Jonathan Evans (MI5)

Jonathan Evans

Jonathan Evans is the Director General of MI5 and is the sixteenth person to have held that post since it was created in 1909.

According to the MI5 website:

Jonathan graduated from Bristol University, where he gained a degree in Classical Studies. On joining the Security Service in 1980 he worked on counter-espionage investigations, before moving in 1985 to protective security policy, advising departmental security officers on the protection of classified information. Jonathan then worked on implementing policy changes as part of Sir Anthony Duff's modernisation of the Service.

Since then, Jonathan's main focus has been counter terrorism, both international and domestic. Various postings in Irish-related counter terrorism during the late 1980s and 1990s were interspersed with a spell as head of the Security Service's secretariat, and also two years attached to the Home Office. During this secondment, Jonathan was closely involved in the development and implementation of VIP security policy.

H Branch

According to official MI5 historian Christopher Andrew, Evans was serving in H Branch as H1B/1, when Duff's successor Sir Patrick Walker ordered his superior H1/0 to carry out a strategic review of the service in February 1990. Evans recalled a 'stormy' discussion of H1B/1's findings by the MI5 Management Board, where the service's legal advisor David Bickford clashed with Walker.

G Branch

Evans was appointed as G9, head of Middle Eastern counter-terrorism within MI5's G Branch in the autumn of 1998.

He was appointed head of G Branch 10 days before 9/11 in September 2001.

Deputy Director-General

Evans became Deputy Director General of the Security Service in February 2005.

Director General

Evans succeeded Eliza Manningham-Buller as Director General of MI5 in April 2007. Evans gave a speech to the Society of Editors in Manchester in November 2007.

Domestic Terrorism

In his first speech after taking over as Director-General of MI5, Jonathan Evans stated that Islamists were "radicalising indoctrinating and grooming young, vulnerable people to carry out acts of terrorism".

Binyam Mohamed case

In February 2009, the Court of Appeal ruled that MI5 must disclose CIA intelligence which showed service's own complicity in the mistreatment of British detainee Binyam Mohamed.

Following the judgement, Evans wrote an article for the Daily Telegraph, arguing that "some of the recent reporting on the supposed activities and culture of MI5 has been so far from the truth that it couldn’t be left unchallenged, particularly against the backdrop of the current severe terrorist threat to this country."

He went on to warn that "our enemies will also seek to use all tools at their disposal to attack us":

That means not just bombs, bullets and aircraft but also propaganda and campaigns to undermine our will and ability to confront them. Their freedom to voice extremist views is part of the price we pay for living in a democracy, and it is a price worth paying because in the long term, our democracy underpins our security.

But we would do well to maintain a fair and balanced view of events as they unfold and avoid falling into conspiracy theory and caricature.

Guardian journalist Richard Norton-Taylor suggested that Evans' article was an implicit attack on the judges who made the ruling, particularly Lord Neuberger, whose draft judgement had accused MI5 of misleading the Intelligence and Security Committee, and of having a "culture of suppression" that does not respect human rights.