Richard Moore | |
---|---|
Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service | |
Assumed office 1 October 2020 | |
Prime Minister | Boris Johnson Liz Truss Rishi Sunak Keir Starmer |
Preceded by | Sir Alex Younger |
Director General,Political at the Foreign,Commonwealth and Development Office | |
In office April 2018 –30 September 2020 | |
Monarch | Elizabeth II |
Preceded by | Karen Pierce |
Succeeded by | Sir Tim Barrow |
British Ambassador to Turkey | |
In office January 2014 –December 2017 | |
Monarch | Elizabeth II |
Preceded by | David Reddaway |
Succeeded by | Dominick Chilcott |
Personal details | |
Born | Tripoli,Libya | 9 May 1963
Spouse | Maggie Martin (m. 1985) |
Children | 2 |
Education | Worcester College, Oxford (BA) Harvard University |
Website | Twitter Profile |
Sir Richard Peter Moore KCMG (born 9 May 1963) is a British civil servant, currently chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and formerly Director General for Political Affairs, at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, [1] [2] [3] and previously the British ambassador to Turkey. [1]
Moore attended St George's College, Weybridge, an independent school in Surrey. [3] Afterwards, he studied philosophy, politics and economics at Worcester College, Oxford, where he graduated as a Bachelor of Arts. [1] He then won a Kennedy Scholarship to study at the Kennedy School of Government in Harvard University. [1] In 2007, he attended the Stanford Executive Program. [1]
Moore's career has been in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and in His Majesty's Diplomatic Service. [3] He has had postings in Vietnam in 1988, Turkey in 1990 and from 1991 to 1992, Iran from 1992 to 1995, Pakistan from 1995 to 1998 and Malaysia from 2001 to 2005 where he undertook a variety of roles, including working for the Secret Intelligence Service. [1] [4] He was the section head of the Security Policy Group at the FCDO from 1998 to 2001 and Deputy Director of the Middle East from 2005 to 2008. [3]
Moore, more recently, was Director for Programmes and Change from 2008 to 2010, and Director for Europe, Latin America and Globalization from 2010 to 2012. [1] [3]
Moore's first prominent appointment was as Ambassador of the United Kingdom to Turkey. He held this post from 2014 to 2017. [1] He spent a short period of time working as Deputy National Security Advisor (Intelligence, Security and Resilience) in 2018. [3] He held the appointment of Director-General, Political in the FCDO from 2018 until August 2020. [1] [3] On the 29 July 2020, it was announced that Moore would become Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) in autumn 2020. [4] [5] He took up this position on the 1 October of the same year. [6]
Moore was the first member of the British secret service to openly use Twitter, when on 2 October 2020 his tweets from his first day as Chief of MI6 made the news for their humorous hashtags and emojis. [6] [7]
On 5 May 2021 Moore announced that MI6 had begun "green spying" to investigate secretly if foreign nations were genuinely keeping to their emission reduction commitments in order to tackle climate change. [8] [9]
In February 2021, Moore apologised publicly to MI6 officers who were dismissed from the agency under the ban on LGBT staff prior to 1991, and called the policy "wrong, unjust and discriminatory". [10]
In July 2023, Moore stated that the Chinese government and Xi Jinping were "absolutely complicit" in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. [11]
Richard Moore was born in Tripoli, Libya, on 9 May 1963. [3] He married Margaret Martin (Maggie) in 1985, with whom he has had a son and a daughter. [3]
Moore's grandfather Jack Buckley served as a soldier of the Irish Republican Army from 1916 to 1922 in Cork, Ireland, and was awarded a medal by Sinn Féin for fighting against British rule. [12]
He is fluent in Turkish. [13] Moore was appointed Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to UK/Turkey relations [14] and Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) in the 2023 Birthday Honours for services to national security and British foreign policy. [15]
Moore was a member of the Garrick Club; [16] he resigned from membership on 20 March 2024. [17]
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) is the ministry of foreign affairs and a ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom.
The Security Service, also known as MI5, is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), and Defence Intelligence (DI). MI5 is directed by the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), and the service is bound by the Security Service Act 1989. The service is directed to protect British parliamentary democracy and economic interests and to counter terrorism and espionage within the United Kingdom (UK).
Captain Sir Mansfield George Smith-Cumming was a British naval officer who served as the first chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS).
Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky, CMG is a former colonel of the KGB who became KGB resident-designate (rezident) and bureau chief in London.
Sir John McLeod Scarlett is a British senior intelligence officer. He was Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) from 2004 to 2009. Prior to this appointment, he had chaired the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC).
Sir John Ogilvy Rennie, was the 6th Director of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) from 1968 to 1973. He was once the head of the Information Research Department (IRD), a secret branch of the UK Foreign Office dedicated to pro-colonial and anti-communist propaganda during the Cold War.
Sir Maurice Oldfield was a British intelligence officer and espionage administrator. He served as the seventh director of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), from 1973 to 1978.
Sir Richard Billing Dearlove is a retired British intelligence officer who was head of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), a role known informally as "C", from 1999 until 6 May 2004. He was head of MI6 during the invasion of Iraq. He was criticised by the Iraq Inquiry for providing unverified intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to the Prime Minister, Tony Blair.
Sir David Rolland Spedding was Head of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) from 1994 to 1999.
Sir Dick Goldsmith White, was a British intelligence officer. He was Director General (DG) of MI5 from 1953 to 1956, and Head of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) from 1956 to 1968.
Sir Arthur Temple "Dick" Franks was Head of the British Secret Intelligence Service from 1979 to 1982.
The Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) was a department of the British War Office.
Sir Robert John Sawers FRUSI is a British intelligence officer, diplomat and civil servant. He was Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), a position he held from November 2009 until November 2014. He was previously the British Permanent Representative to the United Nations from August 2007 to November 2009.
The chief of the Secret Intelligence Service serves as the head of the Secret Intelligence Service, which is part of the United Kingdom intelligence community. The chief is appointed by the foreign secretary, to whom they report directly. Annual reports are also made to the prime minister.
Sir Iain Robert Lobban is a former British civil servant. He was the Director of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British signals intelligence agency, from 2008 to 2014.
Sir Simon Lawrance Gass is a British civil servant. He chaired the Joint Intelligence Committee from 2019 to 2023 and served as the British Prime Minister's representative on Afghanistan from 2021 to 2022 concurrently. Between 2018 and 2019, he was the Commandant of the Royal College of Defence Studies. During his diplomatic career, he served as British ambassador to Greece and to Iran. In May 2023, it was announced he was stepping down as Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee and succeeded by Madeleine Alessandri.
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6, is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligence on foreign nationals in support of its Five Eyes partners. SIS is one of the British intelligence agencies and the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service ("C") is directly accountable to the Foreign Secretary.
The Government of the United Kingdom maintains several intelligence agencies that deal with secret intelligence. These agencies are responsible for collecting, analysing and exploiting foreign and domestic intelligence, providing military intelligence, and performing espionage and counter-espionage. Their intelligence assessments contribute to the conduct of the foreign relations of the United Kingdom, maintaining the national security of the United Kingdom, military planning, public safety, and law enforcement in the United Kingdom. The four main agencies are the Secret Intelligence Service, the Security Service (MI5), the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and Defence Intelligence (DI). The agencies are organised under three government departments, the Foreign Office, the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence.
Sir Alexander William Younger is a British intelligence officer who served as the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), from 2014 to 2020. In April 2019, the government extended Younger's contract to maintain stability through the Brexit negotiations, which made him the longest-serving MI6 chief in 50 years.
Sir Thomas Drew is a British diplomat who was the Director General, Defence and Intelligence, at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and has previously been British High Commissioner to Pakistan.