A Spy's Guide to Spy Thrillers: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
(Note: This is first in a series on how a spy reads spy thrillers. To get the next one by email, sign up at the bottom of this page.)
In 1963, a serving British intelligence officer published a spy novel. He used a fake name: John le Carré.
In a foreword published fifty years later, he says everything he wrote was made up. But no one would believe him. Because everyone expects spies to lie about their operations.
But he wasn't lying. It really was all made up. And he was tired of telling everyone that. He was tired of not being believed.
Or maybe that foreword was one more way of keeping the secret.
The novel was The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
Made up or not, one thing about it is real: the part about Source Analysis.
Alec Leamas runs British agents in East Germany. He loses them one at a time. The last one is shot crossing into West Berlin, a few yards from safety.
Leamas goes back to London a failure. But his boss offers him one more operation. A way to take down the man who killed his agents: Hans-Dieter Mundt, the head of East German counterintelligence.
The first step: Leamas falls apart in public.
He loses his job. He drinks. He throws a punch at a grocer and goes to jail. The East Germans notice. They see a bitter man with secrets and no pension.
They approach him. He's passed up the chain to a man named Fiedler.
Fiedler is the second-in-command in East German counterintelligence.
Fiedler thinks his boss Mundt is working for the British.
And he thinks Leamas is carrying the evidence that proves it.
Fiedler debriefs Leamas. Fiedler asks where each piece of data came from. He asks how close Leamas was to what he describes.
Leamas never claims Mundt is an agent. He only describes payments he handled: numbered accounts, cities, dates.
Fiedler checks the accounts. The money was withdrawn on dates when Mundt was in those cities. The evidence points to Mundt.
Because British intelligence arranged for it to point there.
Then Fiedler tests the man instead of the story. He watches how Leamas behaves.
Leamas resists the big conclusion. He argues against it. A fake defector would push the story. Leamas pulls away from it.
Which is exactly how a real source acts.
Fiedler runs most of the questions of Source Analysis: Where did the data come from? How close was the source? What does the source want?
For Fiedler, everything checks out. The motivation checks out: bitter, broke, drinking. The behavior checks out: a man reluctant to conclude what his own facts suggest.
The questions Fiedler asks come back answered.
Because every answer was built for those questions.
But there was one question of Source Analysis that Fiedler didn't ask.
Fiedler brings his case against Mundt to a secret tribunal. He lays out the accounts, the cities, the dates. His case is strong.
Then Mundt's lawyer produces a girl. A young librarian Leamas fell for during his staged collapse.
She testifies to small things she doesn't understand. George Smiley visited her after Leamas disappeared. He paid the rent on Leamas's flat. Leamas had promised that she'd be looked after. And he'd said goodbye to her before the incident that sent him to prison.
The tribunal says: The defection was staged. Leamas was a plant.
The case against Mundt collapses.
Fiedler is arrested instead.
The novel saves the truth for the end: Mundt was a British agent.
Fiedler was right. His analysis was right.
Except for one thing.
He didn't ask the key question of Source Analysis:
Who benefits if I believe the source, and act on it?
The operation was never about framing Mundt. It was about destroying Fiedler. Because Fiedler was the one man who suspected the truth.
London built a true story. Handed it to a source who could be exposed. And let the exposure bury the truth.
Leamas passed every test Fiedler ran. Because Leamas believed his own mission. He thought he was there to plant evidence that would destroy Mundt.
Fiedler analyzed his source.
But he never analyzed who would benefit if he believed the source. And acted on it.
Maybe you've seen a softer version of this. Information arrives that proves what you already hoped about a rival. A colleague brings you exactly the story you wanted to hear about someone you distrust.
You ask the same questions Fiedler asked: Where did the data come from? How close was the source? What does the source want?
But there's one more question to ask.
A question that determines the significance of all the others:
Who benefits if you believe it, and act on it?
The weapon in this novel is not a gun or a gadget. The weapon is analysis. And the fight is over whether it should be believed.
Le Carré spent years inside British intelligence before he wrote it.
The questions of Source Analysis and how the questions are answered are the key.
That part is real.
(If you want the Spy's Guide frameworks applied to what's happening in the world right now, that's The Spy's Guide Briefing. Twice a week.)
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is here.
Source Analysis is in A Spy's Guide to Thinking.
Next in the series: The Day of the Jackal.
-John Braddock
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