Spies & Spying Personality Profiling: Spymasters‍

From The Psychology of Spies and Spying by Adrian Furnham and John Taylor.

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Spymasters lead and manage the work of intelligence operatives in a department (for example all those working on countering terrorism). They include the heads of services and also senior managers.

In most cases, Spymasters have worked in their service for many years and are experienced in a variety of operational roles. They can also be appointed from other parts of government or the political arena outside the intelligence community. Heads from many different sections may report to the boss or one of their deputies. They are the CEO, directors, and senior managers of an organization.

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Spies & Spymasters

Spymasters provide direction to staff, often deciding which are the priority tasks and targets for the service. They assess the risks and approve intelligence operations and, where necessary, seek the approval of senior ministers in the government. It follows that they need to have excellent relationships with senior members of the government, so the latter have confidence in the intelligence and security agencies and the information they produce. Spymasters must also secure the necessary funds from their government.

In some countries heads of agencies are close to the head of government; elsewhere Spymasters work on the same level as other senior members of the civil service. If they have military rank, they will be one-star to five-star generals.

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Spymasters in the intelligence world

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Sir Mansfield Cumming

The first chief of SIS, Sir Mansfield Cumming (1859-1923), was asked to create what would become the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service on August 12, 1909. The Service has of course changed but there is still much of his legacy that remains. In Alan Judd's biography of Cumming, he wrote toward the end:

“Apart from the hallowed gimmicks, such as the use of the chiefly green ink and the letter C, as well as his title (CSS) there are inherited organizational structures and, more importantly, attitudes. Prominent among the latter are the insistence on putting work first and the easy informality of working relationships.”

Judd goes on to quote Cumming on the subject of intelligence officers:

“He should be a gentleman, and a capable one, absolutely honest with considerable tact and at the same time force of character… experience shows that any amount of brilliance or low cunning will not make up for lack of scrupulous personal honesty. In the long run, it is only the honest man who can defeat the ruffian.” 

Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller

Eliza Manningham-Buller (Director General of MI5, 2002-2007) spoke about leadership and identified seven key attributes:

• Be Visible - Lead by example and try to demonstrate best practice. 
• Establish a Sustainable Routine - You and your team need to be able to make good decisions and exhaustion can prohibit that process. Establishing a sustainable and healthy routine can generate a higher level of competence.
• Avoid Arrogance - Don’t take yourself too seriously otherwise people won’t take you seriously. 
• Encourage Dissenting Voices - To really interrogate decisions you need to hear differing viewpoints, so critical thinking is crucial. 
• Keep Learning - Encourage a culture of learning in order to progress as an organization. 
• Ease Concerns - Reassure your team that we have to live with uncertainty and ambiguity when making decisions. 
• Admit Things Often Fail - Admit that point and you can manage expectations, mitigate consequences, and maintain morale. 

(Manningham-Buller in an address on December 4, 2020)

John Edgar Hoover, Director FBI

J. Edgar Hoover was a giant in the intelligence and security worlds in the 20th century. He was appointed Director of the FBI in 1924 and remained in office until his death in 1972 at the age of 77. He is credited with building the FBI into an effective crime-fighting agency and instituting modernizations to police technology.

Biographer Kenneth D. Ackerman summarizes Hoover's legacy thus:

“For better or worse, he built the FBI into a modern, national organization stressing professionalism and scientific crime-fighting. For most of his life, Americans considered him a hero. He made the G-man brand so popular that, at its height, it was harder to become an FBI agent than to be accepted into an Ivy League college.” 

Hoover did, however, become a controversial figure as his secretive abuses of power began to surface. He amassed a great deal of power and used the information he had to intimidate and threaten others. (Cox, Stuart et al 1988)

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‍Spies & Spymasters: Psychological profile notes

There are several key attributes of this job. The Spymaster is essentially a leader who must select and motivate a team. The team needs to trust the leader who has the analytic ability to understand important issues but also to understand team dynamics. They need to be inspirational and to model honesty and integrity.

Spymasters must take critical decisions with possibly many risks and dangers.

They need to weigh up information and have the courage of their convictions. They need to be able to relate to and convince their masters (usually very senior politicians) as well as their staff. They need socio-emotional and political skills. They need to be highly emotionally aware and able to manage both their own and others’ emotions.

Because of the wide range of people that they have to deal with, they need to have high-level social skills. They also need to be politically and strategically aware. Most are highly educated, very well-informed, and totally inscrutable.

Three essentials for a Spymaster:

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There are biographies and many comments on the internet about Spymasters. Among the most prominent are Mansfield Cumming (the original ‘C’ head of SIS), Dame Stella Rimington, J. Edgar Hoover, George Tenet, Yuri Andropov, Vladimir Putin, and Sir Maurice Oldfield.

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Spies & Spymasters in fiction

In fiction, James Bond’s boss ‘M’, brilliantly portrayed by Judi Dench, showed admirable toughness as a Spymaster, but was equally concerned when she thought Bond might be dead. George Smiley became ‘Control’ in John le Carré's later novels. He had some strategic vision but was always constrained by the counterintelligence problems he had to solve.

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Admiral James Greer was Jack Ryan’s boss in Tom Clancy’s early novels. We met him first in The Hunt for Red October (1984) where he guided and reassured Ryan through the political sensitivities of dealing with the White House and moving from an analyst to a handler.

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‍Excerpt courtesy of The Psychology of Spies and Spying by Adrian Furnham and John Taylor.

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