Has anyone met a secret agent or mi5

[Overwhelmed245]

Has anyone met one like do you suspect your partner to be one etc. obviously I know you hear of woman being told the guy there dating works for mi5 but then find out the guy has two lives and another family

I had a friend who had an IT background and couldn’t have social media and wasn’t allowed to talk about what he did for work. He’s very clever and nice, but really wouldn’t give anything anyway. I still have no idea what he does but he seems well paid and happy and he gets to travel a lot.

My Father was interviewed for his University place by one of the famous
Post War Soviet spies.

My Uncle worked in Intelligence during the War - he was a really nice man very funny and quite bonkers, we all thought he was wonderful. (Although he was generally pretty excitable so goodness knows how he kept any secrets !)

A friend of mine works in an 'intelligence adjacent' position. I helped him get the job but I can't tell you no more 😉

Impossible to get hold of as he cannot have his phone with him when he's working. Thoroughly decent guy, I'd trust him with anything.

We strongly suspect an older friend of pils was. In the earlier stages of dementia they said quite a few things, to an outsider it would easily have appeared to be nonsensical, but in their situation probably wasn't.

At the time their long term memory was accurate, and they'd lost social inhibitions, rather than being permanently deluded, and it was quite common for them to share factual details and stories about the past, regardless of the suitability of the audience. They weren't sharing state secrets or anything, just personal involvement and making references to things that were surprising to say the least.

Someone I used to work with had a friend who apparently claimed to be a spy. I met her at said colleague's wedding and when I asked what she did, she said she wasn't allowed to say. It was all clearly a steaming pile of bullshit.

Couldn't possibly comment....

An acquaintance of mine says he worked at MI6 for a couple of months.

I managed someone who got a role in an intelligence adjacent position. Instead of providing a written reference I had a man in a suit come and interview me about her as part of the vetting. He asked lots of questions about how much I knew about her personal life, whether I'd ever seen her drunk on a night out, what her hobbies were. I realised then you have to be pretty boring to be a spy and I have waaaay too many skeletons in my closet

I did meet a group of American Secret Service agents whilst staying in a hotel in the Caribbean many years ago.
Clinton was apparently in the adjoining hotel and there was a gunship out in the harbour.

We all knew they were American Secret Service as they wore polo shirts with American Secret Service on them.

Ah @ExJasper i think the same about my dad! Even though we were in icu and rehab with him before he died!

Yes. One active in MI5 and another who was invited to apply for MI6 but decided against it.

I briefly met someone who was ex CIA years ago, when I was a student in Paris. He was a family friend of some American relatives who were visiting. No interesting story, just after the meeting the relative told us this as a way of explaining their friend's somewhat uptight personality. I don't think it was a joke.

I know someone who worked there, he’s retired and doesn’t go into details of what he did. No reason to think he was a secret spy, he could of been anything within it.

@bythemillpond I love that they all wore secret service t shirts 😄!

AngelicaElizaAndPeggy

I know.🤣 we were very amused at the time. Lots of jokes wondering if they knew what the word secret actually meant.

They had jackets with Secret Service on as well

Yes.. my DH friend, as DH was interviewed as part of the vetting process for the job. DH had been nominated by the other friends doing the vetting interviews unknown to the friend getting the job to check the others were telling the truth and hadn’t been bribed to lie for him ..

He works in IT.. and seems pretty boring if you met him.. there are quite a few colourful skeletons in the closet.

I honestly hand on heart believe my BIL is MI5. My sister (his wife) thinks so too. He is senior in the Police but never discusses work.

My maternal grandad was, he has passed away now but no secrets were ever shared with any of us.

A friends sister was an undercover agent. She was the most non descript drab person I've ever met.

One of my DD’s friends told me her dad was a commercial spy, it seemed to involve flying to and from Geneva frequently listening to pharmaceutical conversations from other passengers and I guess selling that information on, I was very underwhelmed when I met him, definitely not James Bond.

People are vetted at various levels for all sorts of jobs, including IT jobs where they will have access to certain levels of info. It sounds like an enhanced DV interview. That does not mean he was in Mi5, it really does just sound like he works in an IT role tbh

Yep - this. I work in a uni and often actually as referee for our students. I did one of the enhanced interviews last year and was asked all sorts of questions about the applicant: who their friends were, hobbies, background, political persuasion .... most of which I couldn't answer!

The job was IT / Cyber security at GCHQ.