hello again or welcome to spotlight the interview show on r t i'm al going on and today my guest on the show is michael smith the british intelligence service now as the m i six or simply the six that started the revealing its secrets many notes in the archives of the service have been x. files for decades and now some of them will make the world with its history former british intelligence agent michael smith has already started by publishing a sensational book. written secret intelligence service or m i six has been involved in many operations across the world top secret files from its archives made public to shed light on events and crimes that made history in the twentieth century among them is the murder of rasputin the clearer it can clairvoyant who had an almost magical influence with the family of the last russian

and para and i six suspected rasputin of trying to persuade the tsar to quit the first world war which was contrary to british interests the service is part of his death adds to the mystery of the man six also planned to assassinate joseph stalin in nine hundred eighteen but the very last moment the mission failed what are the intriguing revelations are we to expect the former british intelligence officer michael smith is here the song. hello michael and welcome to the show thank you very much for being with us. thank you. michael you published a book devoted to the history of the british intelligence and the first part of the book is about the period from nineteen zero nine to nineteen thirty nine where you the first research chair who got access to the m i six archives.

i didn't actually have our current access to the m i six official archives their internal archives where we got our material from was a number of archives but mainly from the british national archives where other departments like the foreign office of the morty or the war office had put their documents which had come to them from my six into the archives and my six doesn't release its files and they have only once allowed an official historian to look at their files and that's just happened and he's an official historian so he's dealing with it from an official side mine is an unauthorized biography so to speak of m i six during that period from one thousand nine hundred thirty nine this is myth your latest book contains quite a few sensations for historians and the first and foremost at least for russians is

the the assets the nation of responded and the fact that it was organized by british intelligence well is it true and what was the reason for the u.k. to want to assassinate respirators. the british were very worried. that the rest putin would pursue would persuade the czarina to persuade the tsar to pull out of the on taunt and to. become neutral in a war or worse join germany in a war that would have released about sixty more than sixty german army divisions that were on the eastern front to fight on the western front and that was a major problem obviously for the british so that's why they were so keen to be involved in this incident they wanted to know what recipe to mr ng so so so

are you sure that all may we be sure that this wouldn't have happened without the british involvement and i mean the the attempted arrest wouldn't life. no it's not clear whether it wouldn't have happened whether prince use the paf and his accomplices who's whose role has been widely of course reported not least by you support himself would have had the courage to go ahead it is an entirely clear but they certainly have the anger and the hatred of rescue to end that drove them forward what happened was the use of power of a friend of use of power when he was studying the oxford man called oswald rayna was a member of british a british intelligence in russia at the time he obviously was still close to use a path and a plan was there for hatched between them whereby both sides would get what they

wanted and this myth we we always knew that respondent didn't die quickly but so far we read that that the explanation for this was his extraordinary strength of this extraordinary man you explain it differently you said you're right that he was actually tortured before he was shot so why was he taught it was there any information they wanted to get from this man. yes i think what they wanted to get from him are certainly what the british wanted to get from him as i say is whether it was his involvement with the germans they believed that they believe russia putin was involved in some way with the germans either on their pay or as some sort of alliance in order to persuade the czarina to get the czar to pull out of the war that's what that was the belief in russia at the time. among british intelligence officers in russia at the time that's that stood up by documents in. the

papers of a couple of those officers one of them john scale and the other stephen ali and those those documents show very clearly that the british were involved in this. smith the evidence you got this killing i'll state the rasputin subject well. says that the bullet that actually killed the man was fired from the real gun from a british gun and again that was standard issue of the british intelligence service does that does that. can we take it as sufficient evidence that to respond to it actually was killed by by a british agent named rain or rain or the. the the evidence points to it it isn't. the come from

a tree but there is no doubt the rain it was present and of that rain a high and the the where billy a where billy revolver and it was a where billy point four four five which actually killed russia putin i should. stress here that i'm not the first to touch on most b.b.c. time watch program did something on this quite a while ago and. a friend of mine who is a former. senior detective in the metropolitan police here in london was an advisor on. that documentary program and he went to moscow and he talked with forensic experts in moscow and these people together did a lot of work on this and it's a result of their work rather than any research of mine i have to say that is represented in books so. you know they did extensive research and richard cullen

this former detective has been working on this for a number of years and the has in fact recently published his own book on him have you ever asked yourself why would the russian conspirators like for example prince use super why do they keep the secret of the british involvement in the murder of respond in until their very death why didn't they tell anybody when in writing anything on that. because any involvement by british intelligence in any operations requires that the people are keep it secret just as. was the case with the k.g.b. and is still the case with the f.s.b. and the s.b. are if they carry out a secret operation they don't expect the people involved to go telling everyone that they did it you support. of course wrote his own version of what happened and we have the. rather strange bizarre. history of what happened from him where

by people what rescue team is given. given poisoning cakes which you know he would he could not have survived and it was nothing to do with some. superhuman strength rasputin wasn't superhuman he just wasn't given poison a thorn he was given out of he was plied with out of he was beaten up very very badly tortured and then he was shot well you can't keep me so you keep me so fascinated by this says that so i'll stick i'll stick to respond just for one other question and rest well listen you came wanted to prevent russia from signing an armistice with germany as you said they suspected rest put in there that he was part of this plan now now we know it and you should agree that responded wasn't part of that plan he wasn't guilty of what british intelligence suspected him had and for what the british killed him so studying the history of intelligence how

often did you come across with that cessations which in the end proved to be mistakes. there were there was another attempt as is well known to kill the soviet leadership in the so-called lockhart plot which never came to a few issues because it was it was discovered by by the bolsheviks before it even even happened there were that was in the archives in the memoirs of stephen ali it was one of the leading british intelligence officers in petrograd during that period he said that he was he was sacked from. my six or as it now is known. he was sacked because he refused to kill stalin refused to get involved in the murder of stalin was stalin as is

well known was one of those backing the armistice with germany and an influential figure within the leadership although obviously not as influential as he later became says says michael smith the former british intelligence agent and we'll continue this interview in less than a minute after a short break sal stay with us and the. culture is that so much of the experience i mean to see me in my life here you watch what you say for some political correctness is understood is a form of etiquette for others it is a clumsy attempt at thought control. and discover it.

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i. i. i just. welcome back to spotlight time algor norvin just a reminder that my guest in the studio today is former british intelligence agent

michael smith who's joining us via satellite link from london we're talking about his recent recent. book where he writes a couple of fascinating things since ational things well. one of them is an episode about somerset mom who he says who michael says was british intelligence agent in one thousand nine hundred seventeen he was in russia and he reported back to to london that that the bolsheviks what never come to power that the existing government was very strong which turned out to be a mistake so so michael do you recall a lot of such when when british asians were were mistaken. to such a huge proportion. i think this was probably and i say in the book it's probably the worst prediction ever given by

a british intelligence officer in the whole of the history of british intelligence because as some of the morning actually admitted when he was writing his memoirs are you know the reader will already know that i failed spectacularly in my attempt to stop the bolsheviks taking power and to be absolutely can do it the plans that were in place were. pretty hopeless there was a belief that they the czechs who were heavily involved obviously the czech army was involved on the eastern front. the czechs would help the british prevent the bolsheviks taking over some of that more and came with a very large sum of money. which we've which to buy people but he didn't he didn't really get anywhere and as i say and as you refer obviously know there in moscow. he says his mission was

a complete failure this is myth. how do you think did made the most serious mistake in history and more are found this secret agents themselves who sent in wrong or false reports or whatever or the politicians who ignored the reports what would you say i would say that intelligence is a very different difficult thing to collect that it is very very difficult to produce the intelligence when you've got a good piece of intelligence which the intelligence agencies whether they're russian or british are very competent in then the policy is you politicians should follow that no nation should take note of that and i think in the the competition if set up there between the politicians and the intelligence agents i think the politicians lose hands down because they frequent. only ignore what the intelligence officers and they frequently do very very stupid things well then tell

us about tell us about more and more more recent stuff for example who would you hold. who are responsible for spreading false information about iraq's weapons of mass destruction program in two thousand and three was it the m i six who was blamed war is it the blair's government that. i think there's a combination iraq thing was was was very much a combination of the two you had a perfect storm where both the intelligence chiefs in britain at the time and the politicians in britain at the time wanted to believe something and therefore put more. more reliance on the intelligence than the intelligence could actually survive. they were using you probably know they were using agents in iraq who didn't know much about nuclear and biological and chemical weapons their

expertise was where and they were probably very good agents in in other areas other military areas but they these agents then had to go to other people and ask other people the questions and at that point you don't have a great reliance on these people big you can have a great reliance on these people these new agents of come in sub agents of your own reliable parts agents you are in the hands of your agent and you have great difficulty in knowing whether these subagents are telling the truth or not and that's pretty much what happened and then when the intelligence chiefs went to blair they wanted to give blair what he wanted and of course blair wanted evidence that iraq had weapons of mass destruction so you you end

up with people providing intelligence which isn't reliable to politicians who don't know the difference between what is reliable and unreliable but are at any event very very eager to get any information that backs up their course michael so based on what you just said can you tell me frankly what's the clue still to. a fast and a good career in intelligence saying saying what really happens what you really think what really you believe is the fact or trying to to to report what the politicians want to hear as. well i would say that the the the good thing to do is to report what is actually the truth and what you know to be the truth it isn't just during the iran. incident that we have instances where. british intelligence officers of told politicians what they wanted

to hear those the famous inobvious letter which back in one nine hundred twenty four again which in this particular case was deemed to show that the navi of was trying to in the russians and the communists did not or were trying to interfere with british trade unions and get british trade unions to rise up against the government and to bring in a labor government this was complete nonsense of well it was an entirely new certainly the russians would have liked to have done but the there was complete forgery and yet again. you see the intelligence officers telling politicians what politicians want to hear precisely as we did when richard dearlove the then head of british intelligence was turning tony blair that yes iraq did have weapons of mass destruction michael there are still many scandals implying the involvement of my

sex into the russian affairs for example there is a car i have of the litvinenko case well and there that these things are often suspected to be connected with the british intelligence unlike in the time your book is dedicated to there's no major war to go in and today so why is russia still so high on the priorities list of the m i six what's at stake now. what say now i. mean how i guess is what is russia going to do what is russia going to do in terms of gas resources and its control through gas resources over eastern europe what is russia going to do in terms of countries like georgia and estonia where russia still sees itself as having a controlling interest whereas the states see themselves as being independent states so that sort of thing is important and it has to be said that my

five the british security service the equivalent of the f.s.b. over here they say that the number of russian intelligence officers has not dropped since the cold war there are still that many russian intelligence officers operating in london and we saw recently with the ana chapman of there and the sleeper agents the russians sleeper agents that there is the intelligence services on both sides are still preparing and keeping themselves ready to collect intelligence if it should be needed having said that of course there is an awful lot of cooperation it goes on particularly over al qaeda where both sides russia and the west certainly have a great deal of interesting cooperation on things like terrorism and al qaida speaking of cooperation the british government suspended cooperation between the

british and russian special services after the death of a little in elko do you think it was the right thing to do. do i think it was the right thing to do i i guess it probably was actually at the time i mean do you think it was the right thing to do for the first serve intelligence to send someone to. and kill a russian emigre who is living in london. here it was clearly a retribution to someone who had who was seen as having betrayed the the cause of the former k.g.b. . so as you know as a sovereign state i don't think britain could allow russia. russia north orate is to to reach into britain and kill someone in that way. or do you think it

was all because litvinenko was really an m i six agent. i have no idea whether living younger was an m i six agent it is entirely possible that he was passing intelligence on to my six and it certainly wouldn't surprise me in any way whatsoever but i think the it was it was a great deal to do with the russian politics with the rise of the former k.g.b. in russia and i think the need to show that. a certain degree of power. the need to show people that we can reach out and get you if we need to. america last question i know you want to write a book about the work of m i six in afghanistan and iraq in the modern times today could this account be accurate until all the archives are open. no it's

a simple answer and it can't be entirely accurate because it can't tell you everything that happened and it relies on people who will tell you stuff that they want you to hear in some cases but it says it at least gets close to what is happening and will at least actually give you some idea and i had to say you know. one of the things about my book is that i have used archives but of in russia and the u.k. and i i have a friend too there's a very very good researcher in the same area i was working in in one thousand nine hundred thirty nine in russia who helps me produce infant information from russian archives and i get stuff from for him from the british archives and so you get some way to to getting as close you can i think it's similar within afghanistan you've

got to start somewhere and other people will come along later with more information as more information is revealed no doubt and long after i'm dead perhaps we'll start to see our kind of sight seeing on climbs on what the british were doing in afghanistan and pakistan. ok thank you thank you very much michael for being with us and just a reminder that my guest in the studio today was former british intelligence agent and author michael smith who is has joined us via satellite link from london and that's it for now from all of us here if you want to have your say on spotlight or have someone in mind who you think i should interview next time just drop me a lot we'll be back with more until then stay on r.t. and take a. little

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four thirty am in moscow good to have you with us here on our team using your headlights russia signed up to build venezuela's first nuclear power plant as president hugo chavez talked to business in moscow on the sidelines he spoke to our team in an exclusive interview where he shared his thoughts on global issues. the us on the line one of the reasons for the many conflicts going on in the world today take a look at the war in iraq thousands of people have died women and children were killed but the whole war was based on the lie that the iraqi government and weapons of mass destruction that's the only reason the yankee empire defeated the country.

moscow might soon be getting a new debt a new mayor as deputy prime minister sergei so beyond and gets the presidential nod for the capital's top job you could be set to replace your evolution was dismissed by med last month after nearly twenty years in office. former prisoners claim they were abused at a secret jail inside america's bodrum air base in afghanistan or report by u.s. foundation catalogs in made statements saying they were subjected to extreme temperature of sleep deprivation and extended periods of isolation. that's next r t looks behind the perestroika were for all reforms which the west applauded for opening up the soviet union but turned many people's lives upside down stay with us . it was a time when the youngs of the entire world the soviet union.