Is the British Council really a ‘nest of espionage’?

Iworked for nearly a decade at the British Council in East Asia. Every day, under the guise of teaching English and promoting awareness of British culture abroad, I would compile dossiers on people of interest, take pictures of government buildings and military installations and pass secret documents to couriers to smuggle back to Britain. I would sometimes meet contacts in parks where we would have brief, cryptic conversations beginning with a code line like ‘The geese are flying south early this year’, without ever directly looking at each other.

Except of course I did none of these things and neither, I am convinced, did anyone else. Which puts me at odds with Vladimir Putin, who claims that the British Council is a ‘nefarious nest of espionage’ and thus a legitimate target for bombing