MI6 ranked as Europe's 'best' foreign intelligence service

Britain, if it still exists as a nation state, is broken. On that, I think, most people would agree, though they may differ on the reasons. (I’d suggest forty years of crushing neoliberal ideology, culminating in Brexit, might have something to do with it).

Whatever the causes, Britons can no doubt take heart from a recent poll that ranks MI6 — correct name, the Secret Intelligence Service — as the top foreign intelligence agency in Europe, according to a competition by L’Express.

The weekly had asked current or recently retired leaders of intelligence services around the world to rank their European counterparts, submitting their top five based on their own experience, and taking inspiration from football’s Ballon d’Or and the ghastly Eurovision music competition.

L’Express said ‘some resisted’ and ‘a few invoked secrecy’, but ‘most, on the contrary, saw it as an opportunity to talk about their unusual profession without betraying their oath, subtly testing the boundaries’.

Sixty intelligence professionals from 25 countries around the world agreed to act as judges, including seventeen heads or former heads of a secret service. 

It isn’t clear whether there were objective criteria other than ‘efficiency and reliability’, or whether this was otherwise simply a subjective bit of fun on a quiet day.

Five points were awarded for first place, four points for second, three for third, two for fourth and one for fifth.

The SIS came top (can’t you hear the cheers and see the flag waving crowds?) with 251 points, well ahead of the runner-up – France’s DGSE, which scored 169 points.

'The United Kingdom by far has the strongest intelligence services in Europe,’ former CIA station chief Robert Gorelick told the magazine. 'MI6 is extraordinary,’ he said. How kind.

‘The British have the ability to play the long game, to bet on sources over ten years, a bit like the Russians,’ a former DGSE executive said. ‘And they have a penchant for underhand tactics.’

No more so, surely, than the DGSE itself, which incidentally has quite a reputation for ruthlessness.

Olivier Mas, a senior officer at the DGSE until 2017, said: ‘All European intelligence services draw inspiration from British methods.’ 

He also said it was significant that ‘the best from Cambridge and Oxford join MI6’. Really? I’m sure that’s somewhat out of date by now. I certainly hope so.

Ralph Goff, former head of operations for Europe and Eurasia at the CIA, is reported to have said ‘the British are leading the way on the Ukrainian file. We’re just behind’.

The Dutch AIVD ranked third with 97 points, while Ukraine’s FISU took fourth place with 77 points and Germany’s BND fifth with 62 points.

The rest of the top ten were Sweden (40 points), Norway (34 points), Estonia (27), Poland (22) and Denmark (16).

SIS specialises in human intelligence or ‘humint’. In other words, it doesn’t count Russian tanks, but seeks the intentions of whoever it is who controls them. Intentions, not capabilities, are the target.

It’s also small in size, reported to be around 3,300 staff, of whom perhaps ten percent are intelligence officers, deployed mostly under diplomatic cover in some 55 Stations abroad.

Had the magazine gone beyond Europe’s borders, I wonder where China’s foreign intelligence service, the Gouanbu, would have been placed. Certainly in the top ten, and most liked in the top three. How would Russia’s SVR and GRU have fared? And those of South Korea, Malaysia, India, Indonesia and South Africa?

Anyway, as UK citizens settle back to enjoy everything that doesn’t work in their failed state, they can at least know that their brave little intelligence service is doing well, even if the government has neither the power nor the will to act on the secret intelligence that SIS so diligently serves up to ministers. Do they actually read the intelligence they receive?

That's the 60,000 dollar question.