The BBC World Service Documentary, "MI6 - A Century in the Shadows," is a three part series produced by Mark Savage, in which the history of the British secret intelligence organization, MI6, is explored in explicit detail.
The first piece in the series "Gadgets and Green Ink," is 22:28 minutes long, and serves as an introductory piece to the series. It acquaints audiences with the organization and its early days during the first half of the twentieth century as it looks at British secret intelligence operations during the two World Wars. The controversial and intriguing nature of the topic alone are enough to create, but the way the piece is structured and narrated make it even more interesting to listen to.
The documentary starts very strongly with nat sounds of a coding machine and what sounds like recordings of old radio transmissions. Two sound bites immediately capture the listener's attention, a man and a woman talking about their involvement with death and the questionable "things [they] had to do" in the name of duty. A narrator then introduces the title of the documentary.
The reporter and presenter, Gordon Corera, begins by talking about the most recent MI6 news to create a link between past and present. He touches on the modern paradox that exists between the secrecy of intelligence organizations and the democratic state's duty to be transparent with its citizens. In doing so, he makes a historical digest of the organization's operations relevant to a 21st century audience, and also poses a question that gives purpose to his work, namely whether or not the presence of intelligence organizations is justifiable.
Corera attempts to find out what kind of operations MI6 handled during the first and second World Wars, and also whether or not the the organization's endeavors had any impact on the outcome of either.
He does so by outlining what the job of a secret intelligence agent entails, before delving into details about the actual actions of the organization during the wars. All the while he stresses the moral and ethical dilemma of using secret intelligence. For example, he has his interviewees, all of whom are ex-MI6 officials, speak of recruiting foreign agents who betray their own countries by spying for Britain.
Nat sounds are somewhat scarce, but well employed. One example would be using sections of the Messages Personelles, coded messages that aired on the BBC, a method of communication between the organization and its human resources.
The reporter's tone of voice throughout the piece is objective and detached from the sensitive topic he is presenting on. Corera uses interview segments that include both questions and answers instead of using only sound bites, which adds substance to the piece. However, during the first interview segment (at around 2:20-30) he interrupts his interviewee several times, in a tone that is eager bordering on shocked. Yet, a passive and interested listener would probably forego this, given the fact that the subject at hand has to do with the dubious, and unexposed affairs of secret intelligence services.
The recordings' sound quality is excellent and the piece was very easy on the ears. Still, it is almost half an hour long, and it is only one of three parts of the complete project, so it's easy to get distracted while listening, especially towards the middle. Additional nat sounds could possibly help by adding more of a dramatic effect to keep the audiences more engaged.
That being said, it is possible to download the documentary as a podcast that could be transferred to a cell phone or iPod and listened to whenever and wherever. The fact that the piece is organized chronologically also makes it easy to switch it on and off at intervals as each era has its own story that could stand alone without the details of the period that came before it.
The entire piece was well written. The narration was objective and did not fall prey to the sensationalism that generally surrounds intelligence, despite the fact that it included interviews with former spies and had very tense tunes playing in the background at certain times.
I particularly liked Corera's ending though as it featured one such interviewee who talks about foreign spies being captured, tortured, and killed by the Nazis before their ultimate defeat, and the beginning of the Cold War, which was even more dependent on intelligence operations.
As was mentioned earlier, the fact that secret intelligence operates on a slippery slope is never downplayed, and by simply saying "as one war ended, another war was just beginning, a cold war, a war fought largely in the shadows, and one in which intelligence was to be the front line," the reporter leaves the audiences wondering (especially after the emotional sound bite used before it) what kind of practices MI6 got involved in during the Cold War, and so successfully compels listeners to tune in the week after for the rest of the story.
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