The British Mi6 Spy Agency promotes “Q” to be the first female head

Blaise Metreweli has been assigned a new head of MI6, the United Kingdom’s Secret Intelligence Service, and has become the first woman to lead the agency to make spies abroad since its foundation more than a century ago.

Metreweli currently occupies the head of the technology department – a role known as “Q” after Gadgeteer, the mastermind of James Bond – has previously occupied operational jobs throughout the Middle East and Europe.

Its new job will be held in October when the current President Sir Richard Moore stepped down after a period of five years.

Prime Minister Sir Kerr Starmer, who interviewed the final candidates, praised the promotion of Metrole as a “historic date” at a time when the UK faces threats on an “unprecedented scale.”

Metreweli said she is “proud and bright” to ask SIS, and that she is looking forward to continuing her work “alongside brave officers, MI6 agents and many of our international partners.”

in interview With the Financial Times three years ago – in which she was transferred under the name ADA to protect her identity – Metreweli revealed that even in childhood, it was a spy was the only job that wanted.

She said that her first counter -spreading was an opportunity to split with “really deep flag” for nuclear technology, as well as the task of building relationships with agents abroad “who were risking their lives to be able to share secrets with us.”

Metreweli, who studied anthropology in Cambridge, initially applied to work as a diplomat before it was converted into the SIS Employment Path.

His title is Georgy, which reflects its heritage in Eastern Europe. I said by colleagues to be excellent Arab speakers and has extensive experience in the Middle East, including in war areas.

During her 26-year-old intelligence career, Metreweli also spent some time in MI5, the Local Intelligence Agency in the United Kingdom, as head of the Directorate “K”-which supervises Britain’s threats from hostile states such as Russia, China and Iran.

Its background will be especially related to Arabs, given the current conflict between Israel and Iran. However, Britain spies are wrestling with a number of other competing threats.

In a speech last November, Moore said that within nearly four decades of intelligence, Moore said, “The world has not seen in a more serious condition.” He pointed to the return of ISIS and a more assertive and instability that the Russia war in Ukraine is caused.

Metreweli, 47, was scheduled to occupy the abroad this summer, but will now remain in the United Kingdom to become president, a role known to the title “C”.

One of the main challenges is to manage SIS’s changing relationships with the CIA – a traditional closest allied agency – during a period of different security interests during the era of US President Donald Trump.

Since MI6 is a secret organization, the president is the only member of the “declared” pillars, or publicly called, and the agency will not reveal the number of employees with the United Kingdom and its stations around the world.

Metreweli, the first female “C” in SIS’s 116 -year -old history, admitted in her 2022 interview that being a woman was sometimes an advantage when employing sources in this field.

She said: “In the moments when it is decided to become an agent, you have to make thousands of risk -based accounts, but you are not completely sure how to respond emotionally.” “There are no etiquette. It is paradoxes, it becomes a little from the land of no man.” And she said in this “limited” space, women were good in finding a common ground.

However, reality has been delayed by Hollywood’s imagination – it has been 30 years since Dame Judi Dench has first played the president of MI6 in James Bond movie Goldneye.

MI5 was driven by two general managers: Mrs. Stella Remington was appointed in 1992 and Baronea Elisa Maningham-Puller became her head after 10 years. Gina Hasbil, the first director of the CIA, held her position in 2018.

Moore, who promised to be the last “C” to be chosen from a brief list of males, has defended the appointment of a president. In this competition, three women and one man were presented for the interview.

Moore said he was “pleased” because of the appointment of Merioli, describing her as “a very prominent intelligence officer and restriction, and one of our most important thinkers about technology.”

The historical scarcity of female representation has improved in the roles of SIS in recent years. Three of the current four directors below Moore are women: Metreweli, the other head of operations and the third head of the strategy.

Women in the agency are still receiving average salaries of 7.9 percent less than men in rewards, according to gender wage gap data in SIS.

“It cannot be happier” because SIS will have a president.

Ramsey, who was one of the leading women in her regiment, told FT that MI6 “began to be a strange exception among national intelligence agencies” because there was no woman to lead.

She added that there were a number of well -qualified female spies in the agency’s upper ranks over the years, although none of them succeeded in reaching the higher position. “In the end, the glass ceiling was destroyed,” she said.

The name Metreweli was largely preserved from the audience’s eyes, although CMG was given last year for “British foreign policy services”.

House Companies as a partial owners of a real estate company seems to control one real estate in Pimlico, London, via the river from the MI6 headquarters. This is not its current title, according to the people familiar with the matter.

foot I mentioned Last week, the selection of the new MI6 head was narrowed into two candidates, one from inside the agency and one from the Commonwealth and Development Office.

They were Metreweli – although FT chose not to name it – and Dame Barbara Woodward, the permanent representative of the United Kingdom to the United Nations and the former ambassador to China.