Knowing your enemy

Espionage, Christopher Andrew reminds us, is the second oldest profession. The two converged when Moses’s successor Joshua sent a couple of agents to spy out ancient Jericho. There they were sheltered by the madam of the local brothel. All three are heroes in Israel today.

Generals and politicians have always needed secret information to track and outmanoeuvre their foreign and domestic enemies. So they place spies, suborn traitors, eavesdrop, decipher other people’s messages, subvert their governments, assassinate their servants and sabotage their property. The technology has changed massively over the centuries; the aims and the basic methods have not.

During the 20th century, thanks partly to the works of talented British novelists, ‘secret intelligence’ acquired a mystique among the public. Intelligence agencies found that flattering, even useful. But they still had to keep their operations secret. The British government went further. Until the late 1980s it maintained the absurd fiction that it had no secret service at all.