Director of GCHQ
Introduction __NOTOC__The '''Director of the Government Communications Headquarters''' is the highest-ranking official in the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), a British intelligence agency that specialises in signals intelligence, information assurance and cryptography. The director is a Permanent Secretary, and appointed by and reports to the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs.Though the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has ultimate responsibility within the British government for security matters and the intelligence agencies, the Foreign Secretary has day to day ministerial responsibility for GCHQ. The Director of GCHQ is also a permanent member of the United Kingdom's National Security Council and the Cabinet Office's Joint Intelligence Committee.The role of the Director of GCHQ was outlined by the Intelligence Services Act 1994, in which the director is described as "...responsible for the efficiency of GCHQ". The director's role is to ensure:The GCHQ director has become more publicly visible in the wake of the 2013 global surveillance disclosures. Sir Arthur Bonsall, director from 1973 to 1978, was the first director to speak publicly about his career at GCHQ when he was interviewed by the BBC in September 2013, and Sir Iain Lobban testified before parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee in the wake of the disclosures in November 2013.The director from 1989 to 1996, Sir John Adye, had previously spoken as a witness at the inquest into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in February 2008 to deny that GCHQ had any involvement in the tape recordings that led to the "Camillagate" or "Squidgygate" scandals.Soon after taking on the role in 2014, Robert Hannigan authored under his own name an article in the ''Financial Times'' on the topic of internet surveillance.
List of GCHQ directors   Image  Name  Term 1  75px  Sir Hugh Sinclair   1921–1939  Alastair Denniston  1921–1942Operational head 2   Sir Edward Travis   1942–1952 3   Sir Eric Jones 1952–1960 4   Sir Clive Loehnis   1960–1964 5   Sir Leonard Hooper   1965–1973   6   Sir Arthur Bonsall  1973–1978 7   Sir Brian John Maynard Tovey   1978–1983 8   Sir Peter Marychurch   1983–1989 9   Sir John Anthony Adye   1989–1996 10  75px  Sir David Omand  1996–1997 11  75px  Sir Kevin Tebbit  1998 12  75px  Sir Francis Richards   1998–2003 13   Sir David Pepper   2003–2008 14   Sir Iain Lobban   2008–2014 15  75px  Robert Hannigan   2014–2017 16   Sir Jeremy Fleming   2017–2023 17   Anne Keast-Butler   2023–present
See also *Director General of the Security Service (MI5)*Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6)
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