"Putin is not getting an accurate picture"

This is the second part of our interview with Richard Moore, who from 2020 until last September was Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) also known as “C”. Prior to that he’d been a Director-General at the Foreign Office and our Ambassador to Turkey, having spent his earlier career in MI6.

In the first post we discussed how MI6, and the wider security apparatus, operates. How does “C” work with the prime minister? How do intelligence agencies try to avoid group think? Does he agree with the idea that there’s a “deep state”?

In part two we cover the wider world. What’s Richard’s take on Putin, Xi, Iran and working with the US under Trump?

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Lawrence: You worked very closely with the Americans as well as the Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders as part of the ‘Five Eyes’ arrangement. You left your job at a time when there was tumult in your field in the US, with a Director of National Intelligence (Tulsi Gabbard) who had previously taken positions completely at variance to those of the intelligence agencies. Did you feel that cooperation could go on as before? Or were you concerned that pressures from the American side would at some point make everything too difficult?

Richard: I started in what we now call Trump 1.0, did the whole of Biden, and then the first eight months of Trump 2.0. There has been a very consistent effort over many decades to preserve and maintain the intelligence relationship on both sides of the Atlantic, whatever the turbulence of US politics. And remember those people at the top of their agencies, in contrast to the UK, are political appointments. Gina Haspel, who I started off with, was an unusual head of the agency because she was a professional intelligence officer throughout. That’s the norm in the UK but not there.

Then we had Bill Burns [under Biden], a very distinguished public servant, who was a fantastic partner. And then I had John Ratcliffe for the last period I was there. And John is an extremely nice guy, a classic Texan gentleman of the old school. He’s very Anglophile and supportive of the relationship. I was confident that in John’s hands the relationship would be nurtured and looked after. So honestly I saw no diminution of that relationship over time. You always have situations, even amongst the best of friends, where there are policy differences between your political masters, and you find a way to negotiate through those. You tend to be quite careful about not asking your partner to do stuff you know will be difficult for them because of their compliance or legal framework. And I see that all continuing.

Lawrence: One of the things Bill Burns did was go to Moscow in 2021 to show the Russians that we knew what they were up to. Was that part of your role - to take on very sensitive diplomatic activity - or is that a particularity of the US system?

Richard: There’s a slight ad hominem element about Bill Burns himself as he was a former diplomat and former ambassador to Moscow. So President Biden used him a lot, probably more than anyone previously. I may be wrong, and this is a sweeping statement, but I doubt there are many other CIA directors that have been used quite so often in that mode. In our case there is an element of that. So I would be able to travel to places that might be more difficult if it was a rather more high profile minister or even a senior Foreign Office official. So I was sometimes used to have those kind of below the radar, slightly more difficult conversations.