Eliza Manningham-Buller, Baroness Manningham-Buller

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The Right Honourable  The Baroness Manningham-Buller  DCB
In office 1997 - 2007
Preceded by	Sir Stephen Lander
Succeeded by	Jonathan Evans
Born	14 July 1948 (1948-07-14) (age 59)
Nationality	British
Spouse	Married, with five stepchildren
Occupation	Director General of MI5
Religion	Anglican

Elizabeth Lydia Manningham-Buller, Baroness Manningham-Buller DCB (born 14 July 1948) was Director General (DG) of MI5, the British internal national security agency, from October 2002 until her retirement on 20 April 2007, aged 58. It was announced that Dame Eliza would become a crossbench life peer on 18 April 2008,^[1] her title was gazetted as Baroness Manningham-Buller, of Northampton in the County of Northamptonshire on 2 June 2008.^[2]

Contents 1 Professional life 2 Personal life 3 Parents 4 Public statements 5 Desert Island Discs 6 Styles and honours 7 See also 8 References

[edit] Professional life

Manningham-Buller worked as a teacher for three years at Queen's Gate School, Kensington in London, having read English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford from 1971 to 1974, before joining the Security Service. She was recruited to the Security Service at a drinks party when someone suggested that she see someone at the Ministry of Defence.^[3]

Specializing in counter-terrorism rather than MI5's then-classical counter-espionage, she was active at the time of the Lockerbie bombing by Libya in 1988. During the early 1980s she was one of only five people who knew that Oleg Gordievsky, the deputy head of the KGB at the Soviet embassy in London, was actually a double agent.^[4]

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 succeeded Sir Stephen Lander as Director General in 2002, the second woman to take on the role after Dame Stella Rimington. As Director General, she was paid £150,000 a year. She is credited with making the agency more open: she established a website and recruited agents through newspaper advertisements. Under her direction, terror risk assessments were made public for the first time.^[5]

Manningham-Buller was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the Bath in 2005. She retired from MI5 on 21 April 2007, and was replaced by her deputy Jonathan Evans.^[6] That month marked the end of her 33rd year in the security service.^[5]

[edit] Personal life

Manningham-Buller was the second daughter in a family of four, of Viscount Dilhorne. She was educated at Northampton High School and Benenden School. She was known as Elizabeth, her full first name, at school.^[3]

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. Dame Eliza reported that he knew about her profession before their marriage and when they knew each other well."^[3]

Dame Eliza's brother, 16 years her senior, is John Manningham-Buller, 2nd Viscount Dilhorne.

[edit] Parents

Manningham-Buller's father, Reginald Manningham-Buller, 1st Viscount Dilhorne, (1905-1980) was a Conservative MP from 1943 to 1962. He was Solicitor General for England and Wales, was Lord Chancellor for two years, and he became a peer.

Her mother, Mary Manningham-Buller, Viscountess Dilhorne, trained carrier pigeons that were used to fly coded messages in World War II.^[7] The pigeons were dropped in wicker baskets with little parachutes over France and Germany and were they were used to fly back to her mother's pigeon loft carrying intelligence.^[3] One of the pigeons won the Dickin Medal, and one brought back intelligence of the V-2 rocket project in Peenemünde, Germany.^[3] She died in Oxfordshire on 25 March 2004 at the age of 93.^[7].

[edit] Public statements

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.^[8]

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 [the] 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."^[9][10]

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 led to the Wood Green ricin plot raid in January 2003, she said, "Experience proves that detainee reporting can be accurate and may enable lives to be saved."^[11]

She also stated that they don't ask whether intelligence was obtained by torture "because that would make things difficult".^[12]

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".^[13]

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."^[14][15]

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.

[edit] Desert Island Discs

Manningham-Buller was a "castaway" on Desert Island Discs broadcast on BBC radio 4 in November 2007 giving her first interview after her retirement.^[3] She talked briefly about her personal life and her former professional life, including her reactions to the 7 July 2005 London bombings and the importance of protecting their agents.^[3] She explained that she had decided on her retirement date shortly after she took up the Director General job, choosing to retire with a total of 33 years service in the security services.^[3] She chose as her "luxury", the book The Rattle Bag of poems selected by Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney.^[3]

[edit] Styles and honours

• Miss Elizabeth Manningham-Buller (1948–1962)
• The Hon. Eliza Manningham-Buller (1962–2005)
• The Hon. Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller DCB (2005–2008)
• The Rt. Hon. The Baroness Manningham-Buller DCB (2008–)

[edit] See also

• List of terrorist incidents in the United Kingdom
• MI6, the United Kingdom's foreign intelligence agency
• MI numbers

[edit] References

Government offices
Preceded by Sir Stephen Lander	Director-General of MI5 2002 - 2007	Succeeded by Jonathan Evans

Persondata
NAME	Manningham-Buller, Eliza
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Manningham-Buller, Elizabeth Lydia
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Director General of MI5
DATE OF BIRTH	14 July 1948
PLACE OF BIRTH
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH