LONDON — The man in the Facebook photographs seems like your average guy having a little fun. Here he is in a festive scene at a park, gamely wearing a red fleece and a Santa Claus hat. Here he is again, playing Frisbee on the beach in a pair of snug bathing trunks.
Oops. It turns out that this is not a regular person at all. He is in fact Sir John Sawers, diplomat and spy, currently the British ambassador to the United Nations and soon to be the chief of MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service. The photographs, and a great deal more, came from the Facebook page of Sir John’s wife, Shelley. Since their presence was revealed Sunday in the tabloid newspaper The Mail, most traces of the couple have disappeared from the network.
The Mail fulminated that the existence of the now-defunct items represented a shocking breach of security and was “potentially useful to terrorists.” But “it is not a state secret that he wears Speedo swimming trunks,” Foreign Secretary David Miliband declared in a television interview. “The fact that there’s a picture that the head of MI6 goes swimming — wow, that really is exciting.”
