.560 let's just say for sake of argument, it was nineteen eleven. 0:13:33.280 --> 0:13:35.960 This is just a couple of years after the Bureau 0:13:36.160 --> 0:13:40.680 was formed and Circumbing was, you know, running around doing 0:13:40.720 --> 0:13:46.760 his thing. But by this time, he yeah, writing letters 0:13:46.800 --> 0:13:50.800 of invisible ink all over the place. By this time, though, 0:13:50.800 --> 0:13:55.280 he cultivated some sources already in Germany. He had one 0:13:55.280 --> 0:14:00.280 guy named B. He was seeing this first source, B, 0:14:01.440 --> 0:14:04.480 who would report on you know, comings and goings on 0:14:04.559 --> 0:14:07.600 the coast and the harbor and their ship sizes and 0:14:07.640 --> 0:14:11.320 how many ships are in their fleet. And although they 0:14:11.880 --> 0:14:16.280 totally dropped the ball on Germany invading neutral Belgium, which 0:14:16.320 --> 0:14:18.839 was a big deal, Yeah, they still managed to give 0:14:18.880 --> 0:14:21.640 them a lot of like really important intel that basically 0:14:21.720 --> 0:14:26.880 proved the idea that Britain could really use MI six 0:14:27.000 --> 0:14:27.840 or something like it. 0:14:28.520 --> 0:14:30.840 Yeah, I mean it seemed to be. The way I 0:14:30.880 --> 0:14:32.480 read this was like these are just sort of the 0:14:32.520 --> 0:14:36.160 baby steps. They didn't have like kind of the authority 0:14:36.200 --> 0:14:37.960 they would have later on, and they were kind of 0:14:38.040 --> 0:14:41.720 sessing out how valuable they might be. So they were 0:14:41.760 --> 0:14:44.640 just sort of getting established. After World War One was 0:14:44.680 --> 0:14:48.720 when they were fully established as the SIS, but they were, 0:14:48.760 --> 0:14:51.520 you know, they were monitoring Russia, trying to keep them 0:14:51.520 --> 0:14:53.640 in the war. They were like, what are the Americans 0:14:53.640 --> 0:14:55.920 thinking right now, what's going on in the Oval Office, 0:14:55.920 --> 0:14:58.640 because we'd like to bring them into the war, and 0:14:58.880 --> 0:15:02.680 they were doing Yemen's work, you know, providing you know, 0:15:02.720 --> 0:15:05.600 the kind of stuff you would see in like the 0:15:05.640 --> 0:15:07.760 Great Escape, even though that was World War Two, Like 0:15:08.000 --> 0:15:10.040 if you're a pow, you might get a map and 0:15:10.080 --> 0:15:13.800 a compass smuggled into you, stuff like that, trying to 0:15:13.800 --> 0:15:17.640 foil bombing plots and things like that. So they were like, 0:15:18.080 --> 0:15:19.480 you know, what do you think of us? Now? How 0:15:19.480 --> 0:15:21.840 are you doing? And apparently good enough to be official 0:15:21.960 --> 0:15:22.600 after the war. 0:15:23.040 --> 0:15:26.160 Yeah. So by the time the Inner War period comes along, 0:15:26.360 --> 0:15:32.120 the twenties thirties, they well, there are some more legendary people. 0:15:32.160 --> 0:15:34.320 This is a time where it was just like the 0:15:34.360 --> 0:15:37.520 Wild West in Great Britain as far as spycrafts and 0:15:37.560 --> 0:15:41.280 intelligence goes. And there's this one guy who's definitely worth mentioning. 0:15:41.600 --> 0:15:45.680 He was an early agent. And we should say most 0:15:45.720 --> 0:15:49.360 people call anybody who would be working for six an 0:15:49.440 --> 0:15:52.560 agent with the CIA. You'd be correct. With I six, 0:15:52.600 --> 0:15:54.760 you'd be wrong. An agent, as far as I six 0:15:54.840 --> 0:15:58.400 is concerned, is one of those sources who has turned 0:15:58.840 --> 0:16:04.080 turncoat on their country, is supplying six with secrets. 0:16:03.920 --> 0:16:06.240 Right, that's a double agent, yeah, or just. 0:16:06.200 --> 0:16:08.600 A plane old agent. A double agent would be somebody 0:16:08.720 --> 0:16:12.720 who was actually spying for their country but posing as 0:16:12.760 --> 0:16:14.720 a spy for MI six. This is just a plain 0:16:14.800 --> 0:16:18.560 old agent. Officers are the people who are employees of 0:16:18.680 --> 0:16:23.080 MI six that run and handle agents in the field. 0:16:23.920 --> 0:16:27.680 Right, So that would make Cyril Bertram Mills an agent. 0:16:27.960 --> 0:16:29.800 Correct, Yes, that's what I was getting to. 0:16:30.160 --> 0:16:32.960 All right, So before World War Two, this guy was 0:16:33.000 --> 0:16:37.160 a circus director and he ended up working for six 0:16:37.240 --> 0:16:41.880 for about four decades, known only to his family, you know, 0:16:41.920 --> 0:16:46.640 for doing this work because as a circus director, he 0:16:46.720 --> 0:16:49.360 could get in a little buy wing plane and he 0:16:49.360 --> 0:16:52.720 could fly all over the place under cover of doing 0:16:52.800 --> 0:16:55.680 circus business. I don't think he was like standing on 0:16:55.760 --> 0:16:57.920 the plane and eating a banana, like on the wings 0:16:57.920 --> 0:17:00.560 of the planary, like doing tricks. He had to get 0:17:00.560 --> 0:17:03.520 around as a circus guy, and this was pretty good cover. 0:17:03.680 --> 0:17:07.520 And he had some pretty dangerous missions with these flights 0:17:07.560 --> 0:17:08.160 as well. Right. 0:17:08.680 --> 0:17:13.240 Yeah, there's a couple where he was giving like six 0:17:13.320 --> 0:17:18.440 like really valuable intelligence from flying over like aircraft factories 0:17:18.480 --> 0:17:23.680 in Germany. Apparently there was one particular piece of information 0:17:24.560 --> 0:17:26.920 or I guess a bunch of information that really formed 0:17:27.280 --> 0:17:31.240 a good picture of the size of Germany's Luftwaffa, their 0:17:31.280 --> 0:17:36.760 air force, and Winston Churchill apparently used that to decide 0:17:36.920 --> 0:17:39.439 whether he was on the side of appeasing Hitler or 0:17:39.760 --> 0:17:42.679 fighting Hitler. And I guess because of the build up 0:17:42.720 --> 0:17:44.960 of this air force, he was like, we can't let 0:17:45.000 --> 0:17:48.560 this guy keep continuing. So he was against appeasement, thanks 0:17:48.680 --> 0:17:52.240 largely to Bertram Mills intel that he was directly giving him. 0:17:52.720 --> 0:17:54.760 Yeah, and this was you know, this is dangerous work. 0:17:54.920 --> 0:17:57.600 He wasn't just flying around. I think in nineteen thirty six, 0:17:58.280 --> 0:18:03.200 which was the year he started the Naze courts executed 0:18:03.240 --> 0:18:07.760 by decapitation, usually with an axe, six spies that were caught. 0:18:07.840 --> 0:18:10.199 So he had a lot on the line as a 0:18:10.240 --> 0:18:12.240 circus director, but he was doing it for I guess 0:18:12.280 --> 0:18:13.040 love of country. 0:18:13.359 --> 0:18:16.280 Yeah, and a circus director is understating it. He was 0:18:16.320 --> 0:18:19.240 known as King of the Modern Circus, like he was 0:18:19.280 --> 0:18:22.600 a really big deal outside of his spying activities. It 0:18:22.680 --> 0:18:25.040 would have astounded anybody who had ever heard of him 0:18:25.040 --> 0:18:25.920 that he was a spy. 0:18:26.480 --> 0:18:28.680 Yeah. I think circus director fit better on a card 0:18:28.720 --> 0:18:32.040 than King of the Modern Circus, right, probably. And he 0:18:32.040 --> 0:18:33.680 was an understated guy, you know, he didn't he wasn't 0:18:33.680 --> 0:18:34.640 playing boyant. 0:18:34.680 --> 0:18:37.760 No there you ca Yeah. It would have been one 0:18:37.760 --> 0:18:39.720 of those things where it starts out normal, but as 0:18:39.720 --> 0:18:41.359 it gets closer to the edge of the card, they 0:18:41.359 --> 0:18:43.200 start cramping letters together. 0:18:43.960 --> 0:18:46.119 Like a poster made for elementary school. 0:18:46.080 --> 0:18:50.280 Right for the science fair, exactly what happens with vinegar 0:18:50.359 --> 0:18:51.879 and baking soda. 0:18:52.359 --> 0:18:55.960 Yeah, I still do that sometimes when I have to. 0:18:56.000 --> 0:18:57.879 I don't. I'm not great at spacing like that. It 0:18:57.920 --> 0:19:00.800 has to do with your brain, I think specialwareness and stuff. 0:19:00.960 --> 0:19:03.080 Yeah, I'm not that good at it either. Don't worry. 0:19:03.320 --> 0:19:06.040 All right, good, So for a long time, not a 0:19:06.119 --> 0:19:10.520 lot happened, and then World War two broke out, and 0:19:10.920 --> 0:19:13.160 World War two. By this time, remember m I six 0:19:13.200 --> 0:19:15.680 had proved its metal and worth in World War One. 0:19:16.080 --> 0:19:18.159 You had a whole decade or two where it just 0:19:18.240 --> 0:19:21.520 kept proving it's worth, and so by the time the 0:19:21.840 --> 0:19:24.560 war broke out, you would think that they would be 0:19:24.680 --> 0:19:26.879 totally ready for this. But I don't know if it 0:19:26.920 --> 0:19:29.639 caught them off guard or they were just allowed to 0:19:31.119 --> 0:19:35.119 kind of be pruned in peacetime. I don't know. But 0:19:35.440 --> 0:19:37.679 it took them a minute to get their footing and 0:19:37.960 --> 0:19:43.920 regenerate intelligent like human intelligence networks in Europe. But they 0:19:44.040 --> 0:19:47.360 apparently got their footing fairly quickly and were very successful 0:19:47.760 --> 0:19:51.479 and basically generating a lot of intelligence coming out of 0:19:51.480 --> 0:19:55.359 different countries, including occupied countries in Europe during World War Two. 0:19:56.040 --> 0:19:59.680 Yeah, it seems like that was the slower part. Where 0:19:59.720 --> 0:20:02.440 we know they did a lot better was at Bletchley 0:20:02.480 --> 0:20:06.240 Park with their signals intelligence. You know, we talked about 0:20:06.240 --> 0:20:10.800 the code breaking and Alan Turing and the what was 0:20:10.800 --> 0:20:14.760 it a Enigma machine? Yes, that's right, some great episodes 0:20:14.800 --> 0:20:18.000 from our distant past. But they were kind of crushing 0:20:18.000 --> 0:20:22.040 it over there. They did, finally during this period, start 0:20:22.080 --> 0:20:26.160 to have some women working there that were not just secretaries. 0:20:27.040 --> 0:20:29.880 There was one overseen by a woman named Kathleen pettigrew 0:20:30.720 --> 0:20:34.520 communications at least between home and field agents. She was 0:20:34.640 --> 0:20:36.480 very proud of her work and said I was basically 0:20:36.600 --> 0:20:38.760 Miss Moneypenny, but with more power. Yeah. 0:20:38.840 --> 0:20:42.840 She was the chief at the time secretary and he 0:20:42.880 --> 0:20:45.240 imbued her with enough power to run a program. So 0:20:45.800 --> 0:20:48.280 a lot of people say she was probably the inspiration 0:20:48.400 --> 0:20:51.560 for Ian Fleming's Miss Moneypenny, who James Bond used to 0:20:51.600 --> 0:20:52.280 like to flirt with. 0:20:52.840 --> 0:20:54.919 I think a lot of people from this age were like, 0:20:55.280 --> 0:20:58.280 basically or I'm Cue or I'm Miss money Penny. 0:20:58.600 --> 0:21:00.840 Right. My dad used to go around telling people he 0:21:00.960 --> 0:21:01.159 was Q. 0:21:02.440 --> 0:21:03.160 Are you serious? 0:21:03.359 --> 0:21:07.960 No, that would have been so impairsed. 0:21:08.520 --> 0:21:10.760 Well, see, that was a tough one. I'm giving myself 0:21:10.760 --> 0:21:13.240 a break there because I believe in almost anything you 0:21:13.280 --> 0:21:14.120 tell me about your dad. 0:21:14.200 --> 0:21:16.120 Yeah, it's true, the herbal Elvis. 0:21:16.440 --> 0:21:16.840 Yeah. 0:21:16.920 --> 0:21:20.159 Yeah. And speaking of Q, it turns out that so 0:21:20.240 --> 0:21:23.640 they were. They did kind of develop devices, like you said, 0:21:23.680 --> 0:21:26.200 figuring out ways to hide compasses and maps to get 0:21:26.240 --> 0:21:29.840 to POW's in World War One. But the idea of 0:21:29.920 --> 0:21:33.800 their research and development and technology branch that produced someone 0:21:33.920 --> 0:21:36.280 like Q that we all who know that James Bond 0:21:36.320 --> 0:21:40.000 movies are familiar with, that actually came from them absorbing 0:21:40.480 --> 0:21:44.040 a rival agency that was developed in World War Two 0:21:44.320 --> 0:21:47.119 that m I six did not like one bit at first, 0:21:47.480 --> 0:21:52.520 the Special Operations Executive or the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. 0:21:53.520 --> 0:21:57.000 Yeah, it seemed like and it may just be like 0:21:58.560 --> 0:22:01.240 teenage boying this thing, but it seemed like they got 0:22:01.320 --> 0:22:03.880