Jonathan Evans (MI5 officer)

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Jonathan Evans (born c. 1958) is Director General of MI5, the UK's domestic security and counter-intelligence service. He took over the appointment upon the retirement of his predecessor The Honourable Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller on 21 April 2007.^[1]

Evans attended Sevenoaks School, and went on to read classical studies at the University of Bristol.^[2] He joined the service in 1980, and initially worked in counter espionage.^[2] In 1985 he moved to the protective security function (safeguarding MI5's own personnel and the service's secrets) before switching to domestic counter-terrorism in the late 1980s. ^[2] For more than a decade he was involved with the effort to combat the domestic threat of groups such as the Provisional IRA during The Troubles. In 1999, with that risk greatly abated, Evans moved to G-Branch, ^[3] the section of MI5 which deals with international terrorism. There he became an expert on al-Qaeda^[4] and other branches of Islamic terrorism. He rose to head the section in 2001 (only a few days before the September 11, 2001 attacks), a position which put him on the service's board of management. In 2005, he became Deputy Director-General before being promoted to head the organisation in 2007. In November 2007 he talked publicly about the threat the UK faces from digital espionage.^[5]