Trump, Vrbětice and MI6

to a really good team and to a successor that I uh respect and admire in uh Blaise Metrovelli. And so you kind of feel your job is done. You know, you've you've brought the next generation through and it's It's time to let them move on. So I I don't spend time pining for my former job.

Uh it could uh the danger is it slips over into paranoia in a sort of Le Care type uh way. John Le Care and Smiley and all of that. But I don't feel that way. I I I live my life, I hope I can trust in other human beings as much or as little as anybody else.

uh very regularly. As you may know, I didn't give very many speeches, uh public speeches as chief, but one of them and one of the really critical ones I delivered in Prague and I did that for a particular reason. because for MI six, many of our most important uh Soviet agents came to us because they were uh dismayed and disgusted by what they saw in nineteen sixty eight in Prague, the crushing of the Prague the the so called Prague Spring.

And uh that turned some of them, or it was the final straw which broke the camel's back, the final thing that led them to reach out to MI six. So it felt in the circumstances of a war next door in Ukraine. It was time to appeal to Russians. who uh may be dismayed by what Putin is doing in their name um to come and help us. And uh that's why I chose Prague. So yes, very regular uh interaction with uh the Czech services who, by the way, are outstandingly good.

uh really professional and they understand Russia in a way, frankly, that uh only countries which used to be part uh behind the Iron Curtain can truly uh appreciate.

to understand the activities of uh two nine uh one five five and we put a lot of effort into understanding the activities of that group. You know, it the the two instants really in their in their different ways. You know, in the uh I'm I'm struggling, of course, uh to pronounce Burvetice, to pronounce the the name of the town, but there You know, two Czech citizens, civilians, died as a result of that. And of course in Salisbury the the target

was a a Russian defector, but the the person who died was a again uh a British civilian, Dawn Sturgis, who lost her life. And it's the The commonality of it. the pattern that we now understand of gray zone of of hybrid activities by the Russian intelligence services. And the other thing connected with that is just how reckless they were of innocent life. their preparing us to create explosions uh in the in the Czech Republic, uh or to use a military grade nerve agent.

uh in a small town uh in in England is a s breathtaking in its recklessness. So many other people could have died in both incidents. Now the other thing is a sort of a a real lack of professionalism. Uh whilst the Czech services and MI six were cooperating and MI five and the um uh were cooperating on the on this issue and we were slowly unraveling the two incidents and being able to make connections across the

A commercial company, Berlin Cat, was able to do a lot of the same work and uncover it because the two uh officers concerned were so unprofessional. They left so many tracks back uh into Moscow and into and near their headquarters. It was striking. Uh and I think we all remember that appearance on Russia Today when they were just comically awful.

They were so obviously frauds. Uh and I remember uh meeting a leader, I won't name them, uh, who had been quite sceptical when we had just said that uh two nine one five five was behind Salisbury. And uh I saw him after that T V show and he said, Richard, Richard, he said, uh I I did I thought M I six uh was lying, he said, but I saw those two guys on the television and they were so grouped. He said they were so obviously a Russian military.

The Russians love to have large embassies uh in your capital and if you let them they will. And of course many of them will be intelligence officers undercover. So the best way is to ratchet it down, kick the people out that you discover are intelligence people, and then don't let them replace them. And we have been pretty successful at that in the UK over the years. And it means that the security service doesn't have so much to do.

because it's not following those the all these people around. So the Czech Republic was very brave and very forthright and it it definitely worked. And when you see some of the activity involving now the use of of petty criminals, uh people recruited online to go and do uh sabotage, arson, etcetera. That is an expression of weakness. That's because they can't do it themselves through two nine one five five. And they have to kind of sub contract it out.

And these people that they are hiring uh often don't know what they're doing. They're not uh professionally uh at that level. So they are relatively easier to counter. They're still dangerous. I don't underestimate the threat that they pose. But it is uh an expression of weakness that the Russians have been forced into this uh thing and it reflects the fact that we collectively did a really good job after Salisbury.

And then following up after the um Russian reinvasion of I of Ukraine in February twenty two, we did it again and we took down the numbers even further.

And very clearly you can only have one name and turn up in the same uh airport and uh you can imagine that maybe that wasn't always the case. Look, it's it's always an issue for a human intelligence service that The things that are put uh into airports and elsewhere to capture uh terrorists, which we all want as good citizens, also sometimes make it a little bit more difficult. But you develop new techniques, you find ways of getting the job done.

Uh and it's a kind of, you know, it's a bit of an arms race. You're you're always, you know, moving from one to the other. That's why in the UK, the cooperation between MI five and MI six, MI five being the domestic service and MI six being the overseas service,

uh is so close because we help each other. Mm. Uh MI five can explain to us uh how they're catching the bad guys and we can learn from that and try and avoid uh getting uh caught ourselves. So this is Through the history of intelligence work, this is always the way that uh one door is closed and you have to open a door somewhere else so you carry on doing the necessary

of appealing to Russians to do the right thing and come and find us and and providing a means for them to do it securely uh via the dark web. So yes. But we've always been the beneficiary of people uh coming and finding us, uh, if you like, rather than us necessarily finding them. And uh that that remains the case.

Uh, we were instrumental in helping uh the Americans to set up the Office of Strategic St uh Services, which uh then later became the CIA. So there's a lot of history of working together. And over those years, um, it's evolved. Obviously, uh in the Cold War it was a cooperation focused on the state threat from the Soviet Union above all. Uh and then we had in the nine eleven period a real focus on counterterrorism and now we're back into state on state competition and the relationship

between the US and the UK, but also between the US and other European services has gone around through that. And it's also true that at various points since the Second World War Uh US policy on certain issues has diverged from some of the European countries' views. We found ourselves in a very different position from the US in the Suez Crisis in nineteen fifty six. many Europeans oppose the Vietnam War.

But we find a way of keeping the intelligence relationship going through these uh differences. And I guess, you know, the the obvious one today is there's clearly a difference between the Trump administration and Europe o over military action on Iran. But through all this, We keep the intelligence exchange as far as we possibly can away from the politics, away from the policy, so that whatever the choice of policy

you can see the intelligence to inform your decision making. And as I'm out. I've been out now for six, eight months. But I strongly suspect that people on both sides of the Atlantic are are working hard to keep that uh intelligence relationship in good order. Because it's not about sentiment or charity matter. This is about keeping our citizens safe.

and about working together in our respective national interests. In other words, it's it's transactional at its core. It's about, you know, delivering benefit for both sides. It's not about some great sort of charitable endeavor.

uh sensitive and they are kept but for sovereign reasons you don't share. So let's be very clear. There are always some things you don't share. It's not an open book. Second thing is when you share intelligence, you don't tend to tell the other partner the name of your secret agent or the exact uh SIGINT access, signals intelligence access you have into the opponent. You don't do that. You share the finished product. And you rely on a sense of trust between partners.

to say, look, we have some high confidence in this material or this is lower confidence material. You don't allow people under the bonnet to use a motoring analogy. So I am pretty confident that the intelligence exchange has not been severely impacted because both sides, again, it comes back why do we do this? We share intelligence.

to in the national interest. We do it because it gains us some benefit and saves lives. It's not always narrowly transactional. You say share intelligence to save a lives in in the Czech Republic. Uh you you do it because you share the values and of course that's the right thing. And you know that the check services will do exactly the same for you.

You know, when it comes to it. Not in some quid pro quo just because that's the right thing to do and we share the same values. And I'm very confident that that continues to be the spirit that animates the relationship across the

But because the relationship between the US and UK in the intelligence field is so strong, our intelligence, I'm very confident, when we have good intelligence and we share it with our American counterparts, it will be used To inform the president's thinking and his decision making. How he what he then decides to do, and the decisions he makes.

the the international system that has served Western democracies so well over these last eighty years, they want to change that in their favour. And I think that may come up against our interests and our values. So that's a kind of longer term one. And not to mention climate change, the genetic AI and where that goes. But the most important issue on the international agenda, without a doubt, is Ukraine.

We have to ensure that Putin does not succeed in Ukraine. We have to ensure that we keep our support. The Czech Republic has been one of the most prominent supporters of Ukraine uh since twenty two. We need to keep that going,'cause if we falter, if we fail to meet that challenge.

Not only will Putin's uh appetite grow with the eating, you know, he may be emboldened to do other things which are damaging to Western security, but behind him President Xi Jinping is watching this and he will make judgments about the Western resolve and he will make judgments therefore on what he does in the South China Sea, what he does uh in Taiwan critically. So there are all kinds of reasons why for me Ukraine is the central struggle of our time.