Sir Dick Franks RIP

Kyt · Oct 23, 2008

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article4973918.ece

Sir Dick Franks spent a lifetime in intrigue and espionage, serving with the Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the Second World War and then transferring his talents as a covert agent into a career in the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6).

At different stages in his secret life, he was involved in sabotage in wartime Serbia, engaged in espionage activities in Eastern Europe after the end of the 1939-45 war, and played a role in Operation Boot, a CIA/MI6 plot in 1953 to overthrow Mohammed Mossadeq, the nationalistic Iranian Prime Minister, which led to the restoration of the young Shah of Iran to the throne.

Franks succeeded Sir Maurice Oldfield as Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service and introduced a more collegiate approach to the top espionage appointment, traditionally viewed as a somewhat aloof position.

Arthur Temple Franks, who was known as Dickie within SIS, was born in 1920 and educated at Rugby School and Queen’s College, Oxford where he took a wartime degree in law. He joined the Royal Corps of Signals in 1940 but was later commissioned into the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment.

In 1942 he was posted to the Middle East and became an intelligence officer to the Libyan Arab Force in the Western Desert, and then joined the SOE in Cairo, beginning a wartime role that was to have a lasting impact on him in later years.

In 1944 he was parachuted into the Danube area of Serbia in command of a small group of naval saboteurs. His mission was to collect intelligence on enemy traffic on the Danube and to mount attacks on it.

Franks led a number of courageous and highly successful actions against German shipping and he continued to operate there until the Soviet Army reached the Danube, when his group was evacuated through Bulgaria.

Franks was one of thousands of service personnel who were drafted into the so-called Control Commission for Germany at the end of the war on which were represented all the major Allied powers. The commission was used as an umbrella organisation to cover multiple tasks, not least of which for the West was to gather intelligence in Eastern Europe to keep abreast of Moscow’s sweeping influence.

He worked for a group called the planning and evaluation unit, a front name for an espionage team of about 80 intelligence officers, and he quickly acquired a reputation for being a professional and competent spy.

He was demobilised in 1946 and worked for the Daily Mirror as a sub-editor, but in 1949 he went back to what he knew best and joined SIS. His first overseas posting as a spy was to Cyprus in 1952 where he was a member of the British Middle East Office. It was from there that he became involved in Operation Boot, although the principal SIS player was Monty Woodhouse, head of station in Tehran.

President Eisenhower approved the joint CIA/MI6 operation to overthrow Mossadeq in August 1953, partly because of concerns about the Iranian leader’s nationalisation of the country’s oilfields. Although Franks, working from Cyprus, had a relatively minor role in Operation Boot, it was ironic that soon after he took over as SIS Chief, or “C”, 25 years later in 1978, the Shah was himself overthrown in an Islamic revolution in 1979 headed by Ayatollah Khomeini, taking Western intelligence services, including MI6, by surprise.

In 1953, Britain’s diplomatic relations with Iran, which had been suspended by Mossadeq, were restored after the CIA/MI6 coup against him, and Franks was sent from Cyprus to Tehran to reopen SIS’s station in the capital. He was put in charge. He remained there until 1956. Throughout his career he retained a close interest in the problems of the Middle East.

He served in Bonn between 1962 and 1966, and after a number of senior operational and administrative appointments was appointed Deputy Chief of SIS in 1977. He then succeeded Sir Maurice Oldfield the following year.

Before reaching the top of his service, he was directly or indirectly associated professionally with two people who were later to acquire notoriety: George Blake, the MI6 officer who spied for the KGB whom Franks supervised when he was head of the Directorate of Production Research, and Greville Wynne, the British businessman who was imprisoned in Russia for spying and was later exchanged for the Russian spy, Gordon Lonsdale. Franks who was his case officer, asked Wynne, a frequent traveller to Moscow, to make contact with the State Committee for the Co-ordination of Scientific Research Work. This organisation was a cover for agents from the KGB and the GRU, the military intelligence organisation, who were spying on Western technology.

When he took over as “C”, Franks remoulded the job, making a special effort of meeting and talking to the staff. His wife, Rachel, also played a part in helping with the welfare of individual staff members. He was a man of disciplined enthusiasm, with a relaxed geniality and quiet disposition, and he was noted for his political sense. He also had a reputation for being an able organiser with a gift for generating loyalty.

He always found time for his family, as well as for the Travellers’ Club in London and for regular games of golf.

He was appointed CMG in 1967 and KCMG in 1979. He retired in 1981 and accepted a job as an adviser to the Wilkinson Group on their overseas marketing of civil protection products.

His wife predeceased him in 2004. He leaves a son and two daughters.

Sir Dick Franks, KCMG, Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service 1978-81, was born on July 13, 1920. He died on October 12, 2008, aged 88
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Kyt · Oct 23, 2008

Sir Dick Franks - Telegraph

Antipodean Andy · Oct 23, 2008

An interesting life that we'll probably never hear some details of. RIP.

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