Andrea N. Goldstein
Qyburn shows tender care to a street child who is healing from a minor injury and then asks about the boy’s family. The move is motivated not by genuine concern at all—Qyburn may not have an empathetic bone in his body—but rather by a desire to build rapport with a child spy who had previously worked for Varys during his time as Master of Whisperers (a fantastic name that the United States and its allied forces should strongly consider adopting for the J-2, the director of intelligence, and for the J-2X, the director of counterintelligence and human intelligence). The child says in response to Qyburn’s questions, “He called us his little birds. He gave us sweets.”1
The street children who comprised Varys’s spy network had very simple motivation that Varys and later Qyburn exploited: to be seen, to be cared for, and to earn an incentive that could not be earned otherwise—in this case, candy. Qyburn presents the “little birds” with sweets, which they eagerly consume, and asks that if their friends are in need of help or sweets, they come to him: “All I ask in exchange are whispers.” He then introduces the gargantuan undead Ser Gregor and says, “His friends are my friends,” a visual warning to the children not to betray him.2
Whom do you trust with your secrets? Who is invisible to you? While using street children would not be considered ethical or legal for the United States’ human intelligence collection efforts, the example is a good one in reminding us of how people may be motivated to become intelligence sources or agents. Furthermore, it’s a reminder to ourselves that a good counterintelligence plan is to know that the enemy is always listening and that it may be in the form of people whom we least expect.
Doctrinally defined, human intelligence “is a category of intelligence derived from information collected and provided by human sources,” while counterintelligence has a more narrow focus and targets those entities that are targeting friendly forces and information.3 Readers and viewers of the Game of Thrones series are presented with a number of forms of human intelligence and counterintelligence methods, including running source operations, interrogations, and liaison operations.4 Many of the methods employed throughout the Seven Kingdoms are morally and ethically dubious and might not even be considered legal in a U.S. context—for example, Septa Unella depriving Cersei of water while demanding that she “confess” and Cersei “wineboarding” Unella clearly violate the Geneva Conventions. However, they do provide an interesting insight into considerations of human behavior, motivations, and interaction.
We are not totally aware of who comprises Varys’s and Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish’s source networks or how they are recruited. However, it is clear from Varys’s “little birds”—who both include street children as well as many adults and live beyond King’s Landing—and from Littlefinger’s prostitutes that these networks are marginalized people whose agency is invisible to the people they are informing on.
The social constructions of gender affect how an individual interacts with the world and how the world interacts with that person. According to NATO’s directive on implementation of a gender perspective into military operations, gender “refers to the social attributes associated with being male and female learned through socialization and determines a person’s position and value in a given context.”5 It affects who has power and how they wield it and who is rendered invisible. An effective counterintelligence and human intelligence strategy is conscious of those dynamics and will take them into account in enhancing situational awareness, operational effectiveness, and achieving mission success—whether the end state is defeating the Night King and White Walkers or sitting on the Iron Throne as ruler of the Seven Kingdoms.
If human intelligence is about exploiting social relations in order to gather intelligence from human sources and “gender pertains to the construction of relationships between male and female, and the attendant power dynamics found within these relationships,”6 then it follows that any good human intelligence and counterintelligence strategy will deliberately consider the gender of the source handler and source, interrogator and detainee, as well as the additional effects of the intersections of other identities, such as class, culture, race, and religion.
The Faceless Men of Braavos apply these considerations when selecting the face they will wear before carrying out their assassinations. Wearing the disguise of someone else’s face gives one the ability to become someone who might be considered invisible or unthreatening in any given context. Like many human intelligence professionals who present a character that will best endear themselves to a potential source, the Faceless Men become “no one,” a blank canvas who can appear sincere and convincing in becoming anyone he or she needs to be to accomplish the mission. In her assassination campaign, Arya chooses faces that will give her placement and access to her targets, from a serving woman to Walder Frey.
While human intelligence operations pertain to collecting information about an enemy, counterintelligence operations set out to deny the enemy the ability to do so. Specifically, counterintelligence comprises “information gathered and activities conducted to protect against espionage, other intelligence activities, sabotage, or assassinations conducted by or on behalf of foreign governments or elements thereof, foreign organizations, or foreign persons, or international terrorist activities.”7
While they lack a number of technical capabilities present in modern warfare, counterintelligence operations are rife in Westeros. For example, Varys recruits the prostitute Ros to spy on Littlefinger. This is an excellent example of a double agent operation; part of Ros’s duties of working in Littlefinger’s brothel was to gather information on her clients. After witnessing the death of one of Robert Baratheon’s illegitimate children in the brothel, Ros confides in Littlefinger. Rather than trying to retain her trust, he tells hers a story that contains a thinly veiled threat, implying both complicity and lack of care. Ros becomes convinced that Littlefinger is not interested in her safety and feels that working with Varys is more in her interest. This is a valuable lesson on managing source loyalty and how sources can turn against you after you betray their trust. And it’s also a reminder of why certain establishments are off-limits to military personnel.
And finally, what of the interrogations in Game of Thrones? Most of them appear to be sadistic torture sessions, in which the detainee will say anything to abate the pain. Interrogation is defined as “the process of questioning a source to obtain the maximum amount of usable information. The goal of any interrogation is to obtain reliable information in a lawful manner, in a minimum amount of time.”8 In Westeros and beyond in the Game of Thrones universe, there hardly appears to be any kind of legal framework surrounding interrogation, and interrogation appears to serve little point other than to prove who has power over another. Even Cersei observes this when she has turned the tables on Septa Unella, after enduring humiliation and torture at her hands. As she pours wine on Unella’s face, Cersei accuses the septa of being unconcerned with her atonement and says, “Confess! You did it because you liked it!”9
This is not to say that examples of more nuanced interrogation techniques do not exist in Game of Thrones. In season 3, Theon endures repeated torture at the Dreadfort, unaware of where he is. After having his fingernails torn out and his foot impaled, he still has not confessed anything of meaningful value—only just enough to try to get the pain to stop. A mysterious man (whom the audience knows is Ramsay Snow but Theon does not) claims to have been sent by Theon’s sister, Yara, to free him; helps smuggle him out; and even shoots down would-be captors who are in hot pursuit. In the moment just before Theon thinks he is about to be free, he confesses everything to Ramsay, whom he thinks he can trust: that he betrayed the Starks; that he regrets it; that it was all to please his father; and that the Stark children, whom he had pretended to kill, are still alive. The very next moment, he finds himself back in the very cell he thought he had escaped. Ramsay created the illusion of an actual incentive (the reward of freedom, rather than a respite from pain) for Theon, and Theon only confesses when he feels safe. If there are any lessons to be learned from the depiction of interrogation in Game of Thrones, it’s that torture doesn’t work, but earning the trust of and building rapport with a detainee does.
The Master or Mistress of Whisperers (or J-2) and their ilk in Game of Thrones have a number of resources at their disposal for human intelligence, counterintelligence, and interrogation operations. However, due to the lack of other methods, cuing or redundancy of multiple collection methods often means operations have to be planned on single-source intelligence or simply on good historical analysis. It’s unclear how we can categorize Bran Stark’s ability to see the past, hack into the body of another person, mind meld with the Night King, or be a human UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) to track White Walker troop movements, but it is certainly an intelligence collection method.
This means there is practically zero awareness of the maritime domain, which might explain the intelligence failure to predict that Euron Greyjoy, arguably the greatest mariner in the kingdom, would attack Daenerys’s fleet and kidnap Yara. Even so, human sources would know when his ships left port, what the wind speeds were, and how far he might have traveled in the time since he left King’s Landing. Furthermore, knowledge of his deceptive nature might have improved situational awareness and potentially mitigated risk.
While the human intelligence operations in Game of Thrones are often morally and ethically questionable, this does reveal a few key truths about these kinds of activities in any time, place, or season. First, even with the best intentions, masterful manipulation of other people is key to success—build trust and rapport; understand a source’s motivations; and create an incentive for them to feel as if you, as their handler, are the vehicle to get what they want, whether it’s candy or the Iron Throne. Second, gaining and keeping someone’s trust is far more effective as a motivator than threatening or actually inflicting harm. Third, always assume the other side is working against you, being mindful of whom you trust with your secrets while knowing that “invisible” people may be the greatest counterintelligence threats. And maybe keep out of the brothels in King’s Landing.
1. David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, “Oathbreaker,” season 6, episode 3, dir. Daniel Sackheim, Game of Thrones, aired May 8, 2016, on HBO.
2. Benioff and Weiss, “Oathbreaker.”
3. U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Intelligence, Joint Publication 2-0 (Arlington VA: U.S. Department of Defense, October 22, 2013), B-4, http://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/Doctrine/pubs/jp2_0.pdf.
4. U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Intelligence.
5. Hugues Delort-Laval and Graham Stacey, Integrating UNSCR 1325 and Gender Perspective into the NATO Command Structure, Bi-strategic Command Directive 40-1 (Brussels, Belgium: NATO, 2017).
6. Gunhild Hoogensen and Svein Vigeland Rottem, “Gender Identity and the Subject of Security,” Security Dialogue 35 (2004): 163.
7. U.S. Marine Corps, Counterintelligence, Marine Corps Warfighting Publication 2-14 (Quantico VA: U.S. Marine Corps, January 31, 2015).
8. Headquarters, Department of the Army, Human Intelligence Collector Operations, Army Field Manual 2-22.3 (34-52) (Arlington VA: U.S Department of Defense, September 2006), 1-6, 1-7.
9. David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, “The Winds of Winter,” season 6, episode 10, dir. Miguel Sapochnik, Game of Thrones, aired June 26, 2016, on HBO.