Eliza Manningham-Buller

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Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller giving a speech at Queen Mary, University of London, November 2006

Dame Elizabeth (Eliza) Lydia Manningham-Buller, DCB (born 14 July 1948) is the current director general (DG) of MI5, the British internal national security agency, appointed in October 2002. Her full title is The Hon. Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller. The Honorable comes from being the daughter of a Viscount.

1 Professional life
2 Personal life
3 Public statements
4 See also
5 References

[edit] Professional life

She worked as a teacher for three years at Queen's Gate in London, having read English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford from 1971 to 1974, before joining the Security Service.

Specializing in counter-terrorism rather than MI5's then classical counter-espionage, Dame Eliza was active at the time of the Lockerbie bombing by Libya in 1988.

During the early 1980s she was one of only five persons who knew that Oleg Gordievsky, the deputy head of the KGB at the Soviet embassy in London, was actually a double agent.^[1]

She was a senior liaison working out of Washington, D.C. to the US intelligence community over the period of the first Gulf War, before leading the newly-created Irish counter-terrorism section from 1992 when MI5 were given the lead responsibility for such work (from the Metropolitan Police).

Having been promoted to the Management Board of the Security Service the next year, Dame Eliza became the director in charge of surveillance and technical operations, later becoming director of Irish counter-terrorism.

She was appointed deputy director general in 1997, and finally succeeded Sir Stephen Lander as director general in 2002, the second woman to take on the role after Dame Stella Rimington.

She was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the Bath in 2005.

[edit] Personal life

Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller's father, Reginald Edward Manningham-Buller, 1st Viscount Dilhorne, was a Conservative MP for from 1943 to 1962 when he became a peer and was Lord Chancellor for two years. Her mother trained carrier pigeons used to fly coded messages in World War II.^[2]

She was the second daughter in a family of four. She was educated at Northampton High School and Benenden School.

She is married to David, whose surname has never been disclosed publicly; he has five children by his previous marriage, who are Dame Elizabeth's stepchildren.

"Her husband, David, is the son of a former lieutenant-colonel and a former lecturer in moral philosophy at St Andrews University. He has recently retrained as a carpenter. An Irish Catholic by birth, he is said to have once held strong left-wing views. According to friends, he did not know his future wife's profession during their courtship" (as per [1]).

Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller's brother is John Manningham-Buller, 2nd Viscount Dilhorne.

[edit] Public statements

Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller has made speeches to invited audiences containing members of the press, as well as making court statements.

On 17 June 2003, at a conference at the Royal United Services Institute she gave her complete backing for the War on Terror and said that renegade scientists had given terror groups information needed to create chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) weapons. She also warned that the threat from international terrorism would be "with us for a good long time", which was why new legislation had been introduced.^[3]

On 10 September 2005, she spoke to an audience in the Netherlands about the 7 July 2005 London bombings and her disappointment that MI5 failed to stop attacks even when in possession of intelligence because of bureaucratic inertia. She also added that "[T]he world has changed and there needs to be a debate on whether some erosion of [ civil liberties ] we all value may be necessary to improve the chances of our citizens not being blown apart as they go about their daily lives."^[4]^[5]

On 21 October 2005 her leaked statement to the Law Lords about the unreliable information from a man in Algeria who had probably been tortured which lead to the Wood Green no-ricin plot raid in January 2003, she said, "Experience proves that detainee reporting can be accurate and may enable lives to be saved."^[6] She also said that they don't ask whether intelligence was obtained by torture "because that would make things difficult".^[7]

On 23 January 2006, she refused to appear before the Joint Committee On Human Rights in Parliament to speak about "the extent to which the Service is, or could take steps to ensure it is, aware that information it receives from foreign agencies may have been obtained by the use of torture", and "any information which the Service may have about extraordinary renditions using UK airports".^[8]

On 9 November 2006, Manningham-Buller gave a speech at Queen Mary, University of London before an invited audience of academics, students and journalists as a guest of Professor Peter Hennessy. In it she warned that her office was tracking 30 terror plots, and 200 groupings or networks, totalling over 1,600 individuals. She also stated that MI5 had expanded by 50% since the September 11 attacks and stood at roughly 2,800 staff. She reiterated her warning that the threat "may - I suggest will - include the use of chemicals, bacteriological agents, radioactive materials and even nuclear technology." ^[9]^[10]

This speech came three days after Dhiren Barot was sentenced to 40 years for his part in the 2004 Financial buildings plot in which he had a plan to build a radiological dirty bomb that involved setting fire to 10,000 smoke alarms.