Ex-Foreign Office chief accused of outing MI6 officer

Tom Hurd (GOV.UK, OGL)

If all publicity is good publicity, Simon McDonald’s publishers must be happy this weekend. The former Permanent Secretary of the Foreign Office has faced right-wing accusations of establishment ‘declinism’ after an interview in which he told the New Statesman that ‘Britain is still trying to play a hard power game, but we don’t have the resources to back that up anymore.’

Meanwhile, the Mail on Sunday has accused McDonald of ‘exposing the son of a prominent Tory as an MI6 spy’ in a book published last autumn, Leadership: Lessons From A Life In Diplomacy.

Only the identities of the heads of the three main intelligence agencies – MI5, MI6 and GCHQ – are publicly acknowledged by the Government, due to the risk that named spies will be targeted by terrorists or foreign intelligence agencies.

It is understood security officials have demanded changes to the forthcoming paperback edition of the book, while no further hardback copies are being printed (Mail Online, 13 May 2023).

The Mail’s claims about official anonymity appear to be inaccurate at least in the case of GCHQ, according to both the agency’s official historian, Tony Comer, and the former head of the National Cyber Security Centre, Ciaran Martin.

While MI6 is undoubtedly the most secretive of the three services, some experts are sceptical about the security significance of McDonald’s revelations. The University of Lincoln's Professor Andrew Defty commented 'If this refers to Douglas Hurd’s son, claims about his career in MI6 have been widely reported for years and @MailOnline wasn’t so cagey about mentioning it when discussing his wife’s death in 2011'.

The identification of Hurd appears to be confirmed by the Google Books edition of Leadership, making a mockery of any future redactions.

Because I was a relatively junior officer with relatively frequent access to the Foreign Secretary, MI6 asked me to brief their new recruits about working at the centre of the FCO. I did my stuff and, in answer to a question, said (something like) Douglas Hurd was brilliant but a bit distant. Unbeknownst to me my audience included Tom Hurd (Leadership ,Chapter Three).

The Mail’s report on the 2011 death of Tom Hurd’s wife, Catherine, included the following passage:

Mr Hurd appeared on a list of alleged MI6 agents posted on the internet in 1999, although the authenticity of the list has been questioned.

The 1999 list was published by the Larouchite publication Executive Intelligence Review. Former MI6 officer Richard Tomlinson has denied allegations that he was responsible for leaking it.

Even allowing for possible elements of disinformation, the list would have put Hurd on the radar of adversary intelligence services decades ago, as would his subsequent career. He served as the Director-General of the Office for Security and Counter-terrorism from 2016 to 2021, and has been a widely cited contender for the leadership of MI5 and MI6.

The current controversy probably owes less to genuine security considerations, and more to the ongoing fallout from Boris Johnson’s resignation, and Simon McDonald’s role in it.