UK spy chiefs spooked as Trump strains the special relationship

But in the last few weeks, the veteran CIA officer slated to take up the position had the rug pulled from under him. The reason was that the officer – who had been deeply involved in defending Ukraine – was quoted in a book in a way that found disfavour among supporters of President Trump, who made their views known to the CIA director.

It was just the latest sign of politics creeping into intelligence that has left allies worried. Ask Britain’s most senior spies and national security officials how the relationship with the US is faring and they assure you everything is fine. But even their best poker faces cannot mask the unease. “It is all smiley faces on the surface, but beneath that there is real anxiety,” is how one British official put it.

Intelligence officials have long emphasised that whatever the political headwinds, the working relationship between professionals endures. That held true through the first Trump administration despite the odd rocky moment. But for those hoping to keep their heads down for four years, Trump 2.0 does not feel like Trump 1.0.

When America’s director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, accused former national security officials of a “treasonous conspiracy” it caused discomfort and made it significantly harder to pretend that there was nothing to see. The resurrection of allegations of a deep state trying to undermine Trump’s 2016 election (including the release of a report containing highly sensitive intelligence) may be primarily about distracting from the Jeffrey Epstein affair, but it points to the extent to which intelligence is being drawn into Washington’s polarised politics. British officials see little to be gained in getting involved or speaking out.

One worry is that personnel upheavals in Washington have been deeper this time around. In May, the chair of the National Intelligence Council – roughly the equivalent to chair of Britain’s Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) – was removed for not being willing to align an intelligence assessment about the threat posed by a Venezuelan criminal gang with the president’s view.

History is littered with examples of what happens when leaders are told what they want to hear rather than the unvarnished truth.

One of the functions of the CIA station chief in London is that they get to sit in on some (but not all) of the JIC meetings where British assessments are formulated. That is part of helping transatlantic policymakers develop a shared way to see the world (even when those assessments, such as the ones over Iraq’s WMD, prove disastrously wrong). But what if British assessments contradict the statements of the president? That was one reason British ministers were wary of publicly offering their own view of the damage inflicted by recent strikes on Iran’s nuclear programme. Best keep your head down.

When Trump returned to the Oval Office, some speculated that Britain might stop sharing secrets, such as the identity of Russian sources recruited by MI6, in case they were compromised. But that misunderstands how things work. The identities of the most sensitive agents are never routinely shared. In the early 80s, MI6 was running KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky but never revealed his name to Washington despite Thatcher and Reagan’s close relationship. But other intelligence is still routinely shared on a massive scale.

The reality that the US gives more than it receives makes it tricky for allies to raise too many concerns over potential leaks, even when top US officials disturbed many by discussing plans for strikes on Yemen using the messaging app Signal on their personal phones. There have been, I’m told, delicate discussions about what channels to use to pass the most sensitive information to avoid putting Americans into the awkward position of deciding what they pass up to their superiors.

Russia remains the most sensitive area. Trump’s Oval Office dressing down of President Zelensky sparked concern. “London watched the US’s brief intelligence sharing and materiel resupply ‘pause’ with Ukraine in frustration,” says David Gioe, a former US intelligence officer, now a visiting professor at King’s College London. “Abandoning a close partner in an existential conflict left Nato allies, including the UK, wondering whether Washington viewed any standing commitments as firm.”

Many of the core relationships are still functioning at the working level though. MI5 and MI6 are still co-operating closely with their counterparts at an operational level, as does GCHQ, the agency most tightly bound with the US. With its American counterpart the NSA, it divides up the world to intercept communications. Turning off the taps would be difficult. “There is a massive integration, not just of people and systems but ethos,” says Chris Inglis, a former deputy head of the NSA. “It’s a deeply embedded set of relationships. I think it is really hard to root that out or destroy it or do permanent harm to it. And I don’t think that’s the intent of this administration. But I do think you can get there inadvertently in a way that you will rue the day later.”

The UK military has been thinking harder than the spies about what it means to act more autonomously. An audit of dependencies on the US in Trump 1.0 threw up surprises, while last year the UK wanted to allow Ukraine to use British Storm Shadow missiles to hit Russian targets but found it could not do so without US sign-off since the geo-spatial imaging data required for targeting came from the US – a sign of the deep reliance on America for technical intelligence that could not be easily replicated.

“I suspect that there is a high degree of concern over this inside the UK government, but they will have to put a brave face on it in public,” says Matthew Savill, a former defence official now at the thinktank RUSI.

A further worry is the US intelligence machine refocusing on new priorities that do not align as closely with the UK. The CIA has been told to focus on drug cartels and the Mexican border, while FBI agents specialising in national security have been reassigned to immigration enforcement.

London has talked up a “tilt” to the Indo-Pacific, in part to reflect America’s shift towards confronting China. But officials visiting Washington had a rude awakening in June when the influential US under secretary of defense for policy, Elbridge Colby, asked if it was too late to turn round a British aircraft carrier heading for the Pacific. The UK should concentrate on its own backyard was the message.

One British diplomat suggests the problem is the UK has not articulated why it might be in our own national interests to dispatch an aircraft carrier rather than just as a gesture to Washington.

Staying close to Washington has been the bedrock of British security policy for decades. But the idea of keeping heads down for four years looks increasingly difficult and fails to reflect deeper shifts in priorities. That has led to what some insiders describe as a divide among British national security officials.

For some the special relationship is so deeply embedded that they cannot conceive of it not being there, while others believe it is time to at least think – and even prepare – for a different future, even if it is not one they want. What both sides agree on is that the less said openly, the better, which is why few will speak on the record. We need to prepare for the worst without precipitating it actually happening, is how one official puts it.

But without thinking more clearly about priorities beyond simply staying close to America, the risk is that the UK could end up lost at sea, especially if the UK’s closest ally sails into uncharted waters.

What happens if the two sides start to see the world differently and want to do different things? Keeping their heads down might get much harder.

Gordon Corera was the BBC’s security correspondent. He co-hosts The Rest Is Classified podcast