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Today in Focus

Is MI6 fit for the future?

Today in Focus

The Guardian

News, Daily News

4.65.9K Ratings

🗓️ 7 December 2021

⏱️ 25 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Britain’s overseas spy agency MI6 needs to become ‘more open, in order to stay secret’ according to its new head, Richard Moore. Dan Sabbagh looks at what that might mean. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/infocus

Transcript

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0:00.0

This is the Guardian.

0:10.0

Today,

0:11.0

my Britain's secretive foreign intelligence service

0:14.0

is moving into the open.

0:16.0

The Guardian

0:29.0

For much of the last century,

0:31.0

the main focus of Britain's foreign intelligence service,

0:34.0

MI6, was winning the Cold War.

0:37.0

Every evening I left the office

0:39.0

with a big briefcase full of reports

0:41.0

I'd written myself,

0:43.0

full of files taking out the actual documents

0:46.0

of the actual archives.

0:48.0

It was a world of Soviet double agents,

0:51.0

secretive meetings, dead letter drops,

0:53.0

and disappearing ink.

0:55.0

I used to hand them to my Soviet contact in the evening.

0:59.0

Next morning I'd get the file back,

1:01.0

the contents of me in put and left,

1:03.0

and take them back early in the morning

1:05.0

and put the file back in that place.

1:07.0

And the most of its history,

...

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