James Bond's true "M" finally revealed

Defending Secrecy, British Spy Chief Goes Public 

LONDON — At an appropriately hush-hush site, before a not-so-hush-hush audience of newspaper editors and television cameras, Sir John Sawers, the head of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, on Thursday delivered what he said was the first public address by a serving chief of the agency in its 101-year history.
His speech ranged from questions about Al Qaeda abroad to accountability at home, from nuclear proliferation in Iran to terrorism and on to the fraught issue of torture in the pursuit of secret information. He praised Britain’s secret agents as “true heroes” in some of the world’s most dangerous places.
But Sir John, whose organization is widely known as MI6, devoted much of his 30-minute address to the central role of secrecy in maintaining security — a reaffirmation of traditional tradecraft in an era of leaks and pressure for ever-greater disclosure.
“Secrecy is not a dirty word,” he said. “Secrecy is not there as a cover-up. Secrecy plays a crucial part in keeping Britain safe and secure.”
“If our operations and methods become public, they won’t work,” he said.
While he has not spoken publicly spoken before about the work of MI6, he made two public appearances to give evidence at an official inquiry into the Iraq war, both about earlier assignments as a foreign policy adviser to former Prime Minister Tony Blair and as the British representative in Baghdad.
His appearance Thursday reinforced a trend among Britain’s spy bosses to shed the traditional cloak of their trade. Sir John’s appearance followed a first public speech by Iain Lobban, the director of Britain’s electronic eavesdropping agency, and several appearances by Jonathan Evans, the director general of MI5, which is responsible for domestic security in contrast to MI6’s focus on overseas operations. In 2006, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, Mr. Evans’s predecessor, made headlines when she gave a speech warning of the range of terrorist threats Britain faced.
“Why now, might you ask?” Sir John said of his decision to go public. The answer, he said, was that despite its prominence in the news, the debate about MI6 was not well informed, and “in today’s open society, no government institution is given the benefit of the doubt all the time.”

Continue at NY Times