Stella Rimington

Stella Rimington
Allegiance	United Kingdom
Service	MI5
Rank	Director-General of MI5
Award(s)	DCB
Birth name	Stella Whitehouse
Born	13 May 1935 South London, England, UK
Nationality	British
Spouse	John Rimington
Occupation	Intelligence officer, author
Alma mater	University of Edinburgh

Dame Stella Rimington, DCB (born 13 May 1935) is a British author and former Director General of MI5, a position she held from 1992 to 1996. She was the first female DG of MI5, and the first DG whose name was publicised on appointment. In 1993, Stella Rimington became the first DG of MI5 to pose openly for cameras at the launch of a brochure outlining the organisation's activities.^[1][2]

Early life

Rimington was born Stella Whitehouse in south London, England; her family moved from South Norwood to Essex in 1939, due to the danger of living in London during World War II. Her father got a job as chief draughtsman at a steel works in Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria, and the family moved there and she was educated at Chetwynde School after spending some time in Wallasey. When her father got a job in Ilkeston, Derbyshire, the family moved to the Midlands, where Stella attended Nottingham High School for Girls. She spent her last summer of secondary school working as an au pair in Paris, before enrolling at the University of Edinburgh in 1954 to study English. By chance, she met her future husband, John Rimington, whom she had known from Nottingham.

Completing her degree in 1958, she studied archive administration at the University of Liverpool, before beginning work as an archivist at the County Record Office in Worcester in 1959. In 1963, she married John Rimington and moved to London, where she successfully applied for a position at the India Office Library.

In 1965, her husband was offered an overseas posting as First Secretary (Economic) for the British High Commission in New Delhi, India, and the couple sailed to India in September.

India and MI5

In 1967, after two years in India, Rimington was asked to assist one of the First Secretaries at the High Commission with his office work. She agreed, and when she began, discovered that he was the representative in India of the British Security Service (MI5). Gaining her security clearance, Rimington worked in the MI5 office for nearly two years, until she and her husband returned to London in 1969, where she decided to apply for a permanent position at MI5.

Between 1969 and 1990, Rimington worked in all three branches of the Security Service: counter espionage, counter subversion, and counter terrorism. In 1984, she and her husband John separated, with Stella retaining custody of their two daughters. In 1990, she was promoted to one of the Service's two Deputy Director-General positions, where she oversaw MI5's move to Thames House. In December 1991, she made a visit to Moscow to make the first friendly contact between the British intelligence services and their old enemies the KGB. On her return from Russia, she was told she had been promoted to Director-General.

Director-General

In her first months as Director-General, Rimington was subject to a determined campaign by the British press to identify her. The New Statesman and The Independent had obtained and published covert photographs of her, despite which Rimington oversaw a public relations campaign to improve the openness of the Service and increase public transparency. On 16 July 1993, MI5 (with the reluctant approval of the British Government) published a 36-page booklet titled The Security Service, which revealed publicly, for the first time, details of MI5's activities, operations and duties, as well as the identity and even photographs of Rimington as Director-General.

Stella Rimington retired from MI5 in 1996. She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the Bath (DCB) in the New Year Honours List in 1996.

Post-MI5

Rimington's work after leaving MI5 has been as a non-executive director for companies such as Marks & Spencer and BG Group.

Rimington published her memoirs, entitled Open Secret, in 2001. In July 2004, her first novel, At Risk, about a female intelligence officer, Liz Carlyle, was published. Her other novels are Secret Asset (August 2006), Illegal Action (August 2007), Dead Line (October 2008), Present Danger (September 2009), Rip Tide (July 2011), The Geneva Trap (July 2012) and "Close Call" (2014).^[3] Her novels are part of a tradition of "insider" spy fiction written by former spies in the UK, especially in MI5, going back to John Bingham, 7th Baron Clanmorris, John LeCarre, and Ted Allbeury, among others.

In 2004, she continued her interest in archives, fostered by her early career, through involvement with the Archives Task Force, where she visited a number of archives through the country and contributed to the report for the future strategy of archives in the UK.^[4]

In November 2005 she spoke out against national ID cards.^[5] She has also described the US response to the 9/11 attacks as a "huge overreaction."^[6] In remarks reported in 2009, Rimington expressed concerns that the Brown administration was not "recognizing that there are risks, rather than frightening people in order to be able to pass laws which restrict civil liberties, precisely one of the objects of terrorism: that we live in fear and under a police state.”^[7]

On 5 October 2009 the BBC broadcast a statement from Rimington who claimed that certain MI5 files collected by her predecessors had been destroyed, but without clarifying whether this took place during her appointment as Director-General, or as part of her later involvement with the Archives Task Force.

In 2009, Rimington received an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Social Science from Nottingham Trent University in recognition of her support for openness about the work of the secret service.

She was chair of the judges for the 2011 Man Booker Prize. She and her fellow judges were widely criticised for focussing on "readability" rather than literary quality. Rimington responded during her speech at the Booker ceremony with a "diatribe" in which she compared British literary critics to the KGB.^[8]

Bibliography

At Risk

Rimington's first novel, At Risk, brings her knowledge of spy operations to the thriller genre. Her heroine, 34-year-old Liz Carlyle, an MI5 intelligence officer, receives information that a terrorist threat is imminent, and that it will be assisted by an "invisible" young British woman who can easily blend into the background and cross borders easily. Liz must not only deal with the impending crisis, but she must put up with the patronising sexist attitude from her MI6 partner. Danger lurks constantly for both Liz and the "invisible" woman as their paths come closer to each other. At Risk has received positive reviews with The Telegraph saying, "At Risk is breezily told, seldom pompous, and the plot, though every bit as hokey as you'd expect, winds its threads together very entertainingly.^[9]"

Autobiography

• Rimington, Stella (2001). Open Secret: The Autobiography of the Former Director-General of MI5. London: Hutchinson. ISBN 0-09-179360-2.

Novels

• Rimington, Stella (2004). At Risk. London: Hutchinson. ISBN 0-09-179996-1.
• Rimington, Stella (2006). Secret Asset. London: Hutchinson. ISBN 0-09-180024-2.
• Rimington, Stella (2007). Illegal Action. London: Hutchinson. ISBN 0-09-179722-5.
• Rimington, Stella (2008). Dead Line. London: Quercus Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84724-310-2.
• Rimington, Stella (2009). Present Danger. London: Quercus Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84724-994-4.
• Rimington, Stella (2011). Rip Tide. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4088-1112-2.
• Rimington, Stella (2012). The Geneva Trap. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-14088-3218-9.
• Rimington, Stella (2014). Close Call. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1408841044.

References

1. "First lady of espionage". BBC News Online (8 September). 8 September 2001. Retrieved 26 October 2008.
2. "1993: Secret Service goes public" (BBC News Online: On This Day (16 July)). 16 July 1993. Retrieved 26 October 2008.
3. Spies in history and literature
4. "Listening to the Past, Speaking to the Future" (Museums, Libraries and Archives Council). Retrieved 8 February 2009.
5. "Ex MI5 chief sparks ID card row". BBC News. 17 November 2005. Retrieved 26 October 2008.
6. "Overreaction". The Guardian (London) (18 October). 18 October 2008. Retrieved 19 October 2008.
7. Spy chief: We risk a police state
8. Booker prize 2011: Stella Rimington's broadside against critics was entertaining, for all the wrong reasons
9. Leith, Sam. "An insider job". Telegraph.co.uk. Retrieved 2016-04-13.

External links

• ABC.Net.au, Stella Rimington talks about her life and writing spy fiction.
• BBC.co.uk, 1993: Secret Service goes public.
• TrashOtron.com, Stella Rimington Interview at The Agony Column Podcast with Rick Kleffel on 25 July 2008