Role-Playing for War: the Human in Human Intelligence

Abstract

Unlike open source and signals intelligence, human intelligence, gaining information from meeting and talking with enemies or occupied peoples, required some form of direct face-to-face contact with foreigners. In this context, intelligence agents inevitably found themselves in a complex relationship both with those who were placing them in these situations — the British authorities — and those whom they would be encountering, the soldiers and civilians of enemy or occupied countries. On the one hand, anyone involved in intelligence had to be security-cleared, given an unblemished and proven certificate of loyalty to the British Crown. On the other hand, intelligence work required such people to create the impression, however fleetingly, that they were native speakers who had actually been born into the enemy/occupied cultures. In a sense, the role of intelligence agents was conceived in English but involved performing in a foreign language before an audience of native speakers of that language. Rather than the paradigm of translation which marked the practices of open source and signals intelligence, human intelligence operated through performance, the performance of individuals. Acting, playing a part, making oneself believable to those in the audience, whilst maintaining artistic credibility with the producer and director, lay at the very heart of human intelligence, and language was the key element in this performance.