************************************************* 14) From: "Timothy Robarts" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: British Intelligence Service / new spymaster / Profile The Sunday Times - July 25 1999 Richard Dearlove. The master spy inside a suburban cold fish In the mythology of British espionage, certain names conjure up the glamorous danger of undercover work. One thinks of Moneypenny, Domino, Goodnight and Pussy Galore. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the overlords of the Great Game have asked a character named Dearlove to slip into something more comfortable - the chair of "C", head of the Secret Intelligence Service, known to the uninitiated as MI6. Good heavens, another woman? "Q" was quite put out when Stella Rimington was appointed boss of the detested MI5. No, Dearlove is a man - Richard Billing Dearlove. Next week he becomes one of the most powerful figures in the British Establishment. Ministers will cross at their peril a figure who commands more than 150 intelligence officers, a staff of 2,000 and a budget of more than �150m. In keeping with the John le Carr� tradition, Dearlove conceals his identity behind a George Smiley persona that is guaranteed to confound wily foreigners. In the London suburb of Putney, he occupies a semi-detached Edwardian house surrounded by a 7ft hedge. Here, with a devoted wife and three children, he enjoys reading classics, growing fuchsias and dabbling in watercolours. Britain would expect nothing less. Dearlove clearly subscribes to the sentiments of the man he replaces, Sir David Spedding, who in a rare public utterance declared: "We are not going to allow ourselves to be undressed in public." It is equally reassuring to learn that Dearlove's mild facade conceals a flinty and sometimes ruthless brain. One former colleague who knew him well paid him the rare compliment of remarking that he was "colder than a week-old cod on a fishmonger's slab". Others describe him variously as "hard-nosed and ambitious", "honest, forthright and fair-minded" and "grizzled but respected because of his operational experience". Some even maintain he possesses that other requisite of the spy: he is attractive to women "because of his eyes and long eyelashes". Good Lord, steady on. But another verdict is equally perplexing given the fate of Michael Howard: "There is something of the night about him," said one colleague. It is a matter of hallowed record that Dearlove's "C" designation is derived from the surname of Captain Mansfield Cumming, who founded the Secret Service Bureau in 1909 and whose penchant for signing dispatches in green ink still survives. The initial also inspired Ian Fleming's "M", James Bond's boss. It is fervently hoped that Dearlove will emulate Cumming's achievements, notably as a master of disguise. How Cumming accomplished this is not quite clear given that he had only one leg (he lost the other in a road accident) and needed his gold monocle. To overcome his handicap, he propelled himself down the corridors of power on a child's scooter. Dearlove's childhood was overshadowed by a similar injury sustained by his father. Jack Dearlove, who worked for Sainsbury's while it was a high street grocers and went on to help establish the first supermarkets, lost his leg at the age of 12 in a road accident. Against the odds, he forged a career as an international cox, winning a silver medal at the 1948 Olympics. Tellingly, he was not allowed to join the opening ceremony because of his handicap. Jack's battle against his disability had a huge influence on his three children. A determined man, he even played tennis, serving with the aid of a crutch and hopping around the court. He died, aged 54, in another car crash, apparently after collapsing at the wheel. Richard Dearlove was born in January 1945, following an elder brother, John, and a sister, Ann, into the world. He attended Monkton Combe school near Bath and spent a year at Kent school in Connecticut in the United States. He joined MI6 at 21 after graduating from Queens' College, Cambridge. He read history on a scholarship and took up his father's passion for rowing. At Cambridge he also first bumped into Stephen Lander, now director-general of MI5. They have since become friends, something that may be prompted as much by expediency as mutual interest. It was the mid-1960s, the height of student activism, but Dearlove was not a rebel. He toyed with the idea of becoming an academic and was offered a clerkship at the House of Commons. Instead, he joined MI6. His first assignment in 1968 was Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, where he worked as a diplomat to earn cover for his next posting, Prague. It was 1973 and the world was gripped by cold war fear. In the capital of what was then Czechoslovakia, Dearlove distinguished himself running a cold war operation to infiltrate the Warsaw Pact. "Richard did well," said a former colleague. "We had them by the throat." In 1980 he moved to Paris where he struck up good relationships with the French secret services, DGSE (external security) and DST (internal security), which had the reputation of being more leaky than sieves. The move paid off when his contacts were promoted to senior positions. Seven years later, Dearlove was appointed head of the MI6 station in Geneva, under United Nations cover. He then went on to head MI6's liaison staff in Washington in 1991 - a job formerly held by Kim Philby and Sir Maurice Oldfield. He returned to London a little over a year later to oversee budget revisions and the move of MI6 from its crumbling south London headquarters in Century House, Lambeth, to its magnificent postmodern riverside edifice at Vauxhall Cross. From 1994 he was director of operations, the key appointment beneath "C". He made his name as a reformer, allowing fresh air and new ideas into what some regarded as a stuffy organisation, still steeped in cold war traditions. He applied for the job of head of GCHQ, the government's listening post near Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, but lost out to David Omand, now permanent secretary at the Home Office, perhaps because Dearlove was already being groomed for the top job at "six". By 1998 he was deputy to Spedding. There is no doubting his qualities as a master spy. He is intelligent, thoughtful, softly spoken, a keen skier and a fly-fisher. John, his elder brother by about six years, is arguably more flamboyant. An accomplished linguist and Japanese speaker, he also graduated from Cambridge, joined the foreign service and enjoyed a distinguished career overseas. He now he imports Barrandov, a little known but powerful Czech lager which he supplies to discerning customers, including Foreign Office diplomats abroad. Dearlove's sister, Ann, was a teacher in Australia and America before her husband died of brain cancer. She returned to Britain and was head of Roedean School from 1984 to 1997. Dearlove's children have all shown artistic promise. His daughter Sarah is billed as a rising star of British fashion, whose sexy knitware has been paraded by models such as Stella Tennant. So what faces Britain's new spymaster over his five-year term, during which he will enjoy a salary of about �100,000? He will have to grapple with a world of rapidly shifting threats. The collapse of the Soviet empire has left the spooks without an obvious No 1 Enemy. The old sponsors of international terrorism appear to have reformed. Britain has even restored diplomatic ties with Iran and Libya. The new enemies are more likely to be playboy terrorists such as Osama Bin Laden or billionaire drug barons; characters oddly reminiscent of Ian Fleming's arch villains. Old style "humint" (human intelligence) as practised by Bond may yet enjoy a renaissance over its rival sigint (signals intelligence supplied by GCHQ) as the world is swamped by innumerable digital calls from mobile phones and encrypted e-mail messages. Friends say that Dearlove is a more modern and forward-looking chief than Spedding, his predecessor, though some acquaintances beg to differ. One former senior FBI man who knew Dearlove in Washington described him as an unimposing man. But if he thought that was an undesirable quality in a spy, then he misunderstood the nature of British intelligence.
