Academic research into espionage and spies: what is true?

What happens if a researcher tries to get into a world which is built upon covers and confidentiality? Where people live double lives, have secrets, raise smokescreens and where documents also do not always turn out to be reliable? 

At Utrecht University, research is being done into espionage. Historian Dr. Eleni Braat's work focuses on the dilemmas which come with espionage, to the political legitimacy of intelligence services, to the agents (or spies) and staff members of secret services, and to the academics researching this. Because how do you as an academic know what is true? How do you know when your source is deceiving you? And how can you understand the past based on limited and often misleading sources?  

One of the most intriguing examples from her current research is about a former double agent who calls himself M.

According to his story, M worked for two different services during the Cold War: first for the Dutch BVD, then for the American CIA and always against the East German Stasi. This would mean he was a double agent, who says his primary loyalty was to the BVD and the CIA .  
Together with her colleague Dr. Ben de Jong (retired, University of Amsterdam), Braat interviewed M multiple times. Long sessions, detailed stories, with recurring names, dates and locations. Everything seemed consistent. But the question still remained: is what he tells plausible and which other sources are out there?  

What stood out during the interviews, was the way in which M spoke about his contacts (or handlers) at the Stasi, who guided his actions as an agent. Instead of detached reports, it was about friendships, appreciation, loyalty. He was taken out to nightclubs in East Berlin, received gifts and there was interest in his well-being. According to Braat and De Jong, trust and gratitude played bigger roles than agreements, financial remuneration or ideology. And that immediately makes it more difficult to unravel: who was loyal to whom? Why? And how have M’s memories of this developed as time went on? 

The archives barely gave any definitive answers. Much material from that time is still secret or incomplete. The AIVD (legal successor of the BVD) provided no access to his file. And M himself set strict conditions: his real name was not to be mentioned, some details about his work were not to be reported on. 

But then, Braat and De Jong discover there is a part of M's Stasi file out there after all, in Berlin. His two Stasi handlers also turn out to still be alive. Braat and De Jong inform M: the file of which he only got to see a small part years ago turns out to be much more sizeable. Braat and De Jong also indicate to M they are going to try to contact his former Stasi handlers. M had tried to do this in the past, to no avail. To their surprise, M does not respond with relief, but is very dismissive: he begs them not to request the Stasi file and to not contact his former Stasi handlers. He says that would put him in danger, via still living former Stasi officers who allegedly will see this as a provocation and have ties to Russia. 

What and who should you believe? The memories of man who lived in a double-crossing world for years and would love recognition for that? Or the documents of a service which itself excelled in deception?  
When Braat and De Jong told M they had requested the file and had been in contact with one of his former handlers, he was angry. Not because the content of the obtained information was allegedly incorrect, but because they had requested this information in the first place. He did not want to hear anything about it, dismissed questions, showed no interest at all in what the archives or his former handler said and no longer collaborated with the research.  

And so we keep guessing. Has M talked himself into a story? Does he try to protect his role? Or does he actually believe in his own memories? And most of all, how should academics deal with this? Historians assume that only one single objective ‘truth’ is intangible. So it is a phantom they usually do not pursue. Instead, they interpret various perspectives on the past. This issue in the history of espionage is what Braat and De Jong are writing a book about. In it, their own research process into M’s past is the guide.     

Espionage research is not the only domain where research results can be of a sensitive nature. Elsewhere within academia as well, results can be in conflict with, for instance, individuals or governments. “But academia specifically exists to ask further questions, even if the outcome is uncomfortable,” Eleni Braat says. “Researchers who occupy themselves with sensitive themes therefore have to be not only critical of their sources, but also of their university surroundings.” Does she have any advice for fellow academics? “Academics should – if they aren't doing so already – make good agreements with involved external parties, such as in M's case. In these, there can be more attention for the academic's autonomy. Ethically responsible research is not equal to keeping external parties satisfied. The contact with externals can be abrasive and the academic should feel protected in this from the university.”