The spy game catches everyone who plays it

It’s been a good month for spy commentators. Experts on espionage have been popping up everywhere in the news media, offering views, news and background information on secret intelligence. The exposure of a Russian spy-ring operating in the United States, followed by a spy-swap in which America retrieved four of theirs in return for Russia retrieving ten of theirs (but ‘we got back really good ones’, explained the US Vice President, Joe Biden) has brought the whole business of Great Power intelligence-gathering to the forefront of media attention. Almost everybody loves a good spy story, as spy novelists will attest.

But listening to John Le Carré on the Today programme talking most absorbingly about what the Russian spies embedded in America might actually have been doing (Mr Le Carré thought they had been left more or less marooned by post-Cold-War shifts in the spying game) reminded me of a doubt I’ve had all my adult life: a doubt that has troubled me ever since first encountering the work of ‘Our Friends’ as a young diplomatic officer.