When Sir Alex Younger, a former chief of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service — MI6 — died on 2 June 2026, aged 62, the British media lined up to hail a legendary spymaster: a man who had operated undercover in the field and brought a new culture of openness to his organisation. But behind the glowing tributes lies a far more complex story — one that reaches from the tense days of the Brexit negotiations in Dublin and Brussels, all the way to the dark, hidden history of child sex abuse and intelligence manipulation at Kincora Boys’ Home in Northern Ireland.
While the British media praised Younger for his openness, they completely overlooked his single most courageous act of transparency: a de facto admission of MI6 involvement in the Kincora scandal.
For once, MI6 emerges with some credit regarding Kincora.
1. A CAREER MI6 OFFICER.
Sir Alex Younger died on 2 June 2026. A career officer with MI6, he rose through the ranks to become its chief, a role known as ‘C’. He was 62 years old.
Younger was born in Westminster, London, into a Scottish brewery family. He was the son of Mary (nee Edge) and Nicholas. He was educated at Marlborough college and studied economics and computer science at St Andrews University. He was approached to join MI6 while a student but turned the invitation down. Instead he became a captain with the Scots Guards. The offer from MI6 never withered and he joined the service in 1991 after leaving the army the previous year, after the first Gulf war.
2. THE BALKANS, VIENNA, AFHGANISTAN AND DUBAI.
He went on to serve MI6 in Europe, the Middle East and Afghanistan.
He told an audience at his old university, St Andrews, that his first mission in the field – travelling under a false identity – had been in the western Balkans, in the mid-1990s, where he had helped pave the way for the prosecution of war criminals during negotiations with Serbians:
‘It involved many nights drinking obscure homemade alcohol, piecing together the intentions of the parties to that conflict. I had the satisfaction of knowing that my work, along with that of many others, helped to pave the way for the eventual arrest and prosecution of war criminals.’
Subsequent foreign postings were to Vienna (1995-98) and Dubai (2002-05). His official cover as a diplomat – ‘which my friends frankly regarded as improbable’ – meant that even his three children were not told what he did for a living.
Once called to a meeting with Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, on an island off the kingdom’s coast, Younger discovered him sitting under an umbrella watching a Bond movie.
As The Guardian has observed:
‘There were moments of ingenuity too. As the station chief in Afghanistan during the war against the Taliban, Younger discovered that the country’s president Hamid Karzai enjoyed sweetening his tea with jam, so ensured he had a plentiful supply of his mother’s home-made blackberry variety to give him: one way of competing with the CIA’s lavish security assistance.‘
3. HEAD OF COUNTER-TERRORISM.
After his return to London, he headed up counter-terrorism at MI6. He took up the role in 2009. It involved the preparations for the 2012 London Olympics.
In this role he had to counter a new enemy, an array of domestic lone wolf would-be perpetrators of explosions and suicide bombings influenced by Islamism, as well as hostile state actors such as those of Russia.
Younger was appointed as deputy chief of MI6 in 2012, while it was commanded by Sir John Sawers.
4. MR CHARM.
He succeeded Sawers in 2014.
In a high profile speech in 2016, he said that James Bond would no longer pass the agency’s recruitment process.
The following year he told the Women in IT Awards that the real Q, the head of MI6 gadgetry in the Bond films, was a woman and appealed for more of them to apply to the service. The award ceremony took place at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel in London. It was an ideal opportunity to make a pitch to some of the smartest women in Britain’s IT industry. ‘The real-life Q is looking forward to meeting you and I’m pleased to report that the real-life Q is a woman,’ he told his audience.
Acknowledging he was wearing a tuxedo, he aded that the 007 movie series portrayal of MI6 spies needed to be overcome:
‘It leads to a stereotype which is of a particular kind or a particular sort of person that will join MI6 – whether they’re really posh or going to Oxford or whatever it is. I’m none of those things by the way.
‘And the issue for me is that stands in the way of something that I regard as being so important which is that we can reach into every community in Britain and make sure that we get the people that are the best, regardless of their background.’
After his death, the British media lined up to praise his achievements, repeating one or two colourful stories from his time in the field. In one, he operated under a false identity in the Balkans, wearing a false moustache that came loose in the heat. He had to glue it back on in a public toilet, where the fumes nearly knocked him unconscious. The message was clear: Younger was no desk-bound bureaucrat shuffling papers in Whitehall — he was a man who had faced real danger in the line of duty.
Another tale told of him wandering around MI6 headquarters as ‘C’, stopping to chat with junior officers and analysts, offering encouragement and showing he understood their work.
5. BREXIT ESPIONAGE CHALLENGE.
MI6 is Britain’s overseas intelligence service and a part of the Foreign Office.
Younger had been due to retire in 2019, but his term was extended by a year. The reason? His hands-on leadership during MI6 operations linked to Brexit — operations that included intensive intelligence gathering focused on Ireland. Back then, the future of the UK’s border with the EU had become the most sensitive political issue in these islands, and MI6 was undoubtedly working flat out to understand exactly what was being said in Dublin.
Younger’s political overlord at the Foreign Office for two years, 2016-2018, was Boris Johnson. PM Theresa May had to instruct Younger not to reveal MI6’s more sensitive secrets to Johnson, as he did not know how to keep them.
David Davis, who served as Brexit Secretary for a time, was also subject to the fatwa. ‘Senior Whitehall sources’ told their friends in The Telegraph and at The Daily Mail that
‘information obtained by the intelligence services about the Brexit negotiation strategies being plotted by the French and German governments is being kept from Mr [David] Davis [the then Cabinet Brexit Secretary], and Mr Johnson in case they blurt it out – or foreign intelligence services intercept their calls. Instead, they claim, the details are being restricted to Prime Minister Theresa May, her No 10 officials and senior civil servants. [It] comes just days after it was revealed that Mr Davis had been warned by his permanent secretary, Oliver Robbins, that he should expect other EU member states to spy on his activities.’
The spies were so concerned about David Davis, that they furnished him with a high-tech ‘Faraday’ briefcase to protect his wireless, cellular, GPS and WiFi signals from French DGSE and German BND hackers – at least when he had his devices locked up inside the magic box. Davis also had to forgo his trendy i-watch, which was equally vulnerable and – worse still – could broadcast his conversations with colleagues.
So much for the defensive tactics. What about going on the offensive? Theresa May’s Brexit humiliation in Salzburg in September 2018 – where she failed to secure the support of the leaders of the 27 EU nations to bypass the EU negotiation team led by Michel Barnier – resulted in a thunderous broadside directed at her chief Brexit adviser, Olly Robbins, a former top-level Whitehall spymaster, for this particular failure. Robbins – not MI6 – became the whipping boy ‘for intelligence failures about the mood on the continent towards [the] Chequers [proposal] which led to Mrs May being blindsided’ at Salzburg, according to The Daily Mail. The fact that Younger’s tenure as ‘C’ was extended indicates he was not deemed responsible for the fiasco.
Robbins had served as ‘Head of Defence, Diplomacy and Intelligence Finance’ in the mid-noughties. In 2006, he had become Principal Private Secretary to the PM at 10 Downing Street, a role that involved rubbing shoulders with MI5 and MI6 spooks on a daily basis. He became the Director of Intelligence and Security the following year, later redesignated Director of Intelligence, Security and Resilience – in the Cabinet Office.
An indication of what Younger’s MI6 might have gotten up to can be gleaned from an examination of MI6 operations against its EU allies in recent decades. In the run-up to the Maastricht negotiations, PM John Major monitored his European partners and their security personnel by taking a travelling circus of spies with him to EU summits. The circus was made up of MI6 (overseas intelligence), GCHQ (electronic snooping), and MI5 Home Offce, experts at countersurveillance). Major’s moles bugged hotel bedrooms and restaurants, and purloined data from laptops and other digital devices as various negotiations were in progress. No expense was spared: Major’s squad travelled with him on EU and non-EU summits alike.
And then there was ‘OCADA’, MI6’s most important spy in Germany in the modern era. Richard Tomilson is an ex-MI6 officer and author of The Big Breach (2001). His revelations landed him in prison for breaching the UK’s Official Secrets Act. The UK does not imprison ex-MI6 officers for writing fiction, hence we can take Tomlinson’s incarceration as confirmation of the truth of his claims. One of them was about a German traitor known as ‘OCADA’. Tomilson explained that for some MI6
‘.. Andrew Markham, my IONEC colleague, was selected for [a] slot in Bonn. This was a deep cover job, running MI6’s most important agent in Germany, a high-ranking official in the Ministry of Finance. In return for a substantial salary, OCADA provided five-star CX [i.e. top-level secrets] on the German economy and interest rate movements, enabling the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Governor of the Bank of England to adjust Britain’s interest rates and economy to the best advantage. The OCADA posting was so sensitive that only the ambassador in Bonn and H/BON [MI6 Head of Station] were briefed and no one else in the embassy was even aware that Markham was from the “friends” (FCO-speak for MI6). Markham thus had to learn to become a thoroughly convincing diplomat to fool his FCO colleagues, so he attended the FCO pre-posting training courses in addition to all his MI6 courses, and in order to brief OCADA effectively, he also attended advanced lectures at the London School of Economics and did an extended attachment with the Treasury.’ (Tomlinson 158/9).
Espionage by one Western ally on another created resentment, especially in Germany, where Chancellor Merkel became incensed at the UK-US surveillance of her private communications. She once berated Barack Obama about this intrusion, pointing out that she had suffered the same type of meddling with her privacy when she had lived under Soviet rule in East Germany and had never expected the same from her allies.
No doubt there were many high-level traitors working for Younger in Paris, Madrid and Brussels. MI6 officers were undoubtedly active in Dublin too, trying to work out the thinking of key figures such as Leo Varadkar and Simon Coveney.
6. OUR MEN IN DUBLIN
MI6 has had great success in its espionage against Dublin since the foundation of the state. I have laid out evidence in History Ireland and Village that Thomas Coyne — Secretary at the Department of Justice from 1949 to 1960 — had been an MI6 asset. He was involved in recruiting Patrick Crinnion, a garda officer who was convicted in February 1973 of passing secrets to MI6.
Coyne’s successor, Peter Berry, may well have been one too; certainly, that was the suspicion of a senior Department of Justice official who worked alongside him and was aware of the relationship between Coyne and Crinnion.
A more detailed analysis can be found in my book ‘The Puppet Masters’ and an online update, ‘Nest of Spies’. The latter can be found here: Nest of Spies.
Maj. Thomas McDowell, the driving force behind The Irish Times, was one of MI6’s prime assets in Dublin. He had access to plenty of political information that never reached the pages of his paper, which he undoubtedly relayed to London. See also: Our Man in Dublin. [WebBook]
In the 1970s, 1980s and beyond, a unit within An Garda Síochána carried out surveillance work directly for British intelligence. Some of this involved spying on John Hume and Seamus Mallon of the SDLP in Dublin. See also: MI6 smeared John Hume. He was also placed under MI5 surveillance in Dublin with the assistance of the Gardaí. [WebBook]
I also quoted Kennedy Lindsay, in the ‘Nest of Spies‘ webbook. He was a politician and author with proven access to British intelligence secrets, who noted that British agencies had never lacked sources deep inside the Irish civil service.
Under Younger, MI6’s task was to determine the Irish government’s position on the various challenges posed by Brexit, including what Ireland was saying privately to Brussels — and vice versa.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and other government bodies are acutely aware that their phones are monitored and that sometimes government meeting rooms are bugged.
In the future, I hope to publish details of a highly sensitive bugging operation carried out by MI6 in recent decades — one that targeted the Irish government but was detected and shut down.
The fact that Younger was asked to stay on as chief speaks volumes. It suggests that the level of espionage directed against Dublin, Brussels, and other EU states during Brexit was so sensitive and so complex that no successor could have stepped in, absorbed the background, and taken over responsibility quickly enough.
Younger and his team also worked hand in glove with GCHQ — the UK’s powerful communications intelligence agency — which routinely monitors the calls and electronic communications of Irish officials.
7. CLEVER PADDIES.
Dublin’s response to these sorts of intrusions is clever and unconventional: instead of relying on firewalls or technical security measures, it chooses to fight back with disinformation.
The Department of Foreign Affairs has a long history of feeding carefully crafted information through official diplomatic channels to London and Brussels. Does the British government still believe that Irish officials assume these channels are completely secure? If so, they are seriously mistaken. Back in the 1980s, Ireland used a communications system known as Zenith — one it knew perfectly well had been compromised by British intelligence. Rather than abandon it or make a fuss, Irish authorities turned it to their advantage, sending deliberately misleading messages to the Irish Embassy in London to shape British perceptions and influence their decisions.
These acts of British surveillance are illegal and hostile, yet in modern Ireland, politicians and the media have largely come to regard British intelligence operations as inevitable, almost normal. At this stage, it is hard to be surprised by such behaviour, let alone become outraged. It will fall to historians perhaps a century from now to judge who really won the battle of wits over Brexit: Younger and MI6, or the sharp, streetwise officials in the Department of Foreign Affairs.
I have long suspected — though I have no hard proof — that some of the agents Britain recruited in Dublin were in fact double agents, loyal to Ireland rather than the UK. I spoke at length to a man who acted as a liaison between Craig Smellie, Head of MI6’s Northern Ireland station based at Lisburn, and a prominent figure whom I have referred to in one of my books only as ‘a businessman’. On balance, I do not believe this man was a double agent. He was, in my view, an outright traitor. He died within the last decade, and I have still not decided whether to publish his name. Yet with every new piece of information I uncover, I become more convinced of his treachery. He was so well known in his time that his name would still be recognised in many Irish households — particularly among people over the age of 40.
8. TRANSPARENCY AND COURAGE
After his death, the British media praised Younger repeatedly for his commitment to transparency. Yet they ignored what may well be the most significant – and courageous – example of openness in MI6’s recent history: his cooperation with the inquiry led by Sir Anthony Hart into the abuse of children at Kincora Boys’ Home and other institutions in Northern Ireland.
For decades, the British establishment concealed the truth about what happened at Kincora. The shameful reality is that the home was used as a ‘honey trap’ by both MI6 and MI5, who targeted loyalist politicians and paramilitaries. Compromising material — or kompromat — was gathered, and individuals such as John McKeague (Red Hand Commando leader) were subsequently blackmailed and controlled.
Remarkably, Younger authorised MI6 to effectively acknowledge this truth. Apart from an article I wrote for Village magazine, however, no media outlet in either the UK or Ireland reported the fact.
The Hart inquiry was established after two key witnesses stepped forward. The first was Richard Kerr, a former resident of Kincora and a victim of abuse. Two of Kerr’s courageous welfare workers had previously exposed the scandal to the Irish Independent, but Kerr himself had left the institution and only re-emerged publicly in 2014, appearing on BBC Northern Ireland in a programme presented by Chris Moore, author of two books on the subject.
The second was Captain Brian Gemmell, a military intelligence officer who had worked alongside MI5 in Northern Ireland; he gave detailed evidence about how the agency had halted his inquiries into the abuse at Kincora. Their testimony forced the British government to revisit the scandal and appoint Sir Anthony Hart to chair a public inquiry.
The report that followed is a deeply flawed document — rife with errors, contradictions, and misleading speculation, and it unjustly attacks witnesses’ credibility. Had the inquiry been led by an independent and open-minded chair, the core truth about Kincora could have emerged from the information Younger had allowed MI6 to disclose. Instead, Hart twisted the evidence and turned what should have been transparency into deception. The scale of misrepresentation in his report makes it impossible to believe he was not acting on behalf of some group or institution seeking to hide the facts. It is safe to rule out MI6 itself, given Younger’s cooperation; that leaves MI5, the intelligence agency responsible to the Home Office. While the Kincora operation was originally set up by MI6, MI5 later became the dominant intelligence body operating in Northern Ireland and took over control of the operation at the institution.
9. SIR MAURICE OLDFIELD, CHIEF OF MI6 AND & THE “KBH HEAD”
Through his officers, Younger disclosed to Hart that one of his predecessors as ‘C’, Sir Maurice Oldfield, 1973-79, had been a personal friend of the man who ran Kincora Boys’ Home.
The revelations stemmed from an inquiry MI5 had carried out into Oldfield’s conduct after it discovered in 1980, that he was a homosexual and – in their eyes – had potentially exposed himself to blackmail by rival foreign intelligence services. MI6 reviewed its files on the matter in 2011. Younger allowed MI6 to disclose to Hart in 2016 that MI6 ‘Officer G’:
‘examined four ring binders with material relating to Sir Maurice Oldfield, including the 1980 MI5 investigation. Officer G made the following comments at the start of his note.‘
The note revealed that Oldfield had had a relationship with Joe Mains, the Warden of Kincora.
‘The relationship [Oldfield] had with Kincora boys’ home (KBH) in Belfast and subsequent “rent boy scandal” is, in my view the only remaining potential sensitivity in the papers.
‘The sensitivity being that [Oldfield] may have a link to (by association through his friendship of the KBH Head) of the alleged crimes at the boys’ home. Given the current climate surrounding similar cases, it may at some point emerges as an issue.’ (Chapter 28, Paragraphs 619 )
Just how did Sir Maurice Oldfield, the head of the British Secret Service, get to know the ‘head’ of a small residential home in Belfast for boys, unless he had some involvement with it?
Hart noted that paragraph 5 of the MI6 review paper contained the following comment.
‘More worryingly is the small collection of papers in file three which relate to the relationship [Oldfield] had with the Head of the Kincora Boys’ Home (KBH) in Belfast.‘
Hart concluded that this was not evidence of MI6 involvement in Kincora because Officer G had made a mistake and was merely referring to allegations in the media about Oldfield’s relationship with the ‘KBH Head’. (620)
However, neither MI6 nor the Hart Report have cited any contemporaneous report alleging a friendship between Oldfield and the Warden of Kincora, Joseph Mains, the only man who fits the description of ‘KBH Head‘.
Younger went to work for Goldman Sachs after his retirement.
Younger’s successor was Richard Moore, grandson of an IRA veteran of the War of Independence from Cork.
MI6 is presently run by Blaise Metreweli.
10. RETIREMENT AND REFLECTION.
In retirement, Younger spoke about the psychological impact of the career he had had to rhe BBC’s Today programme in 2023:
‘It is rather wonderful to be in this play that no one knows is even going on in the middle of everyone’s life. That does give you a kick, but at the same time it is incredibly isolating and that compounds and amplifies a lot of doubts and fears and the psychological swings therefore are things you learn to guard against quite quickly.’
Younger also bemoaned the damage Brexit had wrought on the UK. He often appeared on television and gave interviews to the press on the issue:
Younger was aghast at the impact of Brexit. In the interview rebroadcast above, he pointed out that:
‘Putin would’ve been absolutely delighted by our decision [to leave the EU] and so would Xi.’
‘We’ve made ourselves irrelevant.’
‘France has effectively eclipsed us.’
‘Brexit has marginalised us.’
Leading the tributes after his death, then Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, said Younger had ‘led an exemplary life and career’, adding ‘he will be remembered by the many ministers, colleagues, friends and family for his utmost dedication to British public life and protecting our nation.’
In a post on X, the Prince of Wales, who has developed an interest in the intelligence community, said he was ‘saddened’ to hear of Younger’s death.
‘Britain has lost an exceptional public servant,’ Prince William said. ‘My thoughts are with Lady Younger and their family.’
Former prime minister Theresa May, posted on X, that she was:
‘Deeply saddened by the death of Sir Alex Younger – an extraordinary man and dedicated public servant.
‘We worked closely when he was chief of MI6 and remained friends in the years since. The nation owes him a great debt of gratitude. My thoughts and prayers are with his family.’
Blaise Metreweli, the current ‘C’ said he ’embodied my service’s values of integrity, courage, creativity and respect.’
She added: ‘He made a lasting and distinctive contribution to our country and indeed to global security.
The Guardian’s obituary commented that:
Sir Alex Younger, the former head of MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, who has died from pancreatic cancer aged 62, was one of the most engaging and indeed open British spymasters in the service’s 116-year history.
David Burke is the author of four books published by Mercier Press.
These books can be purchased here: