Richard Peter Moore (born 9 May 1963) is a British civil servant, currently
chief
Chief may refer to:
Title or rank
Military and law enforcement
* Chief master sergeant, the ninth, and highest, enlisted rank in the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force
* Chief of police, the head of a police department
* Chief of the boa ...
of the
Secret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...
(MI6) and formerly Director General for Political Affairs, at the
Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office
The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) is a department of the Government of the United Kingdom. Equivalent to other countries' ministries of foreign affairs, it was created on 2 September 2020 through the merger of the Foreign ...
,
and previously the
British ambassador to Turkey.
In 2020, Moore became the first member of the
British intelligence agencies
The Government of the United Kingdom maintains intelligence agencies within three government departments, the Foreign Office, the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence. These agencies are responsible for collecting and analysing foreign and do ...
to use social media publicly.
Education
Moore attended
St George's College, Weybridge, an independent school in
Surrey
Surrey () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant urban areas which form part of the Greater London Built-up Area. ...
.
Afterwards, he studied
philosophy, politics and economics at
Worcester College, Oxford
Worcester College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. The college was founded in 1714 by the benefaction of Sir Thomas Cookes, 2nd Baronet (1648–1701) of Norgrove, Worcestershire, whose coat of arms w ...
where he gained a
Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...
.
He then won a
Kennedy Scholarship
Kennedy Scholarships provide full funding for up to ten British post-graduate students to study at either Harvard University or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Susan Hockfield, the sixteenth president of MIT, described the schol ...
to study at the
Kennedy School of Government
The Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), officially the John F. Kennedy School of Government, is the school of public policy and government of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The school offers master's degrees in public policy, public ...
in
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
.
In 2007, he attended the Stanford Executive Program.
Career
Moore's notable career has been in the
Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and in
His Majesty's Diplomatic Service
His Majesty's Diplomatic Service (HMDS) is the diplomatic service of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, dealing with foreign affairs and representing British interests overseas, as opposed to the Home Civil Service, which d ...
.
He has had postings in
Vietnam
Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...
in 1988,
Turkey
Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...
in 1990 and from 1991 to 1992,
Pakistan
Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...
from 1995 to 1998,
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
from 1992 to 1995 and
Malaysia
Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...
from 2001 to 2005 where he undertook a variety of roles, including working for the
Secret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...
.
He was the section head of the Security Policy Group at the
FCDO from 1998 to 2001 and Deputy Director of the Middle East from 2005 to 2008.
Moore, more recently, was Director for Programmes and Change from 2008 to 2010, and Director for Europe, Latin America and Globalization from 2010 to 2012.
Moore's first prominent appointment was as
Ambassador of the United Kingdom to Turkey. He held this post from 2014 to 2017.
He spent a short period of time working as Deputy National Security Advisor (Intelligence, Security and Resilience) in 2018.
He held the appointment of Director-General, Political in the
FCDO from 2018 until August 2020.
On the 29 July 2020, it was announced that Moore would become
Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service
The chief of the Secret Intelligence Service serves as the head of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, also commonly known as MI6), which is part of the United Kingdom intelligence community. The chief is appointed by the foreign secretary, ...
(MI6) in autumn 2020.
He took up this position on the 1 October of the same year.
Moore was the first member of the British secret service to openly use Twitter, when on 2 October 2020 his tweets from his first day as Chief of MI6 made the news for their humorous
hashtag
A hashtag is a metadata tag that is prefaced by the hash (also known as pound or octothorpe) sign, ''#''. On social media, hashtags are used on microblogging and photo-sharing services such as Twitter or Instagram as a form of user-generated ...
s and
emoji
An emoji ( ; plural emoji or emojis) is a pictogram, logogram, ideogram or smiley embedded in text and used in electronic messages and web pages. The primary function of emoji is to fill in emotional cues otherwise missing from typed conversat ...
s.
On 5 May 2021 Moore announced that MI6 had begun "green spying", to secretly investigate if foreign nations were genuinely keeping to their emission reduction commitments in order to tackle
climate change
In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...
.
In February 2021, Moore apologised publicly to MI6 officers who were dismissed from the agency under the ban on
LGBT
' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity.
The LGBT term is a ...
staff prior to 1991, and called the policy "wrong, unjust and discriminatory".
Personal life
Richard Moore was born in
Tripoli, Libya
Tripoli (; ar, طرابلس الغرب, translit= Ṭarābulus al-Gharb , translation=Western Tripoli) is the capital and largest city of Libya, with a population of about 1.1 million people in 2019. It is located in the northwest of Libya o ...
on the 9 May 1963.
He married Margaret Martin (Maggie) in 1985, with whom he has had a son and a daughter.
Moore's grandfather Jack Buckley served as a soldier of the
Irish Republican Army
The Irish Republican Army (IRA) is a name used by various paramilitary organisations in Ireland throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Organisations by this name have been dedicated to irredentism through Irish republicanism, the belief tha ...
from 1916 to 1922 in
Cork
Cork or CORK may refer to:
Materials
* Cork (material), an impermeable buoyant plant product
** Cork (plug), a cylindrical or conical object used to seal a container
***Wine cork
Places Ireland
* Cork (city)
** Metropolitan Cork, also known as G ...
,
Ireland
Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...
, and was awarded a medal by
Sinn Fein
In the philosophy of language, the distinction between sense and reference was an idea of the German philosopher and mathematician Gottlob Frege in 1892 (in his paper "On Sense and Reference"; German: "Über Sinn und Bedeutung"), reflecting the ...
for fighting against British rule.
He is fluent in
Turkish
Turkish may refer to:
*a Turkic language spoken by the Turks
* of or about Turkey
** Turkish language
*** Turkish alphabet
** Turkish people, a Turkic ethnic group and nation
*** Turkish citizen, a citizen of Turkey
*** Turkish communities and mi ...
.
Moore was made a Companion (CMG) of the
Order of St Michael and St George
The Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George is a British order of chivalry founded on 28 April 1818 by George IV, George IV, Prince of Wales, while he was acting as prince regent for his father, George III, King George III.
...
on 31 December 2016 for services to UK/Turkey relations.
References
, -
, -
{{DEFAULTSORT:Moore, Richard
1963 births
Living people
People educated at St George's College, Weybridge
Alumni of Worcester College, Oxford
Harvard University alumni
21st-century British diplomats
Ambassadors of the United Kingdom to Turkey
British expatriates in Pakistan
Companions of the Order of St Michael and St George