ANGELA ROBINSON: WITH RECENT EVENTS SURROUNDING IRANSCAM IT'S BECOMING EVIDENT THAT INTELLIGENCE GATHERING ORGANIZATIONS ARE BECOMING MORE POWERFUL THAN EVER.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403220038-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 9, 2012
• Sequence Number: 38
• Publication Date: February 11, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

ILL Pr-1P
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February 11, 1987 12:00 noon
Phillip Knightle.y
ILLEGIB
!IS. ANGELA ROBINSON: With recent events surrounding
Iranscam it's becoming evident that intelligence
gathering organizations are becoming more powerful than
ever. International stakes are getting higher,
tensions are nearing fevered pitch. There's never been
more money poured into spying.
Joining us now on Panorama to give an insight into this
world of international espionage we welcome Dlr. Phillip
Knightley and his book on the subject entitled The
Second Oldest Profession. Very interesting book, Mr.
Knight ley.
MR. PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY: Thank you, thank you.
IBS. ROBINSON: We welcome you to the show.
(My question is, and let's go back a little bit before
we talk about some specifics, if you can find out all
of this information, under cover, resources, names,
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places and things, that means possibly anybody that
puts a lot of time and concentration into it can do
that also?
MR. KNIGHTLEY: Yes, of course. I mean --
MS. ROBINSON: That means other countries can very
easily find out what we were doing?
MR. KNIGHTLEY: Absolutely. Absolutely. You see, one
of the interesting things about the CIA is that it's a
secret intelligence organization run within a
democratic country. Now that's almost a contradiction
in terms. In other words, it is impossible because of
the way the United States runs to keep everything
secret and all you have to do is use the Freedom of
Information Act, look for publications of Congressional
hearings, monitor certain publications and then, of
course, the CIA, it's in the phone book. You know where
it is, you can ring them up. You can ask to speak to
their press officer. You can find out who the previous
officers were who have now retired. They all live
around here, in Virginia, Washington itself. Ring them
up, go down and see them, have a chat with them. They
love to tell you their stories.
MS. ROBINSON: So what we've been thinking is such a
deep dark secret is not that much of a secret after
all?
MR. KNIGHTLEY: Not in the United States because it is
elsewhere.
MR. KNIGHTLEY: In Britain, for example, Her Majesty's
Secret Intelligence Service, the James Bond
organization, now that is so secret that it doesn't
even exist. There is not a word about it in any
British telephone directory. There's nothing about it
in the list of government organizations. If you want to
join it, you have to wait until they approach you. You
know, we'll ring you, don't you ring us. And if you do
happen to learn about and then publish something about
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it, you can go to jail for seven years even though you
may not have realized that what you were revealing was
a so-called official secret.
MS. ROBINSON: That's interesting. How much money is
dumped into this spying network organization, so to
speak.
MR. KNIGHTLEY: Oh, enormous. I mean it's a really
20th Century growth industry.
MS. ROBINSON: That we really don't know about, that,
you know, the American people have absolutely no idea
whatsoever?
MR. KNIGHTLEY: I don't think even the American
government knows how much money it spends on its secret
world, and I don't think they know how many people they
employ because you run into difficulties of definition.
Everybody knows -- well, the CIA naturally knows how
many employees its got. But a lot of work is
subcontracted and nobody knows how many sub employees.
Say, if you're a CIA officer stationed abroad you may
have a little network of agents and you pay them money.
Now in a way, they're really working for the CIA. And
if you add them all up it comes to three or four times
the actual established number that people know about.
If you want some figures on it, I mean the world
intelligence organization, the whole community,
consists of about 1.25 million people --
11S. ROBINSON: You're kidding.
MR. KNIGHTLEY: -- and they spend something like $25
billion a year.
MS. ROBINSON: You're kidding?
MR. KNIGHTLEY: No, I'm not kidding. That's the way it
goes.
"IS. ROBINSON: I believe you, yes. That's incredible.
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You know, when you talk about not really knowing the
American people, perhaps, the government takes us back
to when the Iranscam, so to speak --
MS. ROBINSON: -- broke and we are under the
impression, at least the information we've gotten, a
lot of people didn't know what was going on or somebody
knows and somebody's just not talking. A lot of people
aren't talking.
This raises another question: Who in the world is
running the show? Who is charge, and I don't mean
Secretary so-and-so.
MR. KNIGHTLEY: Right.
MS. ROBINSON: Mr. So-and-so with this title, uh uh.
Who is really running the show?
MR. KNIGHTLEY: Who is really running it? Well, I
raised the question in the book whether the CIA runs
the President or the President runs the CIA. It's not
quite as bad as that, but certainly because it's a
secret world, because there is no established reporting
procedures, it's very likely that a small group of CIA
offices, or in Britain a small group of SIS officers,
or in Russia a small group of KGB officers can actually
run their own operations doing things on behalf of
their country without the
country's leaders knowing about.
MS. ROBINSON: So it's very impossible, if I'm hearing
you correctly, Mr. Knightley, for someone like an
Oliver North, perhaps, and his --
MR. KNIGHTLEY: Yes, without -- you said don't mention
any names. But okay --
CIS. ROBINSON: Well, you know it's all over everywhere.
We've been talking about and trying our best to figure
out what's going on here with this Iranscam.
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MR. KNIGHTLEY: All I can tell you is it's quite
possible that Oliver North was running a little
operation on his own and --
MS. ROBINSON: And the President, CIA, the Secretary of
State may not have known?
MR. KNIGHTLEY: May not have known about it. May not.
MS. ROBINSON: May not.
MR. KNIGHTLEY: I don't know. I mean it may all
emerge, but it is theoretically possible.
MS. ROBINSON: And this has happened a lot? I mean - -
MR. KNIGHTLEY: It happens all the time.
MS. ROBINSON: Operations like this have been
happening over the course of the years and nothing has
leaked, so to speak, like this came out to the press?
MR. KNIGHTLEY: Let me give you an example. Don't
imagine that the United States is alone in this. Let
me give you an example of what happened in Britain not
so along ago. A group of decent intelligence officers
in British intelligence got worried that the Prime
Minister, the then serving Prime Minister of Britain,
was a bit too friendly with the Russians and he had too
many Russian contacts. They bugged his telephone.
They bugged the telephone of the Attorney General. And
they did this without the knowledge of their own boss.
So here you have an example of the power of this
organization. This is only emerging now. Nobody in
Britain knew about this, not the Prime Minister --
well, the Attorney General began to get a little
suspicious when he heard all sorts of pops on his
telephone. And if he wanted to talk to say a very high
other government official, he used to have to go out in
his car and go for a drive around the park to be
certain that he wasn't being overheard and bugged by
his intelligence agency.
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MS. ROBINSON: See, that is incredible. And see --
and that happens, that exists?
MR. KNIGHTLEY: That happens.
MS. ROBINSON: Who is the type of person that wants to
get into this spying? Describe -- I mean I think there
would be a lot of danger, a lot of risk in certain
areas, and if someone is off doing their own little
escapades and whatnot and the head of the organization
doesn't know what's going on, that's a lot of danger to
an individual.
MR. KNIGHTLEY: Sure. The danger of actual death has
now been removed because it got counter productive. I
mean we knocked off them and their agents, they knocked
off ours and it was no longer a feasible financial
thing for one thing. You know, you put a lot of money
into training an officer and the other side killed him.
And they puts lot of money into training a man, and we
have to kill him. So there's a sort of truce at the
moment between the major intelligence agencies. We
don't kill each other. But you may very well end up in
jail for a long period of time.
MS. ROBINSON: And a lot of times we don't know about
it?
SIR. KNIGHTLEY: No, a lot of times you don't know
about it and you may not be swapped. They have
exchange of spies every now and then, run by,
incidentally, the exchange is run by a lawyer in Berlin
who specializes in spy swaps. Marvelous business.
MR. KNIGHTLEY: Now, you may end up in jail for a long
time but if you do, you're warned before you go abroad
on that mission that if it goes wrong, we're going to
wash our hands of you. So you're on your own. So
there is that risk. So what sort of people want to do
it? Soldier priests. Some people are patriotic they
think they're doing what they should for their country.
Others do it for money. It's an interesting career,
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to
good career structure, government post, bureaucratic
jobs. But also I think it does tend to attract people
who are a little bit anti-social who --
MS. ROBINSON: And they want to get in and explore
that?
MR. KNIGHTLEY: Yes, and they like it. Yes. 9ecause
it's basically exploiting other human beings.
MS. ROBINSON: Right.
MR. KNIGHTLEY: Manipulating then, dragging information
from them and in the end often portraying them. And I
think it needs a very strange sort of person who wants
to do that.
MS. ROBINSON: Phillip Knightley, thank you very much
for --the book is intriguing.
MR. KNIGHTLEY: Good.
MS. ROBINSON: It really is.
MR. KNIGHTLEY: I'm glad you like it.
MS. ROBINSON: The Second Oldest Profession
spying and spies of the 20th Century. We thank you
for joining us on Panorama.
MR. KNIGHTLEY: I enjoyed it. Thank you.
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