Rory Cormac - How to Stage a Coup: And Ten Other Lessons From the World of Secret Statecraft

Also by Rory Cormac

Disrupt and Deny: Spies, Special Forces and the

Secret Pursuit of British Foreign Policy

Confronting the Colonies: British Intelligence

and Counterinsurgency

Also by Rory Cormac & Richard J. Aldrich

The Secret Royals: Spying and the Crown,

from Victoria to Diana

The Black Door: Spies, Secret Intelligence and

British Prime Ministers

Spying on the World: The Declassified Documents

of the Joint Intelligence Committee, 19362013

(with Michael S. Goodman)

First published in hardback in Great Britain in 2022 by Atlantic Books,

an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright Rory Cormac, 2022

The moral right of Rory Cormac to be identified as the author of this

work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright,

Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any

means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,

without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the

above publisher of this book.

Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright-holders.

The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify

any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the

British Library.

Hardback ISBN: 978-1-83895-561-8

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-83895-562-5

E-book ISBN: 978-1-83895-563-2

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A merica is back, President Biden confidently declared in February 2021. Bruised, bloodied and more than a bit broken after four years of disinformation and democratic decay, America, Biden insisted, had returned to the world stage. And had no time to waste.

Democracies across the world are under siege. Hostile forces use propaganda and subversion to sow division, and to promote their own brands of illiberal authoritarianism. The distribution of power across the world is changing. After decades tied down fighting terrorists, the US is no longer the dominant power it once was. China is assertive and on the rise; Russia is intent on maintaining not only dominance over its backyard but also its self-perceived great power status. It wilfully wields disruption and wreaks havoc to do so. The Biden presidency wasted little time promising to compete in this gray zone.1

I made it clear to President Putin, Biden insisted during an early speech at the State Department, in a manner very different from my predecessor, that the days of the United States rolling over in the face of Russias aggressive actions interfering with our elections, cyberattacks, poisoning its citizens are over.2

Just weeks later, the American intelligence community warned of Chinas push for global power, and of yet more provocative actions by the usual suspects of Russia, Iran and North Korea. Russia, US intelligence predicted, would continue dividing western countries for the foreseeable future. It had already meddled in successive American presidential elections, developed dangerous cyber capabilities able to sabotage targets and conducted assassinations overseas. Meanwhile, US intelligence accused Iran of sabotaging Israeli water facilities during a hot summer in 2020, and, in the same year, of trying to undermine confidence in American democracy.3 China did not attempt to interfere in the election but did spend much of 2020 pumping out propaganda designed to undercut the wests response to the coronavirus pandemic.

That same spring, across the Atlantic, Prime Minister Boris Johnson made a similar declaration. We are living in a more competitive age, he wrote, and we must change our approach to adapt to the uncertain new world emerging around us. The UK, Johnson promised, would defend against disinformation, cyberattacks, electoral interference and attempted assassinations on the streets of Britain.4 It would do so, in part, using the hidden hand of secret statecraft: intelligence agencies and discreet forces capable of special operations. The UK would thrive in the grey zone.

Afterwards, the head of MI5 issued a sombre warning: ordinary members of the British public were not immune from the tentacles of foreign states. This is not some game played out by spies in the shadows, he insisted; subversion, sabotage and subterfuge affect all of us.5

Much mythologized and heavily romanticized, covert action is one of the most misunderstood aspects of the grey zone within international politics. Few fictional figures have created more confusion than James Bond. Britains real life 007s have licence to kill renewed after 60 year gap, declared the Daily Mirror, confidently but entirely wrongly, in summer 2020.6 It was certainly not alone in illustrating any story about subversion and sabotage, indeed any aspect of secret intelligence, with reference to the irrepressible James Bond. The following spring, the head of GCHQ, Britains signals intelligence agency, publicly committed to recruiting more women. It was, he said, mission critical to increase diversity in the service. The Mail Online covered this story with a photograph of Bond caressing the naked back of Strawberry Fields, a glamorous fellow intelligence officer featured in Quantum of Solace, the 2008 outing of the franchise.7 Wrong service; fictional officers; and hardly reflecting the diversity requirements highlighted by the GCHQ chief.

The UK is not alone here. In an example of British cultural influence, 007 features prominently in American headlines too. The image is clear: suave men, dashing around the world despatching baddies, driving expensive cars and sleeping with beautiful women. More cocktail party than covert action. Legislative oversight be damned.

In May 2021, the CIA launched a diversity drive of its own. Its campaign featured a cisgender millennial Latina officer with generalized anxiety disorder. Republican senator Ted Cruz was quick to criticize on Twitter: If youre a Chinese communist, or an Iranian Mullah, or Kim Jong Un would this scare you? Weve come a long way from Jason Bourne. Played by the actor Matt Damon in the eponymous films, Bourne is of course another fictional character not entirely dissimilar to Bond.

This book navigates the fact and fiction to cut through the romance of the secret world. It makes three arguments designed to demystify, elucidate and provoke. First, poisonings, disinformation and electoral meddling are all pieces of the same puzzle of covert competition as states try to gain the upper hand on each other without resorting to war. These tactics are not new and can only be understood alongside recent history. The timbre may now be brasher, the tempo faster, the volume louder, but the notes remain the same. Covert action is not new. The internet era has not revolutionized the very nature of subversion and sabotage; neither has it created an entirely new type of covert action.

Second, it is harder than ever before to control global events; covert action is therefore more about disruption. Hidden hands divide, discredit and chip away at authority. Whether secret war or cyberattacks, it often comes back to the same thing: exploiting weaknesses and crippling the adversary. It is the slow drip of steady subversion, of persistent disruption. This can be subtle, to the point of being untraceable; or it can be deliberately ambiguous.