# Richard Moore (diplomat)

Sir Richard Peter Moore KCMG (born 9 May 1963) is a British civil servant, currently chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and formerly Director General for Political Affairs, at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, and previously the British ambassador to Turkey.

## Education

Moore attended St George's College, Weybridge, an independent school in Surrey. Afterwards, he studied philosophy, politics and economics at Worcester College, Oxford, where he graduated as a Bachelor of Arts. He then won a Kennedy Scholarship to study at the Kennedy School of Government in Harvard University. In 2007, he attended the Stanford Executive Program.

## Career

Moore who had a strong interest in international affairs from growing up in both Libya and Sri Lanka as a child, applied upon leaving university to be a journalist with the BBC World Service but did not get in. He was then recruited to MI6 as an intelligence officer. He was posted to Vietnam in 1988, Turkey from 1989 to 1992, which included language training, in London as Desk Officer for Iran from 1992 to 1995, Pakistan from 1995 to 1998 and Malaysia from 2001 to 2005.
Transitioning to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and His Majesty's Diplomatic Service. Moore's first prominent appointment outside of MI6 was as Ambassador of the United Kingdom to Turkey. He held this post from 2014 to 2017. He spent a short period of time on secondment to the Cabinet Office working as Deputy National Security Advisor (Intelligence, Security and Resilience) in 2018. He then became Director-General, Political in the FCDO from 2018 until August 2020. On the 29 July 2020, it was announced that Moore would become Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) in autumn 2020. He took up this position on the 1 October of the same year.
Moore was the first member of the British secret service to openly use X (formerly Twitter), when on 2 October 2020 his tweets from his first day as Chief of MI6 made the news for their humorous hashtags and emojis.
On 5 May 2021 Moore announced that MI6 had begun "green spying" to investigate secretly if foreign nations were genuinely keeping to their emission reduction commitments in order to tackle climate change.
In February 2021, Moore apologised publicly to MI6 officers who were dismissed from the agency under the ban on LGBT staff prior to 1991, and called the policy "wrong, unjust and discriminatory".
In July 2023, Moore stated that the Chinese government and Xi Jinping were "absolutely complicit" in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In September 2024 Moore stated that international world order is "under threat in a way we haven’t seen since the Cold War".
Speaking in November 2024, after the US presidential election, Moore suggested that abandoning Ukraine's war would mean "infinitely higher" longer term costs. He added "If Putin is allowed to succeed in reducing Ukraine to a vassal state, he will not stop there. Our security – British, French, European and transatlantic – will be jeopardised."

## Personal life

Richard Moore was born in Tripoli, Libya, on 9 May 1963. He married Margaret Martin (Maggie) in 1985, with whom he has had a son and a daughter.
Moore's grandfather Jack Buckley served as a soldier of the Irish Republican Army from 1916 to 1922 in Cork, Ireland, and was awarded a medal by Sinn Féin for fighting against British rule.
He is fluent in Turkish. Moore was appointed Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to UK/Turkey relations and Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) in the 2023 Birthday Honours for services to national security and British foreign policy.
Moore was a member of the Garrick Club, but resigned his membership on 20 March 2024.