Gordon Carrera
Appearances
The Rest Is History
Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
Pigeons, Tom. It all comes back to pigeons, the superheroes of history. I think if I hadn't appeared on The Rest is History doing pigeons, I don't think I'd have understood the power of podcasting, not least, and enjoyed it so much. And it's fascinating. After a career, 20-odd years broadcasting at the BBC, I appear on The Rest is History to talk about pigeons.
The Rest Is History
Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
And that is all anyone wants to talk to me about. They go, I heard you... I heard you on The Rest is History. So I suddenly realised, I think the power of podcasting came to life at that moment, brought to life through the superheroes of pigeons. And I think that was one of the foundational reasons for The Rest is Classified coming into being.
The Rest Is History
Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
There are a few others as well, which is people do love stories about spies and secrets. And me and David enjoy a good spy story as well.
The Rest Is History
Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
Well, we've got a rich array from history right up to the present. So we started off with a coup in Iran in 1953, engineered by Britain and America and the MI6 and the CIA to overthrow Mossadegh in Iran. We've also looked at the first chief of MI6, a wonderful character called Mansfield Cumming, who was founding MI6, the British Secret Service, around the time of the First World War.
The Rest Is History
Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
Famously, he had a wooden leg and he wouldn't tell new recruits that he had a wooden leg. And they'd come into his office and he would stab himself with a penknife in the wooden leg to test whether or not they'd flinch. And if they flinched, he knew they weren't good enough for the British Secret Service.
The Rest Is History
Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
So it's a bit of a character there. You've got a brilliant series on North Korean espionage, haven't you? Yep. More recently, we've done North Korean espionage, done a bit about Syria. Got a series going out around now about Anna Chapman, who was a rather famous female agent from Russia who infiltrated both London and New York society on behalf of the Russian security services in around 2010.
The Rest Is History
Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
So we've got a kind of rich array, I think, of different stories for people who just love spy stories.
The Rest Is History
Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
So you're going to do those at some point? Absolutely. Vassal is a fascinating story about a honey trap in Moscow, actually, you know, and he gets trapped there while he's serving with a British embassy. And Gordievsky is one of the great spy stories. I've met Gordievsky a few times and he's an amazing character, still alive, living in kind of semi-hiding in Britain.
The Rest Is History
Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
But he's a great example where you've got all the excitement of a spy story, of his exfiltration from Moscow under the kind of watching eyes of the KGB and the drama of it. But you've also got a figure who is quite consequential.
The Rest Is History
Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
in history, because the intelligence he provided helped, especially Thatcher and Reagan, kind of inform them how to deal with the Soviet Union, how to deal with Gorbachev, and how to manage the end of the Cold War. And I think that's really interesting, when you get a spy story, which isn't just an exciting story, but actually tells you something about history.
The Rest Is History
Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
And that's right. I think that's one of the things we want to answer is as well as the kind of human side of things. But when did it matter? And I think Gordievsky is an example. Philby is another figure who mattered enormously in terms of the early Cold War, but also shaping, you know, I think Dominic knows, you know, shaping British institutions and British culture. actually, for many decades.
The Rest Is History
Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
That one person's betrayal and what it did, I think, is really interesting. So I do think spies matter. And you can look at that right up to the recent invasion of Ukraine in 2022 by Russia and the way in which Western intelligence was declassifying information about what Russia was up to, to try and disrupt that invasion. So you can see the way intelligence is often used in the public domain.
The Rest Is History
Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
Think about the justification of the war in Iraq, using intelligence about weapons of mass destruction. All of that shows that it does matter.
The Rest Is History
Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
Alistair and Rory may want to comment on some of these matters. They may have knowledge about these affairs, given their backgrounds in the diplomatic and governmental world. So yeah, I think there's plenty of room.
The Rest Is History
Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
Since our podcast a while back, I have been asking that high and low in the British state. And I had some assurances from security officials that they were looking at it. But I fear... That's meaningless. But that's what I fear, Dominic. I fear you're right. I feel they're fobbing me off. And so, you know, I'd hope that perhaps collectively we could make another push on the pigeon gap.
The Rest Is History
Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
If Churchill, you know, in the 30s could campaign on the gap with, you know, Nazi rearmament, I think, you know, if he was alive today, I'd like to think Churchill might have a podcast and he'd be, you know, podcasting about that. So perhaps we can do our bit to close that pigeon gap.
The Rest Is History
Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
Yeah, I think that's a really interesting way of seeing it because rather than thinking she is someone who is trained as a spy and recruited, put through a year or two of training and then sent to do this, she's someone who they go, you've got access, you've got influence, you've proved that in London. Let's start using you and training you up as you go to become a spy.
The Rest Is History
Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
I think it's worth reflecting here about the way Russia spies, which is slightly different as well. One of the things that they do is use these people under what they call illegal cover, which is kind of an odd phrase. But the contrast is they think of someone who's under diplomatic cover. So a spy who's working at the embassy, they have legal cover because they've got diplomatic immunity.
The Rest Is History
Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
And if they get arrested, they can't be arrested. They just get expelled. But an illegal is someone who doesn't have, if you like, diplomatic cover, but is blending into a society. and who is moving around with it, kind of swimming in the waters, hopefully unseen. And it's a particular type of spy which the Russians specialise in.
The Rest Is History
Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
Exactly. I think the Russians were famous and the Soviets for using these deep cover illegals who they trained for years. They trained them to actually pose as being another nationality. You take a Russian and you'd make them into being a Canadian or a Briton or an American.
The Rest Is History
Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
insert them with the identity of a real, maybe a Briton or an American who died and have them kind of embed themselves deep in society. The idea was that they could then do things which a Russian couldn't do. They could move in circles and not be as suspicious. And so that was your classic deep cover illegal.
The Rest Is History
Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
But what I think we're seeing here in the 90s and 2000s is a recognition by Russia that times have changed. for two reasons. I think one is that it's harder to do that kind of deep cover stuff. One of the reasons is biometrics because you've got kind of passports, you've got databases.
The Rest Is History
Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
It's harder to kind of create a fake identity and then sustain it whether it's fingerprints or DNA or facial recognition to use different names and different types of cover. But also, one of the reasons that they needed to do this in the kind of 20s and 30s and in the Cold War onwards and use these illegals was because
The Rest Is History
Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
Russians couldn't move easily in Western society, where suddenly you've got this period where, as we said, from the 90s to the 2000s, Russians can come into London. They can move around London. That's not suspicious. There's not a kind of barrier to it.
The Rest Is History
Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
So Anna, I think, is emblematic of this new type of spying that Russia can do, which is no need to do the deep training for some illegal spy, but take someone who's already moving in between the two societies or has got links in London or somewhere and just train them up, use them, make the most of them because they're there.
The Rest Is History
Russian Spies, Pigeons, and The Rest Is Classified…
They've got the ability to kind of meet people and talk to people and move in interesting circles.