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- [00:00]
Jack Lawrence
Hello, Legends. Before we get into the episode, just a quick heads up if you have completed season one of what I Survived. Firstly, thank you for the incredible support for the show and all the lovely comments. I truly appreciate it. I'm madly working on season two, which will be out for you very soon. In the meantime, though, I have just dropped listed as season two in what I Survived, a previous show that I created a couple of years ago called Wanted. The entire show is there for you to binge while you wait for season two of what I Survived. Espionage, or intelligence gathering, is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information. A person or persons who commit espionage are referred to as a spy. The world of spies and secret government agencies has long been a fascination to many. Much like with the world of crime and the underworld, the. It's the unknown, the secrecy. A world that not many will ever get to experience. Annie Macron did experience this world. Not only did she work for one of the world's most famous government spy agencies, but she was also pursued by them.
- [01:12]
Annie Macron
It was cash only. If we had to grab some money in a city, we would then leave that city and move as far as we could on some intercity train as quickly as we could so that they would miss us.
- [01:23]
Jack Lawrence
My name's Jack Lawrence. Welcome to Wanted. I'm a wanderer of the soul before the end I plan to behold But I know I lose myself along the way what's gone is gone what's past is past Let me leave what belongs in the past. The British Secret Service was founded in the early 1900s, where its main concentration was focused on the activities of the Imperial German Government. The bureau was initially split into naval and army sections, which over time specialised in foreign target espionage and internal counter espionage. Prior to the beginning of World War I, due to a number of administrative changes, the home section became known as Directorate of Military Intelligence, Section 5. And of course its abbreviation, MI5. Later on down the track, the foreign naval section of the service was to become known as MI6, of course, made famous by British spy commander James Bond. The headquarters for the British Secret Service is located in the heart of London. It's situated right on the banks of the River Thames. Other than its imposing size, it's a very unassuming building and it's situated almost 300km away from a small channel island known as Guernsey. And Guernsey in 1968 was the birthplace of Annie Macron. She was born into a family that had no real government ties and in fact, quite the opposite, as she had journalists in her family.
- [03:29]
Annie Macron
So Guernsey has a weird history. All the Channel Islands do because they were occupied by the Germans during the Second World War. It's the only part of Britain that was seized by the Germans and they went through five years of hell. And both my grandfathers left and served. One was in the midget submarines, sorting out stuff in places at Singapore Harbor. My other grandfather was a Spitfire pilot, though they both served a lot of very hard years in the forces. And when they went back to Guernsey, both of them, the one who'd been immediate submarines, became a grower, which was the big thing in Guernsey at that time. You know, built fineries, you grew tomatoes, you exported them. And my other grandfather had started working life as a journalist and the Spitfire pilot. So when he went back to Guernsey, he married and settled down, had a family and became a journalist again and became the editor of a local newspaper. My father, his son then also went into journalism after having been a pilot also. So he became the editor of the local paper too. So, yeah, it's not government actually much more the fourth estate, as it used to be called, which was trying to hold power to account. And the way that Guernsey went from tomato growing and tourism to in the 50s, 60s, 70s, to being a renowned, rather dodgy sounding tax haven, which started in the 80s onwards. This is what my father, particularly when he was editor in the 90s, was trying to expose. So I grew up with these, my grandpa and my pa, both inculcating with the idea that, you know, the fourth estate is there to speak truth to power, you have to hold power to account. So that was quite the antithesis of any sort of government connection.
- [05:06]
Jack Lawrence
And little did you know how much of an impact that would have on you in later life.
- [05:10]
Annie Macron
Quite.
- [05:12]
Jack Lawrence
Annie would end up gaining a very rich education through her high school. Anne would in fact win a scholarship to attend the prestigious Cambridge University. It's a gateway into the British establishment, with many high profile individuals having been educated here. In fact, many spies having their start at Cambridge, the likes of Sir Isaac Newton, Sir David Attenborough, Stephen Hawkins and even King Charles himself have all been alumni of Cambridge. And it was while studying here that Annie would get her first contact from the world of espionage. You know, going there, obviously, as you said, it's kind of a golden ticket. You know, your world is. The world sort of opens up to you. There's lots of connections of people that go there. Did you have any aspirations of what you thought you might want to do?
- [05:58]
Annie Macron
I did. I wanted to be a diplomat, George. Or rather than war, war is Always the best approach, to quote, I think, Winston Churchill. And this is something that I found very fascinating. So I applied to the Foreign Office in the UK and then had a weird anonymous letter from the Ministry of Defence saying there may be other jobs you find more interesting. If you are interested, ring this number. And that was it. That's all it said. I opened it. I was back at home, actually, with my pa. I opened it and when, as soon as I saw it, instinctively, I said, oh, fuck, it's MI5. This should be ladylike Education I had, and my father, because he was a journalist and because he was a spy novel fan, he just said, please ring this number and see if it is MI5. So it's all my passport. That's how I ended up in i5,
- [06:45]
Jack Lawrence
because he just said he desperately wanted to hear what. What? That conversation, how that conversation went. And how did it go? I mean, do you call and they, they don't obviously answer. Hi, am I five?
- [06:55]
Annie Macron
No, they just said, oh, it's good to hear from you, come along, we'll set up the travel and you can come for an interview on this date of this address in London. So I did.
- [07:11]
Edward Jones Narrator
A rich life isn't a straight line to a destination on the horizon. Sometimes it takes an unexpected turn, with detours, new possibilities and even another passenger or three. And with 100 years of navigating ups and downs, you can count on Edward Jones to help guide you through it all. Because life, life is a winding path made rich by the people you walk it with. Let's find your rich together. Edward Jones. Member SIPC.
- [07:45]
Annie Macron
The next station is Mile End. Change here for the District and Hammersmith and City lines.
- [07:57]
Jack Lawrence
It's around July 1990 and a young Annie Macron makes the trip to London for her interview. She thinks she knows who she's meeting with, but she's still not 100% sure. Nonetheless, she would arrive at an unassuming building which was completely unmarked and also totally empty.
- [08:21]
Annie Macron
I went into this room and there was this sort of hippie chick. Seriously, that's what she looked like. Hair down to her waist and tiered skirts and all the rest of it. Turned out she was highly regarded officer in MI5 because I ended up working with her when I was in MI5, but she just did not look the part. And we had a three hour conversation all about my life from the age of 12. And then halfway through that conversation, she said, why do you think you're here? Who do you think we are? And I said, well, you am I5. I thought, if I've got this wrong, going to sell her.
- [08:50]
Jack Lawrence
Yeah.
- [08:52]
Annie Macron
And she said, yes, we are, and please sign this. Which was the notification Official Secrets act,
- [08:56]
Jack Lawrence
right straight away, that got you.
- [08:59]
Annie Macron
Yeah. But the weird thing was this hippie chick was so unexpected and also very clear thinking and very reassuring about exactly what the positioning of MI5 was at that time. They were trying. They were on a legal footing. They did have to obey laws for the first time in 80 years history at that stage. And I liked her. So, you know, people always say if they work in sales, you don't buy the product you buy from the person who's selling it because you trust them. I got on very well with her and she saw me through the entire process. And as I said, I ended up working with her. But, yeah, that's how I ended up sort of falling into their grip.
- [09:41]
Jack Lawrence
The British Secret Service is just that secret. In fact, for these organizations, which are in every country around the world, secrecy is the biggest thing. You could have passed someone from an intelligence agency this morning stood behind them as they ordered their coffee or looked over at them in the commute to the office. That's the point. They are just ordinary people doing an extraordinary job and one that Annie says you can't share with people, not even the ones around you.
- [10:13]
Annie Macron
I mean, I'm talking about Christmas 33 years ago, and at that point they were beginning to open up a little bit, so they were beginning to think about more open recruitment. And in fact, they started implementing it only a couple of years later. But it was very strange. So my recruiter said, you can tell that you're in the process of being recruited by this organization to your husband, partner, whatever, or your best friend or very close family members. So I did tell my pa, I did tell my partner at the time, and I did tell my best friend. But all I could say was, this is the organization that I'm talking to, but I can't say anything more. So from that point, it's like a sort of glass shutter comes down between you and even the people you most trust, and it becomes very difficult to maintain and foster the open sort of relationships you'd have.
- [11:06]
Jack Lawrence
I was going to say it would be potentially quite isolating because most people, when they go, when they have a bad day at work or anything like that, you. The first thing you want to do is whinge about it to partner or your friends or whatever. You know, when you go out for drinks with people, everyone whinges about their work and, oh, God, the boss and blah Blah. But you, you, you can't.
- [11:24]
Annie Macron
When I started working there, yes, that did become a huge problem. And this is why there are so many sort of incestuous relationships between officers within these types of organizations. Because it becomes very difficult to maintain a relationship if one of you is on the outside. So a lot of people end up in relationships on the inside because you can just let it all hang out. You can talk about your day, you can talk about the operations you're working on and it's, it's not a problem. It's not Alice down the rabbit hole, it's more Alice through the Looking Glass. I think I would say that's what it felt like. And the recruitment process, yeah, that was the beginning of it. It was a very odd time.
- [12:09]
Jack Lawrence
So Annie has had her first interview, which she successfully gets through and signs the Official Secrets act. Something that at the time of signing, I'm sure she would have never thought that she would eventually break after that. It's in to the recruitment process.
- [12:26]
Annie Macron
So you have the first three, three hour interview, you sign on the dotted line, then you have, if you get through that, you go through a two day intensive recruitment process. It's psychometric tests, it's analytical tests, it's written tests, it's role play, all the rest of it really, really hard. And most people don't get through that. I mean, they might get one out of every batch, so to speak. Strangely, my batch, two of us got through and we remained very good friends all the way through our years in MI5. But yeah, it's really, really hard if you get through that, then you go through a final selection board with the grace and the good. If you get through that, that's when they start betting you, which takes months. So you have to nominate four people from different phases of your life, like a school friend, uni friend, work friend, whatever. And then you get interviewed, they get interviewed and then they have to nominate another four people each. So the ripples go out very widely. And of course, at that point everyone knows that you're being recruited by something spooky. So, you know, the whole idea about being really discreet about it is rather blown out of the window. And then if you get through that, you start work.
- [13:30]
Jack Lawrence
And start work she does. At the age of just 22 years old, Annie heads off to her first day as an intelligence officer for one of the world's most secretive government agencies. Do you remember your very first day walking through those doors?
- [13:45]
Annie Macron
Vividly.
- [13:47]
Jack Lawrence
It's a very unusual experience.
- [13:48]
Annie Macron
I'd imagine it was Surreal. It was not in their hq. So when I joined, they were scattered at various little offices across London and the recruitment or the training sector was right next to Bond Street. Very nice location. So, yeah, you walk through the door, you don't know what to expect. You know, you've got two weeks of being inducted, as they called it, and you get your two weeks training and then you're lobbed off to whichever section you're assigned to and you have, I think it was six months probation with a so called mentor. Most of them crap, actually. And then once you've gone through that, you are assigned to your work and other desks, desks being the subject areas. Sorry, that sounds really boring, but that
- [14:35]
Jack Lawrence
was going to be one of my questions. What is it like in there? Is it just a jet? Is it just a normal office? The cubicles and, you know, the, the coffee and tea machines and all the rest of it.
- [14:43]
Annie Macron
Oh, God. Back in the day, back in the old offices, it was pretty crap. I mean, if you think sort of British civil service, threaded carpets and, you know, duct tape holding down wires and all that sort of shit. It was really, really bad. When they moved to the new HQ, back in the old HQ now back in 1994, it was all terribly high tech and very nice.
- [15:02]
Jack Lawrence
Yeah.
- [15:03]
Annie Macron
But yeah, it was Civil Service grade, I think is the best way of putting it. It is not ostensibly a glamorous job would be the best way of putting it, but the weirdness is when you suddenly start having to deploy secret techniques to investigate people and you start, you know, reading their communications or listening or getting agent reports coming across your desk and all that sort of thing. So for the first few weeks, when you're learning that it is really genuinely odd and after a few weeks, couple of months, it's fine. Just the job.
- [15:34]
Jack Lawrence
Right, yeah.
- [15:35]
Annie Macron
It's weird how people can acclimatise themselves so quickly to a very small world.
- [15:41]
Jack Lawrence
Yeah. Now she's in, what exactly is she going to be tasked with? Well, from the very start, Annie is unsure about just how ethical her first task really is, as she's sent to section F2, which handled counter subversion. It's the aspect of counter intelligence, designed to detect, destroy, neutralise or prevent subversive activities through the identification, exploitation, manipulation and deception of individuals, groups or organizations, I.
- [16:12]
Annie Macron
E. Investigating political activists effectively. Yeah. So the, the whole raison d' etre of counter subversion was the fact that there had been this thing called the Cambridge Spy ring in the 50s and 60s. It was a huge scandal where the Soviets had actually turned a number of various very senior establishment figures to subvert the British state from within. So we're talking about Guy Burgess, Kim Thorby, Donald McLean, people like that. I think there were five of them in total. And this rocked the British establishment back in the early 60s, particularly when Kim Fulby escaped to Russia.
- [16:55]
Jack Lawrence
The Cambridge spy ring, or Cambridge Five, was a ring of spies in the UK that passed information to to the Soviet Union during the Second World War. The five men would be identified as Donald McLean and Guy Burgess, both of whom would flee to Russia in 1951. Everybody considered you and Maclean to be traitors. What have you to say to that, Mr. Burgess?
- [17:18]
Annie Macron
It's no use me saying I'm not a traitor. That means nothing. Of course I'm not. But that's any I who know that.
- [17:27]
Jack Lawrence
Kim Philby, who was actually questioned on television regarding his involvement, which he denied. I was asked to resign from the Foreign Office because of an imprudent association with Burgess and as a result of his disappearance. Beyond that, I'm afraid I've got no further comment to make. Can you say when your communist associations ended? If I assume they did. The last time I spoke to a communist, knowing that he was a communist communist was sometime in 1934. He would later flee to the Soviet Union in 1963. Every evening I left the office with a big briefcase full of reports which I had written myself, full of files taken out of the actual documents, out of the actual archives. I used to hand them to my contact in the evening. Next morning I'd get the file back, the contents having been photographed, and take them back early in the morning and put the piles back in their place. British Intelligence would later obtain confessions from two other men whose involvement was kept secret for many years. In 1979, Anthony Blunt was outed and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher would break the news to Parliament.
- [18:37]
Annie Macron
In the early part of last week, Professor Blunt was publicly identified as having been a suspect Soviet agent agent. Professor Blunt has admitted that he was recruited for Russian intelligence when he was at Cambridge before the war.
- [18:54]
Jack Lawrence
And in 1990, John Cairncross will be revealed and round out the fifth member of the Cambridge Five.
- [19:06]
Annie Macron
And they became incredibly paranoid about what they called Reds under the bed subversion. So this ramped up this huge scale investigation into people who might potentially be subversive. This meant that hundreds of thousands of British citizens were investigated for their affiliations to not just the Communist Party, but also things like Trotskyist groups or other subversive wrp, International Socialists, Socialist Workers, Party, all the rest of it. So this went on for about three decades and was only. But we only began to shut it down in the 1990s. And I have, I'm so happy to say I was one of the people who wrote all the reports that said, this is crap, we need to shut it down. Yeah, they are not a threat. Especially after the Soviet bloc fell apart. You know, Berlin Wall came down in 1989, so the whole justification for investigating any of these groups was completely blown out of the water anyway. And most of the groups were Trotskyists, not Communists, so they had nothing to do with the Soviet Union anyway. So the whole thing was fairly surreal. For a 22 year old going into this section and looking at this degree of surveillance and this manipulation of history and the impact it had on democracy was astonishing. But what has frightened me more since moving forward is the fact that MI5 did shut down this area of investigation in 1995. They then offloaded it to the Metropolitan Police Special Branch, as it was called then, the Secret Police. And they continued to do this work. And then they were outed in a scandal in 2010 with the undercover cops scandal, where they were still infiltrating these groups and animal rights groups and environmentalist groups and all the rest of it in the most invidious ways. And this scandal is still rumbling on.
- [21:06]
Jack Lawrence
Around the end of 2010. And during 2011, it was disclosed in the UK media that a number of undercover police officers had, as part of their false Persona, entered into intimate relationships with members of targeted groups.
- [21:22]
Annie Macron
Here's one of the several left wing organizations infiltrated by by covert officers from this new squad in the Met's Special Branch. 1 An inquiry today said should have been shut down.
- [21:33]
Jack Lawrence
Now the next part is quite astounding as some of these officers in some cases proposed marriage or even fathered children with protesters who were unaware their partner was a police officer in a role as part of their official duties. This was Bob Lambert in 1985, holding his newborn son. Only then he was Bob Robinson to the mother and child. Two years later, he suddenly disappeared and left a son to grow up believing his father had gone on the run.
- [22:02]
Annie Macron
This is a unit that operated until 2008, although today's report, which focuses on its first 14 years, says it should have been disbanded in its infancy, that its ends couldn't conceivably justify its means. Remarkable new revelations in our lead story tonight.
- [22:19]
Jack Lawrence
Bob Lambert, a former undercover police officer,
- [22:21]
Annie Macron
has told Channel 4 News of the full extent of his clandestine infiltration of Pressure groups like the Animal Liberation Front, seducing women who are among his targets, using false identities taken from dead children.
- [22:38]
Jack Lawrence
Various legal actions followed, including eight women who would take action against the Metropolitan Police stating they were deceived into long term intimate relationships by five officers.
- [22:49]
Annie Macron
I suppose the lesson here is never think that just because you're an activist and you're trying to improve the world or win a cause or, you know, do something for the better, for the better good, that you're not going to be spied on.
- [23:02]
Jack Lawrence
Do you think people understand or realize how much that they are being sort of, I mean, use the term spied on. Do you think people understand how much access that these organizations can have on your day to day life and your communications?
- [23:16]
Annie Macron
No, they bloody should. I mean look at what Edward Snowden revealed. And that's a decade ago. So there's this huge intersection between the government, nation state level actors and the corporations who can be backdoored and also the criminal hackers who can get their hands on spy weapon, cyber weapons. So the whole thing intermeshes all the time and people should be aware of this and should be concerned about it. And the fact that I, you know, there's still sort of activist groups organizing on Facebook, I mean, just makes me want to weep. There's no way you're going to keep your plans or strategies safe out.
- [23:53]
Jack Lawrence
Yeah, just putting it all over social media.
- [23:56]
Annie Macron
Exactly. I mean all this stuff was there, I mean all the capabilities were there from the 80s 90s onwards. It was just much more labor intensive to do it. Now of course with the Internet and with social media and all the rest of it, it's flicker switch. Anyone can be watched at any time and this is what people need to be aware of if they want to activate, if they want to get involved in campaigning or they want to try and make a difference or they just want to keep their privacy. Basic human right.
- [24:22]
Jack Lawrence
How did you feel about, you know, while you were working there, doing that? Did you suddenly, were you of the mindset that, you know, I'm loving this, this is, you know, obviously as you said, it starts off weird and then it becomes just everyday job. Did you, did you find yourself really enjoying the work you were doing or did you, were you already a bit sort of like, oh, I'm not sure about this, about how much, you know, we are looking into people?
- [24:41]
Annie Macron
Very much the latter. In fact, I got to the point in 1992. Yeah. So I'd have been about 18 months and I'd just been looking at this Stuff and writing these papers and saying, you know, this is not worth doing, we should not be looking at these people. And I was being ignored. So I was actually on the brink of resignation. It was at that point that I met a guy called David Shaler who became my not only colleague but also my partner at the time. And we fell in love and I didn't resign and we stayed there for another five years. So, you know, it's. There's always the personal as well as the professional, isn't there? That interleaves and overlap.
- [25:27]
Jack Lawrence
David Shaler was born in Middlesbrough in the United Kingdom on December 24th of 1965 and even from a young age was described by one of his teachers as a born rebel who sailed close to the wind and did not suffer fools gladly. David's early life was actually in journalism and at university he would take on the role of editor of the student newspaper where he would in fact publish excerpts from the book spycatcher from another MI5 officer, Peter Wright. This book was in fact banned in Britain at the time. David would graduate university with second class honours at the upper division with a degree in English and would later take a job at the Sunday times newspaper. In 1991 he would join MI5 after responding to an obscure job advertisement calling for people with an interest in current affairs, common sense and the ability to write. Believing it was some form of media related position, he applied. Much like Annie, David began his career in F Branch and Counter Subversion where he worked vetting Labor Party politicians prior to the 1992 election. He would later be transferred to T branch which handled the threat of Irish terrorism, which is also an area that Annie worked and again would find herself in a situation which troubled her.
- [27:16]
Annie Macron
I was given the desk to investigate Irish terrorist logistics. So it wasn't just the Republicans, it was also the loyalists too. So we were trying to stop the infiltration, exfiltration of personnel and materiel into and out of the uk. So I had to work a lot with organisations like the Customs and Ports, Police and people like that.
- [27:37]
Jack Lawrence
I would imagine that's extremely high pressure because obviously when you're dealing with a terrorist organisation, especially one who was as active as the IRA was around that time with bombings and all the rest of it. Was there that sense of, as I said, pressure with making sure that you were on top of everything. And I know you've mentioned that there was a bombing that happened that shouldn't have happened or could have been avoided.
- [27:57]
Annie Macron
Yes, Bishopsgate in 1993. It was a lorry bomb that decimated the city of London. And there were opportunities to stop the attack before it happened and they were missed. And therefore the bomb went off and a person died and many people were injured. It was terrible. It was a huge explosion.
- [28:17]
Jack Lawrence
That's a big one. That is a huge bomb. Good evening. A tipper truck packed with explosives went off in the City of London this morning. It killed one man and injured more than 40 other people. The bomb exploded in Bishops gate near the NatWest tower. The column of smoke rising above the city skyline left Londoners in little doubt about the size of the blast. The shock wave was felt over a wide area, the explosion heard several miles away.
- [28:43]
Annie Macron
The key point that really perturbed my partner as well as me was the fact that they lied about it afterwards in my five because they are supposed to be accountable to the Home Secretary who's supposed to, you know, sign them off to do all sorts of stuff. And they covered up the mistakes they'd made. So I think thereby you don't. An organization cannot learn from their mistakes. And by learning from your mistakes you can improve how you work.
- [29:09]
Jack Lawrence
Yeah.
- [29:10]
Annie Macron
Rather than just brushing them under the carpet. So that was the key problem there.
- [29:13]
Jack Lawrence
So what happens with that sort of information? You say, you know, information came in, it could have been avoided. What happened? Is it tip offs, is it listening in and hearing certain things? And, and they just didn't act on the information that they were discovering?
- [29:26]
Annie Macron
Pretty much.
- [29:27]
Jack Lawrence
And that's I'm assuming through sources and whatnot. They, you know, that I suppose deal with MI5
- [29:35]
Annie Macron
pretty.
- [29:52]
Jack Lawrence
The issues around the efficacy and unaccountability of the British secret services would continue to build for David and Annie and it would be a failed assassination attempt involving MI6 which would be the straw that broke the camel's back.
- [30:06]
Annie Macron
But back in 1996 this was seen as super secret because it's illegal to assassinate pro and heads of David would
- [30:13]
Jack Lawrence
tell Annie he believed it was time that they not only left the organization but in fact out them to the public. It would be a decision which would make them wanted by the very team they once worked with.
- [30:26]
Annie Macron
So I was left with the happy task of trying to organize the exfiltration out of the uk which I did
- [30:34]
Jack Lawrence
next time unwanted I'm a wanderer of the soul before the end I plan to behold But I know I'll lose myself along the way what's gone is gone what's passed is past Let me leave what belongs in the past.
- [31:06]
Edward Jones Narrator
A rich life isn't a straight line to a destination on the horizon Sometimes it takes an unexpected turn, with detours, new possibilities, and even another passenger or three. And with 100 years of navigating ups and downs, you can count on Edward Jones to help guide you through it all. Because life is a winding path made right rich by the people you walk it with. Let's find your rich together. Edward Jones Member, SIPC.