Eliza Manningham-Buller

Manningham-Buller has made speeches to invited audiences containing members of the press, as well as making court statements. On 17 June 2003, at a conference at the Royal United Services Institute she gave her complete backing for the War on Terror and said that renegade scientists had given terror groups information needed to create chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) weapons. She also warned that the threat from international terrorism would be "with us for a good long time", which was why new legislation had been introduced.[23]

On 10 September 2005, she spoke to an audience in the Netherlands about the 7 July 2005 London bombings and her disappointment that MI5 failed to stop attacks, even when in possession of intelligence, because of bureaucratic inertia. She added that "[the] world has changed and there needs to be a debate on whether some erosion of [the] civil liberties we all value may be necessary to improve the chances of our citizens not being blown apart as they go about their daily lives."[24][25]

On 21 October 2005, BBC News reported Manningham-Buller's leaked court statement to the Law Lords regarding methods for collecting intelligence from overseas. This was part of an investigation by the Law Lords on whether Her Majesty's Government should have to be made aware whether the intelligence it is using was obtained through torture. "Experience proves that detainee reporting can be accurate and may enable lives to be saved", she stated, also maintaining that obtaining information from foreign intelligence agencies, which initially enters the British intelligence system via MI6, was vital in fighting terrorism. Regarding the ethics of how and where this intelligence is gathered she stated that "agencies will not often know the location or details of detention".[26]

Her example to support the need for intelligence gathering from overseas was the case of Mohammed Megeurba, an Algerian man who was questioned by agencies in his country. Evidence collected by this questioning led to a raid in London which led to the Wood Green ricin plot being uncovered. Press have speculated that Megeurba was tortured to obtain this information, although Manningham-Buller has maintained neither she nor MI5 were aware of the "precise circumstances that attended their [Algerian agencies'] questioning of Megeurba". She emphasised that, had MI5 requested information regarding how the intelligence had been gathered, its request would have been ignored and the relationship between Britain and Algeria could have been damaged. She concluded by exemplifying the "importance of co-operation between states in countering the threat from international terrorism". Shami Chakrabarti, director of human rights organisation Liberty, commended Manningham-Buller for being "brutally honest" about the activities of intelligence agencies. She also stated that Britain should not "legitimise" torture as a means of intelligence gathering by accepting evidence gained in such a manner as evidence in court.[27] Manningham-Buller stated that the British intelligence services do not ask how intelligence is obtained "because that would make things difficult".[28]

On 23 January 2006, she refused to appear before the Joint Committee on Human Rights in Parliament to speak about "the extent to which the Service is, or could take steps to ensure it is, aware that information it receives from foreign agencies may have been obtained by the use of torture", and "any information which the Service may have about extraordinary renditions using UK airports".[29]

On 9 November 2006, Manningham-Buller gave a speech to the Mile End Group at Queen Mary, University of London as a guest of Professor Peter Hennessy in which she warned that her office was tracking 30 terror plots, and 200 groupings or networks, totalling over 1,600 individuals. She stated that MI5 had expanded by 50% since the September 11 attacks and stood at roughly 2,800 staff. She reiterated her warning that the threat "may — I suggest will — include the use of chemicals, bacteriological agents, radioactive materials and even nuclear technology".[30][31]

This speech came three days after Dhiren Barot was sentenced to 40 years for his part in the 2004 Financial buildings plot in which he had a plan to build a radiological dirty bomb that involved setting fire to 10,000 smoke alarms. In September 2011 Eliza Manningham-Buller delivered one of the BBC Radio Reith Lectures and answered questions from an audience that included historian Peter Hennessy and novelist Ian McEwan.[32]

On 8 July 2008, Baroness Manningham-Buller made her maiden speech in the House of Lords since her resignation. She told the House that she was against government plans to extend the time period for retaining terrorist suspects in the UK from 28 to 42 days. She told peers that she disagreed on a "practical basis as well as a principled one". She criticised the plans for terrorism detention as being not "in any way workable" and emphasised the need for all political parties to work together in finding a solution for dealing with terrorism. Furthermore, Lady Manningham-Buller maintained that "complete security" could never be achieved in a country and that civil liberties were at risk of being compromised if the plans were passed by the House of Lords.[33]

The speech, only 501 words long and lasting only four minutes, attracted praise from other Lords, including Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale, who described it as "outstanding, thoughtful and valuable", but also significant attention in the media, given the Baroness's expertise in counter-terrorism issues. Martin Kettle, writing in The Guardian on 11 July 2008, described it as "devastatingly succinct" and "the fatal shot" which would ensure that the Government's "plans were holed below the water line".[34] James Kirkup of The Daily Telegraph described it as "a huge blow to Gordon Brown's plans to extend the detention of terrorist suspects to 42 days".[35]

Other peers supported Lady Manningham-Buller's stance against the plans, including former Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, former Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer and former Chairperson of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), Lady Neville-Jones. Nevertheless, Lord West of Spithead, who was First Sea Lord of the Royal Navy until 2006 and was then a junior Home Office minister spoke for the Government and implied that more stringent security measures were required to deal with the "unprecedented terrorist threat" to the UK.[36]

Giving a lecture in the House of Lords, Baroness Manningham-Buller said "the government did lodge protests" to its US counterparts once the extent of torture was known. It is the first time that has been said publicly. Asked if she had known of the use of waterboarding and other techniques of pressure while she was Director General of MI5, from October 2002 until her retirement in April 2007, she said she had done, and had disapproved. "Nothing – not even the saving of lives – justifies torturing people ... the Americans were very keen to conceal from us what they were doing [with suspects]".[37]

Baroness Manningham-Buller giving evidence to the Iraq inquiry in July 2010 said the decision to go to war meant that "Our involvement in Iraq, for want of a better word, radicalised a whole generation of young people, some of them British citizens who saw our involvement in Iraq, on top of our involvement in Afghanistan, as being an attack on Islam," she said, before immediately correcting herself by adding "not a whole generation, a few among a generation". As a result, she said she was not "surprised" that UK nationals were involved in the 7 July 2005 bombings in central London. She said she believed the intelligence on Iraq's threat was not "substantial enough" to justify the action. A year after the invasion, she said MI5 was "swamped" by leads about terrorist threats to the UK.[38]