Sir Richard Billing Dearlove KCMG OBE (born 23 January 1945) was head of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) from 1999 until 6 May 2004.

He was born in Cornwall and attended Monkton Combe School near Bath and Queens' College, Cambridge. He joined the MI6 in 1966 and was posted to Nairobi in 1968. After being posted to Prague, Paris and Geneva he became head of Washington station in 1991, director of personnel and administration in 1993 and director of operations in 1994. He became chief in 1999.

Dearlove's tenure as the head of MI6, or "C", saw many momentous events for the service:

• 2000 - MI6 Headquarters at Vauxhall Cross is attacked by an anti-tank guided missile.
• 2001 - Service criticised for failing to establish and warn that Al-Qaida was planning anything on the scale of the September 11th attacks.
• The resulting War on Terror, U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and 2003 Invasion of Iraq.
• Tension with the Government over the evidence for war on Iraq. It has been suggested that many within the intelligence community were uneasy that their qualified judgements on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were presented as hard facts in various dossiers (e.g. September Dossier).

Dearlove's successor as C is John Scarlett, the former head of the Joint Intelligence Committee. Scarlett's appointment has not been without controversy, as in his role at the JIC Scarlett worked closely with Alastair Campbell on the "dodgy" dossier that formed the centre of the Dr. David Kelly affair.

Dearlove became Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge on 1 August 2004. He accepted an invitation to join the Trustees of the Cambridge Union Society in 2006.

He is a signatory of the Henry Jackson Society principles, advocating a proactive approach to the spread of liberal democracy across the world, including when necessary by military intervention.

Dearlove is the purported author of the Downing Street memo.

External links

• BBC News: Profile
• BBC News 1999: "New MI6 spymaster named"

1945 births | Natives of Cornwall | British civil servants | British spies | Knights Commander of St Michael and St George | Officers of the Order of the British Empire | Living people | Post-Cold War spies | Alumni of Queens' College, Cambridge | Fellows of Pembroke College, Cambridge