Britain names MI5 veteran as new spy boss

LONDON, Mar 8 (Reuters) Britain named veteran counter-terrorism officer Jonathan Evans to take charge of domestic spy agency MI5, as it grapples with what authorities call a severe and unparalleled terrorist threat.

Evans, previously number two at MI5, will take over on April 8 from Eliza Manningham-Buller, who announced late last year that she was stepping down.

The 49-year-old classics graduate had been hot favourite to succeed her. He faces what officials consistently describe as a daunting, and growing, array of threats.

Britain suffered Western Europe's first Islamist suicide bombings on July 7, 2005 when four young British Muslims blew themselves up on London underground trains and a bus, killing 52 people.

Since then, authorities say they have prevented half a dozen Islamist attacks, the most recent in January when police foiled an alleged plot to kidnap and kill a British Muslim soldier.

Security sources say yesterday their main focus now is on ''homegrown'' militants, mainly British nationals. A series of recent investigations, including the July 7 probe, have highlighted connections between British Muslims and foreign-based radicals, particularly in Pakistan.

MI5 rates the terrorist threat to Britain as ''severe'', the second highest level on a five-point warning scale introduced last year, meaning that an attack is ''highly likely''. London's police chief has called the current threat ''unparalleled''.

LOW PROFILE The names of MI5 chiefs were once secret -- it was not until 1991, with the appointment of the first woman director-general Stella Rimington, that the government decided to go public.

Despite other modest steps to open up, including the creation of a Web site where budding spies can find out how to apply for jobs, the head of the agency rarely appears in public.

Manningham-Buller made front-page headlines last November with a speech in which she said Muslim militants were plotting around 30 major terrorist attacks in Britain and authorities were tracking some 1,600 people ''actively engaged in plotting or facilitating terrorist acts here and overseas''.

Security sources acknowledge the rapid growth in the number of suspects -- estimated to have doubled since the time of the July 2005 attacks -- is linked to Britain's Iraq war role.

Questions were asked over MI5's failure to detect the July 7 plot, especially when a parliamentary committee revealed last year that two of the bombers had come to the agency's attention on the fringes of a previous investigation.

But it said it was understandable they had not been investigated more deeply, given their peripheral role in that case and the other priorities that MI5 faced at the time.

Evans joined MI5 in 1980, working in counter-espionage and later on Northern Ireland-related counter-terrorism. He will preside over a rapid expansion -- by 2008 the agency will have doubled in size since the September 11 attacks.

Reuters SRS VP0445