The Life of Spyin'

The Monty Python team shows how it’s done when it comes to handling walk-ins.

One subject I don’t really touch on in Think Like a Spy is proactive offers of intelligence service, or ‘walk-ins’. Thankfully, I recently watched The Life of Brian (1979) and spotted a comedic masterclass in how to handle them.

Everyone who has seen the movie will remember the scene. It takes place in an ampitheatre, where the People’s Front of Judea are discussing, amongst other things, gender politics. Brian (Graham Chapman) is working as an usherette and approaches the group to sell them ‘Larks' tongues. Otters' noses. Ocelot spleens.’ The organisation’s leader, Reg (John Cleese) initially dismisses the ‘rich imperialist tit-bits’ but later relents and buys a ‘bag of otters’ noses, then.’ The exchange emboldens Brian to ask if the group is the Judean People’s Front, a mistake that is taken as a major affront. But he persists and asks to join the organisation. In other words, he offers his services. Brian is a walk-in.

The best way to handle a walk-in? With some suspicion, of course. There is no immediate way of guaranteeing that the offer is not being made by a potential double-agent, intent on infiltrating an organisation and causing it harm. Initial caution, even resistance, is advisable. Reg is on board with this approach. ‘No,’ he replies to Brian, ‘piss off.’ The challenge has been set for Brian to prove his credentials as a potential member of the People’s Front of Judea (or is it the Popular Front?). He hastens to do so, telling Reg ‘I hate the Romans as much as anybody.’ But this is still not enough for the rightly risk-averse Reg, who emphasizes that ‘if you wanted to join the P.F.J., you'd have to really hate the Romans.’ Brian affirms his enmity and, asked how much he hates the Romans, replies ‘a lot.’ Thus he passes the first test, during which Reg has mercilessly probed his motivations.

A short diversion here, on the subject of motivations. The viewers know, while Reg does not, that Brian’s vituperation against the Romans stems from the fact that he has recently (in the previous scene, in fact) learned that he is one. Or, at least, half-Roman: the result of a dalliance between his mother and ‘a centurion in the Roman army,’ Nortius Maximus, who promised her ‘the known world’ and ‘as much gold as [she] could eat.’ Reg’s failure to explore properly the roots of Brian’s desire for action is something of an oversight, as I shall explore further below. A childish, knee-jerk, rebellion against one’s parents is not the soundest of motivations. That said, childish, knee-jerk rebellions against country and privilege were exploited well by the Soviets during the Cold War: just ask the Cambridge Five.

In any case, Reg is not done yet. His acceptance of Brian into the group is provisional. He remains suspicious. Having initially resisted the approach, then explored (to some degree) motivations before accepting it in principle, Reg has one more test to set before surrendering his trust. Brian must be seen to deliver the goods. In the case of a walk-in to an intelligence service, the volunteer may be asked to generate information which is already known to that service, to establish access and suitability. In the case of the People’s Front, they must satisfy themselves that Brian possesses the requisite revolutionary zeal. In other words, they must establish his suitability. So, Reg gives Brian the task of daubing the walls of the city with Latin graffiti, inviting the Romans to go home. This sets up the following scene, in which Brian is taught the correct Latin translation of ‘Romans go home’ and ordered by a centurion to write it out a hundred times. As Judith (Sue Jones-Davies) later says, he does so, ‘in letters ten foot high, all the way around the palace.’ She exclaims that ‘the first blow has been struck’ and Brian is accepted fully into the group’s embrace.

I have watched The Life of Brian countless times and I can’t say that I expected to find in it an example of someone thinking like a spy. But that is what Reg does, to brilliant comic effect.

In Think Like a Spy, I write about the process of assessment before a spy sets out formally to recruit her target. I note that the assessment covers ‘three vital matters.’ These are Access (p175), Suitability (p176) and Motivation (p177). For an intelligence service, a walk-in must be assessed according to the same framework, with the added consideration that they may be a plant. Sat in a hostile country, with a remit to generate intelligence from locals, a spy is likely to find a walk-in intoxicating. But this is where cool heads must prevail.

A volunteer without access to information of use is, essentially, worthless as an intelligence asset. An enthusiastic volunteer with such access but who is unsuitable because he struggles with addiction or tends to indiscretion could be dangerous. A volunteer with access and a suitable temperament is nearly, but not quite, the real thing. Although the cultivation stage (pp68 – 102) has been short-circuited, skills of elicitation (pp103 – 136) are still required to enable a rigorous assessment of motivations (pp137 – 174). If a walk-in is driven by a short-term sense of emotional dislocation (as may be the case with Brian), they could prove valuable in the short term but become problematic later. It is often claimed that part of a spy’s job is therapist. But it is a heavy burden to provide ongoing emotional support to an agent and it is not a role to be undertaken lightly. Lack of availability for a needy agent at a time of emotional crisis could derail an otherwise smooth and productive operation.

Not that Reg worries much about emotional support, or any other type of commitment to his followers. Faced with the news of Brian’s arrest and sentencing to crucifixion, he does what any self-respecting leader of an activist group would do. He proposes a motion and initiates a healthy debate. Then he and his colleagues visit Brian on his cross and ‘read a prepared statement on behalf of the Movement,’ to mark the occasion of his ‘martyrdom.’ Watching this again, I was reminded of my own words in Think Like a Spy, writing about the fate of a discovered agent: ‘at the worst and most threatening of times, when his heart is pounding, his mouth is dry and his innards have turned to icy liquid, he will have to manage on his own. Because that is the life of the traitor.’

That is The Life of Spyin’.

(Numbers in brackets refer to page numbers in Think Like a Spy where I expand on the techniques, themes or events referred to.)