Published: March 8 2007 02:00
A career spy with a track-record in international -counter-terrorism is to take over as the new head of MI5, the Home Office announced yesterday.
Jonathan Evans, the security service’s deputy director-general, will next month succeed Dame Manningham-Buller who announced in December that she was retiring after serving four-and-half years.
Mr Evans, aged 49, joined MI5 in 1980, working on counter-espionage operations during the last stages of the cold war. In the late 1980s and the 1990s, he worked as a senior MI5 officer in Irish-related counter-terrorism, interspersed with a senior management post at MI5’s headquarters in London and a secondment to the Home Office.
In 2001, 10 days before the September 11 attacks on the US, he was appointed head of MI5’s international -counter-terrorism section.
Mr Evans was selected as head of MI5 by a group of senior civil servants. His appointment was endorsed by John Reid, the home secretary, with the agreement of Tony Blair, the prime minister.
The choice of Mr Evans was welcomed by the intelligence community, which had feared ministerial plans to shake up counter-terrorist strategy and organisation might have involved bringing in an outsider with a brief to drive through reform. According to close allies, Mr Evans offers a safe pair of hands when MI5 is focused on countering the threat of terrorist attacks on the UK.
The new director-general takes over as the intelligence community faces reform, with an outgoing prime minister and a resurgent Conservative party.
Yesterday, his photograph was published with official approval for the first time, but without details of his professional and personal life – a reminder that moves towards greater transparency have limits.
MI5 was unavailable to comment on similarities in character between Mr Evans and Harry Pearce, the head of counter-terrorism in the BBC’s spy fiction series Spooks.
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