hello again or welcome to spotlight the m.t.v. 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 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 matter of rasputin the clear it can clairvoyant

had an almost magical influence over the family of the last russian impera 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 plan 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 in 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 a visual 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 warty 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 a 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 miss doing 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 you support and his accomplices whose whose role has been widely of course reported not least by you suppose himself would have had the courage to go ahead isn't entirely clear but they certainly had 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 first 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 now 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 or 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 believed 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 then that was standard issue of the british intelligence service does that does that. can we take it as sufficient evidence that responded actually was killed by by

a british agent named rain or rain or the. the the evidence points to it it isn't a salute the come from a tree but there is no doubt the rain it was present and of that rain a hand the the web really a web really revolver and it was a web really 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 taught 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 colonists former detective has been working on this for a number of years and the has in fact recently published his own book on have you ever asked yourself why would the russian conspirators like for example prince use soup of why do they keep the secret of the british involvement in the murder of rasputin 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 e.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 rescued him 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 at all he was given out of all 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 stake you has been just for one other question and rescued him well listen you came wanted to prevent russia from signing an armistice with germany as you said they suspected rasputin 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 and for what it is 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 fruition 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 if you 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 to send t.v. in less than a minute after a short break sal stay with us and. almost seventy years of the red machine which so many people wanted to leave. to make changes these are.

my was it possible to change the regime so quickly. with. a closer look fundamental changes in the state people's minds. on the. wealthy british science. guys go. to. market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with max cons or a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to gaza report on our.

welcome back to spotlight i'm al going off and just to remind you 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 nineteen seventeen he was in russia and he reported back 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 agents where were mistaken but

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 are more 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 have your sleep you refer and

obviously know they're in moscow. he says his mission was a complete failure this is smith. oh 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 do 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 a politician politician should follow that no nation would 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 elsewhere 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't 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. well i would say that the the the good thing to do is to report what is actually the truth from 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 there is 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 win the russians and the communists in russia 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 wasn't entirely once certainly the russians would have liked to have done that but the there was a 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 to tony blair that yes iraq did

have weapons of mass destruction model there are still many scandals implying the involvement of my sex into the russian affairs for example there is off skis the car i have of the litvinenko case well and there the 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 or . now 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 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 that there are still that many russian intelligence officers operating in london and we saw recently with the anna chapman affair 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 qaida 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. driving or is 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 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 to 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 so it at least gets close to what is happening and will at least actually give you some idea on how to say you know. one of the things about my book is that i have used archives both of in russia and the u.k. and i i have a friend to who is 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 him for 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 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 sightseeing archives on what the british were doing in afghanistan pakistan. ok thank you thank you very much michael for being with us and just to remind that my guest in the studio today was former british intelligence agent and author michael smith who is has joined us why a satellite link from london and the third for the hour from of us here if you want to have your say on spotlight or have someone in mind though you think i should interview next time just drop me a laugh we'll be back with more until then stay on r.t. and take a. fifteen

polar explorers face a fierce winter adrift on an ice floe as they begin a mission to collect evidence for russia's claims over the arctic sea hidden treasures. russian pole explorers found a year on floating ice trying to find tonsils s. still one of the also is melting trash is the prize and who will rule the ice in the future stay with me because it is a great show full on. the number of americans living in poverty is the highest for fifty years when live on the streets the only way out for a record amount of people. and russia's ancient center rated craft suffers in the twenty first century thought of the climate we are in the city of the leaking on board our close up.

watching our t. live from moscow a marina joshie a team of fifteen men are starting an epic expedition to prove part of the arctic's untapped wealth belongs to russia they will spend a year adrift on an ice floe carrying out dozens of experiments in the freezing temperatures of a fierce winter the members of the mission got a warm goodbye before being left to fend for themselves. i was there to see them off. there are only fifteen of them and the majority are in their twenty's russia's budding ocean knowledge is oceanographers scent and genius will spend a year on floating eyes in the arctic they'll be trying to shed light on why b. oxic is melting how to reach its gas and.