now, the cia has had a chequered history — involved notjust in spying, but assassination attempts and coup plots as well. but now intelligence seems to have entered a different realm of cyber hacking, big data and electronic surveillance. my guest isjonna mendez. at the end of the cold war, she was the cia's chief of disguise. is human intelligence still a vital asset? jonna mendez, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. pleasure. well, it's great to have you here. what do you think are the qualities you possess that made you a good spy?

no—one�*s asked me that before. um... i'm tenacious, i'm a... ..a bit adventurous. that's how i got into it to begin with. and i think the biggest piece of it was hoping that i had done something worth doing, and that it had made a difference. so the values behind the work were important to you, but on a day—to—day basis, you were having to deceive and to lie. are you good at that? and protect. she chuckles and i got rather good at it indeed. yes, ican... ican... i can prevaricate with the best of them. let me take you back to the beginning. you've described entering the cia through a side entrance, by which i think you mean that you weren't sort of formally recruited. that's right. you sort of fell into it

because you married a guy who, it turned out, just before your wedding, you learned was in the cia. wasn't there a movie or a book? something titled marrying the mob? there was a similarity, yeah. i didn't realise until shortly before we were getting married that my first husband had an unusualjob. when he told me about it, i had... i had come from wichita, kansas. i was in europe. i was not full of information about what the cia even was. he said, you know, "there will be a lot of travel, "some interesting opportunities." he said, "i think you'll really enjoy it." so you were kind of recruited by your husband? yeah, i signed on the dotted line and got married in switzerland. one of the interesting things about your early years in the agency is that the agency really wasn't good at fostering the ambitions of women who wanted to be

out in the field, doing the sort of exciting stuff. there weren't many women doing that. it wasn't high on the list of the men's concerns. but it wasn't just the cia. it was in... in our country in general, women didn't have very interesting jobs. i was a secretary when i went in. most women were. the thing that i wanted was not to be bored, and even when i married tony mendez and he said, "so, what...?" you know, "what do you worry about?" i said, "i don't want to be bored." and he said, "you won't be bored." and he was right. now, tony mendez was a pretty legendary cia agent who was an expert in disguise, and you sort of followed him and became a specialist in disguise, in different forms of technical deception. that's right.

i was amazed to read you had two years of training in disguise. i mean, how complicated can disguise be? very. she chuckles disguise can be so many different things. it's notjust a moustache...and a wig. not at all. it can... and you disguise things in addition to disguising people. it's not just. .. ..a person, and it's not just that person's face. it's...quite broad and deep. it's... it's addicting. you have said the key to it is that disguise is all of you, and that confidence is the absolute essence of an effective disguise. you can, and i have, you could just hand, you know, a handful of poorly made props to a man who — and it was, by the way, always a man — who... ..who could act, who could

get into a character, who could believe himself that he was this changed, poor disguise, and carry it off. and you could... you could spend $10,000 on a disguise and put it on someone who couldn't wear it, and you would see it immediately. so the way you wore it was just as important as any materials that we ever... ..that we ever provided. there are historians of the cia who referred to you as — and they used the james bond movies as their analogy — the q, the woman who was essentially the q of the cia for a number of years. did you like that? it wasn't me that was the 0, it was the office that i worked in, and it was the q. we were the technical arm of the cia and, more broadly, of the intelligence community. and today that's 17 different organisations. not so many back then, but still, it was broad. what it was saying when it called us the q is that we had

the technical expertise to do almost anything. and then we had people specialising in remarkable things, people that did nothing but batteries for their... for their career. battery people, to make them smaller and smaller and more powerful and more longer lasting. because everything we had was battery powered. and cameras. you were big into your camera technology? very big in camera technology. so we had opticians, we had engineers that could make cameras, but, better than that, we had private contractors. one of them was a little man who had a garage out behind his house and he made the cameras that were called tropel. they were exquisite, handmade, each one. an eight... an 8—piece lens that was eight pieces in a little space like that, stacked. you could put it in a fountain pen,

you could put it in a lighter, put it in a... fit in...a lipstick, a key fob, a tie. there was nowhere we couldn't put a camera. do you think you were better than the kgb? better than the stasi? ithink... i speak, really, from a disguise point of view, but you might take this more broadly. we had a greater need for all of these toys, gadgets, whatever you want to call them, because we were so smothered in moscow by surveillance. when the russians sent their people over here to new york, even to california to work, they were not facing that kind of... ..24—hour—a—day observation. they didn't need all of the pieces, the bits and pieces that we did. we needed every tool we could use to work in moscow. i want to talk to you about danger and responsibility for putting others into danger. you've talked openly about one

of your assets that you worked closely with in moscow, aleksandr 0gorodnik. 0gorodnik, yeah. he was vital to your work. you helped him hide from the kgb, and, in the end, that failed. well, the...the kgb had put out the word back then that if they found one of their citizens working for the west, that they would arrest them and they would execute them, and they would do it by feeding them feet first, alive, into a crematorium. that was the government's position on their citizens spying. so when 0gorodnik went to work for us, there's always... the case officers sit down with them and they have some very clear understandings. one is that if it goes badly, we will try and get you out, we will bring you out to the west, we will bring your family

with you if we can. and so while he was working for us, our documents people had a set of passports ready to go. and every year or two, they'd go in and refresh them — new photos, new stamps and whatever it took. so we had an escape hatch built, but there was never any guarantee that it would work. he was a very smart man, and he said, "a condition of my working for you is i want..." what's called an l—pill. the l is for lethal. it's a cyanide pill. we said no. we had always said no. we... the last thing we wanted to do was to give people cyanide. he said, "fine, then i won't work for you." um... so this was back and forth with headquarters. and finally we needed him, we wanted him. we said, "ok, we willgive you... "we will give you this thing." the l—pill was a glass capsule.

and we put it in the end of his pen so that when he was caught... she exhales heavily when he was caught, um... they had him stripped down to his briefs in some room, they had some evidence that they had found. he said, "0k, ok, i'll do my confession. "give me my pen." and they brought him his pen. and they said in their reporting that he simply bit down on that and that he was dead before he hit the ground. it's a difficult question, but all these years later, do you still have... ..the memory of people like him, working for you, on your conscience? yeah. but he... there were long conversations about it, notjust with him, with some others. we actually, when we wrote the book, the moscow rules, we added a rule — neverfall in love with your agent. and that didn't mean

romantic love. it was like... just don't get too attached? if it goes wrong, it's just... it's going to hurt everybody so bad. when trigon was gone... that's his code name? yeah. at cia. i mean, it was... it was tragic. you talk about the books you've written, and they... it's interesting to me that they focus on the sort of intelligence war with russia. 0ne�*s titled spy dust: two masters of disguise reveal the tools and operations that helped win the cold war. that's co—written with your husband. is there an element of propaganda to the way that the cia has encouraged you in recent years to publicise your work? the agency's had a lot of bad, bad publicity. they see you... ..as a useful tool. no, they have not encouraged me, or tony. i take that back. i'll tell you how they encouraged tony. to write a book, we propose it...

..and we write it, with... they have no say. they don't say yes, they don't say no. we write the book and they see it before anybody else sees it. and they have, they say, "take this out. "you can't say that." valerie plame, when i saw her last week, they removed chapters from her book, completely took them out. the cia doesn't propose books. they don't promote books. i think they wish we would not write books, that's my sense, this publication review board that looks at them. the only time that i'm aware of that the cia has promoted something like this was with argo. and to remind people, argo is the story, which is essentially your husband's story, of how he used his amazing disguise skills to get six people out of tehran. he was going to take that story to his grave. he had no intention, no plan to tell any of his stories.

and it was only one of many. then he was called in by george tenet. er, and tenet said, "we want to tell the story." it's kind of quiet. the landscape is... this was before 9/11, and the idea here is, let's tell one good story. ah, a good story. many people will have seen the movie argo and we know that it was, again, great publicity, frankly, for american intelligence. but you had lived through a series of cia dirty tricks operations which included attempted assassinations, coups d'etat, we know the stories of the attempts to kill fidel castro, patrice lumumba. we failed. tony said, "we can't... "we can't do this. "go find the mob. "find somebody who knows how to assassinate a person." we tried to kill fidel with an exploding cigar. that's how good we were.

you knew this stuff was going on. you're not even pretending to me you didn't know. not at the time, i did not know. but i certainly know now. you must have known about cia covert actions in chile designed to bring down a socialist government. you know, i did not, because i didn't... my people were not doing... ..any real work in chile. everything is kind of siloed at the cia. what, you tried to close your mind to stuff that perhaps colleagues mentioned or that you read in the newspapers? and you must have thought to yourself, "i bet we have some involvement in that." i might have. i don't... that was not my focus. and i'm not trying to dodge your question. i was very, very wrapped up in what we were doing, where the work was, where the problems were. i guess my ultimate point is that there came a point i guess my ultimate point in the 19905 when people looked

back on what the cia had done, when, for example, one leading senator, daniel patrick moynihan, led an effort to get the cia abolished, saying that secrecy, he says, keeps mistakes secret, and secrecy is a disease, and it causes, this is his words, a hardening of the arteries of the mind. did you at any point think, "you know what? "the work that we do... "..is questionable, and sometimes it is wrong"? looking back, isee mistakes that were made. by the way, i was a great fan of patrick moynihan and i remember he was carrying on back then about wanting to abolish the cia. i thought he was wrong on that... ..on that point, of course. i mean, you do the work you do so that our policymakers have the information they need to make informed decisions. of course mistakes are made. go back to iran and look at what the british and the americans... sure. we removed a democratically

elected political figure and the shah was installed. in retrospect, that was a huge mistake. well, you don't even have to go back that far. no. look at 9/11, look at the total failure to see the scale of an attack that was coming on the united states of america. everyone at the cia, along with the rest of, i think, the country, realised it was a failure of imagination. no—one... ..could imagine that you could take a plane full of gas and turn it into a weapon and that you could find people so radical... ..that they would pilot that thing... ..into those buildings — it was unimaginable. imagination is such an interesting word to use because it's a human quality, imagination. it seems to me that right now we're in an era where people, when they talk of intelligence gathering,

they are much more focused today on machines, on electronic surveillance, on the power of big data and artificial intelligence, on the efficacy of cyber—hacking. i know you stay very plugged in to the intelligence community. do you think that intelligence gathering today is fundamentally different from the way it was when you were still at the cia? when you're talking about anticipating the next move, i think you only have to look at israel, hamas, and how they came across one of the most secure borders in the world, an electronic border, radar, video, sonic — every imaginable automated device. and they didn't have people looking. they didn't have eyes on it. they didn't have what's called

humint, human intelligence, which can't be discounted, and it can't fall out of favour, because there are machines that can hear better than we can, that can see better than we can. if they had had, if the israelis, for instance, had had one good source in hamas, one humint source in hamas, that's all they would have needed. certainly would have changed the outcome. technology is great, but it doesn't replace... ..a human being. human intelligence. if you look at where resources go in the united states today, you could argue that technology is king. the national security agency, the signals intelligence operation, has vastly expanded. and one could also argue that they are now regarded as a more important agency than the human intelligence gathering cia. do you worry about that balance? i don't believe that

balance is so tilted. i don't believe that the intelligence professionals today, the ones that are helping to form the policy, would favour one over the other. if you have an opportunity to choose between one source that's standing in putin's office with the ability to, say, to leave something behind, to take a photograph of the documents on his desk, the agenda for his meeting, or the minutes afterwards, if you ask me to choose between that man in that moment, that humint, or some kind of eavesdropping electronic sigint, some kind of the... i would choose the man every time because we're looking at plans and intentions, we're not looking so much at what's there right now. we're looking at what's coming, what are they going to do. looking to the future,

people have considered whether the united states remains at the cutting edge, the sort of paramount power when it comes to intelligence gathering. there's a school of thought, and edward lucas, a british commentator, believes closed societies now have an edge over more open societies, which are preoccupied still with issues around privacy. are free societies in a weaker position? i believe they probably are. iwould... i would agree with that, because we are restrained. we're actually quite restrained by our own rules, what we can do. other countries, maybe not so much. you can look back on a long career at the cia — and a very successful one — but as we've discussed, you've also had to address really difficult issues about responsibility for bad stuff, about knowledge that the cia has done some very bad stuff. and ijust wonder now whether you would say to young americans today thatjoining the cia

is an honourable thing to do. it's a big question. the cia has done, as you say, some bad stuff. there is a history where mistakes have been made, some purposely, some not purposely. mistakes have been made. there's probably not another organisation as large as the cia that couldn't say, looking over their shoulder, "yeah, we shouldn't have done that. "that was a bad decision." there's plenty of that. i talk to lots of young people. i tell them it is an honourable profession. it's an opportunity. it's an opportunity to make a difference in the governing of this country. it's... i felt it was a responsibility to get involved in one way or another. it's a profession that needs to be done. our country can't go staggering forward without having some sense of what the rest of the world is doing,

what we have to respond to next. you need intelligence. you need to know, what are they prepared to do? do they have a bottom line? what are we prepared to do? can we counter that with this? i mean, that's how policy is made. it's notjust made willy—nilly just because you feel on tuesday that this is the thing. the world still needs spies? the world needs spies probably more than ever. but it also does come with a price, which is personal. you could not be open and honest with close friends, i dare say, even with some family members about what you actually did. that must take a toll. that takes a toll. there is a price. all your friends on the outside, you've known them forever, and over time, over years... ..they drop away because it's too hard to keep up the facade. and then you have new friends on the inside, and they get it.

they understand. they know you can't talk — even inside, you can't talk about what you're doing that day, but you certainly have lunch with them and laugh. joke is that when you retire and you leave, guess what? your old friends, you've lost track of them over 27 years. your cia friends — that give and take is gone. because really all the things you talk about are "bill," you know, "how is he doing? "what's he doing ? " that's inside stuff. you can't have that conversation. and then there you are on the outside in retirement. alone. a little bit alone, you have to kind of start over. that's what we do. we start over. and it all works out in the end, but it's not a... it's not a straight, smooth path. not at all. jonna mendez, thank you very much forjoining me on hardtalk. my pleasure. thank you.

hello. for most of us, boxing day turned into a pretty decent day. we had some spells of sunshine. certainly, it was a fine day to get out and about. the same does not apply to the day ahead. wednesday's weather dominated by storm gerrit, bringing a combination of rain, snow and gales with a very real risk of disruption. this is our storm system, this vast shield of cloud on the earlier satellite picture just enveloping the uk. outbreaks of very heavy rain driving northwards and eastwards, some really strong winds. notice all the isobars on this chart. and with the wet weather running into cold air, briefly a bit of snow mixing in over higher ground in northern england, southern scotland, but in the highlands,

we could well see 15cm of snow or more accumulating over the highest ground — blizzard conditions when we combine that snow with the very, very strong winds. in fact, it is going to be a windy day for just about all of us. some very heavy rain affecting parts of england and wales — 90mm possible for hills of wales, northwest england. lots of hefty downpours too in northern ireland. a windy day for all of us, gales in places. we could see gusts of 70 to possibly 80mph developing in the northeast of scotland. temperatures north to south, 5 to 13 degrees. and then through wednesday night, well, actually, if anything, the winds will strengthen further around parts of wales, southwest england. also extremely windy weather across the northern isles. we'll see snow and blizzard conditions for some in shetland. lots of showers elsewhere, blowing through on those very strong winds. as a result of the strength of the wind, it's not going to be a particularly cold night. and then into thursday, it stays blustery, the winds only slowly easing. i think we'll continue to see gales in places,

particularly around some western coasts. lots of showers, some of which could be heavy, possibly thundery. wintry showers over high ground in the northern half of scotland especially. and those temperatures, 6 degrees there in aberdeen, perhaps 13 as the high in london. and then as we head towards the end of the week, we will see further weather systems working from west to east, further outbreaks of rain. this one at the start of the weekend could be particularly potent. and with cold air being pulled down from the north, expect something wintry to mix in from time to time, so it's a really unsettled outlook as we head through the rest of 2023.

live from london, this is bbc news. gaza's health ministry, run by hamas, reports 241 deaths within 2a hours as israel warns the war will last many more months. russia confirms ukraine damaged one of its warships in the black sea. the national trust warns unpredictable weather is causing chaos to nature.

post—christmas celebrations colombian style — we'll bejoining the party. hello. i'm azadeh moshiri. we start the programme with the war in gaza, where its health ministry — run by hamas — has said at least 241 people have been killed in the past 2a hours. meanwhile, six people have been killed in the occupied west bank, according to the palestinian health ministry. this is all as israel's military operation continues. palestinian president mahmoud abbas has called the war a "grave crime" against his people. israel's army chief herzi halevi on the other hand has said the conflict with hamas would continue for "many more months". the latest — israel says it hit more than 100 sites on tuesday, amid reports of impending ground operations in central gaza. areas which the israeli

military had declared safe —