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Original poster

Has anyone met a secret agent or mi5

230 replies

Overwhelmed245 · 17/04/2021 14:18

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

OP posts:
SisterMichael · 20/04/2021 12:08

@GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER he wasn’t the GCHQ man that was on the news was he? That was very sad.

GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER · 20/04/2021 14:01

No, @SisterMichael.

SisterMichael · 20/04/2021 14:21

I’m sorry anyway, that’s awful Flowers

MrsRockAndRoll · 20/04/2021 16:39

I would love to be a spy Smile

TulipsTwoLips · 20/04/2021 16:49

My mum once shared a sauna with a man who used to be in the KGB

HerRoyalNotness · 20/04/2021 16:57

Someone I worked with claimed he was on a round about way. He kicked off one day as he’d left his computer unlocked (company policy to lock when away from desk) and the IT mgr sent an email from it to another colleague to teach him a lesson. He started whispering about ‘them’ knowing his computer had been accessed and he’d be in ‘trouble’. He also tried to blame the email on me. But he was just a very weird fucker. I resigned because of him and he resigned about 10mins later. Wish I’d taken it back when I found out, sadly I did not and my life trajectory has been on a downward spiral ever since

UneFoisAuChalet · 20/04/2021 17:00

I actually know one!

A good friend’s ex husband works for the ‘secret’ agency in Canada. She’s always known he works for them but has zero idea what he actually does. He tells people he works for the Government in consumer protection.

Obviously she should not have told me but there were certain clauses in their divorce settlement that I found strange and she eventually admitted why. They have a great relationship and co-parent, so her divulging this info isn’t as revenge and we never talk about it because well, honestly, there’s nothing to talk about.

I think he does something undercover because he was away for work a lot (one of the reasons the marriage broke down) and his ‘look’ has changed radically over the years. He had this biker phase - long hair, bandana, Harley - that came out of nowhere, lasted about 18 months and disappeared completely. This was before I knew and I remember telling her that it was ridiculous for a grown man to be behaving like that. And she just shrugged it off.

TonTonMacoute · 20/04/2021 17:07

Yes, friend of my father's was in MI6 for years, during the 60s and 70s but no one realised until the 90s that that's what he had been doing - they thought he was just a bog standard old diplomat who was very unlucky because he was always being posted to China and the Soviet Union.

More recently when I worked in publishing a colleague's son came to work with us for a while, as he was doing Civil Service exams. He eventually got a job with MI5 but it wasn't secret at all. He seemed to spend his time listening in to drug dealers.

He was going to come and have a drink with us one lunchtime, but he had to cancel at the last minute as he was down to play softball in the park with the CIA.

How times change!

Spudlet · 20/04/2021 17:44

A friend works for GCHQ, but I don’t know what she does and I wouldn’t ask. I’ve also been a reference for another friend’s Foreign Office DV clearance.

My dad was approached when he was in the army in the late eighties - he’s Northern Irish so no prizes for guessing what they wanted him to work. I was only a baby, so he turned it down due to the danger.

Yogatomorrow · 20/04/2021 20:26

I grew up around Cheltenham and a few of my friends' dads worked in gchq. I remember one them told me that his dad wouldn't say what his actusl job was, but when i went round his house he always moaned about morons they were at gchq. I never imagined spies moaned about work like us normal people.

Also I lived with guy who's dad disappeared completely when he was a teenager. Apparently they traced him back to russia (?!) and he had been a russian spy under the cover of an irish family man. He would have been deep under cover in county clare in the 1980s! I always thought the story was bollocks but my friend was adamant and then a few years ago it came out about russians living humdrum double lives in the usa. So, who knows.

Evergibbon · 20/04/2021 21:06

My husbands best friend does. We don't know what he does specifically. And we don't ask....

Bralessandfree · 20/04/2021 21:22

Met someone who worked in the CIA...boring fucker.

PrawnofthePatriarchy · 21/04/2021 06:06

@Cowbells - sorry just saw your comment. I met the Yemeni expert at a Reuters party. Reuters would be an odd place to find an academic anthropologist. However it would be a very likely place to meet someone with political or international information interests, like the CIA. And I was supposed to accept that an American academic was spending lots of time in the Yemen - which was very dangerous - plus he just didn't seem like an anthropologist, iyswim. So I just guessed. It was his reaction that gave the game away. Very satisfactory.

Angrymum22 · 21/04/2021 06:28

I know someone who works at GCHQ. Had a couple of friends who were SOE and a friend who was SBS. They don’t broadcast the fact.
I know of one possible spy who probably works for one of the lesser visible MIs. They are not all based in fancy London spy fortresses Wink

Cowbells · 23/04/2021 08:41

[quote PrawnofthePatriarchy]@Cowbells - sorry just saw your comment. I met the Yemeni expert at a Reuters party. Reuters would be an odd place to find an academic anthropologist. However it would be a very likely place to meet someone with political or international information interests, like the CIA. And I was supposed to accept that an American academic was spending lots of time in the Yemen - which was very dangerous - plus he just didn't seem like an anthropologist, iyswim. So I just guessed. It was his reaction that gave the game away. Very satisfactory.[/quote]
Thank you. Great story!

Thatisnotwhatisaid · 23/04/2021 09:46

Yeah, my Mum’s BIL works for MI6. He doesn’t have two families or anything dramatic like that, he has a wife and kids so totally normal. He can’t tell anyone about anything he does at work, including his wife. Just a normal guy, definitely no James Bond Grin.

fourquenelles · 23/04/2021 09:49

Used to train them in another life. Soft management skills rather than rolling across car bonnets type of stuff. Most of them put their trousers on one leg at a time like the rest of us. My sister is convinced I am a secret squirrel because of the work I used to do. I would be useless at it as I overshare!

MagicSummer · 23/04/2021 09:51

Not in MI5, but back in the 60s my uncle lived in London next door to an Embassy 'of interest'. They came and installed listening equipment in my uncle's flat so that they could listen in on next door!

Bythemillpond · 23/04/2021 11:45

Yeah, my Mum’s BIL works for MI6. He doesn’t have two families or anything dramatic like that, he has a wife and kids so totally normal. He can’t tell anyone about anything he does at work

Sounds perfect. Dh can bore me senseless about what he has done at work

CervixHaver · 23/04/2021 15:17

My late Dad was before we were born.

Iwantcauliflowercheese · 23/04/2021 15:32

Yes. I flat shared with an MI5 agent, many years ago. I had to be told as I had to have security clearance to live with her. We regularly had our phone tapped to check on us. Mostly she just went into the office, like anyone else, but sometimes had to hand over things at the tube station with a password. Just like in the films!

DuckyMcDuck · 24/04/2021 11:02

My dad was invited to a job interview whilst at Oxford (1950's). Slightly odd as he hadn't actually applied for a job. He was reading languages and probably on paper looked perfect. He met the guy in a pub and after just one drink the guy said, sorry, not suitable. The fact dad was 6ft 6" and very distinctive looking seemed to be a problem!

He knows it was something along those lines a guy on his course also met a man in a pub and disappeared straight after graduation. The next time they saw him was at a reunion in about 2015 when they were all retired and after a few drinks he was a bit more open about when his job had been!

Ratonastick · 24/04/2021 11:52

I did and had no idea. A lovely elderly chap who lived near us and shared a hobby with my dad. His wife was fascinating as she’d been a 1948 Olympian, but he was very nondescript, though a lovely man. He was vague about his career but gave the impression of a rather dull Whitehall civil service career that peaked at No 3 in the White Fish Authorities or something equally tedious. They had a nice house with a pretty garden in the country, but no signs of anything exciting. He died with little or no fanfare and had a quiet funeral in his home village.

Some years later I read a biography of George Blake then kept reading anything connected. It transpired that this quiet elderly gent was in fact the guy who smoked out several of the Cambridge Spies and had had a spectacular swashbuckling Cold War career across Europe and the Middle East. I’m still astonished when I think about it.

piratepee · 24/04/2021 11:58

I suspect someone, they work in the civil service but are super vague & never ever talk about work. It stands out when the rest of the people I know in the CS don't shut up about work 😆

SuperPixie247 · 24/04/2021 12:11

Yes, an in-law. He travelled all over the world, spoke many languages and was very intelligent. However, he was dull as dishwater and about as unassuming as you can get. He had a shit time of it though as his wife left him and took the kids as she couldn't handle his work and his travel. The divorce was very nasty.
His DM also really disliked his role and he ended up leaving and did something with helicopters.

Another chap I know, not really a friend, designed communication systems for the military. Now he WAS interesting.