The spy who went into the cold

[Keaney Michael <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Sir David Spedding, The old school spy who brought MI6 in from the cold

By Jimmy Burns
Financial Times, June 14 2001

Sir David Spedding, the former head of MI6, the secret
intelligence service, who died on Wednesday, played a key
role in ensuring that his country's spying community was not
made redundant following the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

He was appointed "C" in 1994, with the cold war receding into
history, and MI6 needing to redefine a role for itself on a new
geopolitical stage with blurred ideological boundaries.

Although he gave the service a new emphasis, he was very
much of the old school. His suspicion of journalists sometimes verged on
paranoia. Those
outside MI6, including MPs who sat on the intelligence oversight committee,
criticised him
for not keeping them sufficiently informed. But he found the public profile
adopted by his
counterpart Stella Rimmington at MI5 unworthy of the profession.

The son of an army officer, Sir David was educated like his father at
Sherborne and later
took a history degree at Hertford College, Oxford, where one of his tutors
worked
informally as a recruitment agent for MI6.

He joined the service in 1967, and his career was focused on the Middle
East, working
under diplomatic cover in several Arab capitals. It was while serving
covertly as a MI6
head of station in Amman, Jordan, in 1984 that he helped defuse the threat
of an
assassination attempt on the Queen by Palestinian terrorists.

Six years later, Sir David's Middle East expertise made him an invaluable
asset as MI6
gathered intelligence on Saddam Hussein and his allies within the terrorist
community
following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

Countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction by "rogue"
states became one
of the key tasks required of MI6 by ministers, and Sir David had the
credentials to deliver.

It was a perception that survived the transition from government under the
Conservative
party to the advent of Tony Blair's New Labour, with MI6 playing an
increasing role also
against organised crime and international drug trafficking.

As the head of MI6, Sir David saw to it that his organisation emerged better
than some
government departments from Sir Richard Scott's arms-to-Iraq inquiry. Sir
David struck a
deal within Whitehall under which no MI6 officer was required to give
evidence in public,
although the organisation agreed to co-operate with the judge.

Sir Richard concluded that while the spies had not failed to gather
intelligence on Mr
Saddam during the 1980s, officials and ministers had not wanted to read the
signals.

Colleagues remember Sir David, who retired in 1999, as an intelligent and
dedicated
professional, with an eye for detail and a good grasp of strategic affairs.

However, his human resource skills sometimes failed him - as in the case of
Richard
Tomlinson, who immersed his employers in controversy after claiming to
having been
unfairly treated.

He is survived by his widow and two sons.

Full article at:
http://news.ft.com/ft/gx.cgi/ftc?pagename=View&c=Article&cid=FT3DTLBTYNC&liv
e=true&tagid=YYY9BSINKTM&useoverridetemplate=IXLZHNNP94C

Michael Keaney
Mercuria Business School
Martinlaaksontie 36
01620 Vantaa
Finland

michael.keaney@xxxxxx