How does a spy actually work? And what happens behind the closed doors of Dutch secret services? Thanks to his research into Dutch intelligence services in the twentieth century, Constant Hijzen manages to lift a corner of the veil.
One of the most famous figures in the world of espionage is certainly the secret agent or spy. Who else works for Dutch intelligence services?
“The two Dutch intelligence services in the Netherlands:the civilian General Intelligence and Security Service and the Military Intelligence and Security Service employ a wide range of employees, who are called intelligence officers. They often have very different backgrounds; for example, a technician can work side by side with a historian on a particular project. The idea behind this is that an interdisciplinary team has a broader perspective, which makes it less easy to overlook things.
Where intelligence officers are officially part of the organization, agents are not on the payroll. They are called up for a certain job and paid for it afterwards, in that respect they are a kind of freelancers."
To stay with those freelancers for a moment:what about their appearance? Are spies really one of those attractive, charismatic macho types à la Daniel Craig, which women fall for…?
“Ha, ha, that's a nice question. But the opposite is true, I would say based on the few meetings I have had with former agents of Dutch intelligence and security services. Those were the kind of people you can easily miss in a bar, based on their clothes and facial expressions. People whose faces are easy to forget, so to speak. This is of course very useful given their work and something they are trained on. So it's not so much James Bond-like types, but characters from the novels of John le Carré, to extend your comparison to book and film heroes.”
Can you also tell us something about how secret agents can work?
“On the basis of documents that have since been released about the Cold War, we can form a picture of this.
For example, the method of spotting a potentially useful person, then approaching them, cultivating the relationship rather than 'letting the pants down' or revealing one's true identity, collaborating and dismantling, proved popular."
Can you give an example of that too?
“For example, during the Cold War, Russian agents stationed in the Netherlands attended a cocktail party to spot 'useful' people and make contact with them. For example, they asked, “Do you know a good dictionary?” Or:“I don't know my way around here very well, can you help me?” If someone responded helpfully and was therefore willing to do something for someone else, the agents cultivated the relationship:they invested long-term in friendship, for example by playing tennis together for a year. Over time, the officers then 'slowly lowered their pants', in other words:they revealed their true identity. They started asking questions like, “Don't you think there's a lot wrong in the world? Wouldn't you like to do something about it?" If the 'victim' then took the plunge and provided a counter-service such as supplying certain data, then that person became an agent. As soon as the job was done and all information was briefed to the head office, the contact was ended.
Somewhat similarly, the strategy involved agents befriending people who have access to important information, and then casually interrogating them without those people realizing it.
But intelligence services also went outside the law to obtain information. For example, it is now known that employees of the Internal Security Service, the predecessor of the AIVD, broke into the Communist Party of the Netherlands in order to find out its membership file."
These days the AIVD would probably just hack their computer. Are agents still needed, now that secret services can fish in more and more data through technology?
"Yes, I think so. If only because the transfer of crucial information could again take place face-to-face more often now that it is becoming increasingly difficult to remember information on computers secretly. The human factor therefore remains important, in addition to the deployment of technical resources.
But new technologies have certainly changed the job. Incidentally, this is not only about eavesdropping and peeking over the Internet; more and more can also be observed from the air. This is partly due to the advance of drones, but even more so due to increasingly sophisticated spy satellites.
Last year, for example, Western governments concluded on the basis of satellite photos provided to them by their secret services that President Assad had indeed deployed chemical weapons in Syria. In addition to other sources, this was an important intelligence tool.
But the use of open sources also remains an important method for gathering information about what is happening both inside and outside the Netherlands."
What exactly are those, open sources?
“These are public means of communication, such as newspapers, magazines, nowadays articles on the internet. Digging through all the papers that appear in a country, from national to local papers, can be a good way to keep abreast of what's happening in a country."
Getting information through secret agents or other methods is one thing, knowing exactly what you want to focus on is another. How does an intelligence service determine its focus in a maze of possibilities?
“It is partly determined by current events. For example, after the attacks in the US on September 11, 2001, the focus of many Western intelligence and security services shifted to radicalization among Muslim and migrant groups.
But an intelligence service must also be able to see the long term. In addition, in order to identify relevant issues in good time, employees should not be afraid to think out-of-the-box. A good example of this is the CIA, which monitored developments in the field of UFOs during the Cold War. Like:you never know.
As mentioned, secret services also like to work with interdisciplinary teams so as not to miss anything. Within that, someone often plays the 'devil's advocate', who starts a discussion about a different track, just when things seem to be unraveling logically. Everything to ensure that nothing is overlooked. Even if the chance of a certain event is small, the impact can be very large."
Would you like to know more about the practices of (Dutch) intelligence services? And what can be done with smart cameras from airplanes, drones and satellites? Take a look at the lecture Constant Hijzen gave last month for the Studium Generale of the University of Twente.