Casting Shadows

This is the second in what might become a series which uses the episodes of a beloved cold war spy series called The Sandbaggers to dig into mechanisms from RPGs I also appreciate with connections to the covert action genre. Sandbaggers aired between 1978 and 1980 on ITV. As a Canadian, I first got to see it in the 80s when it was run on PBS. It stuck with me like few shows ever have. I think only the original series of Star Trek has such a hold on my attention year after year. Unlike Star Trek, however, I didn’t get to see it again until I owned it – a long time later. When DVDs became a viable option for building a video library, I started searching for the series, and once I finally got the full run of episodes I have been watching it at least once a year since. That was in 2001 which was ‘a few years ago.’ I find I will also do a full rewatch when I recommend the series to someone, or when I stumble across it on YouTube. So, even though I recently rewatched the series a few weeks ago when it resurfaced on YouTube, as the dusts and pollen of spring start to coat the Korean peninsula, I am in the midst of my annual rewatch. This year, I thought it might be fun to put some thoughts here on the blog rather than explaining things to our attentive pack of dogs. Though some of them are very interested in security, their exposure to covert action and government accounting has been limited.

Burnside: If I want to send an agent to the lavatory, I need the Foreign Secretary’s permission. If I want him to do anything when he gets there, I need the Prime Minister’s written approval!

Not my favorite line from the series, but it’s on the list.

This post will either fully establish a trend of examining each episode through the lens of fantastic games like Delta Green and World War Cthulhu, or it will be one of a vanishing few which look at single episodes. Neither you, nor I know at this point. Let’s press on regardless, shall we?

The second episode of the series bears the title, A Proper Function of Government and further expands our understanding of the personalities and problems associated with the Operations Department in SIS in general, and in Burnside’s orbit in specific. As such, it offers a lot of material to harvest for talk of core concepts from Delta Green like Bonds, and of Trust from World War Cthulhu: Cold War. Later episodes, particularly in the second season, will give us a good framework to explore the damage the lifestyle of these characters can have – even without cosmic horrors.

Episode 2: A Proper Function of Government

Diane Lawler: Do you want the bad news?
Neil Burnside: I want a cup of coffee.
Diane Lawler: I ran into the Deputy Chief just now. He knows about the Iranian job.
Neil Burnside: What exactly did he say?
Diane Lawler: He asked me if I knew why Sandbagger 2 was in Iran.
Neil Burnside: And?
Diane Lawler: Simple secretary, aren’t I? I said I thought it was a request from Teheran Station.
Neil Burnside: All right, I can lie my way out of that.
Diane Lawler: One day you’re going to get caught, and you’ll be setting up a station on your own, in the Brazilian jungle.
Neil Burnside: Well at least they get plenty of coffee.

The excellent Personal Assistant to the Director of Operations is revealed to be far more than a ‘simple secretary’ and is actually a force multiplier for Burnside as he shows up early for work despite having left the Ops room at 5am.

This episode opens as did Episode 1 with shots of a grim Burnside making his way to work via public transportation. Despite obvious fatigue, he is alert and aware of his surroundings. Unlike Episode 1, however, he is not being tailed.

Upon arrival at the office, his elite personal assistant warns him of trouble brewing with his immediate supervisor, the Deputy Chief of SIS, Matthew Peele. As noted as an aside in Episode 1 and further confirmed here, Burnside has a habit of doing off-the-books ops, including some for the CIA, and Peele has become aware of one that is in progress. Peele, former head of important international stations such as Hong Kong, has worked his way up to the number 2 position from a starting point near the top and has done so on the Intelligence side of SIS rather than the Operations side. This sets him up to have a certain opposite expectations from and ingrained suspicion of Burnside, which his own experiences with the man have done nothing to dispel.

The central problem that arises during the episode, however, is that an important government advisor privy to all sorts of scientific research and lines of development is supposed to be on vacation fishing in Scotland, but has actually gone abroad – secretly. As this problem and its solution play out, it neatly brings poignant political realities as well as personal and professional motivations to light. The pressures, perspectives, and details the characters have to deal with are pointed out quickly and decisively. There are minor overlaps in jurisdiction for the case with what is ideally a partner service, but is practically and politically a rival one – MI5. There are other operations which need attention, off-book and otherwise, not the least of which is the perfect justification to deal with a dangerous dictator and avenge a murdered Sandbagger in the process. Of course, there is also the expected corruption in government, moral and otherwise, to contend with. The conversations around the advisor’s illicit journey and the actions taken to resolve it highlight all of this quite effectively.

Peele: What are you proposing?
Burnside: Hand it to ‘5
Peele: They’d want to go to Vienna!
Burnside: So, if they did they’d work under our head of station.
Peele: But if we allow them to go to Austria today, how long before they are travelling all over the world?
Burnside: As far as I know we are still on the same side.
Peele: Not in matters of departmental survival! MI5 would dearly like to take us over and the Home Office supports the idea.
Burnside: And the Foreign Office opposes it. That’s been going on for years.
Peele: The answer is no. We handle it.

In terms of adding tension to an episode this is good stuff. Because of this conversation, Burnside has to admit to having one of his Sandbaggers out of the country on an unapproved operation for the CIA and explain it. He also has to commit to an opinion on what should and should not require a Sandbagger. In the early stages of the problem, he does not want his department to have to waste time on this suspiciously travelling advisor even though he recognizes its importance and its potential value to his branch of service to have caught what MI5 missed: Dr. Sir Donald Hopkins left the UK and arrived in Austria while his wife believes he is in the Highlands. Later on, Burnside’s observation on what merits the use of a Sandbagger will come back to be of interest to us.

Trust Rating in A Proper Function of Government

Before we look at that, however, let’s use this situation to talk about Trust. What does it mean to have two complimentary services, with very clear and separate operational mandates falling into rivalry? What influence does this have on the passing of information between the services? What spin does it put on their successes and failures? What pressures does it put on them to have the personal political agendas of the appointees assigned to run them and those politicians’ sensitivity to the perceived winds of public opinion doing more to shape action than official policy? What opportunities does it open to have school ties, class ties, and family ties hold more sway than the laws of the land?

In World War Cthulhu: Cold War, SIS as it appears in this episode would represent a troublingly low rating of Trust for MI5 with what is demonstrably a suspicious relationship between the very people empowered and required to cooperate on matters such as this one. These services are primed to be more interested or at least motivated to score points off each other than to fully cooperate. This informs the timely sharing of information and its quality. It means reporting a failing to government, complete with plans to deal with the rival’s shortcomings, before notifying the correct service of a problem.

Such a situation, all too real sadly, is not at all ideal for our world, but is perfect for one we create for our characters to make their way in.

A nice nuance of the Trust rating is that it reflects the official attitude of an organization for the agents it interacts with and the services to which they are most notably attached. Just by virtue of being separate services, albeit on the same side and despite being tailor-made to work together, over time the an erosion of Trust has been produced. We see this well represented in this episode. Later in the series, we get to see the rating at work on a more personal level between Burnside and his counterpart at MI5.

In game terms, while the two services as portrayed in this episode appear not to trust each other at all, we can expect the services to have Trust somewhere around the 30-40% mark: Partially Trusted. If someone like Burnside had Peele’s job that rating might be in the 40s, but as it is the very political Peele’s, his suspicion of his counterparts at the “rival service” reduces it. In either case, as we noted above, the flow of information and its quality are limited at this level of Trust. The service required to do the trusting puts more emphasis on protecting itself than on communicating freely with the other agency.

Bonds in A Proper Function of Government

In what might seem to be a rare moment of consideration of others, Burnside proposes doing a discreet check on whether or not the curiously abroad Cabinet Advisor is really up to no good by discussing it with his former father-in-law, the Permanent Undersecretary of State at the Foreign Office, Sir Geoffrey Wellingham. The advisor, Dr. Sir Donald Hopkins, often goes fishing with Wellingham. This move not only gives Burnside the opportunity to dump the whole thing if Wellingham can demonstrate there is nothing untoward going on, but also puts the whole affair, and how it was SIS that cottoned on to it into Wellingham’s court to make political hay with. It’s good for Wellingham, good for SIS, and good for Burnside.

As in Part 1, we are looking at Bonds from the care and feeding aspect at this stage of the series. It won’t be long before we get to the burning and crossing out stage, however, so let’s enjoy this while we can.

Burnside plays this whole thing very carefully. Mindful of how suspicious Peele is of his ongoing relationship with Wellingham, and wanting Peele to forget about the Sandbagger in Teheran, Burnside asks for permission to speak to Wellingham about Hopkins. With that granted under the proviso that he make sure Wellingham will give credit to SIS, Burnside is then able to take advice from the crafty old fox who was once his father-in-law and warn the man that an investigation into Hopkins is coming. As a bonus, he passes on the opportunity to reveal this news to Wellingham, who can feather both his and SIS’s cap with it. This is highly-efficient Bond maintenance.

Now, simmering in the background while all of this has been going on is the fate of a captured journalist in an unnamed East African nation run by a bloodthirsty dictator. SIS has a score to settle with the dictator at an operational level, but also at the personal level. Both Burnside and Sandbagger 1 want to see the dictator pay for his past actions, and want it enough to be thinking less about sanctions and funding rebels and more about assassination. This is suddenly exacerbated when said dictator executes the British journalist with claims he is a special agent.

Now Burnside has a lot to consider. If Hopkins needs to be brought home and turned over to MI5, that will require a Sandbagger because of the man’s rank. An assassination in East Africa, if it can be approved, will also require one. Burnside only has three Sandbaggers and one is in Iran on that unapproved mission for the CIA. Sandbagger 1, Willie Caine, despite a loathing of guns and unnecessary violence, would like nothing better than to ‘knock off’ the dictator. Burnside himself would like to do it, of course, but is no longer a field agent…

Burnside, playing on the sensitivity of the situation surrounding Hopkins – who, it turns out, is also a friend of the Prime Minister – soothes the concerns of the Chief and Deputy Chief of SIS by suggesting he should send two Sandbaggers to be ready to block a KGB lift of Hopkins should it be necessary. In so doing, he also earns a further degree of respect from his superiors by demonstrating how their purely political approach has put the Hopkins situation into peril. Further, by deft juggling of his appointments, manages to push for the assassination after getting his approval to have all the Sandbaggers out of the country. In addition, needing Foreign Office approval to do an operation himself, he doesn’t merely request that approval as a favor from Wellingham he sweetens it with a very appealing bribe. Finally, as if all of that weren’t enough for an afternoon, he does his best to convince Sandbagger 1 that if permission to assassinate is granted, and he plays down the chance that it will, the job will fall to him.

Sandbagger 1, however, knows him too well.

Burnside: It’s the old rule… Do unto the other guy as he’d do unto you – but do it first.

What does all of this mean in terms of Burnside being a Delta Green character with Bonds? He has managed to cast himself in a better light with his superiors, but they could not be considered Bonds. The benefit, though, is that if Burnside gains more respect and power for himself, that this will in turn benefit his Sandbaggers, who definitely are a group bond. They already know that Burnside will repeatedly go to the mat for them, and not ask of them anything that he was unwilling to do himself. Two of them has served with him in the field and know his worth as an agent and have seen his worth as an administrator with his mind on the security of the nation and the good of the service. The third has been trained in that atmosphere under the other two.

While he has not personally convinced Caine that he does not intend to do the assassination himself, Burnside has set himself up to be ordered to do it by the Foreign Office if the report recommending assassination is approved. In time, that might assert itself as the truth as Sandbagger 1 sees it. Either way, the relationship between D/Ops and his special section is still tight. If nothing else, Caine knows he does not have Burnside’s ambitions. His disappointment at not getting his personal revenge will soon fade.

What has Burnside put at risk…? It’s quite a gamble and worth watching how it is played. The performance between the actors of Burnside and Wellingham is excellent, and how the situation then proceeds to twist as it falls to the government to make decisions about how to handle Hopkins and the assassination is truly delicious in that grim covert action and spineless all-too-real politics sort of way. We are but two episodes in to the run of 20 and already there is so much fuel for understanding the mood, concerns, and complications which make the espionage genre fascinating and compelling. It’s not all cloaks, daggers, and letter drops. It can be much, much crueler, and far more devious.

Does Burnside come out of this with tighter Bonds, more independence within the department, and a personal score settled? Does Hopkins actually intend to defect? Can the government survive the scandal if he does? Does SIS embarrass itself in the eyes of their so-called rival, MI5 – or the public? Were the wagers and the effort wasted?

Watch Sandbaggers Series 1, Episode 2 – A Proper Function of Government – to find out. While much detail has been given in this post, it is not spoiled by a long shot~