John Stephen Longrigg

  General Notes:

MI6 ma n at the centre of the intelligence assessments that were meat and drink to the cut and thrust of Cold War spying Johnnie Longrigg was for 34 years a career intelligence officer in the Secret Intelligence Service, and spent a considerable time after his retirement in a valued consultant capacity. He was an original individual in many respects, not least for being the first non military intelligence officer to be recruited into the postwar SIS, at a time when the service was making tentative steps towards the creation of a peacetime structure staffed by a professional cadre of intelligence officers. Longrigg, as the initial guinea pig, more than vindicated the wisdom of this policy through the exceptional contribution he made in his ensuing career. The older brother of the writer Roger Longrigg, John Stephen Longrigg was born in Edinburgh, the son of Brigadier S. E. Longrigg, who was serving as an administrator in the Government of Iraq at the time of his elder son's birth. Brigadier Longrigg was a considerable authority on the Middle East: it was he who, on behalf of the Iraq Petroleum Company, negotiated the main oil treaties with the Arab rulers during the 1930s. John Longrigg was educated at Rugby, where his arrival as a new boy coincided with that of a new young master, John Bruce Lockhart (who later served with distinction in SIS). Despite the relative gulf in age that divided them, Longrigg and Bruce Lockhart quickly established a lasting friendship, with the latter bearing the responsibility for Longrigg's subsequent direct recruitment into SIS. After Rugby Longrigg went to Magdalen College, Oxford, where his scholarship studies were interrupted by war service. He was commissioned into the Rifle Brigade, and was wounded in Italy soon after being mentioned in dispatches. At the end of the war he returned to Oxford to resume his scholarship. He also played occasionally for the university XV as a scrum half, having won a wartime Blue in 1942. On joining SIS at his second attempt in 1948 - after a near miss at an earlier selection board where he failed to meet the exacting criteria of "those with a scientific or economic background, or a Finnish speaker" - Longrigg encountered the enduring wartime SIS ethos, and he later reminisced with affection about the breed of fellow officers whose response to every operational setback was the all too predictable "not to worry, bash on regardless!". Despite evidently feeling somewhat apart from the core of officers held together by the bond of common wartime experiences, Longrigg persevered with his career, and later acknowledged that he had quickly grasped the fundamental importance of intelligence as a vital part of the Government's decision-making process. This, combined with his belief in what he described as "the supreme importance of luck in the life of an intelligence officer", guided his endeavours in a variety of overseas postings, ranging from Baghdad to Berlin. In Berlin, George Blake was Longrigg's deputy, and the subsequent revelation of Blake's treachery came as a severe blow to Longrigg. His wide operational experience in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Western Hemisphere led to his appointment as a controller of three geographical regions, and his influence on the strategic direction of SIS in the 1970s was profound. A fellow officer once said of Longrigg that he reserved all his energy for the one thing that is important: the exploitation of every available method by which intelligence can be obtained.

Not that he was ever tempted to take himself too seriously. It was typical of him that, when he had left the service, he should have gone to some trouble to ensure that the last three digits of his Blackheath telephone number became 007. In his final official appointment before his first retirement, Longrigg was responsible for directing the complex and rapidly evolving administration of SIS. In this capacity, it was he who emphasised - as his legacy - that the merits of SIS, and the contribution the that the service made to the safety and wellbeing of this country, stemmed from the character of the individuals who have comprised it. It remained Longrigg's firm belief that the actual process of obtaining secret intelligence was, and is, ultimately dependent on human skills and on human will: the interplay of talents and personalities that make the practice of intelligence so endlessly fascinating. It was this conviction that also made him a most vivid writer of SIS obituaries for The Times. Longrigg is survived by his wife, Ann, and by a son and a daughter. A son predeceased him. Johnnie Longrigg, CM G , O BE, Secret Intelligence Service officer, was born on October 1,1923. He died on March 12, 2007, aged 83

  Noted events in his life were:

• Occupation: British Diplomat.

• Honours, 1964. O.B.E.

• Honours, 1973. CMG

John married Living

John next married Ann Virgina Mary O'reilly in 1966. (Ann Virgina Mary O'reilly was born on 21 Apr 1940.)