Dick White
Encyclopedia
Sir Dick Goldsmith White, KCMG
Order of St Michael and St George
The Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George is an order of chivalry founded on 28 April 1818 by George, Prince Regent, later George IV of the United Kingdom, while he was acting as Prince Regent for his father, George III....

, KBE
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...

 (20 December 1906 – 21 February 1993), was a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 intelligence officer
Intelligence officer
An intelligence officer is a person employed by an organization to collect, compile and/or analyze information which is of use to that organization...

. He was Director-General
Director-General of MI5
The Director General of the Security Service is the head of the Security Service , the United Kingdom's internal counter-intelligence and security agency...

 (DG) of MI5
MI5
The Security Service, commonly known as MI5 , is the United Kingdom's internal counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its core intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service focused on foreign threats, Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence...

 from 1953 to 1956, and Head of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) from 1956 to 1968.

Career

White was born in Tonbridge
Tonbridge
Tonbridge is a market town in the English county of Kent, with a population of 30,340 in 2007. It is located on the River Medway, approximately 4 miles north of Tunbridge Wells, 12 miles south west of Maidstone and 29 miles south east of London...

, Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...

 and went to school at Bishop's Stortford College
Bishop's Stortford College
Bishop's Stortford College is a co-educational independent school for day and boarding pupils from the ages of four to eighteen, with a campus located on the edge of Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, England...

. He was athletic in his youth. He was described by Peter Wright as resembling David Niven
David Niven
James David Graham Niven , known as David Niven, was a British actor and novelist, best known for his roles as Phileas Fogg in Around the World in 80 Days and Sir Charles Lytton, a.k.a. "the Phantom", in The Pink Panther...

: "the same perfect English manners, easy charm, and immaculate dress sense." He was, said Wright, "tall with lean, healthy features and a sharp eye". Much as Wright liked White, he felt his move to MI6 was a mistake for both MI5 and MI6: "Just as his work [at MI5] was beginning, he was moved on a politician's whim to an organization he knew little about, and which was profoundly hostile to his arrival. He was never to be as successful there as he had been in MI5." He was appointed Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service in 1956 in the wake of the "Crabb Affair
Lionel Crabb
Lionel "Buster" Crabb OBE, GM was a British Royal Navy frogman and MI6 diver who vanished during a reconnaissance mission around a Soviet cruiser in 1956.-Early life:...

", the exposure of which had damaged Soviet-British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

relations, and embarrassed MI6.
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