New MI5 Chief Cut His Teeth In Belfast

The rather disconcerting looking fellow below is called Ken McCallum and he is the new head – Director-General to be precise – of MI5, the internal British spying service which now has exclusive control of intelligence operations in Northern Ireland.

According to The Guardian report on his appointment earlier today:

McCallum has 25 years experience within MI5, spending the first 10 years of his career working on Northern Ireland, focusing on terrorism and the development of the peace process around the time of the 1998 Good Friday agreement.

So he may be well known to quite a few of the players in that pre-GFA period and it would make sense that as part of his learning experience, he was also expected to run agents in one or more of the North’s paramilitary groups.

I don’t know about you but one look from this character and my knees would go wobbly.