At the Aspen Institute’s annual gathering of national security and foreign policy leaders in July, the former acting CIA director, John McLaughlin, choked up as he recalled how British intelligence chiefs had traversed closed air space from London to Washington to literally embrace their American counterparts after the 9/11 attacks. McLaughlin and Sir John Scarlett, the former head of Britain’s MI6 spy agency sitting beside him, remembered fondly the “special relationship” the U.S.