I had recognized about Alex’s most cancers from the outset, whereas I used to be nonetheless Chief. He handled it along with his customary irreverence and wit. He nicknamed his tumour “Putin”. At one stage he took to sporting a lapel badge bearing the phrases “I am not useless but”. Sarah, his spouse, persuaded him to not put on it to the memorial service of a former agent.
I knew he had turn into dangerously unwell in Boston final week. Even so, it nonetheless got here as a shock to step off a twelve-hour flight to Singapore on Thursday morning and study that he had died. My rapid ideas have been for Sarah and the household. They’d already endured greater than any household ought to once they misplaced their son Sam in 2019.
Alex and I have been virtually precise contemporaries. He was rather less than two months youthful than me. We spent a lot of our skilled lives travelling alongside parallel tracks.
We actually got here to know each other after 9/11, once we have been appointed to our first Head of Station jobs. Alex pipped me to the publish to get Dubai. I bought Kuala Lumpur as a comfort prize.
Because it occurred, each stations turned vital nodes within the effort to know and dismantle the proliferation community established by A.Q. Khan. Working carefully with CIA colleagues, Alex and I discovered ourselves cooperating on one of the vital intelligence operations of that period.
It was throughout that interval that I got here to understand the traits that might outline him all through his profession.
Alex was intensely collaborative. He was aggressive too, however his aggressive instincts have been directed completely in direction of the mission and the adversary reasonably than in direction of colleagues. Underpinning that was a generosity of spirit and a quiet confidence that got here from being completely snug in his personal pores and skin.
That mixture earned him huge affection.
The broader public got here to understand Alex via his media appearances after he left SIS. These of us who had labored with him recognised instantly the qualities the broader public was now seeing: readability of thought, financial system of language and a present for making complicated points intelligible with out oversimplifying them. Few phrases have been wasted. He additionally possessed a splendidly dry sense of humour and a present for the peerlessly judged bon mot.
But beneath the outward affability was a non-public man. In lots of respects Alex was an introvert. His confidence got here not from exterior validation however from self-knowledge. He didn’t have to dominate a room or win each argument. He knew how and when to delegate. The consequence was a relaxed authority that individuals trusted and wished to observe.
These qualities served him exceptionally nicely throughout one of the consequential durations within the trendy historical past of SIS.
As Chief, Alex oversaw a big reorientation of SIS’s counterterrorism effort to confront the rise of ISIS and the risk it posed to the United Kingdom and our allies. The problem was made all of the extra acute by the appalling terrorist assaults suffered by the UK in 2017.
On the identical time, he recognised sooner than many who the hostile-state risk had returned. Alongside CIA colleagues, he invested closely in creating the capabilities of Ukrainian intelligence and safety companions years earlier than Russia’s full-scale invasion introduced the significance of that work into public view.
The tried homicide of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury, and the dying of Daybreak Sturgess, introduced one other defining problem. Alex led the intelligence response that helped drive the expulsion of tons of of Russian intelligence officers working below diplomatic cowl throughout Europe and past, imposing a big and lasting setback on Russian intelligence operations.
He additionally ensured that SIS’s intelligence relationships with European companions emerged intact from Britain’s choice to depart the European Union. At a time when political relationships have been usually below pressure, intelligence cooperation remained robust.
The connection with the United States occupied a particular place in his pondering.
Alex believed deeply within the Anglo-American intelligence partnership and labored carefully with John Brennan, Mike Pompeo and Gina Haspel throughout his tenure. Along with John, he instituted annual gatherings of the senior management groups of SIS and CIA, recognising that institutional belief is finally constructed via private relationships.
He was, nonetheless, equally dedicated to making sure that the connection remained a real partnership. On the uncommon events when he sensed an inclination in Langley to treat SIS as a very succesful vetted unit reasonably than as a strategic accomplice, he would gently however unmistakably appropriate the impression.
Alex additionally recognised sooner than many how profoundly know-how would form intelligence work. The pc science graduate from St Andrews was by no means far beneath the floor. He understood that operations officers wanted to turn into digitally literate – not solely to recognise threats to their operations but in addition to know how know-how might defend brokers and improve operational effectiveness.
His remaining main problem as Chief was Covid. Intelligence providers couldn’t merely shut their doorways and work at home. Operations nonetheless needed to be run, brokers protected and intelligence delivered. The pandemic required a wholesale re-engineering of how SIS functioned whereas persevering with to do its job. Alex led the Service via that interval with readability and compassion.
Wanting again now, what I bear in mind most should not the operations, the crises or the workplaces he held. I bear in mind the humour, the kindness, the judgement and the friendship.
Alex made a profound contribution to SIS and to the nation’s safety. However for these of us lucky sufficient to know him personally, the loss feels reasonably less complicated than that.
We now have misplaced a pal.
Watch The Cipher Temporary’s Interview with Sir Alex Youthful explaining the urgency of the threats dealing with democracies at present within the plain language described by Sir Richard Moore. We’re sending our condolences to the Youthful Household and to Alex’s broader IC household as nicely.
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