Somewhere in an office on the south bank of the Thames, a man is writing in green ink and signing himself simply ‘C’. He is doing these things because all of his 16 predecessors have done so since 1909. Sir Richard Moore is Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), more popularly known as MI6, the only employee of the organisation whose name is made public, and he will soon step down after five years in the role.
SIS is Britain’s foreign intelligence organisation, collecting and analysing human intelligence overseas to protect the United Kingdom’s national interests, inform the government’s strategic understanding of the global situation and support counter-terrorism, counter-proliferation and cyber security. Its domestic counterpart is the Security Service, MI5, while signals intelligence, information assurance and the lead on cyber security falls within the remit of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).
Britain’s intelligence agencies have traditionally been addicted to secrecy. They were not placed on a statutory basis until the Intelligence
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