A tale of two spy chiefs, and their views on past, present and future

If the four people in the picture above was a pop group, they might be called The Podspooks, or the Polispooks ... on either flank me and my podcast co-host Rory Stewart, in the middle former MI5 director general Eliza Manningham-Buller alongside John Sawers, who was for several years "C," the head of MI6.

Back in the days when I was a journalist, we weren't even allowed to name spy chiefs, or get any comment whatsoever on what they did or didn't do, let alone sit down with them in studios and get them talking as frankly as these two do on the latest episode of The Rest Is Politics LEADING, which is out in the morning.

What we are trying to do with LEADING is interview clever people who have something interesting to say. Most guests so far have been from the world of politics, though last week we had sculptor Antony Gormley, and this week Eliza and John. There are lots of ways to judge whether an interview is any good, but one that I apply is by watching the production team who sit in on all of them. Fair to say they were mesmerised by this one. I really do recommend it.

It's not just that they talk very openly and frankly about some of the situations they have had to deal with in the past - a bomb inside a photocopier landing into a UK airport; an agent in Yemen who infiltrated a terrorist organisation and ended up being singled out to take part in a suicide bombing; some of the moral issues they have to weigh up, and how mistakes get made, with Eliza Manningham-Buller very critical of the whole Stakeknife operation which was in the headlines recently. "Disgraceful."

It is more that they give terrific insight into some of the big challenges facing the world today, and do not shirk from giving some strong opinions.

It won't make comfortable listening for Sir Richard Dearlove, who was head of MI6 at the time of the Iraq war and who they clearly felt got too close to the politicians, just as they thought we in Number 10 got too close to him. The job of the head of MI6, says Sir John, is not to "rush to the side of the Prime Minister" with intelligence updates. His ex-MI5 counterpart goes further, saying that whilst politicians rightly have oversight of the security services, they should not be shown individual pieces of intelligence at all, other than with proper context and assessment through the process run by the Joint Intelligence Committee.

It wasn't always comfortable listening for me either, given John Sawers is clear in his view that it was a mistake to publish a dossier based on intelligence, whilst Eliza gently reminds me that "my organisation" resisted putting any intelligence into the WMD dossier Tony Blair presented to Parliament in September 2002, and is equally clear that in her opinion the whole Iraq war was a mistake.

"Disgraceful" - that word again - was how she saw the way the neoconservatives around former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sought to link Iraq to those events. And they are both very clear that "over-reaction" post 9-11, and especially the intervention in Iraq, radicalised enemies and increased the terrorism threat we subsequently faced. "We gave Bin Laden his jihad in Iraq," said Sawers. He added that he feared Israel was making a similar mistake in Gaza right now. He points out that 60percent of Hamas fighters are reckoned to be orphans, adding "there are gong to be a lot more orphans." Eliza added that any government would need to react to what Hamas did on October 7, but that "it is not in Israel's interest" to continue in the way they are, given the humanitarian crisis now unfolding.

She is pretty outspoken too when it comes to the discrimination and sexism inside MI5 in her early years there, and keen that "sustainability and diversity" should be added to a reformed set of Nolan principles on standards in public life.

As for Donald Trump, she describes the prospect of him returning to the White House as "a threat to democracy, a threat to NATO, a threat to the war in Ukraine." Somewhat more diplomatically, John Sawers suggests it would be "a huge, huge challenge," and that the countries with most to fear from Trump 2.0 are America's closest allies.

Both say that there is nothing new in Russia seeking to influence the politics and elections of other countries, but that what happened in the US in 2016 was a "step up" in their operations, and technology makes the risks greater. We should have no doubt, they say, that Russia and others will be taking what they call "active measures" to influence our election too.

On a more historical note, they were also in agreement that the moment when the world came closest to nuclear war was not the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, but 1983, when the Soviets genuinely believed the USA was about to attack them. UK agents inside the KGB were critical to calming the situation but making sure the US, the UK and others understood how serious the risk was, which led to President Reagan calling off planned military exercises which had been alarming the Kremlin.

Sawers is confident that we are currently "on a glide path" to a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza war; says the biggest risk to the UK is a resurgent Russia, which is why Putin cannot be allowed to win in Ukraine; he believes that the China threat is being contained by good Biden diplomacy; Manningham-Buller says the climate crisis dwarfs all the other challenges we face, carrying with it the risk of wars over water, over food, and leading to migration on levels never before seen.

All this and more in the morning, wherever you get your podcasts. I hope you enjoy listening as much as we enjoyed talking to them.

P.s John Sawers says James Bond is "great fun but not realistic;" Eliza is not a fan of Spooks or Slow Horses; and John says the best piece of fiction about the spy world is this one by former CIA agent David McLoskey.