THE new head of MI6 has been embarrassed by a major personal security breach after his wife published intimate photographs and family details on the Facebook website.
Sir John Sawers is due to take over as chief of the Secret Intelligence Service in November, putting him in charge of all Britain's spying operations overseas.
But his wife's entries on the social networking site have exposed potentially compromis
ing details about where the couple live and work, who their friends are and where they spend their holidays.
The family pictures show Sir John on holiday, playing Frisbee in his bathing trunks and wearing a Santa hat while on a visit to New York's Central Park.
Amazingly, Lady Shelley Sawers had put virtually no privacy protection on her account, making it visible to any of the site's 200 million users who chose to be in the open-access "London" network – regardless of where in the world they actually were.
There are fears that the blunder may have compromised the safety of Sir John's family and friends.
Lady Sawers' extraordinary lapse exposed the couple's friendships with senior diplomats and well-known actors, including Moir Leslie, who plays a leading character in The Archers. And it revealed that the intelligence chief's brother-in-law – who holidayed with him last month – is an associate of the controversial right-wing historian David Irving.
Immediately after a Sunday newspaper alerted the Foreign Office to the astonishing misjudgment, all trace of the material – which could potentially be useful to hostile foreign powers or terrorists – was removed from the internet.
The move suggests that MI6 or the Foreign Office, which is also responsible for the GCHQ electronic eavesdropping centre in Cheltenham, had not vetted what sort of information Sir John and his family were distributing over the internet.
Despite the security implications, Lady Sawers revealed on Facebook the location of the London flat used by the couple and the whereabouts of their three children and of Sir John's parents.
On 16 June, the very day Sir John's MI6 appointment was announced, she posted 19 pictures of the couple on holiday with their friends in the West Country earlier that month.
Among those who joined the Sawers on the break were actors Moir Leslie, who plays both Sophie Barlow and vicar Janet Fisher in Radio 4 soap opera The Archers, and Alister Cameron, a character actor who has appeared on The Bill and Footballers' Wives.
The Foreign Office has refused to discuss the affair.
