How Real Is James Bond: Former Spy Life Story | DEEP
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- čas přidán 26. 08. 2024
- In our brand new DEEP series we interview fascinating people who have lived unique lives. In this episode we have talked to Harry Ferguson, a former British spy, who told us about lifetime of spy work, what is the hardest thing in being a spy.
Thanks to Harry for taking part!
You can follow Harry here: / theenglishspy
And get his book here: amzn.eu/d/hH81oxk
Welcome to DEEP - a brand new channel that brings you incredible people with amazing stories from all over the world.
If you've seen the team's previous work - Minutes With/The Gap/Agree To Disagree...then you know what to expect!
Let us know if there's anyone in particular you think we should speak to - we love bringing you stories and want to hear what you like.
Thanks and we hope you enjoy!
“You want all your spies to be different”
Recruits exclusively from Cambridge 😂
He said Oxford. Pay attention James.
Haha
Not a details man are you. In truth they recruit from many places.
@@chrismac2234 I am, and they don’t
@Jules-hn6un ur not, and they do.
"Will they trust their lives and their family's lives with them"
"If they get caught I'm on the first plane home"
It's not because of a lack of caring for an agent. It's just the nature of the job.
When a job goes bad. The 'diplomatic staff' get expelled. The agents get thrown in prison for life.
As he said. Espionage is a high stakes game. But it's essential for any government.
He was being deliberately glib for the sake of refuting the bond image, but if you read real stories, for example Oleg Gordievsky (The Spy and the Traitor is an exception book about this particular agent), its wholesome and almost unbelievable the lengths spy agencies will go to protect their assets even when there is no more incremental intelligence value to be gained. Oleg was extracted from the Moscow through plan that was immensely complex logistically and posed massive diplomatic risk to multiple countries involved if it was discovered, even though his entire value was being a mole in the KGB.
Why? Partly its sentimental for the reasons Harry mentioned - after you've spent years watching someone risk his/her life to help your country, often with very little material reward expected in return, it's difficult not to want to do everything in your power to save that person, but there is also the pragmatic consideration that if you just said 'whelp, cya' to your agent at the first sign of trouble and they got strung up in public for the whole country to see, it becomes a lot harder to recruit spies in the future
No different than any other nation, but at least he is brutally honest about it.
I don't think you were listening. Just before that he'd said how you couldn't just walk into the target, you have to work via agents. That's because you obviously have no power in that country. When a job goes wrong that's if eg the authorities find out. You are probably going to find out a bit later. With no power, and playing catch-up to the latest bad developments, how could you possibly help at that point? It's too late and you have no leverage. If there is any, your country will have it at the government level, but to use that is to admit what was going on.
They trust you to do everything you can so it doesn't get to that stage.
This guy is good. Deserves a full hour interview
We've got a longer cut coming soon - watch this space!
Definitely!
Play it twice
Cool guy... he'd be a wonderful teacher, he knows hot to word his stories. I believe he could make an agency for agents if he wanted.
@@PEOPLEAREDEEP you better upload it😡, pweassssee🥺🥺
This channel is going to blow up. More content on intelligence like this please
Thank you so much for the comment
The special feature of Ian Fleming was his ability to write a story that people would want to read, he was fortunate that being DDNI in WW2 the ideas for stories would flow over his desk every day for all his service time. His stories have credibility, and the excitement that his reader's required.
Dare I ask..favourite Bond?
SOE very for real. They were doing suicide missions - 6 week lifespan for agents was a strong innings. It was a very scary place to live, and the gestapo were killing journalists, historians, and whomsoever they believed to be an enemy combatant. We are talking premier league genocidal government, which is racking up the death toll like they legalised murder. The unconventional warfare offices of the UK were where the stuntmen and bank robbers went to work, and Ian Fleming's lot were considered "more trouble than their worth" by many in the XX counterintelligence office. Fleming's bond shows the ultra casino corruption crew who worked alongside the British and OSS taking down the Nazis, and as such is an exceptional portrayal of the early post war era. It's a good insight, and Fleming is absolutely convincing in his insights of how SOE senior agents were able to operate - autonomous incommunicado infiltration and sabotage operations are by nature improvised and high risk. It's illegal in a warfare context to use operatives of this type, and James Bond's behaviour was considered scandalous in its era - for the nazis these people would have looked like satan himself incarnate, wearing a bow tie, listening to big banf jazz, and drinking martini.
@PEOPLEAREDEEP My heart says Connery, but my brain says Craig. Connery set an I credibly high standard which Daniel Craig broke.
The entire notion of all Bond narratives is ludicrous.
The primary purpose of the Bond nonsense is to entertain and distract the domestic populations with spectacle.
They play no role whatsoever in the big game with agencies of other countries. It’s ludicrous to assume that for instance the Russians or Chinese would believe that British agents operate in any particular way, or are somehow less capable or easily detectable.
Noel Coward wouldn't agree. After a late night he called in at Fleming's Jamaican home, Goldeneye, to hear Fleming reading one of his stories aloud. He stood outside a window, barely able to suppress his laughter.
Former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt once was asked the same question: was it all worth it. And he said „when the rooster crows on the dung heap, the weather will change or stay as it is“
I like this man, clearly very switched on and has had an amazing career!
I just learned, never trust a spy. also learned being a spy, you have a career where your employer wants to see you succeed.
crisping my entire house
😂💯
Crisping Lover
Crisps are too noisy.
I thought i’m just a slob. Turns out I was a top spy all along!
Like it
At a guess Bond has been dramatically important to MI6 simply because Bond stands out, his car(s) women and drinking, plus he must have a hotel room packed full of incriminating gadgets. Assume that a British spy is like Bond, then simply don't notice the grey man or woman who simply does the job, doesn't, get noticed, then vanishes silently. BUT a grey man as Bond wouldn't sell books/films.
There is a theory that Bond is a cover for the Grey Man to get the job done properly...!
Kincora boys... That's the moral capacity of intelligence agencies
@johnflanagan9382 if you go back to the older Bonds you have this element a lot where Bond makes the distraction and his partner gets access to something because of it. Especially Felix Leiter.
Yea few know about Stock (Agent -007), who sneaks into objectives and accomplishes the mission while Bond 007 is distracting the bad guys.
@@johnflanagan9382.
Interestingly cold: "When the job goes belly up, I'm on the first plane back to London....But the agents get left behind to do the job....So" Looks like it's key to be able to turn off your humanity in order to be able to retire in this profession. Too inhuman for me, I could not do it. But I do know that this job has to be done.
Wait man. Is the ‘agent’ also in the MI program?
@@sivecruze1247 nay the agent is an asset
@@sivecruze1247what he calls an agent is more usually termed an "asset". That is people who are not actually members of am I 6 - not case officers in the CIA sense - but people that are employed, or bribed, or threatened, or cooperating for personal reasons with the intelligence agencies. these are usually people in foreign countries, but they could be domestic as well. If you wanted to be tried you can think of them as the "freelance contractors" of the intelligence world.
@@sivecruze1247 nah that's the foreigner he's leveraged / lied to in order to get them to do his dirty work
Guess you have to be on the psychopathic spectrum for this work.
Fantastic interview. Thank you to the guest for sharing part of his life story.
Thanks for watching!
Could listen to this guy for hours.
Glad you enjoyed it - check out our other episodes!
"thye're looking to take your strengths and support them"that sounds worth working for
I get the impression that real espionage is usually as exciting as working in a tax office. But when it's not, a spies best weapon or gadget is plausible deniability.
CZcams Physical Penetration Testing. These are modern day guys that get paid to sneak into companies (sometimes in plain sight) to see where their security is weak, both in name, but also in physical and staff sense.
Intelligence work is usually pretty boring but important.
15:00 I know someone who went to Moscow on holiday in the late 70s or early 80s.
He was an odd bloke, very left wing, he'd always wanted to visit the USSR because he saw it as an ideal place, he fully believed their propaganda and so on, he went through the process of getting a tourist visa to the USSR which wasn't easy in those days and he brought with him his brand new camera to take some photos and document the experience.
That was fine, he said at the airport they checked his papers and his camera and he was assigned to a tour bus which would take him to Red Square and he was allowed to wander around and photograph things, because it is always kept nice for people to photograph in these tours.
But you see Peter was an odd bloke, as you may well expect of someone whose dream holiday was a guided tour of Soviet Russia and he wanted to see a bit more, he wanted "the real Communist utopia" so he wandered off from the back end of his tour and went down a street, continuing to take pictures of houses and saying hello to people in his bad Russian 😂
Apparently after about 5 or 10 minutes of this a black GAZ 24 pulled up and two men in long overcoats got out and walked over to him, snatched the camera out of his hand, opened the film up and exposed it all, then dropped the camera on the ground and stamped on it. One wagged his finger and the other pointed back down the street towards Red Square.
As an old story goes, KGB agents used to hang around in threes. One could read, one could write and the third used to keep an eye on the other two dangerous intellectuals.
"Spies hate electronic gadgets.."
* Gasp! * My mum's a spy !
great piece of PR that lulls people into thinking this dude is not a karate master
Skripal was poisoned with Novichok not polonium. Litvinenko was polonium
And, mirroring the history of the real event, it took em a guy on the internet to point out what's up.
And so they said …….. they also said Russia was not provoked in Ukraine 🤷♂️
yet according to a KGB defector, Gareth Williams was poisoned by the SVR with a gas that leaves no trace. If they have such a gas, why use a frikin weapon of mass destruction which novichok is to target a very specific person. So somebody's gotta be lying here.
Polonium thing is more believable but it has to be placed somewhere where the target spends a lot of time. In the 90s in Russia a lot of radiation sources were left unguarded after the breakup of the USSR and radiation was a thing to remove rival bussinessmen. They once found a source of radiation sewn into the car seat.
Do FSB has James Bond level spies?
@@jacobjorgenson9285 they weren't
The Sinn Fein chap Stephen Lambert recording MI5 officer trying to recruit him is mad and is a great listen.
This is excellent and no lies detected. The end is on point. Was it worth it. Did the world change? My answer was no
Impossible to know.
In the 115 years that MI6 had existed, there has never been an officer lost... because we say so. Especially, not Gareth Williams. 👍
Still blows my mind that case
Specifically he said an officer had never been lost _on assignment._
whether you consider that to be a meaningful distinction or not is a separate question, but I think a case could be made that it is legit. i.e. It's kind of like saying that an army has never lost a soldier in combat, even if maybe one was killed by his neighbor when he was at home, one died in a drunk driving accident, etc
@Laotzu.Goldbug 3:23 He says "in operations," but I did miss that. I suppose, depending on how he defines that (in his own mind), he could say almost anything.
@@anthonykent00 yes, on assignment, in operations basically all mean the same thing: "in the practical activity of the espionage",
you're right it is tricky to define, but I think we can pretty definitively say that by any reasonable definition it doesn't include sitting in your own parlor in your home being assassinated by a foreign government.
That is a bold faced lie. MI6 lost a huge number of agents in WW2 due to poor tradecraft.
90% office work. 10% observing.
Depends on your job within MI6.
Depends on your job in MI6
If all you do is "observe" you won't learn much.
They're the crepe sole, rumpled clothes people, innocuous with a lethal skill of observation and a peculiar intelligence for thinking outside the box.
came from TikTok, love this, dont stop
Appreciate you making the journey!
You mean tictac?
Would love to see you do an updated interview with Edward Snowden.
We’d love to as well!
Russian citizen Ed Snowden, father to two Russian citizen children ...
not another one, please
James Bond never found 006 padlocked in bits in a sportsbag
Bond put him there after it turned out he was a clone of Blofeld.
Really interesting interview. Thank you for doing this.
I will relate the following. There was a British spy in Germany immediately pre-WW2. He rode the rails! Yep. He simply rode the rails around Germany, doing reports. Was it dangerous? Absolutely! If caught and detected, he would have been executed forthwith. The spy eventually retired, moved to downtown Los Angeles and died in obscurity.
When the former Soviet achieves were opened after the fall of the Soviet Union, it was learned that the predecessor of the FSB had more accurate and up-to-date maps of San Francisco than the US Army. In Europe, in the '70's, Russian Spetnaz people would be truck drivers running routes from Turkey to Great Britain and taking notes.
In late October 1987, around October 23rd Spetnaz troops, driving a truck marked "Polish Mineral Expedition" tested the Soviet built concrete highway outside of Khandahar, Afghanistan to learn if it were solid enough to handle aircraft landings. Not glamorous, but necessary.
if a brit spy was doing something openly then it was likely that he was a turncoat. MI6 has a lot of those.
I like the idea of this channel. This was a great video. The dissonance of the music… not sure about.
This was fascinating. I've subscribed.❤
Thank you!
Another DEEP interview on Wednesday!
Thank you for such an engaging and informative chat.
Thank you for watching!
@@PEOPLEAREDEEP you did good kid
James Bond did use a 'crisp' to detect if somebody entered his room; he placed a tiny hair in his room in one of the novels by Fleming that was disturbed, indicating his room was entered into.
The part of his interview where he stated spies don't hurt spies (pace Mad Magazine's running cartoon, 'Spy vs Spy") rings true. Also the part at the end whether it was worth it, knowing so many people got hurt, also rings true. The British war historian John Keegan, writing about WWII partisans, stated that probably all the resistance did was slow down the Nazis a bit, at great cost, and it was not a big factor in winning the war. Even WWII's Bletchley Park's code-cracking Enigma project arguably was not a big factor in winning WWII (the Germans also cracked the Allied codes at times, and in the battle for Crete, despite perfect knowledge of German plans due to Enigma, the Germans still won despite being slowed down quite a lot).
They used the hair in that BBC series The Capture as well. But the problem is that a hair can be easily replaced, as he said in the interview, if you know what your crisp looks like then it's unlikely they will find one the same to replace it with, so even if they clean up their mess and put a fresh crisp down, you'll still know they've been in. Granted a hair is harder to spot but if they happen to see you checking for it, there's a risk they can replace it and you may not notice. Of course if you use a hair and a crisp then you've got both bases covered!
@@vink6163 a hair cannot be, it would not be seen. If crisp was perfectly replaced, no, you wouldn't know they'd been in.
@@Jamie-js3qw Yes but I said if they were watching you and saw you checking/replacing the hair then they could easily keep it themselves and put it back after. But unless you're thinking of Pringles where they're all the same, it's exceedingly unlikely they are going to be able to get hold of a crisp exactly the same shape as your original one, which they don't even know what it looks like because they only found it after they crushed it.
Another top upload there deep
Thanks for watching - appreciate it!
Good Watch 👍
Thanks 👍
You can tell he's unscripted and free from moral restraints. I'm not learning anything new about methods but i am learning a lot about reading a person. Thanks to posters who said beware of factual accuracy!
Great video. Good luck with the new channel.
Subbed. This was a really interesting interview. Looking forward to watching more!
Thank you! Another every Wednesday!
It seems more like Gene Hackman in The Conversation than James Bond or Mission Impossible
Fleming was basically M. He was the one sending people behind enemy lines during WWII to commit acts of espionage. I'd love for James Bond to go back to the 40s or 50s. Make it a period piece about his origins.
I've had an idea for it for years, whereby the pre-credits sequence is Bond on a mission at the tail end of WWII. By the time he returns for a debrief, Germany has surrendered and the war is over. Post-title sequence, Bond returns to his native Scotland and in the post-war peace, he doesn't know what to do with himself until one day, his old commander comes to visit him, talking about tensions rising with the Russians and a new initiative being spearheaded by British Intelligence called the Double O Programme.
They brushed over it in the ministry of ungentlemanly warfare... but i like were your heads at.
Yes, I see you understand that Bond was a WWII level spy, not afterwards. The SOE was tasked with actively/physically bringing down the Germans. Today, it is more about info.
I would love a modern Bond, where saving the world is not the issue, but protecting someone or something.
They kind of went that route with the last 3, but it always drifted into too much action and your typical superhero/avengers movie.
Good idea...somebody in Hollywood has probably now nicked it
Super interesting vid!
Really pleased you think so!
The structural maze is already there for you guys to have fun 😂
Very interesting. Would have loved to hear him comment on Argo and the real events that inspired the film.
Great suggestion! Next time…
James Bond is real. James Bond is not an analyst or a recruiter or officer. James Bond is an agent. James Bond is a disposable asset and his job is to infiltrate elite enemies of Britain. That's why he is allocated a big budget through the treasury which allows him to have what a mission would require. He is also given a license to kill so that he will not be trialled in a UK court.
There is a misnomer that James Bond works for MI6. He doesn't. He actually receives a stipend through his company Universal Exports LTD and checks in with his handler which is M. M as James should never know an officers real identity. Many of the elite movers and shakers are actually their respective countries' versions of James Bond.
The curious case of Jeffrey Epstein (Bond Villain) who went from school teacher to Billionaire, only he was never really a billionaire, he just had a massive budget to entrap other agents.
more than agents apparently
How can Bond fool anyone being a pasty white Scotsman ? You think the Chinese, Africans, and Saudis be fooled.
Very fascinating and by all counts might as well be perfectly accurate, albeit I might add that you have just seen a description of a profession that deals with assessing and producing deception. This fine chap has maybe "retired" from a profession from which by his own words no person retires and maintains it's secrets. So given his fine health and sound mental state how can I really know that anything he says is actually real and if I choose to accept it as factual , is that the effect he planned and to what end? In any case cool video bro.
Thanks for watching - appreciate your thoughts!
@@PEOPLEAREDEEP Oh you are very welcome.
He's on a mission to hide the fact they have secret bases and super gadgets.
Sounds interesting hope this channel catches on😊
Thank you - us too!
Ah hence the song, about agents. Not officers ....
"Secret ageeent sacrificial mug!"
This was fantastic. Thoroughly engaging and interesting
Thank you so much! Please check out our other videos!
Use two detection mechanisms. One "obvious" one, one hidden one. If both are tripped, you know someone came in. If the obvious one was replaced, you know it wasn't just anyone.
When he says agent in America we call asset. An agent is same as officer here
I believe about 50% of what he says - OSA still in effect and he probably still has links
I remember you, believe you were named Tom and we met in Bangkok back in thr late 90s.
That's the first time I've someone pronounce "quasi" like that.
4:01 I guess the real question… is how many agents have died 😅
17:34 the answer 😅
Very interesting, thanks.
Not bond. These people are information gatherers. Researchers, intelligence etc. Its the SAS or SBS seconded that do the action. If at all.
it's the local agent. The SAS fight wars or stage interventions. Agents are the local guys who work in a nuclear research unit or government or whatever it is
You are now entering the most secure location in England ! :))))))))))))
What is the NIS that he mentioned a few times? anyone know?
very, very interesting!
Shame he got the Skripal poisoning incorrect.
Excellent.
" All those Bits"
Can you write the next Bond film please?
Mugabe was a headache for these guys
Sounds like being an undercover cop is more exciting. You probably get more “action”. And still gather intel. You also more hands on interacting.
Dunno if it was edited somehow, but the whole "you might think you'd slow down and let the other people get in the wày of the bullets, but NO WAY would you, anyone, me for instance, ever do that" bit, because it appears unprompted read all a little bit like the postman youve never met before ringing your doorbell one day and teling you "you might suspect your wife's affair, but theres no way I'm hooking up with her. Not on Tuesdays, not Thursdays, definitely not last Thursday, I would NEVER do that..."
The Skripsks were poisoned with Novichok, not Polonium.
Great video
Thanks so much for watching!
Majority of spies are “ordinary” people, you get travel bloggers, foreign investors, university lecturers etc… in my time in the services Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya and across the Middle East came across many of these people, sometimes you have people who work for NGOs who will then be asked to also provide information for the intelligence services, a lot of times the info is trivial and leads to other leads etc, from my experience the whole thing is pretty boring personally never came across anyone who was anything like James Bond or Bourne, most were like Mr Worger from English lit or Jack Corrigan travel vlogger and author.
15:30 - Q: "Pay attention Mr. Ferguson..."
@15:00 - photographing a military site as a tourist: how many Chinese tourists are currently doing that in the US in recent times?
“I joined in a very unusual way…”
Goes on to explain how every spy seems to get recruited 🤔
Very interesting interview. What must be kind of disappointing is that you spend your entire life lying and being lied to, and in the end you're not sure if it was all worth it..
Subbed 👍🏼
Thank you!
Moonraker was especially realistic, its all lasers, and magic cars in the intelligence service
I need to confess: i never run as fast as i can.
Cover NOC's😮
Sign me up!
MI-7 is the production arm of MI-6. Hi Mark Bowden
Target 🎯
The fact that he can talk about this means he's a non-official PR person for MI6, right?
I dont understand the statement 17:51 "you have a agent" what agent are we talking about if you are a mi6 agent you don't do the dirty work you ask others to do it for you who are these "others"?
the more i listen to this, the more i think it sounds MORE like the OLD 60's James Bond movies (there was less action and more creative spying and subterfuge , reconing and cover ups, in the old movies) lol. I meen the writer was an mi6 wasn't he? So basically cellphones and smart phones are manifestations of SPY GEAR lol. Vibrating boxes? so you know when youve received a message without making an audible sound? that sounds familiar......i do this all the time at the theatre so the noise is not audible , when im recieving a secret transmission from an associate.
What I really like about the old Bonds, especially the books was the acting that Bond did.
He played a very important business man or a fellow gentleman to gain access to a group of people. Thats still something you do in testing the (cyber) security of a company or organisation.
@@MrHaggyysocial engineering
What are MI-1 through 4 up to?
Still learning to count through to 5 and 6
It used to go 1-19, with 13 and 18 not used.
All the former MI departments were disbanded, apart from 5 and 6.
wow a real spy kids
Great channel, please maintain the British fruitful information style, don't turn it into American
Sue thing!
My girlfriends grandfather was MI6 killed by the Nazis in WW2, so when he says none have been killed, he must mean excluding WW2.
I always wonder how they teleport. 1:00
I love the story about the massive cameras. Hilarious!
Hilarious? It was mildly amusing at best.
Street smart, clam and resourceful…average Ivy League or Cambridge/Oxford grad….
Didn't MI6 lose Sydney Reilly?
No, they didn't "lose" him. He travelled to Russia without his boss's knowledge or permission to carry out what he saw as a piece of unfinished business. Unfortunately he was arrested by the precursor of the KGB. On Stalin's orders he was shot.
Fleming was the second of admiral godfred ..his novel was story. But his description was inspired by oss training..for movie bond is far away from books..ambler, lecarre, leighton were real agent
No, his Bond stories were inspired not by the training of the American Office of Strategic Services, but by the activities of the British wartime subversive warfare organisation called the Special Operations Executive (SOE). Ian Fleming was an officer in British Naval Intelligence.
How many agents have been killed in the 115 in assignment? And is Bond an agent or an officer?
So is it that MI5 is roughly equivalent to the FBI in the US, and MI6 is more similar to the CIA?
MI5 and MI6 are old pre-WW2 designations. Nowadays the correct names for them are officially "The Security Service" for MI5 and the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) for MI6. The Security Service works within the UK, seeking to subvert the activities of unfriendly foreign intelligence services working undercover in Britain. The SIS is the foreign intelligence service of the UK, gathering intelligence on potentially hostile nations and protecting British interests abroad. So essentially you are correct.
So the real question is how many agents have been killed due to contact with MI-6?
James Bond is not a Spy. He is special forces, E squadron.
Nope - he is part of 49 Para
@@RicoMacky Either way he is not a spy but special forces.
‘People are deep’ wow how profound…
Thats only because they don't really deal with dangerous people think about it in certain places you can get killed for fucked up look. And most places the locals know everyone in their hood so if a couple of pasties show up out of nowhere and speak your language something ain't right
Doppelganger.
was his teacher John Cleese? ;p
how many contradictions did you hear?