A former intelligence officer explores the espionage world of John le Carré's fictional works.
The reality of espionage isn't easily disentangled from its mythology - and somewhere at the uneasy confluence of these dimensions is the fiction of John le Carré. A former British intelligence officer, le Carré has captured the shadows and textures of the covert world with a sure eye for its nuances and a deep appreciation of the human factor. And while intelligence work may be far removed from the experiences of most of us, its grand themes - loyalty and betrayal - touch everyone.
In Le Carré's Landscape Tod Hoffman, a former intelligence officer, offers a unique perspective on le Carré's work. He juxtaposes his own experiences and extensive research with le Carré's fiction, shedding light on those dank recesses where spying is done. Taking the reader through the countries and continents of le Carré's fiction, Hoffman reflects on the political causes and personal effect of spying - secrecy, manipulation, deceit, treason.
Le Carré's Landscape is a unique look at the master of the spy genre - a man who has captured the imaginations of millions of readers and perhaps enticed more than a few into the real world of espionage.
Details
304 Pages
ISBN 9780773522626
September 2001
Formats: Cloth, eBook
"This is an engaging book. Hoffman's eight years with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service gives the reader authentic insights into the shadowy world of spies." Allan English, author of The Changing Face of War
"I came away from this book not only entertained, but educated on various aspects of not only the literary history of John le Carré, but the day-to-day realities of true life espionage work." Carolyn Smart, Department of English, Queen's University
Tod Hoffman, a former intelligence officer with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, is the author of Homicide: Life on the Screen. He lives in Montreal, Quebec.
Le Carré's Landscape
Tod Hoffman
Table of Contents and Preface
Preface
1 In le Carr??s Landscape
2 Introducing George Smiley
3 Out in the Cold
4 Karla
5 A Different Landscape
6 Changing Times
7 Other Wars
Conclusion
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Preface
?It?s an odd game, turning a man?s life inside out without meeting him.?
Yet that?s precisely what an intelligence officer (io) does: gathers odd bits of disparate detail, hearsay, and opinion, filling them into an indistinct outline he or she builds around a target ? an object, the subject of a file, not even a person ? until a human impression has been created, like a pointillist painting, where the dots give the illusion of connecting but don?t quite. In large measure, it?s what a writer does as well, taking characters, real or imagined (and often the supposedly real ones are only who the writer imagines them to be), and rendering them in such a way as to convey an impression of who they are. In either case, the measure of proficiency is how close the likeness stands to reality. Maybe this similarity of task is what inspires so many spies to become writers and writers to act like spies.
What is it about writers and spies? Like the spy, John le Carr? has said, the writer will ?prey on the community to which he's attached, to take away information ? often in secret ? and to translate that into intelligence for his masters, whether it?s his readership or his spy masters. And I think that both professions are perhaps rather lonely.? He goes on to explain how ?you must abstain from relationships and yet at the same time engage in them. There you have, I think, the real metaphysical relationship between the writer and the spy.?
It?s the sense of separateness they share: of observing events without fully participating, of eavesdropping on conversations without contributing. Also, there?s the ability to create and bring characters to life, to constantly assume new voices. For writers, those characters act out only on the page; for the spy, they are roles to play. Take me for instance: under ordinary circumstances, I might be reticent to make a cold approach on someone, to just walk up to a stranger and engage that person in conversation. But in the guise of intelligence officer, I never hesitated. All I had to do was slip into the persona. I wasn?t myself soliciting cooperation or fearful of rejection for who I was, but a character performing for the intelligence service. That character was whatever I thought an io ought to be: confident, friendly, overtly forthright, but with something obviously held in reserve. It sold to some ? those who agreed to be interviewed and, eventually, to collaborate with my Service ? not to others.
Of himself, le Carr? has said, ?I knew I was a writer first and everything else after that.? In his most autobiographical work, A Perfect Spy, he has a cia agent say, in reference to his alter ego Magnus Pym, ?I think if Magnus?s writing ever worked for him, he?d have been okay. There?s just too much inside him. He has to put it somewhere.? All the withholding causes a pent-up desire to confess. And the most comfortable confessor is the blank page addressed in solitude. You can rehearse until you get it just right in your own mind, figuring out how best to explain things you might only half understand yourself. I think, for spies as well as for writers, eloquence comes more easily in print than in conversation. So we become inveterate and introverted scribblers and note-takers. An experience seems more real ? or at least easier to control ? when you see it laid out. If you can write down the what and how, maybe you?ll come to understand the why and the who.
Le Carr? wrote, ?For the novelist, as for the counter-intelligence officer, motive concerns the possibilities of character.? Most of my service was spent in counter-intelligence, so I must be forgiven if I still think like a ci man, if I can?t shake the impulse to suspicion or to seek refuge in secrecy. In fact, as of this moment, I was longer in ci than I?ve been back in the overt world. And that?s another point: there?s something disconcerting in surfacing from the protective, if stifling, fold of the covert world. The lies and subterfuges I hid behind were oddly reassuring. It was a relief never to have to be myself; exhausting to be someone else. In the end, not even I could easily tell who I was. Unless I confront my own motivations, the possibilities of my character, it is impossible to discuss those of others, even when the others at issue are the creation of a novelist.
I never intended to write a biography of David Cornwell, the former British intelligence officer who created John le Carr? and lives the private life that parallels the literary one. This book is about how le Carr? views and represents the profession that Cornwell once practised and how, in turn, that view has coloured perceptions of who spies are and what they do. Otherwise put, it is an operational critique ? as distinct from a literary critique ? of his fiction, and as such, it draws heavily upon my own career in intelligence with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (csis).
My original plan was to conduct extensive interviews with le Carr?. However, he declined to meet with me, stating that he is uninterested in the critical process. He added a further reason which no writer can fail to respect: ?In order to function as a writer, I need my seclusion.? So, following a brief exchange of faxes when I first embarked on this project, I have had no personal contact with him. I should add that I certainly bear him no ill will for his rejection. As a matter of fact, it appealed to the solitary in me.
However, his decision forced me to refocus, perhaps for the better (or so I hope, at any rate). I was put in the position of having to turn le Carr??s life ? though not Cornwell?s ? inside out without ever meeting him, only ever getting to know him from a distance. I wouldn?t have occasion to test out my thoughts on the subject. Everything would have to be gleaned from how I read his work, what I could cull from interviews he?d granted to others, and what I?ve learned from my time among the spies pursuing the Cold War mission and fighting the post?Cold War malaise.
So it would be a more introspective book: my own journey through le Carr??s landscape, or how he came to map such a big portion of my life, from my aspiration for a career in intelligence to how I perceived my role once I got there. This is the subject of the first chapter. Since leaving csis, I haven?t entirely escaped. I?m still preoccupied with the essential mysteries of espionage: its seductive allure and heedless manipulation, the power of loyalty and those forces that encourage betrayal, the willingness to deceive ourselves and others. I?ve ended up turning myself inside out, discovering things I would otherwise have left unexplored. And as odd as it is examining a stranger?s life, it was frequently more unsettling to delve into my own.
For eight years (1988?95) I was an io, what espionage aficionados sometimes mistake for a spy. The distinction is crucial yet often overlooked, and it needs to be made. An io is a salaried, full-fledged employee of an intelligence service, a pension-awaiting civil servant. It is the person we called a ?source? (an agent in le Carr??s parlance, an asset in the lexicon of the cia), on the other hand ? whether active in a target organization or close to a member of such an organization, or someone who shows him or herself (for any variety of reasons) to be a good prospect for infiltration ? who spies. The distinction between io and source is not merely academic; it is essential to any consideration of who becomes involved with intelligence services. For that is the most interesting question surrounding espionage: who participates in this strange trade? Are they motivated by the great expansiveness of their character or do they only indulge its puny limitations?
My becoming an io was very much a result of being exposed to spies in pop culture. That experience created certain expectations which, no matter how much reality I saw, were and remain tough to shake. Where did reality fall off the cliff and plummet into the romantic image I?d wanted for myself? How much of my angst was genuine and how much artificial, just because it seemed like the thing to affect? As I compulsively looked over my shoulder, was I expecting to see anything? Could I have spotted it if it had been there? And what would I have done?
Ironically, whatever answers I arrive at will still leave you wondering at my conclusions concerning reality. Maybe they aren?t reality. Six years after leaving intelligence, I can say that what follows is how I see the covert world, what drew me to it, and what pushed me out. The hardest thing about writing this book was to breach the line where ambivalence meets honesty. I?m not certain I?ve succeeded in doing so. I still want to believe all the myths I know in my heart are untrue. But right now this is as close to truth as I can come.
John le Carr? was my companion before, during, and since my spy days. In the chapters that follow the first, I?ve used my experiences, as well as events of the postwar era, to get to know him as best I could. My secret landscape overlaps his, and in my mind, the two become inseparable. This, then, is as much the story of how I was drawn into intelligence as it is about what I found once I got there. I don?t know if David Cornwell will ever read this book. If he does, I hope he recognizes some of the landmarks.
A word of warning is in order. Don?t look to this book for revelations of secret information, for there are none. No sources or members of csis, past or present, are mentioned by their real names. All the specific incidents I describe have their basis in fact, but they are sufficiently disguised that none of the participants or circumstances could ever be identified. Methods of intelligence collection are discussed in terms already known to the public from other sources. Indeed, except for highly specific details, most intelligence methodology is familiar to fans of spy literature.
Because this is strictly a work neither of autobiography nor of history, I didn?t feel constrained by absolute fidelity to events. However, neither is it fiction. Where details have been altered to protect sources or methods, the impression I mean to convey has been kept intact, and that?s the real purpose of this book. It?s not a text on intelligence but a discussion of ideas. Throughout, I have remained faithful to the spirit of each incident and have accurately reflected how I was affected and the effect I perceived in others who were involved. So while, for example, I have changed the nationality or occupation of an individual source, I have not changed that person?s motives or my interpretations of his or her character. By allowing myself the freedom to conceal the superficial, I gave myself the freedom to be more honest on a more provocative level.
Another disclaimer, this one concerning my research method: there are seven or eight book-length critiques of le Carr??s writing. I purposely avoided them because I didn?t think it necessary to support my own interpretations with other?s; nor did I want to put myself in the position of responding to others? analyses. The exception was David Monaghan?s encyclopedic Smiley?s Circus: A Guide to the Secret World of John le Carr?, which is a valuable reference. I also used few reviews of le Carr??s books, referring to them only when they raised particularly original points.
Some of the ideas I explore at length in this book were first addressed, at least in preliminary fashion, in articles I published in Queen?s Quarterly. I am thankful for having been given the opportunity to confront them in its pages. I also gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts.