The former director of MI5 revealed that the spy agency once considered using gerbils in interrogations to detect liars.
In an interview with Gordon Corera and David McCloskey, the ex-spy master Lord Jonathan Evans revealed that he personally read a classified dossier titled: ‘Gerbils Use in Counterintelligence’.
Lord Evans said: ‘You see the title and think, I’ve got to read that.’
Inside was perhaps one of the stranger plans in espionage – he said there was research into training gerbils to smell stress hormones in a suspect’s sweat to detect lies.
It went even further, proposing a sort of rodent lie detector contraption, saying that agents could stuff a load of gerbils into a box and the suspect would have to put their hand in.
If the animals smelled the stress-related chemicals linked to deception and lying, they would trigger a mechanism to signal that a potential lie had been told.
Lord Evans added: ‘The gerbil then pushes a wheel or something and a light comes on, and that tells you whether this is true or false.’
While the idea was clearly taken seriously enough to warrant a formal file, the former MI5 chief said there was one small issue: ‘The only problem with this technology is that it doesn’t actually work.’
The former director of MI5 Lord Jonathan Evans (centre) revealed to Gordon Corera (right) and David McCloskey (left) that the service wanted to use gerbils to catch suspects
The file said that gerbils could be trained to smell stress hormones so would be able to detect lies, even suggesting a gerbil-powered lie detector contraption which suspects would have to stick their hand into
Lord Evans was the head of MI5 from April 2007 to April 2013 and led the agency through major changes, including during the 2012 London Olympics.
He joked: ‘I thought that was really going to solve counter-espionage challenges – but there you go. You have to take risks. We normally like our pigeons, but we’ve introduced gerbils into the spy world now.’
Lord Evans predecessor Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller, who served as head of the service from 2002-2007, revealed how pigeons were also used in MI5.
During the war, Baroness Eliza’s mother Lady Manningham-Buller was hired by the War Office – a precursor to what we now called MI5.
She had to train homing pigeons for the War Office and then release them on top-secret missions which provided real intelligence and directly saved lives.
Lady Manningham-Buller was in Oxfordshire but still working for the military. Pigeons used to fly over to her there from occupied Europe and carry messages from agents behind the lines after being parachuted out there in wicker baskets.
Should intelligence agencies experiment with bizarre animal methods if lives are at stake?
Lord Evans predecessor Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller told how her mother had to train and send out pigeons on espionage mission during World War Two for the War Office – MI5’s precursor
The MI5 Building At Thames House on Millbank
To inform the War Office, agents used to visit her regularly on motorbikes, disturbing the calm in the quiet Oxfordshire village.
British intelligence has a long history of using unlikely animals for their intelligence services, particularly during World War Two and the Cold War. Now gerbils have been added to that list.
You can find out more about Lord Evan’s stint as MI5 chief on The Rest Is Classified podcast with interviews by the British and American authors and journalists Gordon Corera and David McCloskey.
Watch or listen to The Rest Is Classified however you get your podcasts.