Nationality British Name Dick Franks Spouse Rachel Ward | Children One son, two daughters | |
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Service Secret Intelligence Service (SIS/MI6) Died October 12, 2008, Aldeburgh, United Kingdom Awards Order of St Michael and St George | ||
Sir Arthur Temple "Dick" Franks KCMG (13 July 1920 – 12 October 2008) was Head of the British Secret Intelligence Service from 1979 to 1982.
Career
Educated at Rugby School and Queen's College, Oxford, Franks was commissioned into the Royal Corps of Signals in 1940. He became an Intelligence officer in the Western Desert and then joined the Special Operations Executive.
After the War he briefly worked for the Daily Mirror before joining the Secret Intelligence Service in 1946. He became involved in Operation Boot, a plan to overthrow Mohammad Mosaddegh, the nationalistic Iranian Prime Minister in 1953. He was posted to Bonn in 1962 and was promoted to Deputy Chief in 1977. He was appointed Chief of the Service in 1978, in place of Brian Stewart, the Director of Support Services.
He lived at Aldeburgh in Suffolk.