US National Security Spokesman John Kirby’s statement to the BBC about the latest leak of classified US Pentagon documents that “we don’t know who is responsible, we don’t know why” and the subsequent revelation that it was 21-year-old Jack. Teixeira, who will face trial for violating the Espionage Act over relevant social media posts, has apparently been a hit. Not only for American intelligence, but for the entire industry, given the manner, means, characteristics of “spies” and the aura of a certain ridiculousness they exude. It is quite expected, because, according to the British Times article, more than a million (!) Americans have access to classified information. Such formal admissions by American officials further undermined the concept and notion of the need for an “institution” that has accompanied mankind since Biblical times, starred in ancient settings and medieval royal courts, to achieve the creative superior value that writers offer to espionage. who often were or were spies feeding us literary works that flourished during and after World War I until the present day. However, there was a sense of disgust in the statement of one of the officials when, without prior or subsequent public discussion, he said that “we certainly take better care of the people on the ground.” This recognition of the special value of the human being, admittedly, has come as some consolation to the spy readers who number in our millions and remain loyal despite the #ForgetJamesBond hashtag coined for Twitter by the current head of the British secret service, Richard Moore. his efforts to promote the harmonization of the service with modern, politically correct attitudes. Even if we prefer Le Carré’s semi-realistic espionage with Smiley to Fleming’s completely fictional James Bond. In addition, the spy timeline is full of references to specific spies who worked for Moore’s country, from whatever country they were, and does not mention with – even hypocritical – admiration the names of spy satellites and other technological methods of intelligence. espionage. . Because, at least since World War II’s mysterious device, technology has always played a role, but it was human interpretation that gave importance and value to the few who were trained to be the elite. Just as it is impossible to train a million employees who are not in contact with the “human situation”, but with the mass of information that hits their screens from the global cloud, often coming from private contractors of this kind and with a degree of secrecy that along the way has lost its reason, value and purpose, which is now often the result of a Tuesday classified document that we all read on the front page of a newspaper on Thursday. Moreover, as Boston University professor and CIA veteran Arthur Hallnick noted before his death in 2018, “Americans are particularly inclined to equate intelligence technology with intelligence effectiveness.”

The traditional espionage that has given us the masterpieces of Mama Somerset, the meter of moral ambiguity by Graham Greene, Buchan and Joseph Conrad, along with descriptions of internal existential conflicts and situations like Balzac’s The Human Comedy, has a different mindset. , in light of which another information security expert, Dan Lomas, addressed the intelligence services and those involved with the hashtag “more openly to stay secret”, does not seem to affect the growing climate of disclosure of classified documents.

“No matter how powerful the technical means, nothing can replace a spy in the field.”

Because, along with the power, scale, and speed of technological intelligence gathering, the role of big data, and the availability of open source materials, many of the…many contributors to classified information, without a “face” and, above all, without personal relationships with responsible operations officers, they do not “feel” like spies and at best have a free flow of information and – for better or worse – are independent of the state of security.

We loyal readers will continue to favor human heroes in spy stories. But, as Jill Bennett, historian of the British Secret Service, and “most intelligence professionals would agree, no matter how powerful the technical means, nothing can replace a spy in the field. HUMINT, the human source in intelligence gathering – the human intelligence, the spy, remains the “currency of the realm” for intelligence agencies. For novels too.