New Head of MI5 - Jonathan Evans

MI5 has named Jonathan Evans to be its new head, replacing Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller.

Like most MI5 staff, it's hard to find anything about him on the net. He's the current Deputy Director. He went to Bristol for university (classical studies). Evans began his career in MI5 in hunting spies and moles. In 1985, he moved to work in protective security, advising departmental security officers on the protection of classified information.

Evans then moved on to work in Northern Ireland as a senior intelligence official in the 1990s.

The Belfast Telegraph mentions that Evans could be called in a Belfast High Court hearing. The case is brought by former Army agent 'Kevin Fulton'. Evans may have been one of Fulton's handlers. Fulton is suing the NIO for compensation over what he claims is its failure to honour a contract to finance a new life in England after his cover as an agent was blown in 1994.

Evans, at some point, became the head of the anti-Al-Qaeda unit. So, it is rather interesting what happened just before the 7th July 2005 bombings.

A dozen Labour whips were addressed by Dame Eliza about the terrorist threat to the UK the day before the bombings ... Sources have told the Guardian that Dame Eliza told them that there was "no imminent threat to London or the country" from a terrorist attack. They also say she appeared rather detached from the detail of security operations that must have been taking place at the time. It was already known that the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, a government body based at the headquarters of MI5, had reduced its assessment of the threat to Britain from level 2, or "severe-general" to level 3, or "substantial", six weeks before the July 7 bombings.

So, either he wasn't briefing her enough, or he was briefing her wrong.

Apart from what little we know of him, there are a number of things on the go for MI5:

- where are the chlorine trucks, and who has access to them?

- will MI5 keep spying on senior black and minority ethnic officers within the Metropolitan police?

- will MI5 keep visiting Guantanamo and just stand by during interrogation and torture?

- will MI5 keep pushing to be able to spy on MPs?