Clive Loehnis

Sir Clive Loehnis KCMG (24 August 1902 – 23 May 1992)[1] was a director of the British signals intelligence agency, GCHQ, a post he held from 1960 to 1964.

Career

Loehnis was born in 1902 in Chelsea, London. His father, Herman Loehnis, was born in New York, but had become a naturalised British citizen and became a barrister.[1]

Clive Loehnis attended Lockers Park School and then became a Royal Navy officer cadet, training at the Royal Naval College, Osborne, and graduating from the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, and the Royal Naval College, Greenwich.[1] He became qualified in signals in 1928 and left the Navy in 1935.[1] In 1938 he returned to the Signals Division of the Admiralty, where he earned the silver oak leaves of a commander before retiring in 1942 and going into the Naval Intelligence Division.[1] When he was demobilised after the war, he joined GCHQ, at that time a semi-covert division of the Foreign Office.[2]

Loehnis was appointed deputy to Sir Eric Jones in 1954.[1] When Jones retired in 1960, Loehis was promoted to the directorship, which he held until 1964.[1] He was knighted in 1962.[1]

Loehnis married Rosemary Ryder in 1929, and the marriage produced a son and a daughter.[1] After leaving GCHQ Loehnis retired to Belgravia, where he died in May 1992.[1]

References
  1. D. R. Nicoll, "Loehnis, Sir Clive (1902–1992), naval officer and civil servant", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004
  2. James Bamford, The Puzzle Palace
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