Eliza Knowlittle?

So just in time for the memoir then?

I don't know, you wait for years for a spy to exit the fold and now they're clambering all over each other to go public.

You wouldn't have seen M behaving like that. I thought this was supposed to be the "secret" service.

But to return to the point in question, Manningham-Buller expects us to believe that as MI5 director general from 2004-7 she was totally unaware of her employees' complicity in kidnap, torture and abuse around the world.

Her claims that the CIA was "very keen that people like us did not discover what they were doing" regarding the torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and, by implication, other abuse against British citizens is farcical on every level.

This is a woman who, prior to getting the top job, worked specifically in counter-terrorism and had been a liaison officer in Washington.

She was also deputy director general of MI5 from 1997 and had been on the management board of the security service before that.

It would be remarkably odd if someone with her track record was not aware of what was going on. Does she not read the papers?

As far back as 2002, in response to an MI6 officer's concerns about the US treatment of a suspect, agents were advised that they were under no obligation to intervene in torture as the victims were not officially in British custody.

That doesn't strike me as something you would just dash off randomly and circulate to every agent in the service on the off-chance they may encounter naughtiness abroad.

There have been numerous documented occasions of torture complicity dating back at least as far as 2002 and continuing up to 2006 and beyond, such as the cases of Binyam Mohamed and Shaker Aamer, where MI5 or MI6 officers were present during brutal interrogations or conveniently just before or after.

Reprieve has described the British spooks' involvement as pushing notes under the torture chamber door.

Did the MI5 officers think there was just a blocked toilet in the next room or something?

"Oi mate! It's backing up again, give the handle a jiggle - that normally sorts it out."

Or maybe they thought it was just a particularly rigorous new campaign for a certain brand of shampoo - waterboarding, because you're worth it!

When the former director general claims she was unaware of this, as she did in 2006 in evidence to the Intelligence and Security Committee, it should really raise the question of how qualified she was to be the head honcho of the secret squirrel squad.

She also told the committee that she now regretted not asking the CIA for more details of the whereabouts of Mohamed after he was rendered from from Pakistan to Morocco. Well she didn't need to did she?

She must have known exactly where he was - he was having his genitals slashed with a razor blade and being fed questions by MI5 via his Moroccan torturers.

The government was certainly aware of what was going on.

In 2004 it redrafted the 2002 guidance to field agents, but it's refusing to reveal what the new guidance was.

However judging by David Miliband's claim that to do so would provide "succour" to terrorists, we can probably assume it wasn't a shining example of integrity and defence of human rights.

Another possibility in Manningham-Buller's case is that, in the manner of her namesake Eliza Doolittle, she has reinvented herself to such a degree that she no longer recalls who she was.

Who recruited her? Some Oxbridge academic type named Higgins?