# Former British Intelligence Officer | Julien Fisher | Ep. 408

An episode of [The Team House](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1492797340), 25 Apr 2026, 2 h 01 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/clrtpod.com/m/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/71626022/mi6_julien_fisher_spreaker.mp3

Former British intelligence officer Julian Fisher joins us to break down the real world of espionage, from MI6 tradecraft and denied-area operations to private intelligence work across Africa and conflict zones like Congo and Sierra Leone. He shares how intelligence officers build cover, recruit allies, and survive dangerous situations where a single decision can mean life or death. Grab Julien's book here: https://a.co/d/02yafSL6 https://julesfisher.com/ https://uk.linkedin.com/in/julian-fisher-67161920?trk=public_post_feed-actor-name Today's Sponsors: Spies Lies & Nukes Conference⬇️ https://www.spiesliesnukes.com/ Use the code "teamhouse" at checkout for an exclusive offer GhostBed ⬇️ https://www.ghostbed.com/house FOR 10% off! Wild Alaskan Company⬇️ https://wildalaskan.com/HOUSE Get $35 off your first order! For ad free video and audio and access to live streams and Eyes On Geopolitics...JOIN OUR PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouse To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -live shows and asking guest questions -ad free audio and video -early access to shows -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Support the show here:⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse ___________________________________________________ PRE ORDER JACK'S NEW BOOK "THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN" ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/803651/the-most-dangerous-man-by-jack-murphy/paperback/ Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️ https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured __________________________________ Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/ —————————————————————— Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️ https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouse Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Team House Discord: ⬇️ https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: ⬇️ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 "Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio" 00:00 — Start 01:00 — British intelligence, MI6, and the Official Secrets Act 05:20 — Childhood in Birmingham, family tragedy, and early hardship 11:30 — The Iranian nurse who taught Julian the power of allies 15:00 — Getting into Oxford and building social capital 20:00 — Winston Churchill’s grandson and learning influence early 27:20 — City of London finance, class, and becoming a chameleon 35:30 — Leaving finance for British intelligence 38:00 — Iraq War intelligence, David Kelly, and resigning on principle 45:30 — Moving into private intelligence and corporate security 49:00 — Tim Spicer, Sandline, Sierra Leone, and private military myths 55:00 — Head of Africa: Congo, mining clients, and ground-truth intel 59:50 — AK-47 in Kinshasa: using cover to survive 01:28:45 — Somalia, a mortar attack, and surviving by minutes 01:46:15 — How Think Like a Spy turns tradecraft into leadership lessons 01:51:40 — Final thoughts, book info, and where to find Julien Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Hey, folks, I want to tell all of our listeners
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[1:14] Speaker 1: recently at an event where Valerie Plaims spoke specifically about
[1:19] Speaker 1: nuclear proliferation and anti proliferation treaties. She's a great speaker,
[1:25] Speaker 1: puts on a great event and I think everyone will
[1:27] Speaker 1: really enjoy this. And again, to get tickets, they're on
[1:30] Speaker 1: sale at spieslisanukes dot com. Use the Code Teamhouse to
[1:34] Speaker 1: check out and you'll get an exclusive listener discount. Hey everyone,
[1:40] Speaker 1: this is episode four hundred and eight of The Teamhouse.
[1:43] Speaker 1: I'm Jack Murphy here with today's guest, Julian Fisher. He
[1:47] Speaker 1: is a former British intelligence official and he is the
[1:50] Speaker 1: author of Think Like a Spy, which we're going to
[1:53] Speaker 1: talk all about in this interview. Julian, thanks for joining
[1:57] Speaker 1: us on the show today.
[1:59] Speaker 2: Great. Thanks for having me Jack, It's a real pleasure.
[2:02] Speaker 2: I'm an esteemed company. I know you've had some of
[2:04] Speaker 2: my former colleagues and amazing writers like I s Berry
[2:10] Speaker 2: on your on your show, so this this feels like
[2:13] Speaker 2: a great privilege.
[2:14] Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you. Yeah.
[2:16] Speaker 1: She put us in touch with so many people. I
[2:19] Speaker 1: think a few friends of friends have heard from the agency.
[2:21] Speaker 1: We have booked actually in the future as well. Great, Yeah,
[2:25] Speaker 1: she's she's great and yeah. So I what is it
[2:31] Speaker 1: that we're allowed to say about your background? Julian you
[2:34] Speaker 1: told me a kind of funny anecdote about uh, you know,
[2:38] Speaker 1: if you were a Walter Midti, you'd be able to
[2:40] Speaker 1: say much more.
[2:42] Speaker 2: That's about the size of it, Jack, Yes, Okay. So
[2:45] Speaker 2: there's a peculiarity of the legal system here in the UK,
[2:49] Speaker 2: which I'll just very briefly explain that there's no there's
[2:53] Speaker 2: no crime of impersonating an intelligence officer. There's a crime
[2:57] Speaker 2: of impersonating a police officer, but not of impersonating an
[3:01] Speaker 2: intelligence officer. On the other hand, if someone has worked
[3:06] Speaker 2: in one of the three letter acronym services and they
[3:10] Speaker 2: avowed themselves, that is arguably a criminal act and our
[3:13] Speaker 2: Official Secrets Act. So that leads to a paradox that
[3:17] Speaker 2: if somebody says that they worked around I six and
[3:20] Speaker 2: they didn't, then they are not breaking any law. But
[3:24] Speaker 2: if they did, they may well be and they may
[3:26] Speaker 2: face sanction. So I just get around that by not
[3:29] Speaker 2: saying that I worked for six I get it, And
[3:33] Speaker 2: after I didn't work for them, I went on to
[3:37] Speaker 2: work in the private sector, initially for an extraordinary man
[3:43] Speaker 2: called Letender, Colonel Tim Spicer, who ran an organization called
[3:46] Speaker 2: Easiest Defense Services. So I was his point man in
[3:49] Speaker 2: Africa for many years before I went on to set
[3:53] Speaker 2: up my own private intelligence boutique called Afghan Integrity Services,
[3:57] Speaker 2: and then wrote this book Think Like a Spy Master
[4:02] Speaker 2: The Nine Secret Skills of Influence and Leadership, which came
[4:07] Speaker 2: out in the US only a few months ago. In
[4:09] Speaker 2: fount at the beginning of this year.
[4:12] Speaker 1: Tim Spicer, if I recall correctly, he was the guy
[4:15] Speaker 1: that was like kind of knee deep in EQUATORI or
[4:17] Speaker 1: Guinea and all that, right.
[4:19] Speaker 2: Amongst other things, Tim is an extraordinary character. I mean,
[4:23] Speaker 2: if you can get him onto your show, then I
[4:26] Speaker 2: highly recommend him. He's quite a figure in the private security,
[4:31] Speaker 2: private military world, and he's done some amazingly good stuff
[4:36] Speaker 2: over the years. I'm a big fan of Tim's. But
[4:39] Speaker 2: you're right that there was some controversy in his career,
[4:42] Speaker 2: including an Equatorial Guinea question marks about his involvement through
[4:47] Speaker 2: his former organization Sandline in West Africa in Sarah Leone.
[4:52] Speaker 2: But you know, I note him well. I believe him
[4:56] Speaker 2: to be a man of great integrity, and I think
[4:58] Speaker 2: what he's done under the auspices of his various organizations
[5:03] Speaker 2: tends on the tends on the whole to be a
[5:06] Speaker 2: force for good rather than anything else. And in fact,
[5:09] Speaker 2: I recently gave another podcast or I won't name it here,
[5:13] Speaker 2: in which I talked about the mercenary activity.
[5:18] Speaker 3: Broadly speaking, you can tell people where you're find.
[5:20] Speaker 2: That that's not True Spies. The True Spies podcast. It's
[5:25] Speaker 2: a member's only edition of that, but I think it's
[5:27] Speaker 2: worth subscribing for the for their output generally. And in
[5:34] Speaker 2: that I was talking about how the world of mercenaries,
[5:37] Speaker 2: the world of private contractors, military contractors, is actually much misunderstood,
[5:41] Speaker 2: and I think one of the saddest things is that
[5:44] Speaker 2: the good that is done by some of some of
[5:46] Speaker 2: those contractors, some of those private military types, is never
[5:52] Speaker 2: really recognized. We all we always talk about the controversies
[5:55] Speaker 2: and we never recognize the heroism, and there is a
[5:57] Speaker 2: great deal of heroism. But I think that's a set
[6:00] Speaker 2: subject for another day maybe, or maybe it's a book
[6:02] Speaker 2: that I need to write.
[6:03] Speaker 1: Yeah, we can touch upon that in a little bit.
[6:06] Speaker 1: We had We've had Evan Barlow on the show Your
[6:10] Speaker 1: Amazing and you know, I'm I love his book that
[6:15] Speaker 1: he wrote. He wrote a memoir that I really recommend
[6:17] Speaker 1: to people. But we'll get to see.
[6:23] Speaker 2: Sorry i've lost you, Jack. No, So I don't know
[6:34] Speaker 2: what's going on here. I'm not getting your tool testing testing. Yeah, okay,
[6:41] Speaker 2: you hear me, now I can.
[6:44] Speaker 1: Okay, strange, Okay, So to start at the beginning, Julian,
[6:49] Speaker 1: and tell us a little bit about your upbringing, your background,
[6:53] Speaker 1: and how that kind of propelled you towards governmental service.
[6:57] Speaker 2: Great question. It was the last thing I ever expected
[7:00] Speaker 2: to do, to be honest. I was born in the
[7:02] Speaker 2: Midlands of the UK, in a place called Birmingham, the
[7:07] Speaker 2: country's second city, and my upbringing was I mean, it
[7:11] Speaker 2: was a fantastic upbringing. You many ways. My parents were
[7:14] Speaker 2: amazing characters. They were incredibly clever, they were incredibly creative,
[7:21] Speaker 2: and they helped to foster those skills in their family.
[7:27] Speaker 2: And I was one of seven. But it is fair
[7:29] Speaker 2: to say that we were somewhat financially disadvantaged. So I
[7:33] Speaker 2: was brought up in circumstances which were occasionally a bit
[7:37] Speaker 2: of a struggle. You know. We would go to bed cold,
[7:40] Speaker 2: sometimes go to bed hungry, not for want of effort
[7:43] Speaker 2: on the part of my parents. But it was the
[7:45] Speaker 2: nineteen seventies and the economy here was in the grip
[7:49] Speaker 2: of a recession. You know. It was the era I
[7:54] Speaker 2: guess that some people refer to as a winter of discontent,
[7:58] Speaker 2: A lot of strikes, a lot of shortages, three day week.
[8:03] Speaker 2: So the circumstances of my upbringing were not particularly auspicious,
[8:09] Speaker 2: and they were also companied by a great deal of grief.
[8:13] Speaker 2: Because when I was eleven on my very first day
[8:16] Speaker 2: at school, and that sounds like quite old, a bit
[8:21] Speaker 2: too old to be having my first day at school,
[8:23] Speaker 2: but for various reasons I won't go into, my parents
[8:26] Speaker 2: elected to educators at home, homeschoolers until the age of eleven.
[8:32] Speaker 2: And on my very first day at school, I came
[8:33] Speaker 2: home to the news that my only sister, my oldest sibling,
[8:38] Speaker 2: had killed herself after a very distressing illness diagnosed as
[8:44] Speaker 2: paranoid schizophrenia. And because the age of eleven, that's a
[8:49] Speaker 2: remarkable loss to have to face, and there's a blindness,
[8:55] Speaker 2: I think sometimes to infant grief. Of My parents were
[9:01] Speaker 2: absolutely beside themselves with grief, and they were having to
[9:06] Speaker 2: look after themselves, and they did a great job of
[9:08] Speaker 2: looking after the rest of us. But there is, you know,
[9:10] Speaker 2: I think there's always a hierarchy of grief, and as
[9:12] Speaker 2: an eleven year old boy, I'm not sure I felt
[9:16] Speaker 2: I had much right to show that grief. And as
[9:21] Speaker 2: a response to this, I became very emotionally drained, I suppose,
[9:31] Speaker 2: and about a year later, having suffered about a year
[9:34] Speaker 2: of bullying at school, I decided to the best way
[9:39] Speaker 2: to put an enta all this was to walk in
[9:40] Speaker 2: front of a moving vehicle, and luckily I survived that impact,
[9:47] Speaker 2: but it did hospitalize me for a year, and I
[9:51] Speaker 2: have to say that that was probably the most important
[9:54] Speaker 2: year of my life, and it really turned me around.
[9:57] Speaker 2: And what happened was there was a young nurse there
[10:01] Speaker 2: called Maya, and she was an Iranian refugee, which sounds
[10:06] Speaker 2: it is incredibly topical now, but of course, as you'll know,
[10:12] Speaker 2: the Iranian Revolution took place in nineteen seventy nine when
[10:16] Speaker 2: I was nine, and I was in hospital in nineteen
[10:20] Speaker 2: eighty two, nineteen eighty three and Maya had fled from
[10:26] Speaker 2: Tehran with her mother after her father had been disappeared.
[10:29] Speaker 2: He was a counter revolutionary, so he was taken into
[10:32] Speaker 2: custody one night, and it was presumed by her that
[10:37] Speaker 2: he had died being killed, assassinated. We know that's something
[10:42] Speaker 2: that is not uncommon in Iran. But Maya was an
[10:48] Speaker 2: extraordinary character, and she had every intention of following her
[10:52] Speaker 2: father's footsteps because he'd been a doctor. So she was
[10:57] Speaker 2: absolutely hell bent on becoming a nurse. The problem was
[11:03] Speaker 2: she didn't really speak very much English, and so she
[11:06] Speaker 2: failed her examinations at school, which you were the first
[11:10] Speaker 2: basis on which to be accepted trainers and nurse and
[11:14] Speaker 2: was in despair when one of her teachers had a
[11:18] Speaker 2: good idea of getting hold of universities which taught Farsi,
[11:23] Speaker 2: the language in Persian and now Iran. Through so and
[11:31] Speaker 2: introducing her to students of that language. And through that
[11:34] Speaker 2: introduction she met a young man called Dad, half Israeli,
[11:38] Speaker 2: half brit and they would meet day daily during a
[11:45] Speaker 2: summer break, and they'd speak for one hour in Farsi
[11:47] Speaker 2: and one hour in English. To give her the ability
[11:52] Speaker 2: and the skill and the practice to become fluent in English,
[11:56] Speaker 2: which she did over the course of a few months,
[11:58] Speaker 2: and then she retook her exams. But in the process
[12:07] Speaker 2: of having to retake they ran out of money. Her
[12:12] Speaker 2: mother ran out of money, and she was proposing to
[12:15] Speaker 2: send her into the workplace as a cleaner or some such,
[12:18] Speaker 2: which is how her mother was earning money. And that's
[12:21] Speaker 2: when Dan's father stepped in. And Dan's father, who was
[12:25] Speaker 2: a local businessman, basically said that he would support Maya
[12:31] Speaker 2: through college to make sure she got the qualification she
[12:35] Speaker 2: needed so long as she continued to work with his
[12:38] Speaker 2: son Dan to help in with his university course. And
[12:43] Speaker 2: that arrangement worked, and hence by the time I met her,
[12:47] Speaker 2: she was just embarking as a student NUS and she
[12:54] Speaker 2: said to me words I'll never forget. She said to me, Look,
[13:02] Speaker 2: what you must remember is allies are the most important
[13:06] Speaker 2: thing you can have in life. They will make all
[13:08] Speaker 2: the difference and you must never forget that. And I
[13:11] Speaker 2: never have. And I realized from that day forward that
[13:15] Speaker 2: actually there's something that some people are born to and
[13:19] Speaker 2: it's called social capital. You know. They have parents, they
[13:23] Speaker 2: have a wider social circle, they have schools, they have
[13:28] Speaker 2: communities that can help them to navigate their way through
[13:32] Speaker 2: the complexities of the education system to get the loans
[13:36] Speaker 2: that they need to qualify to get a degree, to
[13:39] Speaker 2: get onto the jobs market. And if you're not born
[13:43] Speaker 2: with that, you have to create it. And the way
[13:46] Speaker 2: to create it is to build alliances. And so I
[13:50] Speaker 2: became quite a debt at building alliances with people who
[13:54] Speaker 2: not in a manipulative sense, but people that I assessed
[13:58] Speaker 2: would be able to help me in my own journey,
[14:02] Speaker 2: a journey from this financially deprived background eventually onto Oxford University.
[14:10] Speaker 2: From there into the financial sector. Well, I can't say
[14:16] Speaker 2: I'm a bit of a square pegging a round hole
[14:19] Speaker 2: in the financial sector. So I then moved into international relations,
[14:23] Speaker 2: if I can put it like that, and the rest
[14:26] Speaker 2: is history.
[14:27] Speaker 1: Before we move on, Julian, I mean, Oxford obviously is
[14:31] Speaker 1: you know, the Ivy League of the UK, it's their
[14:33] Speaker 1: top score. As you say, you come from an economically
[14:37] Speaker 1: disadvantaged background, what was your journey coming from, you know,
[14:40] Speaker 1: being that twelve year old kid in the hospital bed
[14:42] Speaker 1: to gaining admittance into Oxford, which we should also point
[14:47] Speaker 1: out it's like the indoctrination Center for British Spies.
[14:50] Speaker 3: They all go through there, don't they.
[14:52] Speaker 2: More Cambridge actually Cambridge, yes there is. Oxford is famous
[14:58] Speaker 2: for producing prime ministers here. I'm not sure that's a
[15:01] Speaker 2: necessarily good thing. I think the vast majority of our
[15:05] Speaker 2: post war prime ministers have been graduates and the same
[15:07] Speaker 2: subject that I took, which is ppe philosophy, politics and economics.
[15:13] Speaker 2: And Cambridge is quite famous for producing some dubious characters,
[15:17] Speaker 2: such as philby Burgess. Rightly, Cambridge five. I have to
[15:25] Speaker 2: ask your question, I have readers Digest to thank. It
[15:30] Speaker 2: sounds a bit odd. I don't know if you even
[15:33] Speaker 2: remember what Digest was. Yeah, it was I think a
[15:37] Speaker 2: weekly or a monthly publication which would provide abridged versions
[15:44] Speaker 2: of novels. And I didn't read those. But what I
[15:48] Speaker 2: discovered somewhere along the line was that every so often
[15:50] Speaker 2: I'd have IQ tests self scored IQ tests, and I
[15:56] Speaker 2: became a bit fixated on them and discovered that I
[15:58] Speaker 2: was scoring very high, highly on these tests whenever I
[16:03] Speaker 2: had the table of piled high with copies of the
[16:07] Speaker 2: Reader's Digest, which i'd flick through looking for these IQ tests.
[16:11] Speaker 2: Eventually discovered that there was actually a lot cleverer than
[16:14] Speaker 2: I thought I was, or I thought I must be
[16:17] Speaker 2: because I was scoring highly on these tests. And so
[16:19] Speaker 2: I set about when I came out of hospital, I
[16:26] Speaker 2: insisted that I changed school because I didn't feel the
[16:28] Speaker 2: school I was at had the right academic profile for
[16:33] Speaker 2: what I wanted. And then I I suppose I said
[16:39] Speaker 2: about making allies of teachers, so I would I had
[16:43] Speaker 2: a particular aptitude for English, as it happened, so I
[16:45] Speaker 2: would always make sure that I had a good relationship
[16:48] Speaker 2: with my English teachers, and they they would take time
[16:51] Speaker 2: out of their work, out of their personal time, to
[16:57] Speaker 2: help me to become a better writer, to help me
[16:59] Speaker 2: to become a better public speaker, a better debater. And
[17:04] Speaker 2: I think that was very valuable when it came to
[17:09] Speaker 2: the process of getting into Oxford, because what they looked
[17:11] Speaker 2: for there really isn't necessarily a traditional education in Latin,
[17:19] Speaker 2: Greek and all the rest of it, although there's still
[17:21] Speaker 2: an element of that, but they look for an ability
[17:25] Speaker 2: to think for yourself. They look for an ability to
[17:27] Speaker 2: form arguments cogently and to communicate them well. And through
[17:32] Speaker 2: my alliances with two particular English teachers, one from the
[17:35] Speaker 2: school I went on to and then I moved again
[17:37] Speaker 2: for my final two years at this remarkable English teacher
[17:41] Speaker 2: called Johnny Cleek in my final two years, and he
[17:46] Speaker 2: actually took time his personal time to coach me in
[17:50] Speaker 2: the Oxford University examination papers. So he was an early ally.
[17:54] Speaker 2: And I you know, if I would have looked at
[17:57] Speaker 2: those papers without his guidance and have basically been flund
[18:00] Speaker 2: but he taught me through it on top of his
[18:04] Speaker 2: own curricular work, and I'm forever grateful to him for that.
[18:09] Speaker 2: So it was an early exercise in recognizing, yes, of
[18:13] Speaker 2: course Oxford are looking for an a raw academic ability.
[18:18] Speaker 2: Of course it is, but there's lots of people with
[18:20] Speaker 2: that raw academic ability, and they're looking for something else
[18:23] Speaker 2: on top of that, which is an ability, as I say,
[18:26] Speaker 2: to form cojun arguments and communicate them well. And I
[18:30] Speaker 2: had my early allies, particularly in the form of Johnny Cleek,
[18:34] Speaker 2: to thank for that.
[18:37] Speaker 3: And that's what got you through those admission exams.
[18:40] Speaker 2: Yeah, admission exams and then interviews. So the interviews are
[18:46] Speaker 2: really were then. I think that they're now regardless less important.
[18:49] Speaker 2: But back then, and talking quite a long time ago,
[18:52] Speaker 2: the interview process was rigorous and frightening, but in a
[19:01] Speaker 2: way very stimulating because you know, you were being I
[19:05] Speaker 2: sort of expected to go in to be asked questions
[19:08] Speaker 2: of a fact, but actually they were challenging see whether
[19:11] Speaker 2: I could think on my feet, And that was a
[19:15] Speaker 2: that was quite a bracing experience. And without Johnny's input,
[19:19] Speaker 2: I don't think I'd have performed as well as I did.
[19:23] Speaker 1: And then, you know, speaking of your upbringing in you know,
[19:26] Speaker 1: growing up poor, it actually makes a lot of sense
[19:29] Speaker 1: that you pushed yourself in this direction in towards finance
[19:32] Speaker 1: because you didn't want to have to worry about that anymore.
[19:37] Speaker 2: You make a very astute points. I mean, I came
[19:42] Speaker 2: out of university having not a clue what I wanted
[19:45] Speaker 2: to do. If I if I'm honest, I knew I
[19:49] Speaker 2: was quite interested in politics, but I wasn't one of
[19:53] Speaker 2: those people who wanted to get into the political system.
[19:55] Speaker 2: Early on, I sort of took the view that I
[19:59] Speaker 2: wanted to do something else to be qualified to be
[20:02] Speaker 2: a politician, and I stand by that view. In fact,
[20:07] Speaker 2: I think we see today that the quality of politicians,
[20:10] Speaker 2: particularly in the UK, is quite low because so many
[20:13] Speaker 2: people come into politics for politics sake rather than having
[20:16] Speaker 2: life experience. So I was interested in politics. I was
[20:21] Speaker 2: interested in the world at large, international events, affairs, but
[20:28] Speaker 2: I didn't really know what to do with that. And
[20:29] Speaker 2: of course, as you say, I was quite keen by
[20:33] Speaker 2: that point, having struggled through university with very little money,
[20:37] Speaker 2: you know, surrounded by people who came from very wealthy families.
[20:40] Speaker 2: I think it's fair to say that my priority was
[20:44] Speaker 2: to get some money. So the city was the obvious
[20:46] Speaker 2: place to go, and I was very lucky to be
[20:51] Speaker 2: interviewed to join a firm called Kazanov and Kazanov was
[20:56] Speaker 2: an extraordinary organization, extraordinary firm back in its day, since
[21:00] Speaker 2: been acquired by JP Morgan, but it was the last
[21:07] Speaker 2: independent partnerships stop breaking partnership in the city of London,
[21:12] Speaker 2: and it was very, very dominated by the aristocratic class,
[21:20] Speaker 2: to the extent that I stuck at like a sore thumb.
[21:24] Speaker 2: But I was lucky enough to be interviewed. And this
[21:29] Speaker 2: is where another story about the importance of alliances comes in,
[21:34] Speaker 2: because one of the things I did during university vacations
[21:43] Speaker 2: was to work in the House of Commons and now
[21:45] Speaker 2: Parliament as a researcher initially for an MP. I won't
[21:51] Speaker 2: name the MP in question, but he was. He was
[21:57] Speaker 2: a great guy, but it didn't have the profile that
[22:00] Speaker 2: I was looking for. So what I wanted I had
[22:04] Speaker 2: it in mind. And this is going to make me
[22:05] Speaker 2: sound like a terribly scheming young man, and perhaps I was,
[22:10] Speaker 2: but I had it in mind that I wanted by
[22:12] Speaker 2: the time I left university to have a very highly
[22:17] Speaker 2: recognizable name as a reference. And so I sat down.
[22:22] Speaker 2: I went through what I described as a targeting exercise
[22:25] Speaker 2: in the book the first stage of the agent recruitment cycle.
[22:30] Speaker 2: I sat down in the House of Commons library and
[22:34] Speaker 2: went through the entire list of MPs looking for two things.
[22:39] Speaker 2: One was somebody who was very high profile and somebody
[22:42] Speaker 2: who had a very small support team, in other words,
[22:47] Speaker 2: that might be in the market for a researcher or
[22:52] Speaker 2: parliamentary system. And one name jumped out of me, and
[22:57] Speaker 2: it was Winston Churchill. Now not the original Winston church
[23:02] Speaker 2: I'm old, but I'm not that old, his grandson, but
[23:07] Speaker 2: Winston Churchill. Nonetheless, Winston Churchill MP. And so I set
[23:11] Speaker 2: about cultivating Winston. First of all, I had to get
[23:17] Speaker 2: alongside him, find out where his office was, and quite
[23:22] Speaker 2: close to his office was one of those old Reutter's
[23:24] Speaker 2: ticker tape machines which would spew out the daily headlines
[23:30] Speaker 2: on spools of paper that would then just collect on
[23:32] Speaker 2: the floor. It's quite it's so archay, quite amusing. But
[23:37] Speaker 2: one of these was sighted just outside of his office,
[23:40] Speaker 2: so I would just make a point of hovering around there,
[23:42] Speaker 2: apparently reading the headlines. And I made sure I knew
[23:46] Speaker 2: from his register of interest what his external interests were
[23:51] Speaker 2: and what his policy areas of interest were. And then
[23:54] Speaker 2: if I ever saw a headline and he was around,
[23:57] Speaker 2: I would draw his attention to that headline if it
[23:59] Speaker 2: was something i'd I knew he'd be interested in. And eventually,
[24:02] Speaker 2: as a result of this, we got chatting and I
[24:05] Speaker 2: said to him, look, you know, do you need a researcher,
[24:09] Speaker 2: And he's, well, I don't, but I do need a
[24:10] Speaker 2: speech writer. So I became Winston Churchill's speech writer. And
[24:17] Speaker 2: I had to say I wasn't terribly good at it. Actually,
[24:19] Speaker 2: I didn't really know at that point about how to
[24:21] Speaker 2: construct a speech. I only didn't really know how to
[24:24] Speaker 2: construct an effective parliamentary speech in the sumwhere I don't
[24:28] Speaker 2: know if you know, there's a record of parliamentary proceedings
[24:31] Speaker 2: in the UK called Hansard, and there's somewhere in my
[24:36] Speaker 2: collection of books the handsard from the day when Winston
[24:41] Speaker 2: delivered one of my speeches, and the response from his
[24:45] Speaker 2: opposite number was, I don't know where the honorable gentleman,
[24:50] Speaker 2: I don't know who writes the honorable gentleman's speeches for him,
[24:54] Speaker 2: but if I were him, I'd look for a new one.
[24:56] Speaker 2: And that was me terribly insulting. Winston sent me a
[25:01] Speaker 2: copy of that, but he laughed about it and said,
[25:03] Speaker 2: you know, actually that's just the customs for us, the
[25:06] Speaker 2: jousting of parliamentary procedure. And we became quite good friends,
[25:11] Speaker 2: to the extent that I was able to put down
[25:13] Speaker 2: Winston Churchill MP as one of my referees. And this
[25:16] Speaker 2: was because my boss at Kasnov, lovely chap called John
[25:22] Speaker 2: said to me at some point, as we sat opposite
[25:25] Speaker 2: each other just chatting idly, he said, well, I had
[25:27] Speaker 2: to offer you a job anyway, and I said, well,
[25:29] Speaker 2: why is that? And he said, because I wanted to
[25:30] Speaker 2: phone the House to Commons and ask to speak to
[25:32] Speaker 2: Winston Churchill. And I like to think you were joking
[25:38] Speaker 2: but maybe not. Well, it was enough to get me
[25:43] Speaker 2: into the city and then it sort of gave me.
[25:45] Speaker 2: It gave me a springboard.
[25:47] Speaker 1: The way you describe it, you know, is like, you know,
[25:50] Speaker 1: maybe you were scheming or manipulating. But again I think
[25:54] Speaker 1: that you know, when you come from poverty. The other
[25:58] Speaker 1: term you would use to describe that is survived, right,
[26:01] Speaker 1: and you had seen from a very young age what happens.
[26:04] Speaker 1: You know that not everybody makes it, and I imagine
[26:07] Speaker 1: that must have been a tremendous motivator for you when
[26:10] Speaker 1: you were young.
[26:12] Speaker 2: It's certainly incentivizing to know that you have two you
[26:16] Speaker 2: don't have that network of social capital to rely on. Yeah,
[26:20] Speaker 2: I think a lot of people don't understand the importance
[26:23] Speaker 2: of that. I mean, I quite fond of saying it.
[26:25] Speaker 2: You know, what you know is important, but it's not
[26:27] Speaker 2: just what you know, it's who you know. And we
[26:31] Speaker 2: can control those bits of that equation. You know, you
[26:33] Speaker 2: can control who you know and you can control what
[26:38] Speaker 2: you know. So of course I would say to all
[26:40] Speaker 2: young people, focus on getting the best education you can,
[26:46] Speaker 2: but don't neglect the other side of it. You build
[26:48] Speaker 2: that nework of alliances, and people are often surprised that
[26:54] Speaker 2: those who have successful in life often want to give back,
[26:58] Speaker 2: and so this isn't this is manipulative. I don't think
[27:01] Speaker 2: it's a case of exploiting somebody asking for help. Asking
[27:09] Speaker 2: for support is not exploitation if you're clear about what
[27:12] Speaker 2: you're doing. Many people, and Winston is one of these,
[27:19] Speaker 2: love rest them. Many people in his position are quite
[27:23] Speaker 2: keen to have the opportunity to give a helping hand
[27:27] Speaker 2: to younger people. So I always say, just you know, ask,
[27:30] Speaker 2: don't be afraid to ask, because the last you can
[27:32] Speaker 2: get is the no.
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[30:57] Speaker 2: Bye, and often you won't get to know you'll get enthusiastic,
[31:03] Speaker 2: wholehearted support, and if you think about it in a way,
[31:06] Speaker 2: that's giving something that's a mutually beneficial relationship. Because I
[31:12] Speaker 2: know it now as a I've got to the stage
[31:15] Speaker 2: in my life where people will ask me to talk
[31:18] Speaker 2: to their friends children about their careers and it gives
[31:21] Speaker 2: me an enormous sense of fulfillment, you know, to do
[31:26] Speaker 2: that to help a young person, It's partly why I
[31:28] Speaker 2: wrote the book. It's I mean, I think it's a
[31:30] Speaker 2: book that anybody will benefit from at any stage in
[31:33] Speaker 2: their life. But Charles Cumming, the spy writer, said of
[31:36] Speaker 2: it that he wished it was the book that he
[31:39] Speaker 2: wished he'd had to hand when he was first embarking
[31:44] Speaker 2: on his career. And so part of the point of
[31:47] Speaker 2: this book is to help younger people to realize the
[31:51] Speaker 2: importance of alliance building, to realize the importance of building
[31:53] Speaker 2: social capital. It's something which incidentally, your Vice President's very
[31:57] Speaker 2: keen on. He speaks about it on a number of occasions.
[32:02] Speaker 2: Imports the social capital in respect of his own journey
[32:07] Speaker 2: from real Ohio.
[32:09] Speaker 3: I guess it worked for him.
[32:11] Speaker 2: It seems to have done, doesn't it.
[32:12] Speaker 1: Absolutely so when you go to work in the city
[32:17] Speaker 1: of London. I'm picturing in my mind of Frederick forsythe novel. Yes,
[32:24] Speaker 1: what was it really like?
[32:28] Speaker 2: Actually funny enough. I had course to reread because I
[32:31] Speaker 2: did another podcast again with True Spies on This one
[32:37] Speaker 2: hasn't been released yet, but it's coming out shortly and
[32:39] Speaker 2: it's about a story of mine when I was invited
[32:41] Speaker 2: to help plot Akouo in a West African republic, and
[32:48] Speaker 2: of course I wasn't able to do that, and I
[32:49] Speaker 2: wasn't going to do that, and actually I don't know
[32:52] Speaker 2: how to plot a coup. It's not something I've ever done.
[32:54] Speaker 2: But I did have a copy on my kindle of
[32:57] Speaker 2: Freddie Forsyth's Dogs of Walk book. It's a fantastic book.
[33:02] Speaker 2: It also has many, many pages devoted to how to
[33:05] Speaker 2: plot a coup.
[33:06] Speaker 1: It's like a it's like a manual, step by step,
[33:09] Speaker 1: this is how you do it exactly.
[33:12] Speaker 2: So that had been very helpful because I was you'll
[33:15] Speaker 2: have to listen to the podcast, but I can, let
[33:20] Speaker 2: me just say, without breaking the law, I was able
[33:23] Speaker 2: to lean very heavily on what Freddie Foresi's have written.
[33:27] Speaker 2: And Freddie's a great guy, so I knew him. He's
[33:31] Speaker 2: he was the president of a club I'm a member
[33:33] Speaker 2: of in London. Sadly I never got to tell him
[33:37] Speaker 2: that story because I think he'd have been very, very
[33:39] Speaker 2: amused by it. But anyway, I digressed. The important point
[33:44] Speaker 2: is that in preparab preparing for for that podcast, I
[33:48] Speaker 2: re read The Dogs of War. I'm always happy to
[33:54] Speaker 2: do anyway, And actually, your your description or your suggestion
[34:01] Speaker 2: that the city back in those days was was a
[34:03] Speaker 2: bit like the the portrayal of I think it's James
[34:08] Speaker 2: Manson in the book, isn't it the the entrepreneur who
[34:14] Speaker 2: funds the attempt to coup It was a bit like that,
[34:20] Speaker 2: you know, it really was. I mean, it's some very
[34:26] Speaker 2: when when I was working at Kaslov, it was very
[34:28] Speaker 2: much like a gentleman's club, you know, sort of some
[34:31] Speaker 2: plush furnishings, and everybody talk about well, before we started recording,
[34:35] Speaker 2: we were talking about how how BRIT's dress, and we
[34:39] Speaker 2: tend to dress a little. Certainly, if you're going to
[34:42] Speaker 2: be on a podcast, you you know, it might put
[34:43] Speaker 2: on a shirt, perhaps even a jacket, perhaps the tie.
[34:46] Speaker 2: At Kazanov it was double cuff shirts. Was definitely no
[34:53] Speaker 2: pocket on the shirt, you had to wear, a tie,
[34:55] Speaker 2: couldn't be too flashy, a particular cut of suit that
[35:03] Speaker 2: was expected to be handmade. Everybody came across as very
[35:07] Speaker 2: very upmarket, quite old fashioned, So yes, you're right in
[35:16] Speaker 2: that respect, it did, and it sort of felt like
[35:20] Speaker 2: there was an air of quiet power and authority in
[35:25] Speaker 2: the in the corridors of this extraordinary stockbrokers who who
[35:29] Speaker 2: worked for something like fifty percent of the foots one
[35:32] Speaker 2: hundred or foot two fifty companies, you know, they were
[35:36] Speaker 2: they were renowned as power brokers. I don't think they
[35:40] Speaker 2: were ever involved in any cupes as it happens, but
[35:42] Speaker 2: other than economic and financial coupes. But yes, there was that.
[35:46] Speaker 2: It was. It was a remarkable place for a young
[35:49] Speaker 2: man from a comprehensive school that's what we call what
[35:55] Speaker 2: you would call a public school, from in the city
[36:00] Speaker 2: Birmingham to find himself in. And it was extraordinary because
[36:05] Speaker 2: I just didn't fit in, you know. I sort of
[36:07] Speaker 2: turned up in a boxy suit which I bought as
[36:11] Speaker 2: cheaply as possible from a high street store. I had
[36:17] Speaker 2: to be taken to one side by my boss because
[36:20] Speaker 2: I took my jacket off at my desk once upon
[36:22] Speaker 2: a time, and he said, you know, we don't, just
[36:25] Speaker 2: to let you know, we don't take our jackets off
[36:26] Speaker 2: at the desk. And by the way, I'm quite glad
[36:30] Speaker 2: you did, because it means that I've just noticed you're
[36:32] Speaker 2: not wearing double cuffs, and there's a cuffs on your
[36:35] Speaker 2: shirt which you have to fold back and then you
[36:38] Speaker 2: put the cufflings in. I was wearing, Horror of horrors,
[36:41] Speaker 2: the shirt with buttons, and that was not done. So
[36:44] Speaker 2: he gave me the name of a good tailor and
[36:47] Speaker 2: sent me off. So there's that sort of sense of
[36:50] Speaker 2: very old fashioned britishness about it, and I really enjoyed
[36:55] Speaker 2: that actually. But I had to do. I had to
[36:59] Speaker 2: employ a s which later on I came to rely
[37:01] Speaker 2: on in the intelligence world, if you like, of being
[37:06] Speaker 2: a chameleon. And I had to change my accent. I
[37:09] Speaker 2: had to change the things I said, not just accent,
[37:12] Speaker 2: but idiom. And I had to become familiar with the
[37:18] Speaker 2: ways and expectations and social modes of an entirely different
[37:24] Speaker 2: social group to me. You know, I'd never heard, for instance,
[37:28] Speaker 2: of Valdis Air, which is a skiing resort, when somebody
[37:34] Speaker 2: left a note for one of my colleagues saying I'll
[37:38] Speaker 2: catch up them at Valdi's air. I had to write
[37:41] Speaker 2: it down phonetically, and I remember I got out for words,
[37:46] Speaker 2: came back and everybody's gathered around this colleague's desk laughing
[37:49] Speaker 2: at my note, and I was so ghosh, and I
[37:54] Speaker 2: could have taken that to heart, And actually I thought, well,
[37:56] Speaker 2: all that's happening here is I'm being sent a message
[37:59] Speaker 2: that I didn't take it as you're not welcome. But
[38:03] Speaker 2: you need to learn to present differently. And that's where
[38:09] Speaker 2: I developed the idea of cover. In the book, I
[38:12] Speaker 2: talk about cover not necessarily being about lying about who
[38:16] Speaker 2: you are, but presenting that version of yourself that fits
[38:22] Speaker 2: in the environment in which you find yourself or aligns
[38:25] Speaker 2: with the person that you're seeking to recruit as an
[38:27] Speaker 2: ally or in the intelligence world as an agent. It's
[38:32] Speaker 2: not I mean, of course, cover is important in the
[38:34] Speaker 2: sense of you have to pretend to be X y
[38:37] Speaker 2: Z for defensive reasons, sometimes to make yourself attractive to
[38:43] Speaker 2: the other person. But all of that's actually reasonably technical.
[38:49] Speaker 2: The really important part of cover is how you present
[38:53] Speaker 2: your personality, and in a sense it's a bit like acting.
[38:59] Speaker 2: You have to adopt an as you have to adopt
[39:03] Speaker 2: a personality which is going to be attractive to your target.
[39:08] Speaker 2: And again that sounds that sounds like it's being manipulative.
[39:11] Speaker 2: It sounds like it's being deceitful. But I don't I
[39:14] Speaker 2: don't look at it like that. You know, we're all very,
[39:16] Speaker 2: very complicated creatures. Our personalities are like Rubert's cubes, and
[39:21] Speaker 2: you can adjust them, you can manipulate them to present many,
[39:24] Speaker 2: many different faces. And what makes one more genuine than another?
[39:29] Speaker 2: You know, we're sort of getting into philosophical questions. I
[39:33] Speaker 2: don't think one is more genuine than another. You know,
[39:36] Speaker 2: this is this is me as much as somebody who
[39:39] Speaker 2: speaks like this, which is the accent that I would
[39:41] Speaker 2: have had when I was talking when I was at
[39:43] Speaker 2: home as a young lad, you know, because I'm from
[39:45] Speaker 2: Birmingham and I had a Birmingham accent. Now is that
[39:49] Speaker 2: version of me the genuine meat? Or is this version
[39:51] Speaker 2: of me the genuine meat? The answer is both. And
[39:56] Speaker 2: so again, you know, as I talk throughout the book
[39:59] Speaker 2: about the important of not being not using your skills
[40:04] Speaker 2: in a manipulative way, and I don't think they are
[40:06] Speaker 2: per se manipulative. It's not manipulative to take the best
[40:11] Speaker 2: of yourself, or to take those aspects of yourself that
[40:15] Speaker 2: make you attractive to another person.
[40:19] Speaker 1: But presumably you didn't find everything you were looking for
[40:22] Speaker 1: in finance. You still had this interest in politics and
[40:26] Speaker 1: international affairs and so on. So what how did you
[40:30] Speaker 1: make the jump from finance to not working for the
[40:33] Speaker 1: British Intelligence Services?
[40:36] Speaker 2: Nicely put so, I I realized I had a problem
[40:41] Speaker 2: in the financial world when somebody asked me to explain
[40:44] Speaker 2: a swaps curve and I didn't have a clue. And
[40:47] Speaker 2: I realized that, I mean, they're quite important swapscurves. I
[40:51] Speaker 2: still don't have a clue. More important I could have.
[40:55] Speaker 2: I could have probably fudged it. More importantly, I realized
[41:01] Speaker 2: I didn't care. I just wasn't in the least but
[41:03] Speaker 2: interested about what a swaps cave was. And it made
[41:06] Speaker 2: me sit down and think, My heavens, I've been spending
[41:11] Speaker 2: the past early years in my twenties thinking about guilt
[41:17] Speaker 2: yields and thinking about the diffidends on stocks. I mean,
[41:25] Speaker 2: you can probably tell her it's making me WinCE just
[41:27] Speaker 2: thinking about it. You know, a few movements in a
[41:30] Speaker 2: few basis points movements and guilt yields or a fifty
[41:36] Speaker 2: percent cut in interest rates? What effect does that have
[41:38] Speaker 2: on the earnings ratios? I don't care, and I really
[41:43] Speaker 2: I realized after a few years of this that I
[41:46] Speaker 2: was been totally the wrong job. So I thought, what's
[41:48] Speaker 2: keeping me here? What am I doing that I enjoy
[41:51] Speaker 2: about this? And I thought, it's the travel. It's the travel,
[41:55] Speaker 2: and it's the the interest in trying to work out
[41:59] Speaker 2: how pol it's intersex with the markets. Okay, that bit
[42:03] Speaker 2: is quite interesting, but I'm more interested in the politics
[42:07] Speaker 2: than I am in the markets. So I thought, what's
[42:12] Speaker 2: the best thing I can do? And the answer is
[42:16] Speaker 2: pairly obviously to apply for the diplomatic service. So I
[42:20] Speaker 2: did that and was successful, and along the way was
[42:23] Speaker 2: invited to join a fairly specialized branch of it, which
[42:30] Speaker 2: was a great period of my life. You know, I
[42:34] Speaker 2: did some extraordinary things. I'm going to draws a bit
[42:37] Speaker 2: of a vail over what those were and where they
[42:39] Speaker 2: were for good reasons that we discussed. But there's plenty
[42:44] Speaker 2: of other stuff to get our teeth into when we
[42:46] Speaker 2: get into the private set to work but ultimately I
[42:52] Speaker 2: had a crisis of conscience over the Iraq War in
[42:57] Speaker 2: the early two thousands, myself unable to support the war
[43:07] Speaker 2: in itself. But more important than that, I was appalled
[43:11] Speaker 2: at the manipulation of intelligence data by a man called
[43:15] Speaker 2: Alistair Campbell, who was then very senior in Number ten
[43:19] Speaker 2: down the street, the Prime Minister's office. The manipulation of
[43:23] Speaker 2: intelligence to make a case for war, I just thought
[43:27] Speaker 2: was absolutely unconscionable. I thought the politicization of the Intelligent
[43:32] Speaker 2: Services was a tragedy. And I think the fact that
[43:36] Speaker 2: one or two quite senior people in the Intelligent Services
[43:39] Speaker 2: back then were complicit. I think they were perhaps drawn
[43:43] Speaker 2: into relationships with Alistair Campbell and then Prime Minister Tony
[43:49] Speaker 2: Blair which were not necessarily appropriate because they were flattered
[43:55] Speaker 2: to be seen to. They were like moths to a lamp,
[43:59] Speaker 2: flapping around the proximity to power. And and then we
[44:05] Speaker 2: had this horrific event of a man called David Kelly
[44:09] Speaker 2: Dot David Kelly, who was a weapons worked in it
[44:14] Speaker 2: took his life and I had a profound impact on
[44:18] Speaker 2: me because you know, I've always had a very difficult
[44:21] Speaker 2: relationship with suicide because of my loss and my sister
[44:25] Speaker 2: uh And I remember I was in a city in
[44:29] Speaker 2: Africa working for government at the time, seeing that news
[44:35] Speaker 2: and the sensation of nausea spreading across me, and a
[44:38] Speaker 2: stark realization at that point that I could no longer
[44:42] Speaker 2: continue to work for that government, or or or for
[44:46] Speaker 2: any service or service adjacent to it, that that was
[44:53] Speaker 2: complicit in the events leading up to the suicide of
[44:57] Speaker 2: a man that I think had great integrity and great
[45:00] Speaker 2: intellect was bullied, harassed and driven to his death by
[45:05] Speaker 2: some very deeply unpleasant people. And that was a terrible
[45:09] Speaker 2: thing to have to do, you know, And I'll be
[45:12] Speaker 2: completely honest, it had. It had the most astonishing effects
[45:16] Speaker 2: on my life. You know, my marriage broke down shortly afterwards.
[45:21] Speaker 2: I'm very I'm ready to say that I suffered some
[45:26] Speaker 2: emotional distress as a result of it, and I was
[45:30] Speaker 2: without work. My marriage had fallen apart. So I walked
[45:32] Speaker 2: out on the job that I was both good at
[45:34] Speaker 2: and enjoyed. And I look back on it and I think,
[45:42] Speaker 2: did you make a stupid error? You know? Could you? Could?
[45:45] Speaker 2: You have been very senior in a very interesting service. Now,
[45:51] Speaker 2: what did I turn my back on all that for,
[45:53] Speaker 2: and then I remind myself that, Hm, it was a
[46:00] Speaker 2: shameful episode in British international relations and British intelligence work,
[46:08] Speaker 2: and I don't regret for a moment walking out on it.
[46:11] Speaker 1: Actually, were you personally drawn into this conflict in the
[46:16] Speaker 1: Middle East.
[46:18] Speaker 3: No, I.
[46:21] Speaker 2: Won't go into too much detail about what it is
[46:23] Speaker 2: that led me to conclude that there had been a
[46:27] Speaker 2: quite unacceptable manipulation, to see it, gaslighting essentially of the public,
[46:36] Speaker 2: the British public, and what led me to the conclusion
[46:40] Speaker 2: that certain agencies have been completed in that. I can't
[46:43] Speaker 2: go into the detail of that, and it wouldn't be
[46:45] Speaker 2: right for me to do so. But something's to say.
[46:50] Speaker 2: I think I've been vindicated. Every sensible analysis and every
[47:00] Speaker 2: that's been conducted since then has vindicated my position. And
[47:06] Speaker 2: I imagine to a certain extent that lessons have been
[47:09] Speaker 2: learned and changes have been made. But the fact of
[47:13] Speaker 2: the matter is it was a shameful, shameful episode in
[47:16] Speaker 2: British history, and a very good man lost his life
[47:19] Speaker 2: as a result of it, harassed, as I say, harassed
[47:22] Speaker 2: and intimidated to death by some extremely unpleasant characters in
[47:26] Speaker 2: senior and British government. And you know, if you if
[47:30] Speaker 2: you lose confidence in your government and you're working for
[47:33] Speaker 2: an organization that serves that government in very sometimes in
[47:38] Speaker 2: very dangerous and awkward places, I think you really don't
[47:41] Speaker 2: you owe it to yourself to resign. So I did.
[47:45] Speaker 3: How was that taken?
[47:47] Speaker 1: I mean, you were like pretty out about you know,
[47:49] Speaker 1: I'm resigning because of you know, a conscientious objector status.
[47:57] Speaker 2: I think there was a combination of disappointment and and anger. Really,
[48:03] Speaker 2: you know, there was there was I think there was
[48:07] Speaker 2: a concern that I was going to tell a story
[48:12] Speaker 2: to the press, which would have of course caused awkwardness. Uh.
[48:21] Speaker 2: There was another person who resigned from a related service
[48:25] Speaker 2: called Catherine Gunn and she she was working for g
[48:30] Speaker 2: c h Q and she was prosecuted or they started
[48:36] Speaker 2: the process of prosecution for her because she she had
[48:38] Speaker 2: objected to the use of gch qutor to listen into
[48:42] Speaker 2: to spy on members of the United Nations Security Council
[48:46] Speaker 2: who were allies of the UK.
[48:48] Speaker 3: Did they did?
[48:51] Speaker 2: Indeed, Indeed, I can't remember the name of the movie,
[48:58] Speaker 2: but it's it's very it's well worth what. But I
[49:01] Speaker 2: was in touch with Catherine for a short while afterward.
[49:03] Speaker 2: We agreed after a while that it probably didn't make
[49:06] Speaker 2: much sense for us to maintain contact. But I respected
[49:09] Speaker 2: her decision. But they put her through help. You know,
[49:13] Speaker 2: the process is the punishment, as they say, in the process,
[49:16] Speaker 2: there was to stand her up in courts before eventually
[49:19] Speaker 2: the decision was taken to drop all charges. But by
[49:22] Speaker 2: that point you can imagine the emotional impact of the
[49:24] Speaker 2: had and I'd already gone through severe emotional trauma of
[49:29] Speaker 2: making the decision to leave. I wasn't going to compound
[49:31] Speaker 2: that at that point. But you know, I can't speak
[49:40] Speaker 2: for the institution or people within it, but I think
[49:44] Speaker 2: there was sort of a general sense that they would
[49:51] Speaker 2: be very keen to remind me of my obligations under
[49:55] Speaker 2: the Official Secrets Act and other surviving obligations of confidentiality,
[49:58] Speaker 2: and indeed remain so to this day. Hopefully these are
[50:02] Speaker 2: conversations and letters I've had many times. So but you know,
[50:07] Speaker 2: my position was, I resigned on a matter of conscience.
[50:10] Speaker 2: I would not say anything that would compromise national security.
[50:14] Speaker 2: I don't think I need to. But the fact of
[50:16] Speaker 2: my resigning on that matter of conscience, I think I
[50:19] Speaker 2: am quite entitled to talk about, and actually, you know,
[50:23] Speaker 2: it opened up a very much more fulfilling and interesting
[50:26] Speaker 2: chapter of my life.
[50:28] Speaker 1: Before we move on to that, I just want to
[50:30] Speaker 1: ask you if there's any kind of stories you can tell,
[50:32] Speaker 1: spy stories, if you will. I know you can't mention countries, dates,
[50:37] Speaker 1: certainly not names, but in vague terms, are there any
[50:41] Speaker 1: interesting ones that you'd be able to share.
[50:45] Speaker 2: From government service? I'm afraid not really, that's that's very difficult.
[50:48] Speaker 2: But at the next stage of my career, where I
[50:51] Speaker 2: worked in private intelligence, there's there's a lot more that
[50:55] Speaker 2: I can share.
[50:56] Speaker 1: Okay, okay, So you go through this, it sounds like
[51:00] Speaker 1: a rather traumatic experience resigning from from governmental service. How
[51:06] Speaker 1: did you wind in corporate intelligence? That's a whole different world.
[51:12] Speaker 2: It isn't It isn't, And the I was sort of
[51:21] Speaker 2: assisted by an outplacement officer if you like that wasn't
[51:25] Speaker 2: afraid that the term they used into working for an
[51:30] Speaker 2: international bank as head of intelligence in a role that
[51:37] Speaker 2: it entailed some liaison with government agencies. So that was
[51:42] Speaker 2: sort of the first step out, and from there, of course,
[51:45] Speaker 2: I was exposed to this whole new world of private intelligence,
[51:50] Speaker 2: private security, because quite a lot of the companies that
[51:57] Speaker 2: worked in that area would minister to me if you
[52:02] Speaker 2: like that, or they would they would you know, they
[52:07] Speaker 2: would see me as a potential client and court me
[52:10] Speaker 2: and cultivate me. So I met I got to know
[52:13] Speaker 2: that the range of providers and eventually cut a long
[52:17] Speaker 2: story short, Tim Spicer became aware that I was in
[52:21] Speaker 2: the private sector. He liked my background and he asked
[52:26] Speaker 2: for one of his staff who knew me, to sound
[52:30] Speaker 2: me out about whether I wanted to become would like
[52:33] Speaker 2: to become his head of Africa, and I went for
[52:40] Speaker 2: an interview with him. I spent a whole night swatting
[52:46] Speaker 2: up on every major subject I could think of relating
[52:49] Speaker 2: to Africa and private security in those days, and there
[52:52] Speaker 2: was quite a lot of them, getting on top of
[52:55] Speaker 2: the politics of the key African countries, knowing who was who,
[52:59] Speaker 2: so exhausted but stopped up on data and information. As
[53:05] Speaker 2: I walked into the interview with Tim, he sat at
[53:08] Speaker 2: the far end of a very long office, waved me
[53:10] Speaker 2: to a sofa, tapped away on his computer for a bit,
[53:14] Speaker 2: finished what he was doing, then turned to me and
[53:15] Speaker 2: he said, are you Julia Fisher? And I said, I am,
[53:18] Speaker 2: and he said good. I think we've decided to give
[53:20] Speaker 2: you a job. So if you go out, Dominic will
[53:22] Speaker 2: sort out the paperwork for you. So all of that
[53:30] Speaker 2: preparation and loss of sleep was for nothing. But I
[53:34] Speaker 2: told him about that just recently when I saw him
[53:37] Speaker 2: at a social event, and he said, yeah, i'd have
[53:39] Speaker 2: been able to tell. And if you weren't prepared, I'd
[53:41] Speaker 2: put you through the ringer. I think he might be right.
[53:43] Speaker 1: And Tim Spicer, just for viewers who aren't aware, he
[53:47] Speaker 1: was an SAS officer, if I recall right, retired to
[53:50] Speaker 1: colonel left hand.
[53:52] Speaker 2: Colonel had a background in the Welst Guard. I think
[54:00] Speaker 2: I'm writing saying maybe my memory may be playing tricks.
[54:08] Speaker 2: But he had a very fine military background, and then
[54:13] Speaker 2: when he moved into the private sector, was involved in
[54:16] Speaker 2: some of the early corporatized private security capabilities organizations. So
[54:22] Speaker 2: in particular he worked for a company called Sandline, private
[54:27] Speaker 2: military company or private security company, depending on how you
[54:30] Speaker 2: want to cast it. Sand Line was famous for its
[54:35] Speaker 2: uh its work in Sierra Leone, where it helped the
[54:39] Speaker 2: elected but ousted government to fight back against the rebels.
[54:44] Speaker 2: And that's why earlier on I mentioned, you know, some
[54:47] Speaker 2: of the good things that private soldiers have done, and
[54:50] Speaker 2: I count that as a very clear example. Actually they
[54:55] Speaker 2: were doing work that for whatever reason, the traditional armies
[55:02] Speaker 2: were not given the green light to do under the
[55:07] Speaker 2: under the governments of the day. But they certainly took
[55:10] Speaker 2: credit for it all later on, but didn't give sufficient
[55:14] Speaker 2: credit to the likes of Tim and his and his
[55:17] Speaker 2: colleagues in Sunlight. He then went on. In fact, they
[55:24] Speaker 2: persecuted him to a certain extent because the questions were
[55:28] Speaker 2: raised about whether or not un arms embargoes have been
[55:31] Speaker 2: broken breached by private military work in Sierra Leone, and
[55:39] Speaker 2: he was made the full guide to a certain extent
[55:41] Speaker 2: in some of the legal wranglings about all of that.
[55:45] Speaker 2: And I think in the unfortunately, in amidst all that noise,
[55:51] Speaker 2: what got missed was that he and his colleagues had
[55:56] Speaker 2: done something extraordinary, which was supporting the democratically elected president
[56:01] Speaker 2: to fight back against a really rather evil rebel group.
[56:08] Speaker 2: And I think I just think it's unfortunate that those
[56:10] Speaker 2: things aren't recognized more readily. But Tim went on then
[56:15] Speaker 2: to set up he Just Defense Services, which was the
[56:21] Speaker 2: company I joined, and he just was famous for winning
[56:27] Speaker 2: what was then the biggest single private good contract, and
[56:33] Speaker 2: it was issued by the US R and Corp of Engineers,
[56:38] Speaker 2: and it was to provide security support and intelligence support
[56:43] Speaker 2: to agencies involved in the reconstruction of Iraq. So, having
[56:49] Speaker 2: resigned over the war in Iraq, I rather ironically ended
[56:52] Speaker 2: up working for a major beneficiary of the war in Iraq.
[56:56] Speaker 2: And people occasionally have said to me that they didn't
[56:59] Speaker 2: that make you feel uncomfortable, and like, well, no, because
[57:03] Speaker 2: I resigned over the destruction of the country and I'm
[57:06] Speaker 2: working for somebody who's involved, again without adequate recognition, in
[57:11] Speaker 2: helping to make the lives of ordinary iraq Is better.
[57:15] Speaker 2: What could possibly be wrong with that? And again, you know,
[57:19] Speaker 2: we look at the stories from Iraq in those days
[57:22] Speaker 2: and actions of organizations like Blackwater, which in one or
[57:26] Speaker 2: two cases were highly controversial. But there are stories about
[57:32] Speaker 2: people that I heard working for ages who would throw
[57:38] Speaker 2: themselves on IEDs to protect their clients and suffer mortal
[57:47] Speaker 2: injuries and similar acts of heroism, all of which are unrecognized.
[57:53] Speaker 2: And I'm remarked on and I think that's terribly, terribly sad.
[57:56] Speaker 2: So I'm proud of the fact that I worked for Tim.
[57:58] Speaker 2: I'm full of admiration for him. I'm full of admiration
[58:01] Speaker 2: for what Eagious Defense Services did. But he was up
[58:05] Speaker 2: against a lot of a lot of opposition, political opposition,
[58:12] Speaker 2: both in the UK and in the US.
[58:14] Speaker 3: What do you think that is?
[58:18] Speaker 2: He was involved in a controversy in Northern Ireland where
[58:23] Speaker 2: he stood by a couple of his men who had
[58:26] Speaker 2: shot a suspected terrorist and were subsequently tried for it,
[58:30] Speaker 2: and Tim stood by them as their officer commanding, as
[58:35] Speaker 2: as was his duty as sort of this military duty.
[58:38] Speaker 2: But certain certain stripes of political opinion in the US
[58:46] Speaker 2: were disinclined to look favorably upon his actions like that,
[58:52] Speaker 2: and so they lobbied against his company being given this
[58:57] Speaker 2: huge contract. I think there was also so a little
[59:01] Speaker 2: bit of annoyance at the contract had gone to a
[59:04] Speaker 2: UK based company rather than a US based company. So
[59:08] Speaker 2: one can always always ask what the real motivation for
[59:13] Speaker 2: some of the lobbying against him was. But even in
[59:16] Speaker 2: the UK, you know he this is a man who
[59:18] Speaker 2: should have been invited to Number ten and fated by
[59:22] Speaker 2: our Prime minister for creating a company almost from scratch
[59:27] Speaker 2: that then went on to work with one of the
[59:31] Speaker 2: one of the best armies, the best army in the
[59:33] Speaker 2: world to reap to undo the damage or help to
[59:38] Speaker 2: undo the damage of that conflict. But far from being
[59:42] Speaker 2: fated he was politically he had he had opponents, and
[59:48] Speaker 2: I think that's very, very sad. But I wasn't involved
[59:52] Speaker 2: in the right side at all. He asked me to
[59:54] Speaker 2: come in as his head of Africa, and so.
[59:57] Speaker 3: What's about that about?
[59:59] Speaker 1: So this is I'm guessing mid two thousands at this point.
[1:00:05] Speaker 1: What was what the work situation like in Africa at
[1:00:08] Speaker 1: the time.
[1:00:09] Speaker 2: Well, there was lot's going on, That's that's fair to say.
[1:00:15] Speaker 2: If you remember, the conflict in Congo had recently come
[1:00:21] Speaker 2: to an end, and that had been called the had
[1:00:26] Speaker 2: been referred to as Africa's Third World War because of
[1:00:29] Speaker 2: so much death and destruction. And I had my own
[1:00:33] Speaker 2: experience there actually later on. This was after I had
[1:00:36] Speaker 2: finished working for Tim. But I'll tell you a quick
[1:00:40] Speaker 2: story about my adventures in Kinshasa, shall I And again
[1:00:46] Speaker 2: this is this actually touches on the use of cover.
[1:00:52] Speaker 2: So as I say, the Congo had been at the
[1:00:58] Speaker 2: heart of a region or conflict which had drawn in
[1:01:01] Speaker 2: countries around it, including Zimbabwe and Uganda Ruanda, and the
[1:01:07] Speaker 2: fighting had been very intense, particularly in the east of
[1:01:10] Speaker 2: the country, and I was approached by a client, a
[1:01:16] Speaker 2: mining sex client that wanted somebody to go on the
[1:01:19] Speaker 2: ground to get ground truth intelligence to assess whether or
[1:01:22] Speaker 2: not they could recommence our operations in the east of
[1:01:27] Speaker 2: the country. So I was instructed to do this work
[1:01:37] Speaker 2: and had to give a fairly careful thought about how
[1:01:40] Speaker 2: do I, as a civilian without government backing in a
[1:01:45] Speaker 2: broadly with an intelligence remit go and get this intelligence
[1:01:50] Speaker 2: in the East of Africa. I said, well, I need
[1:01:52] Speaker 2: an ally, don't I. So I flew to Kincharsen via Johannesburg.
[1:01:58] Speaker 2: And those of your listeners are familiar with geography of
[1:02:04] Speaker 2: Africa will realize that Kinshasa is about as far away
[1:02:07] Speaker 2: from east of Congo as you can get. It's on
[1:02:09] Speaker 2: the western coast, in fact. But I had good reason
[1:02:14] Speaker 2: to go there because I was hoping to catch up
[1:02:16] Speaker 2: with I was hoping to work with a friend of
[1:02:19] Speaker 2: mine who was a former Congolese soldier and have been
[1:02:25] Speaker 2: appointed to what was called the Transitional National Assembly that
[1:02:29] Speaker 2: was their interim parliament, and he and I had a conversation,
[1:02:36] Speaker 2: and we'd agreed that I would fly to Kinshasser and
[1:02:39] Speaker 2: we would then fly together to the east where he
[1:02:42] Speaker 2: would introduce me to a number of sources and I
[1:02:44] Speaker 2: could conduct on the ground intelligence debriefs. So that's the
[1:02:49] Speaker 2: pat and I arrived in Kinshasa, which was a challenging
[1:02:54] Speaker 2: place to be managed to get myself through the airport
[1:02:57] Speaker 2: without having too much too many might belongings and too
[1:03:01] Speaker 2: much my money extracted from me. Spent a bit of
[1:03:05] Speaker 2: an uncomfortable night in a local hotel, fending off the
[1:03:08] Speaker 2: attentions of the gal but the oldest profession in the world.
[1:03:17] Speaker 2: And following day I went to the Palais de Purple
[1:03:24] Speaker 2: as I as agreed to meet my friend, only to
[1:03:28] Speaker 2: find it absolutely deserted. And the palt sort of the
[1:03:32] Speaker 2: palais was where the Transitional National Assembly would meet, so
[1:03:35] Speaker 2: the Parliamentary Center horrible Chinese construction, which reminded me of
[1:03:41] Speaker 2: the school that I first went to when I was
[1:03:42] Speaker 2: eleven years old, of the nineteen sixties, prefab construction. But
[1:03:47] Speaker 2: I'm surprised to find it completely deserted and the doors
[1:03:50] Speaker 2: were opened, which I thought it was a bit odd.
[1:03:52] Speaker 2: You know, this important government center. No, as far as
[1:03:58] Speaker 2: I can see, no restracts on entry and exit, no
[1:04:01] Speaker 2: security anywhere. So I went in and sort of wandered
[1:04:04] Speaker 2: around these deserted corridors before realizing, you know, there was
[1:04:09] Speaker 2: absolutely no way that I was going to find anybody
[1:04:12] Speaker 2: who could help me to locate where my friend was.
[1:04:17] Speaker 2: So I had a very rudimentary mobile phone, and we
[1:04:20] Speaker 2: were talking about the sort of knock here that can
[1:04:23] Speaker 2: make phone calls and nothing else. But back in those days, again,
[1:04:29] Speaker 2: it's fair to say that the signal wasn't very strong
[1:04:32] Speaker 2: in the Congress. I was struggling to get through. I
[1:04:34] Speaker 2: was trying to phone my chump, my contact, and I
[1:04:39] Speaker 2: had my head down as I pushed my way out
[1:04:41] Speaker 2: of the door, and then suddenly I foind a blow
[1:04:43] Speaker 2: to the side of my head, dropped the phone, which
[1:04:46] Speaker 2: went skidding across the tarmacle. I looked up into the
[1:04:50] Speaker 2: barrel of an AK forty seven. I suddenly realized that
[1:04:54] Speaker 2: there was security around, and I was surrounded by it.
[1:04:58] Speaker 2: It was a group of six seven something like that,
[1:05:04] Speaker 2: very angry soldiers who wanted to know what I was
[1:05:09] Speaker 2: doing there, be who I was, and see who I
[1:05:11] Speaker 2: was spying for. You know. So the whole thing was very,
[1:05:15] Speaker 2: very uncomfortable and just little me with my phone now
[1:05:19] Speaker 2: sort somewhere over there, smashed on the ground, and so
[1:05:26] Speaker 2: I had to think quite fast, and I thought, well,
[1:05:29] Speaker 2: what am I What do I say about this? You know,
[1:05:35] Speaker 2: because if I say to them, look, I'm here to
[1:05:38] Speaker 2: go to the eastern Congo and get intelligence on the
[1:05:44] Speaker 2: the state of the war which had recently ended, so
[1:05:48] Speaker 2: you know, but there was still lots of conflict going on,
[1:05:50] Speaker 2: but there was a peace deal in place effectively. But
[1:05:54] Speaker 2: if I say that my job is to go and
[1:05:56] Speaker 2: gather that intelligence, you know, this isn't going to help, right,
[1:05:58] Speaker 2: They're not going to They're not going exactly, They're not
[1:06:03] Speaker 2: going to conclude that that makes me unthreatening. So it
[1:06:12] Speaker 2: so happens that the night before when I sawed, two
[1:06:17] Speaker 2: nights before, when I've been in Johannesburg en route, I'd
[1:06:23] Speaker 2: stayed in a lovely hotel somewhere in Santon. It's a
[1:06:26] Speaker 2: very upmarket part of Johannesburg, and I met this chap
[1:06:30] Speaker 2: who turned out to have been the head of African
[1:06:36] Speaker 2: government relations through a very major international consulting firm, and
[1:06:44] Speaker 2: very interesting chat we'd had a few drinks and the
[1:06:47] Speaker 2: end of the evening we'd swapped cards, and I was
[1:06:51] Speaker 2: wearing a jacket, because you know, Brits abroad in hot
[1:06:55] Speaker 2: countries always wear a jacket, and I put his card
[1:06:59] Speaker 2: in my top pocket and my jacket pocket, and I
[1:07:03] Speaker 2: happened to have the same jacket on. So I thought, ah, okay,
[1:07:11] Speaker 2: I'm going to be the head of African government relations
[1:07:15] Speaker 2: for this majors consulting company for the purposes for this
[1:07:20] Speaker 2: for the purposes of this very specific conflict or dilemma.
[1:07:27] Speaker 2: So I told the guy who was sort of still waving,
[1:07:33] Speaker 2: is going to be the chap in charge? And I
[1:07:37] Speaker 2: say in charge very loosely. You know, I'm not sure
[1:07:40] Speaker 2: there was a great deal of commander control going on here.
[1:07:42] Speaker 2: They were all fairly high or drunk or whatever, but anyway,
[1:07:45] Speaker 2: I told him that I was. I've been. I was
[1:07:49] Speaker 2: working for a company that I had been instructed to
[1:07:51] Speaker 2: work with the military in the Congo for the peace
[1:07:56] Speaker 2: period to establish how they're and conditions and salaries could
[1:08:01] Speaker 2: be improved. And of course what that did was playing
[1:08:07] Speaker 2: to their motivations. So I said that my role was
[1:08:12] Speaker 2: to interview as many people from the army as I
[1:08:13] Speaker 2: possibly could, so that they could tell me what needed
[1:08:16] Speaker 2: to be done to improve their day to day existence
[1:08:19] Speaker 2: and to improve their salaries. And of course that's a
[1:08:21] Speaker 2: great motivator for them, isn't it. So suddenly I think, okay,
[1:08:24] Speaker 2: we're pointing a gun at this guy who's going to
[1:08:26] Speaker 2: be reporting to the president and potentially can help us
[1:08:32] Speaker 2: to improve our rations and accommodation and salary. But there
[1:08:39] Speaker 2: was still a lot of suspicion. So the lead character
[1:08:45] Speaker 2: said to me, the chap in Chad said to me, well, look,
[1:08:50] Speaker 2: how do I know you're telling the truth? I said,
[1:08:53] Speaker 2: I'll give you my business card, and I say, it
[1:08:56] Speaker 2: happens to still have the business card of the chap
[1:08:58] Speaker 2: I've met in job in my jacket pocket, and I
[1:09:02] Speaker 2: hand it over to him. And that was enough. You know,
[1:09:05] Speaker 2: it was a And this is one of the interesting
[1:09:07] Speaker 2: things about cover. When it comes to defense of cover,
[1:09:11] Speaker 2: quite often very small amounts of ephemera are sufficient to
[1:09:18] Speaker 2: convince people that what you're telling them is true. And
[1:09:22] Speaker 2: a business card, you know, it is probably the most
[1:09:25] Speaker 2: flimsy evidence of your identity and background that you can
[1:09:29] Speaker 2: think of, but it works. It works partly because people don't.
[1:09:34] Speaker 2: You know, I think this is a universal human trait.
[1:09:37] Speaker 2: We don't expect to be lied to. Actually we may
[1:09:41] Speaker 2: be suspicious, but we don't expect to be lied to
[1:09:43] Speaker 2: and move and we're quite pleased when it proof is
[1:09:46] Speaker 2: offered to us that somebody is who that they that
[1:09:49] Speaker 2: they say they are. And we see this even with
[1:09:53] Speaker 2: you know, again, I don't want to put ideas into
[1:09:55] Speaker 2: people's heads, but you know, we see it with criminals
[1:09:58] Speaker 2: who will managed to blag their way into buildings just
[1:10:02] Speaker 2: by wearing a yellow high vized jacket because they look official,
[1:10:06] Speaker 2: they look like they're doing something, they've got a reason
[1:10:09] Speaker 2: to be.
[1:10:09] Speaker 3: There, and carry around a clipboard.
[1:10:11] Speaker 2: And absolutely all of that sort of stuff. And so
[1:10:17] Speaker 2: I was very lucky in that I had the card
[1:10:20] Speaker 2: with me, But I think actually it wasn't that I
[1:10:24] Speaker 2: hadn't formed in my mind some idea of how I
[1:10:28] Speaker 2: would deal with the question of what are you doing here?
[1:10:31] Speaker 2: I didn't expect it to be in quite such immediately
[1:10:35] Speaker 2: challenging circumstances, but I was ready to default to a
[1:10:42] Speaker 2: use of cover. And in that particular case, the cover
[1:10:45] Speaker 2: was twofold, wasn't it. It was a defensive cover, by which
[1:10:47] Speaker 2: I mean, you know, this is, here's my reason to
[1:10:50] Speaker 2: be here, here's the business card, this is.
[1:10:51] Speaker 3: What it makes sense for a white guy to be
[1:10:53] Speaker 3: there doing that exactly.
[1:10:56] Speaker 2: But there was also what I call an offensive cover.
[1:11:00] Speaker 2: What I mean by that is, what is it about
[1:11:01] Speaker 2: what you're telling that person that's going to motivate them
[1:11:04] Speaker 2: to engage with you, what's going to draw them to you?
[1:11:08] Speaker 2: And so my being able to say that I was
[1:11:11] Speaker 2: going to work with them to get their views on
[1:11:17] Speaker 2: how to improve their terms and conditions and salaries was
[1:11:21] Speaker 2: a strong motivation for them, and that's what I mean
[1:11:26] Speaker 2: by offensive cover. And it worked because we then sat down.
[1:11:29] Speaker 2: I would also routinely carry a pack of cigarettes of
[1:11:32] Speaker 2: me in circumstances like that, to work on the reciprocity principle.
[1:11:36] Speaker 2: So I offered round cigarettes, which sort of creates that
[1:11:38] Speaker 2: sense of reciprocal obligation, and we got chatting, partly about
[1:11:43] Speaker 2: terms and conditions, which of course I wasn't even vaguely
[1:11:46] Speaker 2: interested in, but also they had recently returned from their
[1:11:49] Speaker 2: tools of duty in the east of the country, so
[1:11:52] Speaker 2: they were able to give me a fairly good operating
[1:11:54] Speaker 2: picture even before I went in there and it was
[1:12:02] Speaker 2: a valuable debriefing session in its own right. So that
[1:12:04] Speaker 2: was the offensive aspect of the cover. The Incidentally, the
[1:12:09] Speaker 2: reason I didn't find my friend in the Transitional National
[1:12:15] Speaker 2: Assembly building in the Palida pub is because I'd got
[1:12:19] Speaker 2: the week wrong. He'd understood so when I said las
[1:12:24] Speaker 2: an impression, I meant this coming week, and he understood
[1:12:28] Speaker 2: from that phrase the week after next. It's actually a
[1:12:32] Speaker 2: fairly common confusion. So it turned out that he wasn't
[1:12:36] Speaker 2: even in the country.
[1:12:39] Speaker 1: Uh So I have to ask you about the Tim
[1:12:43] Speaker 1: Spicer stuff cruising around Africa.
[1:12:46] Speaker 3: Yes, I read.
[1:12:47] Speaker 1: I read that book the Wanga Coup years ago. I
[1:12:50] Speaker 1: gotta get what you know about the background behind all.
[1:12:55] Speaker 2: Well, Tim wasn't involved in the Wonga Ku, of course,
[1:12:58] Speaker 2: and he he's been asked about it and people assumed
[1:13:03] Speaker 2: that he was. But but but he wasn't. I mean
[1:13:06] Speaker 2: that is that that's an extraordinary story.
[1:13:10] Speaker 3: For me.
[1:13:10] Speaker 2: The most important part of that story and come out
[1:13:14] Speaker 2: of seem that your listeners will broadly understand what we
[1:13:18] Speaker 2: mean by the the Wongakou or outline.
[1:13:21] Speaker 3: Maybe just briefly explained.
[1:13:22] Speaker 1: I believe it was a two thousand and four, there
[1:13:25] Speaker 1: was a coup attempt in Equatori or Guinea that was
[1:13:29] Speaker 1: plarted in the UK.
[1:13:30] Speaker 3: It sounds like mostly.
[1:13:33] Speaker 2: It's all a bit wild Geese if you've seen that,
[1:13:36] Speaker 2: if not, I recommend it, you know, so sort of
[1:13:39] Speaker 2: coming out of boardrooms in theory that that nexus between
[1:13:46] Speaker 2: commercial interests in resources and military capability brilliant film well Geese,
[1:13:54] Speaker 2: I recommended to me. And the idea was to remove
[1:14:03] Speaker 2: the highly dictatorial leader of Ecuatorial Guinea ob Jang, and
[1:14:11] Speaker 2: it was the the The coup was actually plotted between
[1:14:16] Speaker 2: London and Cape Town, and it involved somebody who was
[1:14:22] Speaker 2: who was a very good friend of Tim's called Simon Mann.
[1:14:26] Speaker 2: He's now no longer with us. And perhaps more controversially,
[1:14:33] Speaker 2: it involved the son of the former British Prime Minister,
[1:14:37] Speaker 2: Margrat Thatcher, right Arch Thatcher, whose former house I gather
[1:14:43] Speaker 2: I was in Cape Town earlier this year and his
[1:14:45] Speaker 2: former property is on sale down there as it happens
[1:14:48] Speaker 2: if anybody is in the market for a palatial, palatial
[1:14:53] Speaker 2: building in the through constantial region of Ape Town, very
[1:15:00] Speaker 2: beautiful part of Cape Town. Anyway, that's a bit by
[1:15:03] Speaker 2: the bye. The coup was plotted in London and in
[1:15:11] Speaker 2: Cape Town, and for reasons which had never really been
[1:15:16] Speaker 2: entirely clear to me, it was decided to use Hurrari
[1:15:20] Speaker 2: in Zimbabwe as a stopping point for their airframe to
[1:15:26] Speaker 2: collect weapons. And I just literally can't think of the
[1:15:31] Speaker 2: worse place to have chosen. I know a bit about Zimbabwe.
[1:15:35] Speaker 1: Yea Mugabi was still in charge of the time.
[1:15:37] Speaker 3: That was not a great idea.
[1:15:39] Speaker 2: Was This was not a clever idea, you know, there
[1:15:42] Speaker 2: was a It was a febrile, suspicious environment in which
[1:15:49] Speaker 2: the CIO, the Central Intelligence Organization, was incredibly active. There
[1:15:55] Speaker 2: may have been good logistical reasons to to use her,
[1:16:00] Speaker 2: but I just can't really see.
[1:16:02] Speaker 1: They probably thought they had bribed off the right person, but.
[1:16:06] Speaker 2: That's right, but they probably in the process. I think
[1:16:08] Speaker 2: the understanding is that they had inadvertently bribed a CIO
[1:16:11] Speaker 2: officer who was in trapping. I think something like that.
[1:16:16] Speaker 2: But it's a lot of times since I've read The
[1:16:18] Speaker 2: Wan Cuckoo. But but you know, to this day, I'm
[1:16:23] Speaker 2: just amazed that they chose Hurrari. In any case, they did,
[1:16:27] Speaker 2: and of course it went spectacularly wrong, and they were
[1:16:32] Speaker 2: Man and his team were arrested on the tarmac in Harari,
[1:16:35] Speaker 2: in prison there for a while, but also then ultimately
[1:16:38] Speaker 2: extradited to the tender mercies of President ob Yang in
[1:16:43] Speaker 2: Ectorial Guinea, where they were in prison for some years
[1:16:48] Speaker 2: until Simon cut a deal and became a security advisor
[1:16:53] Speaker 2: to the president. In a neat twist of I suppose
[1:16:58] Speaker 2: gamekeeper termsuture for me, that was the point at which
[1:17:08] Speaker 2: the era of the mercenary rather than the private security
[1:17:15] Speaker 2: or private military contractor came to a definitive end. And
[1:17:20] Speaker 2: I think it's interesting to reflect, isn't it that I
[1:17:25] Speaker 2: don't think there's been any high profile case since then
[1:17:29] Speaker 2: of attempted cups led by third party military figures in Africa,
[1:17:40] Speaker 2: And so the question arises of what is it? What's changed,
[1:17:43] Speaker 2: you know, because it was a period from the nineteen
[1:17:46] Speaker 2: sixties through to it, certainly the late latter end of
[1:17:50] Speaker 2: the last century, when coup activity, mercenary activity was fairly common.
[1:17:57] Speaker 2: Actually some of it was implicitly endorsed on a deniable
[1:18:03] Speaker 2: basis by governments, some of it wasn't, and there was
[1:18:09] Speaker 2: some very high profile figures involved in all of that,
[1:18:13] Speaker 2: quite renowned the like said Bob Denah well, suddenly it stopped,
[1:18:21] Speaker 2: and you've got a question. It's an interesting question as
[1:18:23] Speaker 2: to why it did. You know, why, why is all
[1:18:25] Speaker 2: of that type of adventurism come to halt? And I
[1:18:29] Speaker 2: think the answer is better intelligence generally, actually better better intelligence.
[1:18:34] Speaker 2: It's more difficult now to disguise flows of money, or
[1:18:40] Speaker 2: to buy arms, or to communicate with a wider group
[1:18:45] Speaker 2: of suppliers and boots on the ground. Uh, logistical support,
[1:18:54] Speaker 2: all of that, you know you've got to You've got
[1:18:57] Speaker 2: to when you think about how relatively easy it is
[1:19:01] Speaker 2: now to track the whereabouts of airframes, to track where
[1:19:05] Speaker 2: money is going, reporting requirements on banks, an easier ability
[1:19:11] Speaker 2: to track people's whereabouts through mobile phones, and enhanced capability
[1:19:17] Speaker 2: to intercept communication. I think it all of that spelled
[1:19:22] Speaker 2: an end to the year of mercenary adventurism.
[1:19:26] Speaker 1: I have to think that there's some economics involved as well,
[1:19:29] Speaker 1: that there's a more mature corporate model came about which
[1:19:35] Speaker 1: saw security contractors supporting governments rather than overthrowing them, and
[1:19:39] Speaker 1: that there was a lot more money to be made
[1:19:42] Speaker 1: in that reconstruction or security for a sitting government. If
[1:19:47] Speaker 1: you get a training contract to trained soldiers in Libya,
[1:19:51] Speaker 1: there's a lot of money there and these mercenary adventures
[1:19:54] Speaker 1: go wrong like nine times out of ten.
[1:19:57] Speaker 2: So exactly what mite take the risk if you can
[1:20:01] Speaker 2: actually be a semi official arm of government? And you're
[1:20:04] Speaker 2: absolutely right, because you know, people like even Barlow you've interviewed,
[1:20:08] Speaker 2: were of course setting up the likes of executive outcomes
[1:20:11] Speaker 2: to do exactly that, which is to be more legitimate
[1:20:15] Speaker 2: arms of government, and EGS Defense Services was effectively working
[1:20:21] Speaker 2: as an arm as the US army. That's that's the
[1:20:24] Speaker 2: reality of the situation, right, And so from both from
[1:20:29] Speaker 2: a legal footing and from a moral footing, it's much
[1:20:33] Speaker 2: easier to justify and from a from a risk management perspective,
[1:20:38] Speaker 2: what would you rather do to fly in with a
[1:20:40] Speaker 2: band of merry men and try to overthrow an insane
[1:20:45] Speaker 2: dictator on the potential promise of funds when you've finally
[1:20:52] Speaker 2: managed to get the resources out of the ground, or
[1:20:54] Speaker 2: take very highly paid work from Western governments where you
[1:20:59] Speaker 2: know the man is going to hit your bank. I mean,
[1:21:00] Speaker 2: it's a it's a bit of a no brain, isn't it.
[1:21:02] Speaker 2: So you know I'm not I don't want to romanticize
[1:21:05] Speaker 2: the era of mercenary activity. But it let's put it
[1:21:09] Speaker 2: this way, I don't think Blackwater, Aegis or any of
[1:21:15] Speaker 2: the others will be inspiring films like The Wild Geese
[1:21:20] Speaker 2: or even books like Dogs of War.
[1:21:22] Speaker 1: In some Some of it, too, I imagine, has to
[1:21:24] Speaker 1: do with the Cold War political climate, where you know,
[1:21:28] Speaker 1: in the case of my corror, the CIA was kind
[1:21:30] Speaker 1: of in bed with him in five Commando and sending
[1:21:33] Speaker 1: them into the Congo. So there's those sorts of like
[1:21:36] Speaker 1: Cold War dynamics that were going on as well.
[1:21:40] Speaker 2: The deniability of it all was very important to that's right.
[1:21:43] Speaker 2: And you know there was a lot of proxy wars
[1:21:47] Speaker 2: being fought across Africa, you know, whether that was in
[1:21:50] Speaker 2: Angola or Congo or wherever. So governments were quite keen
[1:21:55] Speaker 2: to be able to distance themselves from it, but they
[1:21:57] Speaker 2: were quite but they were also quite keen to have
[1:21:59] Speaker 2: so some attempted direction over events. I mean, if it's
[1:22:05] Speaker 2: politically now, it would be unthinkable for governments to turn
[1:22:09] Speaker 2: a blind eye to or even be complicit with mastery activities.
[1:22:13] Speaker 1: I don't think what maybe Western governments, if you will
[1:22:16] Speaker 1: get the Wagner group, yes.
[1:22:20] Speaker 2: I do, Yes, that's a very very important distinction, because
[1:22:23] Speaker 2: mercenary activity coming out of Russia particularly remains remains a
[1:22:28] Speaker 2: very significant feature of the world, particularly in parts of Africa.
[1:22:34] Speaker 1: And it's it's just as well though, that things changed.
[1:22:36] Speaker 1: I mean, can we think of any examples where a
[1:22:40] Speaker 1: mercenary coup led to the government transitioning to a democracy.
[1:22:46] Speaker 1: I'm hard pressed to really come up with once.
[1:22:50] Speaker 2: I think that's I think that that's a resounding no.
[1:22:53] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[1:22:53] Speaker 3: Yeah, so maybe it's for the best.
[1:22:57] Speaker 2: I certainly think it's for the best. I mean, as
[1:23:00] Speaker 2: I say, it is an era that you can romanticize, sure,
[1:23:07] Speaker 2: but the reality was it was pretty bloody, and it
[1:23:10] Speaker 2: was as it was a result of a wider conflict
[1:23:14] Speaker 2: which was being fought much more in the shadows than
[1:23:18] Speaker 2: it was in plain sight. And and that's changed to
[1:23:25] Speaker 2: a certain extent now. And so it's evolved. And now
[1:23:31] Speaker 2: private military companies, of course, have have got become bigger
[1:23:35] Speaker 2: and bigger. They've shifted towards being more strategic and training
[1:23:40] Speaker 2: support rather than necessarily boots on the ground. So these
[1:23:43] Speaker 2: things will continue to evolve. And who knows, the maybe
[1:23:46] Speaker 2: stories out there which are as good as dogs of
[1:23:49] Speaker 2: war and wild geese coming out of the activities of
[1:23:53] Speaker 2: private militure companies.
[1:23:55] Speaker 1: It's a it's a far cry from my core in
[1:23:58] Speaker 1: his guy's wedding and a shell undercover of being the
[1:24:02] Speaker 1: Fraternal Order of froth Blowers.
[1:24:04] Speaker 3: I believe it was that they were a group of
[1:24:07] Speaker 3: international The.
[1:24:09] Speaker 2: Thing is that they were just characters. Yeah, as much,
[1:24:14] Speaker 2: I mean, not for nothing. Was Mike Hall known as
[1:24:17] Speaker 2: mad Mike Cool?
[1:24:18] Speaker 3: Right?
[1:24:19] Speaker 1: Yeah, we had his son on the show who wrote
[1:24:21] Speaker 1: a biography he did Dad. Yeah, what's it called?
[1:24:28] Speaker 3: The book is?
[1:24:29] Speaker 1: The book is called My Father the Mercenary, great title. Yeah,
[1:24:34] Speaker 1: it's it's a very good book he did. He put
[1:24:36] Speaker 1: a lot of research into it and it came out
[1:24:38] Speaker 1: very well. And I know Eban Barlow was at Mike
[1:24:41] Speaker 1: horus hundredth birthday at the birthday before he passed away,
[1:24:45] Speaker 1: and I would have loved to have heard that conversation
[1:24:47] Speaker 1: between those two guys.
[1:24:49] Speaker 2: Yeah, amazing. I mean, it's it's a different age.
[1:24:52] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[1:24:55] Speaker 1: So we'll tell us about your more your experience working
[1:24:58] Speaker 1: in Africa.
[1:25:00] Speaker 2: So I've spent many years working in Africa, but in
[1:25:03] Speaker 2: fact decades because when I was working for government service,
[1:25:08] Speaker 2: I was posted to a couple of places in Africa.
[1:25:10] Speaker 2: I was fortunate enough to be sent to san Ziba
[1:25:15] Speaker 2: to learn at Swahili, which was hardly a hardship, so
[1:25:24] Speaker 2: I've sot of Africa's in my blood. And then, as
[1:25:27] Speaker 2: I say, Tim had me working as his head of
[1:25:30] Speaker 2: Africa and that was quite an extraordinary experience. And after
[1:25:37] Speaker 2: that I set up a company called African Technity Services,
[1:25:40] Speaker 2: which I closed last year, which was a private intelligence
[1:25:43] Speaker 2: boutique providing support for escal engagement in Africa. Slightly changed
[1:25:49] Speaker 2: the approach I was taking by that point, but I
[1:25:56] Speaker 2: really enjoyed working for Tim because there's no sensetons where
[1:26:00] Speaker 2: you have Tim Spicer and risk of us anywhere near
[1:26:05] Speaker 2: each other unless there's a big Nott in the middle
[1:26:08] Speaker 2: of it. So he was you know, he was the
[1:26:09] Speaker 2: sort of character who would send me off to do
[1:26:12] Speaker 2: things which I think would have probably taken months to
[1:26:17] Speaker 2: get clear us to do when I was working in
[1:26:18] Speaker 2: government sector, like flying into Somalia pretty much the day
[1:26:24] Speaker 2: after the fall of the Islamic Courts Union. So the
[1:26:30] Speaker 2: Islamic Courts Union was the forerunner of the terrorist group
[1:26:34] Speaker 2: Al Schabau, and they had taken control of Somalia mainly
[1:26:42] Speaker 2: in marketition around and run a horrible sort of Islamo
[1:26:48] Speaker 2: fascist government. I think their biggest stay was to outlaw
[1:26:53] Speaker 2: football watching football in public. They also outlaw public dancing
[1:26:59] Speaker 2: and so on. They were not popular, but the people
[1:27:04] Speaker 2: of Somalia were not able to remove them by themselves.
[1:27:08] Speaker 2: They relied on support from the government of Ethiopia. The
[1:27:11] Speaker 2: Ethiopian Army basically came in and removed the the Islamic
[1:27:21] Speaker 2: Courts Union to be replaced with something that was called
[1:27:25] Speaker 2: the Transitional Federal Government, and the TFG was based in Baidoa,
[1:27:34] Speaker 2: and Tim wanted me to go into work with the
[1:27:42] Speaker 2: TFG to look at how we could help to provide
[1:27:47] Speaker 2: them with architecture for national security. But like that, so
[1:27:55] Speaker 2: I had to find a way of getting into At
[1:27:57] Speaker 2: that time, I was based in Nairobi, and I had
[1:28:00] Speaker 2: to find a way of getting into Bida, which is
[1:28:03] Speaker 2: inland in Somalia, but there were no commercial flights, no
[1:28:10] Speaker 2: commercial passenger flights. So I got round that by heading
[1:28:15] Speaker 2: down to Wilson Airport in Nairobi, where I learned that
[1:28:20] Speaker 2: there was a daily consignment of cat which was flown
[1:28:23] Speaker 2: between kat Is. That stuff, which is a teued as
[1:28:28] Speaker 2: a mild stimulant, sometimes not so mild, and basically hitched
[1:28:36] Speaker 2: a ride with a couple of other team members on
[1:28:40] Speaker 2: one of these cat flights into Bidoa where we met
[1:28:45] Speaker 2: the incoming Prime Minister. And then we're driven in a
[1:28:51] Speaker 2: convoy from Baidoa to mogad Issue and it was an
[1:28:55] Speaker 2: extraordinary drive in these what they used to call tech calls. Right,
[1:29:01] Speaker 2: that's basically a flatbed truck with a noosy night millimeter
[1:29:04] Speaker 2: mounted on the back. Sort of riveted into the flatbed
[1:29:08] Speaker 2: of the truck with child soldiers. There's a picture of
[1:29:12] Speaker 2: me somewhere. I'll send it to you surrounded by these
[1:29:15] Speaker 2: my security guards who I'm looking like a poet of
[1:29:20] Speaker 2: wearing a white looking foppish And apparently when when I
[1:29:26] Speaker 2: send a picture back to London that picture and the
[1:29:31] Speaker 2: cry went up in the ops room, Oh my god,
[1:29:33] Speaker 2: we sent a poet to Somalia by mistake. And but
[1:29:39] Speaker 2: you know, my view was there's no point in trying
[1:29:41] Speaker 2: to I'm not going to blend in. Yeah, you know,
[1:29:43] Speaker 2: there's no point in trying to blend in that don't
[1:29:45] Speaker 2: be ridiculous, So sort of lean into the looking non threatening.
[1:29:50] Speaker 2: That was my That was my approach very much approach.
[1:29:53] Speaker 2: Actually it's a it's a very English approach. Please don't
[1:29:57] Speaker 2: be offended. I don't mean this as a to decry
[1:30:00] Speaker 2: the American approach to security, but if you take convoys
[1:30:05] Speaker 2: driving from the airport to the Green Zone in Baghdad,
[1:30:09] Speaker 2: the American approach has sort of be bristling with arms
[1:30:12] Speaker 2: and surlarmored cars whereas which is obviously very effective at
[1:30:17] Speaker 2: one level, but oftentimes, I know, Tim quite like the
[1:30:20] Speaker 2: idea of people just getting in the back of a
[1:30:22] Speaker 2: sedan and just just being as low key as possible,
[1:30:28] Speaker 2: And that was the approach I took. It's just ant, don't,
[1:30:31] Speaker 2: Forgod's say, trying to blend in, because you can't for
[1:30:34] Speaker 2: fairly obvious reasons. So just look unthreatening, which I was anyway.
[1:30:39] Speaker 2: We were working with the government, but because in a
[1:30:41] Speaker 2: situation like that, there's so much distrust and there's a
[1:30:46] Speaker 2: lot of clan warfare, if you like, so it was
[1:30:50] Speaker 2: incumbent upon me to look as unthreatening as possible, less
[1:30:56] Speaker 2: that sort of military bearing to my colleagues. And so
[1:31:00] Speaker 2: we drove from bid down to market issue and it
[1:31:03] Speaker 2: was an incredibly eventful drive. I was with a chap
[1:31:07] Speaker 2: I called him Magic because he seemed to just get
[1:31:11] Speaker 2: us out of scrapes. There's one point in which we
[1:31:12] Speaker 2: were bombing along. I'm sure the driver already chewed quite
[1:31:15] Speaker 2: a lot of cat and there was this mortar crater
[1:31:19] Speaker 2: in the middle of the road, which is about give
[1:31:21] Speaker 2: half a car's size, and we were headed straight forward
[1:31:26] Speaker 2: and I thought, oh my god, we're gonna We're gonna
[1:31:28] Speaker 2: go in there and we're gonna flip. And I said,
[1:31:31] Speaker 2: it's all over. Us came over and you know, we
[1:31:33] Speaker 2: don't have any no medevac arrangements place or anything like that,
[1:31:36] Speaker 2: and I'm thinking, what the hell am I doing here?
[1:31:38] Speaker 2: The moment was like, what on earth am I doing here?
[1:31:41] Speaker 2: And why didn't I phone my mum before I came out?
[1:31:44] Speaker 2: You know, there's are all those weird thoughts going through
[1:31:46] Speaker 2: your head. But Magic just turned out, turned around and
[1:31:51] Speaker 2: Tappy shouldered the driver's shoulder and he said, just are
[1:31:55] Speaker 2: the accelerator all worse than that effect, which the driver did,
[1:31:58] Speaker 2: and we just basically sailed over for this more. That
[1:32:03] Speaker 2: was one thing you say. Then there was there was
[1:32:07] Speaker 2: a lot of firing by the side of the road
[1:32:09] Speaker 2: and a lot of commotions suddenly we were off road.
[1:32:14] Speaker 2: We've seen that we were chasing a bunch of camels
[1:32:16] Speaker 2: because there was this huge herd of camels. Actually were
[1:32:19] Speaker 2: we were chasing camel rustlers. Camel rustling is a thing
[1:32:23] Speaker 2: in Somalia. Who knew, but the great value attached to
[1:32:27] Speaker 2: a herd of camels. And we'd seen these bandits, probably
[1:32:32] Speaker 2: offshoots of al Chebab trying to round up and rustle
[1:32:37] Speaker 2: this herd of camels, and our driver decided to go
[1:32:40] Speaker 2: off and again Magic's like, look, I think for the
[1:32:42] Speaker 2: sake of our guests that we might want to get
[1:32:44] Speaker 2: back onto the road here. So you know, it was extraordinary,
[1:32:48] Speaker 2: all these kits, these child solders on the back of
[1:32:51] Speaker 2: the technical sort of jumping up and down, firing off rounds,
[1:32:55] Speaker 2: and that just calm as you like, let's just get
[1:32:57] Speaker 2: back onto the road and get our guess safely to Issue.
[1:33:00] Speaker 2: And then the most extraordinary thing was we went in
[1:33:05] Speaker 2: to see the president a place called Villa Somalia, which
[1:33:08] Speaker 2: is the presidential compound in market Issue, and we had
[1:33:15] Speaker 2: a meeting with him in the main reception rooms, very
[1:33:20] Speaker 2: Middle Eastern style, sort of low seats or sort of
[1:33:23] Speaker 2: all down one side, with both sides of the room,
[1:33:25] Speaker 2: and then the President sat in the middle receiving us
[1:33:29] Speaker 2: with grace and tea. And the came a point at
[1:33:34] Speaker 2: which Magic just decided that we had to go. It's
[1:33:38] Speaker 2: just like, I think we should leave now, so I
[1:33:41] Speaker 2: just took it. I think he must have decided that
[1:33:44] Speaker 2: we doubt stayed. A protocol welcome from the President, which
[1:33:47] Speaker 2: was fine because there was a Curtesy call, and off
[1:33:50] Speaker 2: we went. And as we drove away, probably about half
[1:33:53] Speaker 2: a mile down the road, we heard this crump of
[1:33:55] Speaker 2: a mortar bomb and it turned out that that mortar
[1:33:59] Speaker 2: bomb had the very room in which we've been sat
[1:34:02] Speaker 2: about five minutes earlier. And it's almost like he had
[1:34:05] Speaker 2: this sixth sense. And of course, what if you think
[1:34:08] Speaker 2: about it, the Eclomic Courts Union had been recently deposed
[1:34:13] Speaker 2: from power, so they knew exactly where the layout and
[1:34:16] Speaker 2: the geography of this compound. They knew exactly what they
[1:34:19] Speaker 2: were targeting, and they've probably just seen a group of
[1:34:23] Speaker 2: cars go in with white men and white faces at
[1:34:25] Speaker 2: that point were not very common in Somalia ever since
[1:34:29] Speaker 2: the Black haught Down incident, if you remember that. So
[1:34:33] Speaker 2: for nineteen ninety four, all the way through to two
[1:34:35] Speaker 2: thousand and six, two thousand and seven. It's quite rare
[1:34:38] Speaker 2: to see white faces in Somalia, so they clearly were
[1:34:42] Speaker 2: watching it. They'd obviously seen us go in. They obviously
[1:34:46] Speaker 2: had an idea where we would be meeting the president
[1:34:48] Speaker 2: and that's what they targeted. But Magic had managed to
[1:34:52] Speaker 2: magic us out of that spirit us out of it
[1:34:55] Speaker 2: before the before the bomb hit.
[1:34:59] Speaker 3: Did were you success?
[1:35:00] Speaker 1: That's for in drumming up some business and Somalia.
[1:35:03] Speaker 2: But we we worked on the I don't, I can't.
[1:35:10] Speaker 2: There are obviously non disclosure agreements in place about that.
[1:35:14] Speaker 2: But what I can say is that we I wrote
[1:35:17] Speaker 2: a fairly lengthy piece on on the national security architecture
[1:35:20] Speaker 2: such as it was, and I have to say, trying
[1:35:29] Speaker 2: to draw up a coherent national security plan from for
[1:35:34] Speaker 2: Somalia back then and probably today is a challenge that
[1:35:40] Speaker 2: is beyond most mortals.
[1:35:42] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[1:35:43] Speaker 1: I mean, we we've round through like twelve transitional governments
[1:35:47] Speaker 1: or something like that.
[1:35:50] Speaker 2: It's not it's it's it's is not. My view is
[1:35:53] Speaker 2: it is not susceptible. Two, what we understand systems of
[1:36:00] Speaker 2: governance and security and central governance. It's for Ciprus. It's
[1:36:03] Speaker 2: clan driven. Obviously, corruption is a big part of it.
[1:36:10] Speaker 2: The economy is actually in some parts very very healthy.
[1:36:15] Speaker 2: Charcoal is a big export, for instance, but it is
[1:36:22] Speaker 2: not run according to precepts that we understand, you know.
[1:36:26] Speaker 2: And I think it would be almost impossible for any
[1:36:29] Speaker 2: Western And I'm not saying this is not a value judgment,
[1:36:33] Speaker 2: by the way, I'm just saying I think it's impossible
[1:36:36] Speaker 2: for any Western advisor with understanding a Western intelligence, security
[1:36:40] Speaker 2: and military protocol to go in there and apply a template.
[1:36:45] Speaker 2: I just don't think that's possible. And you know, I'm
[1:36:49] Speaker 2: not the first person to find that out, as Black
[1:36:52] Speaker 2: Caught Down illustrated very very effectively and very very tragically.
[1:36:58] Speaker 3: Everyone.
[1:36:59] Speaker 1: I want to tell you about new novel, The Most
[1:37:01] Speaker 1: Dangerous Man Out in June. It is a novel about
[1:37:05] Speaker 1: a Regimental Reconnaissance Company soldier who gets kidnapped while he's
[1:37:09] Speaker 1: on a mission to West Africa, and when he wakes up,
[1:37:12] Speaker 1: he finds that he is now being hunted for sport
[1:37:15] Speaker 1: by a group of tech billionaires through the wilds of
[1:37:18] Speaker 1: West Africa. This book is based on stories that I
[1:37:22] Speaker 1: heard over the years about safari guides taking wealthy clients
[1:37:26] Speaker 1: hunting for poachers on game reserves in Africa. I took
[1:37:30] Speaker 1: that and I took a century old short story, The
[1:37:33] Speaker 1: Most Dangerous Game, and modernized it. And the product is
[1:37:36] Speaker 1: this book, which I think will feel contemporary and resonate
[1:37:40] Speaker 1: with audiences today. Thank you and please check it out. Okay, So,
[1:38:00] Speaker 1: any other experiences in Africa you want to share.
[1:38:05] Speaker 2: I'd love to tell you the story about the coup panning,
[1:38:07] Speaker 2: but that's that's there been coordered by another podcast. Sadly
[1:38:16] Speaker 2: there was the case again. This is about I'll tell
[1:38:19] Speaker 2: you a story about another uncomfortable experience, this time in Zimbabwe.
[1:38:26] Speaker 2: And this is about targeting. Actually, it's a story I
[1:38:30] Speaker 2: tell in the book because I tried to find stories
[1:38:35] Speaker 2: from my personal life and then from my professional life,
[1:38:38] Speaker 2: which which illustrate the principles that I outlined, which is
[1:38:41] Speaker 2: the principles being the UH, the agent recruitment cycle of targeting,
[1:38:47] Speaker 2: culture targeting, use to cover cultivation, elicitation, assessment and motivations, recruitment,
[1:38:58] Speaker 2: debrief and detection of deception, and use of tradecraft secure running.
[1:39:05] Speaker 2: So I sort of go through the the nine separate
[1:39:11] Speaker 2: skills that have evolved in the recruitment of an agent
[1:39:15] Speaker 2: and the running of an agent in a secure way.
[1:39:18] Speaker 2: And in each of them, I've tried to tell a
[1:39:20] Speaker 2: story which is relevant for both of my personal life
[1:39:23] Speaker 2: to show how it can be applied in non intelligence
[1:39:27] Speaker 2: settings and then from professional life. And there's one particular
[1:39:31] Speaker 2: one which is I think shows the power of targeting.
[1:39:36] Speaker 2: And that's when I was in Zimbabwe Harari. And this
[1:39:44] Speaker 2: was shortly after the two thousand and eight election, which
[1:39:48] Speaker 2: had been particularly bloody. I mean it had been you know,
[1:39:56] Speaker 2: I think it's fair to say that it was probably
[1:39:58] Speaker 2: one of the most violent elections Zimbabwe ever had to
[1:40:01] Speaker 2: deal with. And I was visiting for various reasons, but
[1:40:08] Speaker 2: one of the things I wanted to do was to
[1:40:09] Speaker 2: see a friend of mine and that friend was a
[1:40:11] Speaker 2: senior figure in zanu pef have been the ruling party
[1:40:16] Speaker 2: in Zimbabwe, and zan Pere had its headquarters, I kid
[1:40:20] Speaker 2: you not, on a street called Rotten Row in Harari.
[1:40:24] Speaker 2: And I went down to Rotten Row and my friend's
[1:40:32] Speaker 2: office was on pretty much the top floor, not quite
[1:40:34] Speaker 2: top floor, so third one day and of this not
[1:40:37] Speaker 2: quite a skyscraper, but nine floors or whatever. And I
[1:40:44] Speaker 2: went and met him we we we know each other
[1:40:47] Speaker 2: of old. Let's spread it like that. We had a
[1:40:49] Speaker 2: we had a good catch up. We had tea and
[1:40:52] Speaker 2: cake and warm Fanta, all the things that you expect
[1:40:56] Speaker 2: when meeting a senior African official. And as I came out,
[1:41:02] Speaker 2: I thinking about taking the steps down because I can
[1:41:07] Speaker 2: be a little bit claustrophobic. But the lights in the
[1:41:10] Speaker 2: stairwell were out, so I thought, well, i'd better I'll
[1:41:12] Speaker 2: just jump, you know, hell, it's only short ride and
[1:41:17] Speaker 2: the elevator. So I wait for the elevator to arrive,
[1:41:20] Speaker 2: doors opened, nobody in there, get in, went down one
[1:41:24] Speaker 2: story and the doors opened. Two gentlemen in suits, quite
[1:41:30] Speaker 2: tatty suits, but suits not the less god in I thought, okay,
[1:41:33] Speaker 2: that's good. At least I got some company. If we
[1:41:35] Speaker 2: get trapped and I have to spend half a day here,
[1:41:37] Speaker 2: because let's put like this, they wouldn't have engineers out
[1:41:41] Speaker 2: very very quickly, and and electrical cutouts are quite common
[1:41:46] Speaker 2: at that point in the ZIM. At least I'd have
[1:41:49] Speaker 2: some company. But then behind them in trooped a group
[1:41:55] Speaker 2: of god knows how many youth leagass a youth league.
[1:42:04] Speaker 2: They use the word use in a fairly loose sense,
[1:42:07] Speaker 2: so there was anybody sort of under forty really, and
[1:42:13] Speaker 2: they're one of their roles, apart from organizing community events
[1:42:18] Speaker 2: and football games, was beating up the opposition. So they
[1:42:23] Speaker 2: would often get groups of youth leaguers together to go
[1:42:26] Speaker 2: down to opposition rallies and knock heads together. And one
[1:42:31] Speaker 2: of their favored weapons was one of those curved blade
[1:42:37] Speaker 2: climb jar pangas up, which have been used I mean
[1:42:42] Speaker 2: you see those in use of cutting hedges, but they're
[1:42:45] Speaker 2: also very frequently used in the the Ruandan genocide. So
[1:42:50] Speaker 2: they're just quite chilling weapons to see in some of
[1:42:56] Speaker 2: his hand and there were a lot of them in
[1:42:58] Speaker 2: the hands of these youth leaguers. As they climbed in,
[1:43:03] Speaker 2: and they were all high as kites or drunk. I
[1:43:12] Speaker 2: could smell this evil local brew on their breath, so
[1:43:19] Speaker 2: I was like, you know, this is I think probably
[1:43:22] Speaker 2: advisable if I just keep myself to myself here. I
[1:43:25] Speaker 2: don't want to draw any attention to myself. So I
[1:43:28] Speaker 2: sort of shrunk into the corner. Doors closed, and we
[1:43:32] Speaker 2: went down about half a floor, and suddenly the weight
[1:43:36] Speaker 2: was too much and the whole thing jutted to a
[1:43:39] Speaker 2: halt and then the lights went out. So we were
[1:43:45] Speaker 2: there and pitch dark, surrounded by these youth leaguers, and
[1:43:51] Speaker 2: given my philosophobia, I thought I just need to have
[1:43:54] Speaker 2: some light. So I had again fairly rudimentary foam, but
[1:43:57] Speaker 2: there was a little torch thing at the top of it.
[1:44:00] Speaker 2: Put that on just so I could see what was
[1:44:01] Speaker 2: going on, and of course I, in so doing did
[1:44:05] Speaker 2: that thing which I said I shouldn't do, just draw
[1:44:07] Speaker 2: attention to myself. So suddenly there's this whole group of
[1:44:12] Speaker 2: slightly inebriated or rather inebriated youth leaguers branching their pangas
[1:44:18] Speaker 2: and looking. I mean they weren't branching, they did. The
[1:44:21] Speaker 2: place was pats. They wouldn't have been able to brandish,
[1:44:24] Speaker 2: but they were sort of, you know, training their eyes
[1:44:28] Speaker 2: on me and wanted to know who I was and
[1:44:30] Speaker 2: what I was doing. And it's important to understand that
[1:44:32] Speaker 2: at this point Britain was not well regarded in Symbarbie
[1:44:38] Speaker 2: government circles, and so in fact we were the We
[1:44:41] Speaker 2: had been put up as the bogeyman for a British
[1:44:44] Speaker 2: part politics, former British colony, all of that stuff. So
[1:44:48] Speaker 2: there was a lot of question about what is this
[1:44:50] Speaker 2: British man doing here? You know, are you spying? Who
[1:44:54] Speaker 2: are you going to? All this stuff? The and so
[1:45:00] Speaker 2: I thought, well, okay, I need to do. I can't
[1:45:04] Speaker 2: say I.
[1:45:04] Speaker 3: Need to do.
[1:45:05] Speaker 2: I thought, I need to do what Maya taught me
[1:45:07] Speaker 2: to do, which is to find an ally. But by
[1:45:09] Speaker 2: this point it was it was almost ingrained that I
[1:45:11] Speaker 2: would look for allies that I would target. So I
[1:45:15] Speaker 2: scanned around, and of course there were two. Very quickly
[1:45:17] Speaker 2: it occurred to me, there's only two people that I'm
[1:45:19] Speaker 2: actually going to be able to engage with here in
[1:45:23] Speaker 2: any meaningful way other than conflict, and that's the two
[1:45:26] Speaker 2: gentlemen wearing suits. And I thought, also given up. They're
[1:45:31] Speaker 2: wearing suits, quite likely to be quite senior, so there
[1:45:34] Speaker 2: might be some deference shown to them. So I needed
[1:45:37] Speaker 2: to find a way of engaging with them. And I
[1:45:40] Speaker 2: noticed on the lapel of wall of the two he
[1:45:44] Speaker 2: had a little enamel badge and it just said United.
[1:45:49] Speaker 2: And I worked at that that must be Manchester United.
[1:45:52] Speaker 2: It must be sort of half a broken badge and
[1:45:55] Speaker 2: half a badge from Manchester United. And because I knew
[1:46:03] Speaker 2: that British soccer was immensely popular in that part of
[1:46:09] Speaker 2: the world, and I knew that the most popular team
[1:46:13] Speaker 2: was Manchester United, so I was able to work out
[1:46:15] Speaker 2: that must be who we're talking about here. So I
[1:46:18] Speaker 2: sort of looked over to him, caught as I and
[1:46:21] Speaker 2: I just simply said I had no idea whether there
[1:46:25] Speaker 2: had been a recent game or not. But I took
[1:46:27] Speaker 2: a gamble. I just said, how was the game the
[1:46:29] Speaker 2: other night? And there was just like pause. Everybody sort
[1:46:34] Speaker 2: of looked at him, and then he laughed and he said, oh, yeah,
[1:46:38] Speaker 2: it was great, but you know, Rooney could have played better.
[1:46:45] Speaker 2: You know, he's one of the best players in the world.
[1:46:48] Speaker 2: And then somebody else said from the no, no, no,
[1:46:52] Speaker 2: it's not Rooney. Rooney is not the greatest. Ronaldo's the greatest.
[1:46:55] Speaker 2: And suddenly we were into a debate about something I
[1:46:58] Speaker 2: know nothing about, which is soccer. I just learned literally
[1:47:01] Speaker 2: nothing about it. I think I don't think I've ever
[1:47:03] Speaker 2: seen Maybe I might have seen a couple of matches
[1:47:06] Speaker 2: of the World Cup or something on occasion, but it's
[1:47:08] Speaker 2: just not something I know anything about it. But it
[1:47:10] Speaker 2: was my gamble to say, you know, told me about
[1:47:13] Speaker 2: the game the other night worked and it got the
[1:47:16] Speaker 2: whole debate going about soccer and drew all the attention
[1:47:20] Speaker 2: away from me. And by the time we got we
[1:47:22] Speaker 2: got moving again, which wasn't actually as long as I feared.
[1:47:25] Speaker 2: It was about half an hour to an hour later
[1:47:28] Speaker 2: or so. I'd actually made quite good friends with the
[1:47:34] Speaker 2: guy who was wearing the United badge, and he went
[1:47:36] Speaker 2: on to become quite We stayed in touch and he
[1:47:39] Speaker 2: became quite a powerful useful source of mine. So that
[1:47:43] Speaker 2: was a that was a miniature example of using targeting
[1:47:47] Speaker 2: in the moment. And the lesson in there is you're
[1:47:51] Speaker 2: looking for something which matters to somebody else on which
[1:47:54] Speaker 2: you can engage them. And the really key point is
[1:47:57] Speaker 2: you don't necessarily you don't have to be an expert,
[1:48:00] Speaker 2: because guess what, people who are experts on their subjects
[1:48:04] Speaker 2: that fascinate them are very happy to tell you their view,
[1:48:08] Speaker 2: so you can spark a conversation. If you've got your
[1:48:12] Speaker 2: targeting them right, you can win a win an ally,
[1:48:18] Speaker 2: win over an ally relatively easily by appealing to their
[1:48:22] Speaker 2: areas of interest in asking them to educate you. And
[1:48:27] Speaker 2: that's something which I found fairly common across Africa. Actually
[1:48:35] Speaker 2: Africa is a very very diverse place. So I always
[1:48:38] Speaker 2: hesitate to generalize, but I think I'm right to say
[1:48:43] Speaker 2: generally Africans are incredibly welcoming and they are very eager,
[1:48:51] Speaker 2: usually to help. Of course, it's not always the case,
[1:48:55] Speaker 2: and sometimes it goes very badly wrong.
[1:48:59] Speaker 3: But I found.
[1:49:01] Speaker 2: Appealing finding out what your interlocutor is interested in and
[1:49:06] Speaker 2: asking them to talk to you about it. It's a
[1:49:08] Speaker 2: very powerful technique, not just in Africa, of course, but
[1:49:11] Speaker 2: it seemed to work particularly powerfully in Africa because of
[1:49:14] Speaker 2: that sense of wanting to educate, wanting to help, wanting
[1:49:17] Speaker 2: to support, and wanting to be welcoming.
[1:49:20] Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the most fall I have ever been
[1:49:23] Speaker 1: in my life was in West Africa.
[1:49:26] Speaker 2: They like to feed you, Yes, they sure do. And
[1:49:30] Speaker 2: it's I when it's the time I've had to make
[1:49:35] Speaker 2: excuses for not finishing a player food which would have
[1:49:39] Speaker 2: probably have fed my entire family exactly, And I'm talking
[1:49:42] Speaker 2: about when there were seven of us.
[1:49:45] Speaker 1: So you did this for a while, You had your
[1:49:47] Speaker 1: own firm for a while, which you said you had
[1:49:50] Speaker 1: shut down. What was sort of the next step in
[1:49:53] Speaker 1: your life in how did this book Think Like a
[1:49:55] Speaker 1: Spy come about?
[1:49:57] Speaker 2: Well, The book came about mainly because I've had it
[1:50:03] Speaker 2: in mind for some years now, and what I was
[1:50:05] Speaker 2: very struck by I was working in private intelligence and
[1:50:08] Speaker 2: working in government. Many of the skills were the same, actually,
[1:50:12] Speaker 2: And then I realized looking back that those skills in intelligence, recruitment,
[1:50:17] Speaker 2: age of recruitment are something which all of us use
[1:50:20] Speaker 2: pretty much all the time, but we just don't do
[1:50:22] Speaker 2: it in any structured way. We don't do it in
[1:50:24] Speaker 2: any intent forul way, and I think that's very sad,
[1:50:29] Speaker 2: it's very unfortunate, especially as I think people who don't
[1:50:32] Speaker 2: have we talked about social capital earlier, those people who
[1:50:35] Speaker 2: don't have a network of social capital can benefit from
[1:50:39] Speaker 2: understanding how to build relationships. And I thought, why should
[1:50:44] Speaker 2: spies have all the fun, you know, why should they know?
[1:50:47] Speaker 2: These are not national secrets, they're not massive national security.
[1:50:52] Speaker 2: These are techniques about relationship building, about interpersonal skills, about
[1:50:59] Speaker 2: enhancing your self awareness, your others awareness, and your situational awareness.
[1:51:04] Speaker 2: That's essentially what the book is about. How to do
[1:51:07] Speaker 2: those three things, and to turn enhancing your three awarenesses
[1:51:12] Speaker 2: into building enduring ethical relationships what I call alliance alliances
[1:51:21] Speaker 2: with goals allies people who can help you to get
[1:51:24] Speaker 2: to that next stage of your career or whatever you have,
[1:51:27] Speaker 2: whatever happens to be your goal. So I you all
[1:51:30] Speaker 2: equivalence between the intelligence cycle and your achievement cycle. Rather
[1:51:36] Speaker 2: than trying to focus on the outcome in fifteen twenty years,
[1:51:40] Speaker 2: focus on the outcome in the next year. What do
[1:51:43] Speaker 2: you need to be doing in the next year, then
[1:51:44] Speaker 2: it's two years, three years. Who do you need to
[1:51:48] Speaker 2: support you in that iteration of your achievement cycle. So
[1:51:53] Speaker 2: that brings you to targeting. How do you get alongside them?
[1:51:57] Speaker 2: How do you cultivate them? How do you recruit them
[1:52:00] Speaker 2: to support you? What can you give them back? What
[1:52:04] Speaker 2: are their motivations? And I thought, I realized I've been
[1:52:10] Speaker 2: doing it all my life, one way or another, ever
[1:52:12] Speaker 2: since Mayor had taught me about the importance of building alliances.
[1:52:16] Speaker 2: And so it strikes me as a very powerful set
[1:52:20] Speaker 2: of skills for anybody to use at any stage in
[1:52:25] Speaker 2: their life, particularly for younger people who are looking to
[1:52:28] Speaker 2: get into the workplace for the first time. Now, recently,
[1:52:31] Speaker 2: I've also been focusing on the relationship between intelligent skills
[1:52:38] Speaker 2: and leadership. That may sound a little bit unlikely because
[1:52:46] Speaker 2: intelligence oftentime involves working by yourself in the field. So
[1:52:52] Speaker 2: what's the leadership all about? Well, John C. Maxwell, the
[1:52:56] Speaker 2: leadership guru, said that leadership has influenced nothing more, nothing less.
[1:53:00] Speaker 2: And if you think about what an intelligence officer is doing,
[1:53:05] Speaker 2: persuading somebody perhaps in a dangerous country to become a
[1:53:10] Speaker 2: traitor at risk of their own freedom, potentially at risk
[1:53:14] Speaker 2: of their own life, I can't think of a better
[1:53:17] Speaker 2: example of influence. So it strikes me that corporate leaders
[1:53:24] Speaker 2: say sect to leaders. Local leaders, politicians could all benefit
[1:53:31] Speaker 2: from learning what the skills of intelligence relationship building are
[1:53:37] Speaker 2: and apply those in the leadership context. Because leadership is influence,
[1:53:43] Speaker 2: and influence is right at the heart of what intelligence
[1:53:48] Speaker 2: officers do. And we've I've been I now run occasional workshops.
[1:53:58] Speaker 2: I don't do publicly accept workshops at the moment, but
[1:54:03] Speaker 2: there are plans afoot to do that called the Stars
[1:54:08] Speaker 2: Inspires Leadership program. And this is this is working with
[1:54:11] Speaker 2: an actor, the idea being that there's a relationship between
[1:54:21] Speaker 2: intelligence work and acting because it's all about as we
[1:54:25] Speaker 2: were talking about, presenting that best version of yourself, stepping
[1:54:28] Speaker 2: into a role and by using acting skills you can
[1:54:33] Speaker 2: assert a presence and an authority, which is perhaps not
[1:54:37] Speaker 2: something that feels natural to you, but it's very, very
[1:54:39] Speaker 2: powerful in the presentation to other people. So we're exploring
[1:54:42] Speaker 2: this Stars and Spies Leadership lab and offer it as
[1:54:49] Speaker 2: a private offering to corporates currently, but I will be
[1:54:54] Speaker 2: we will be planning to offer it publicly. It's with
[1:54:59] Speaker 2: an actical Louise Osborne, and we will soon be I
[1:55:04] Speaker 2: think later this year we will have our first publicly
[1:55:06] Speaker 2: accessible leadership masterclass.
[1:55:10] Speaker 1: And the book is available now. If people want to
[1:55:12] Speaker 1: go and read Think Like a Spy.
[1:55:14] Speaker 2: The book is available. I'll show you again with the
[1:55:23] Speaker 2: I Think Like Spy Master of the Nine Secret Skills
[1:55:25] Speaker 2: of Influencer Leadership, and it's now out in the US.
[1:55:31] Speaker 2: I think it's been out since the beginning of this year,
[1:55:33] Speaker 2: so it should be available in all good bookstores and
[1:55:37] Speaker 2: obviously on Amazon.
[1:55:38] Speaker 1: Where can people find you online? I know you have
[1:55:41] Speaker 1: a website, right.
[1:55:43] Speaker 2: Jules Fisher dot com. It's my personal website, my author website.
[1:55:47] Speaker 2: You can contact me through that if you'd like to.
[1:55:50] Speaker 2: I'm not a great used for social media, but I
[1:55:52] Speaker 2: am quite active on LinkedIn and I'm very happy to
[1:55:55] Speaker 2: have connection requests there.
[1:55:58] Speaker 1: And for the people watching this on YouTube or with't
[1:56:01] Speaker 1: in the podcast, we'll have links down the description to
[1:56:03] Speaker 1: all of those places where you can find Julian. As
[1:56:09] Speaker 1: we wrap up here, I mean, any final thoughts, anything
[1:56:11] Speaker 1: that you would like to talk about that we didn't get.
[1:56:13] Speaker 2: To, well, I just want to reiterate that point really
[1:56:18] Speaker 2: that it there. There's an idea around that spying is
[1:56:28] Speaker 2: the preserve of a certain type of person that people
[1:56:31] Speaker 2: spies are born, and you're born in bo you are
[1:56:34] Speaker 2: any sense as well as born as in the BO
[1:56:38] Speaker 2: r N sense. But actually, you know, what spying is
[1:56:41] Speaker 2: all about, what intelligence work is all about, is the
[1:56:44] Speaker 2: use of personality, the use of human and human relationship
[1:56:47] Speaker 2: skills into personal skills. And we're all capable of enhancing those,
[1:56:52] Speaker 2: learning them, practicing them, and mastering them, and that can
[1:56:55] Speaker 2: make a huge difference to your life. And my final
[1:56:57] Speaker 2: thought is this, we are in an age of artificial intelligence,
[1:57:04] Speaker 2: and I believe given the encroachments of artificial intelligence on
[1:57:08] Speaker 2: our work life and our personal lives, compounded by the
[1:57:13] Speaker 2: prevalence of social media and the ready access to forms
[1:57:17] Speaker 2: of entertainment streaming entertainment, we're in danger of losing some
[1:57:21] Speaker 2: of those interpersonal skills, are in danger of losing the
[1:57:24] Speaker 2: human touch. And I think the thing that will mark
[1:57:27] Speaker 2: out your listeners from everybody else as we go we
[1:57:32] Speaker 2: hurtle into this artificial intelligence age is enhancing into personal skills.
[1:57:38] Speaker 2: So human intelligence is more vital than ever in the
[1:57:41] Speaker 2: age of artificial intelligence, and that's what's going to make
[1:57:45] Speaker 2: all the difference in the coming years.
[1:57:48] Speaker 4: I think we have one viewer of question for you.
[1:57:51] Speaker 4: It's actually not a question, it's just a statement. Think
[1:57:53] Speaker 4: like as from Gens, Think like a Spidery. Fantastic book
[1:57:58] Speaker 4: for those who are working in all discipline is that
[1:58:00] Speaker 4: demand analysis and decision making.
[1:58:02] Speaker 3: Okay, you have a fan.
[1:58:03] Speaker 2: Yeah, brilliant. That's fantastic. Thank you so much. I really
[1:58:07] Speaker 2: appreciate that.
[1:58:09] Speaker 1: So, Jules, thank you for coming on the podcast this morning.
[1:58:13] Speaker 1: Really appreciate it well this morning. And again, Jules Fisher
[1:58:20] Speaker 1: is the website if you guys are looking for him,
[1:58:23] Speaker 1: and again we'll have links down the description. Thanks again,
[1:58:27] Speaker 1: and please stay in touch.
[1:58:29] Speaker 2: Thank you for having me. Really enjoyed that. Great to
[1:58:32] Speaker 2: speak to you, Jack and.
[1:58:33] Speaker 3: All you out there. Will see you next time.
[1:58:40] Speaker 1: Hey, guys, I want to take a moment to tell
[1:58:42] Speaker 1: you about the Team House Podcast newsletter. If you go
[1:58:45] Speaker 1: and subscribe, it's totally free, and what it will do
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