Is there a reason why Britain would spy on America?

I'm working on a story about a CIA agent who realizes he's being watched by some mysterious group. I've got this idea for a twist that it turns out that the people spying on him are British intelligence. But I can't think of a reason why MI 6 would spy on a CIA agent. Britain and America are pretty close diplomatically. Is there some information that the CIA would keep from MI 6 that they would want to know?

There's quite a few. The easiest would be that they didn't know he was CIA and were spying on him for other reasons. One easy one would be that another power (Russia/China/whatever) was looking into him, so they decided to look into him to figure out why.

Alternatively, if you're going with spy-classic who travels to dangerous places and meets with dangerous people, that's awful suspicious to a spy agency. If they were investigating the same folks he was trying to infiltrate, easy for wires to get crossed.

Then there's the 'allies doesn't mean we share all the same goals' and whatever the primary plot of the story is they might be involved, either to steal the mcguffin for the UK, or to ensure the evil conspiracy doesn't effect them, or whatever...

More generally, allies often spy on one another. The main difference is that unless something goes massively wrong, when you catch an allied spy you give them a talking to and are done with it. There are exceptions, see e.g. Jonathan Pollard.

Spying is constant. Most superpowers or secondary powers are spying on nearly everyone, and even most tertiary powers are spying on their neighbors at very least. Allies and enemies alike spy on each other, and when the spy is caught, there's usually an apology, a big fuss, and then everyone gets back to spying on each other. (though the spy who got caught usually gets sent somewhere else.)

The British spied on the Americans throughout World War I. There's plenty of excuses, but as speaking as a writer I'd recommend making sure this excuse is plot-relevant. Maybe the CIA agent is a Red Herring for whatever the MI6 agent is working on?

Yeah, they don't really need much of an excuse, provided they are discreet about it. Even allies spy on allies, and the US itself has been caught spying on it's NATO partners multiple times.

Let the press find out about it, though, and the consequent diplomatic incident will be real enough.

To quote John Donovan from Mafia 3.

"It's your friends that fuck you the hardest."

Countries spy on each other all the time, they just claim they don't because admitting it is bad form.

"But . . . spies? I thought we were chums with the Low King!"
"Of course we are," said Vetinari. "And the more we know about each other, the friendlier we shall remain. We'd hardly bother to spy on our enemies. What would be the point?"

This theme is often touched by Bill Granger's November Man spy series; the premise of the first novel and its sequels is that Ronald Reagan founded a secret spy agency ("Section R") to spy upon CIA because of the fears that CIA was corrupted and acted against the nation's interests. If I remember correctly the plot of the fourth book in the series, The British Cross, does indeed revolve around the idea that CIA and MI 6 are spying upon each other. The book is a standalone, so I'd suggest giving it a read.

Recent Bond movies have also played around the antagonism between MI 6 and CIA, namely Quantum of Solace and No Time To Die.

Edited by Spectreking on Jun 14th 2022 at 3:50:22 AM

A handful of good reasons:

- Monitoring "American Exceptionalism" influences within the USA, and the USA's own intelligence communities. The nationalist-exceptionalist tends to idealize isolationist stances; that is, abandoning or undermining international ties to the benefit of one's own country. Provided that the UK still considers the U.S to be an ally, it would make sense for MI 6 to try and moderate/suppress Exceptionalist influence in US politics. (Not that they're currently doing a very good job of it, mind.)

- Keeping the U.S's own intelligence agencies in check. In matters where the US and the UK agree on foreign policy i.e most of the time, this typically isn't an issue. Where they disagree, the UK has a vested interest on knowing what their US counterparts aren't sharing, and vice-versa. Similarly, there's a great deal of worry around the risk of an opaque organization like the CIA or MI 6 being taken over from the inside, or for opaque components of those agencies to go rogue and do their own thing.

- Keeping the US/UK alliance valuable. Why bother keeping an alliance with another country if they can't offer anything you need? A lot of this work is properly in the realm of official diplomacy, but there are areas of this that also belong solidly in the realm of espionage. If the US is dissatisfied with the UK's current stance on something, or if the current trade situation isn't favorable, that's a diplomatic talk, since the easiest way to reconcile it is open communication.

But what happens if the US happens upon a technology or resource bank that renders the UK's offering obsolete? In terms of trade, you're describing a market crash, or a market glut that beggars UK-based traders. In terms of technology, you're describing a geo-political dominance shift, which isn't in itself bad, but could be very bad if it leaves the UK without any bargaining power to bring to the diplomatic table. Ensuring the US doesn't hold any more leverage over the UK than it already does, or detecting a change in priorities on the US side that changes what "leverage" is, would be well within the realm of espionage.