THE  INTELLIGENCE  GAME  :  Illusions  and  Delusions  of   International  Espionage

by James Rusbridger.     Bodley Head, ISBN 0-370-31242-2      Price:  £12.95

James Rusbridger is a former commodity broker who claims to have been involved in British intelligence operations while visiting Eastern Europe. The picture he paints of his own activities is very modest and has the ring of truth; there are no claims that he risked his own life carrying microfilm or contraband into the Soviet Bloc or was in any way vital to the defence of the 'West'. And certainly Mr Rusbridger makes no such claims for any others engaged in this sphere of activity.

The sub-title of this book is Illusions and Delusions of International Espionage, and the author makes it clear that it is the public of both the "free world" and the then rapidly-shrinking Communist Bloc who were (and are) entranced by the  illusions, while the  delusions belong to the illusionists, the intelligence agencies. In particular they are deluding themselves when they claim they are vital to national security, freedom or the protection of their fellow citizens.

This may seem a curious thing to say, but Rusbridger backs up his claims with a plethora of well-documented and often disturbing examples. All the intelligence services are exposed as inefficient, profligate, unreliable, untrustworthy, and a far bigger threat to the security of the state than the 'communist conspiracies' which the CIA are forever uncovering in their own backyard.

The CIA, NSA, MI5 and MI6 come in for particular criticism; the American agencies have grossly overstated the danger of the Communist menace and the scale of the KGB's penetration of the Western security setup. But rather than this being an honest error, the reason is a pragmatic one -- empire- building. In short, if there were no real communist threat (or a much smaller one) theNSA could manage with considerably fewer than the 20,000 staff and $4,000,000,000 budget that it currently struggles under.

The fact that almost all the major spies of the last fifty and more years have been caught either by accident or betrayal, is hardly a recommendation for efficiency! In Britain, Geoffrey Prime was shopped by his wife, George Blake was exposed by a defector, and Anthony Blunt confessed, but only after being given immunity from prosecution....

The "positive vetting" procedures used by the security services leave more than a little to be desired. The matter of Boyce and Lee was one case in point. Both men were drug addicts, yet Boyce, who worked for the NSA, was cleared by the FBI to handle top secret material; while in Britain, Michael Bettaney, (who in 1984 was sentenced to 23 years imprisonment) is described by Rusbridger as an unstable drunkard and convicted fare-dodger.
Bettaney was also a Marxist, an aspiring Catholic priest, and a closet Nazi -- apparently all simultaneously! As well as being arrested for being drunk and disorderly and shouting "You can't arrest me, I'm a spy!", Bettaney also boasted to colleagues that he was working for the Russians and told them to "come and see me in my dacha when I retire". He was described by his fellow MI5 officers as "intelligent, articulate, agreeable, and with a bizarre sense of humour"....

If the Western security services are inefficient, we can at least take some comfort from Rusbridger's description of the KGB. When the aforementioned Bettaney decided to betray his country he delivered a letter by hand to the Russian Embassy, giving details of the recent expulsions of three Russian diplomats, and followed this up with M15's assessment of the KGB's London operation. Despite all this, the Russians on both occasions gave him the cold-shoulder.

The reader can also take comfort from Rusbridger's assessment of the KGB's track record in Black Africa. Far from being ardent Marxists, the supposedly backward Africans were extremely astute in playing the superpowers against each other, screwing dollars out of the CIA and payment in kind from the Russians. The dictators of the Dark Continent were less interested in spreading the gospel of Karl Marx than in joining the super-capitalists on the other side of the pond, in spirit at least.

Rusbridger catalogues the CIA's dirty tricks which include attempting to overthrow democratically elected governments, bribery, assassination and using captive publications and tame journalists to boost their esteem with the public and frighten politicians as well as spreading myriad kinds of disinformation. Britain's security services are equally adept at this game; Rusbridger digs out this charming quote about Chapman Pincher (generally regarded as something of an expert on national security and the business of spying):--

The columns of the Daily Express are a kind of official urinal where high offficials of MI5 and MI6 stand side by side patiently leaking secrets to Mr Pincher, who is too self-important and light-witted to know he is being used.

The only really efficient security services are the French DGSE (better known as SDECE) and Israel's Mossad; particularly the latter, this being probably due to a mixture of their paranoid fear of being crushed by some megalithic Arab conspiracy, and the fact that they are much smaller than any of the Western agencies. They are also amongst the most ruthless.

The question which Rusbridger's book doesn't answer, and the one which probably cannot be answered, is this....   How far should the security services be allowed to go in the interests of national security? Is it right to employ freelance burglars, to deliberately mislead the public or even to keep dossiers on members of CND?  Surely assassinating foreign nationals, intercepting every telephone call coming into Britain, and betraying their own agents so as to enhance the credibility of highly-placed moles, is hardly the best way to make the world safe for democracy?

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