“That is quite unusual,” said a third private intelligence figure, adding that in the U.S. people are “very open” about having worked for the CIA. America has a “semi-retirement model where when you’re moving out of the agency, you’ll probably spend about six or seven years subcontracting back, and then you’ll finally move into the private sector.”
“We don’t do things like that here at all. So, Vauxhall [MI6] will almost never outsource meaningful intelligence work to the private sector,” they said.
Still, trading in knowledge is commonplace. The same person added that there is a “lot of frustration from both sides of the river [Thames] that the old boys’ network was getting a bit too informal, with people telling their clients that they can call their old buddies.”
Lawfare
London’s emergence as the epicenter of private intelligence is largely down to its proximity to two big pools of clients: Britain’s legal and financial sectors. These two powerhouses of the U.K. economy are regularly at the heart of complex cases that run into the billions.
Much of this work is “quite pedestrian,” says the second private intelligence figure. Basic due diligence reports involve routine checks, including whether someone is on a sanctions list or has had negative press. These, the same person said, are usually done by young graduates and the work “isn’t very well paid or exciting.”
The big-money work broadly falls under the deceptively dull term “litigation support.” This can encompass everything from “opponent research” — dirt-digging to help discredit individuals — to gathering evidence that can be used in court, such as documents, witnesses and hard drives.