to think my brother's friend is an MI6 spy?

[faintpinkline]

She has a first class degree from Oxford, a phd from Yale, speaks fluent Arabic and looks completely unassuming - pretty, brunette, petit, always cheerful and friendly. She has a job in some obscure branch of the civil service and is abroad more than she's at home

I've changed a detail or two just in case she actually IS but AIBU to wonder?

I'm getting worried. Husband knows a few x forces types who work in the cleaner side of mercenary work, so he says. They are always off to Afghanistan etc setting up deals. Husband is always jetting off and goes to Pakistan, Asia and Middle East - maybe he is one too!

She may work for something like DfID or she may be a spy . . .

I'm quite glad not many people have mentioned journalism as a cover. That's a bloody irresponsible and unethical lie to tell, as it endangers real journalists (who can hold secret services and special forces to account, so convenient, eh?).

Yes I was going to say she is nit a very good spy if you think she is one.

The spies I know will say "Look, if you ask questions then I have to make a business case for having you shot and you wouldn't believe the forms I have to fill in for that. So let's drop it, shall we?"

I remember when Spooks started - I was really into it. I went onto, I think it was the MI6 website, just being nosy and there was a section on careers and you could fill in a form to request more information. I was just being nosy, as I said, and wanted to see what they sent and what they were looking for purely out of interest.

I was then most surprised to received a letter saying 'thank you for considering applying for a job at MI6. On this occasion we are not going to take your application further' or some such thing. It was one of those moments where you go, 'you what now?!'

Tinker, in my house it's ' I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you'.

Well that explains why I have never been approached to spy for anyone..

I'm obviously so distractingly beautiful that I would stand out anywhere.

Sorry went to do school run, take DD into town to sort out some shopping we needed to do and then went to pizza hut (or maybe I was spying on some unsuspecting and corrupt business man).

I'll never ask her if she's a spy she'd just laugh at me . All she's told me about her job is its something to do with compiling statistics for health service - needless to say I ask no further questions it sounds horribly boring

Hmmm, my friend actually does compile statistics for the health service and never has to go abroad for work. I'd say spy for sure!

Well, if they are working for M16 as spies, one thing's for sure, they won't tell you.

How do you all know these spies? I want one,could be useful mwahahaha

I knew a very senior retired spy while she was doing her post-spying job. She did a pitch perfect batty old lady act and told hilarious stories about the scrapes she'd got into in the "colonial civil service". Never occurred to me for a minute that she'd actually been bugging the soviet embassy in Ulan Bator - I was most surprised when it all came out in her obituaries.

Probably just as well I didn't apply to MI6, I'd clearly be rubbish.

We are all convinced the gorgeously refined, classy but slighty dotty lady who used to live next door to my parents was a lot more than she claimed to be

My dad knew she had been in the Wrens and at Bletchley.

...and that's it really! But she is still here and in touch with my mum.

All these peoole who didn't know that people were spies until they died....

Is exactly like the time my Dad was Santa in the playgroup grotto. I had no chuffing idea, my mum told me the other day in Tescos....

Almost.

I think I once interviewed a spy, well I tried to. She entered the interview room and started off by saying that she had been employed by the Ministry of Defence and her answers would be limited by the Official Secrets Act. It was one if those competency based interviews with set questions and, as I was interviewing with the Deputy HR Director, I had to toe the line.

We started on the questions which were all "could you tell us about a situation where you dealt with..." or "using your past experience describe how you might deal with...". Almost every question was answered with "I cannot answer that question" or "I can't fully answer that". It got really farcical when I had to ask her about handling confidential material just because we'd asked all the other candidates the same question. It was surreal by that point!

It was only when I was outlining my disastrous day to my friend that her husband told me that MI5 often used the MOD for their cover stories.

I knew one or two people who were approached because of their languages at Oxford. In at least one case, because he so carefully made it clear they had declined his services, I'm pretty sure he was taken on, especially when he started to work abroad in an 'interesting' area a few years later.

Of course not everyone is posted abroad - I know of someone else who was generally thought be working at GCHQ near Cheltenham - and there are a couple of other UK sites for the same kind of work as well.

People from Cheltenham who "work in IT" are generally spies so I'm told.

My friend at school, her dad was a retired spy. Had spent the 1950s racing round Berlin from one side to the other.

Oh blimey I know 2 people who work in IT at Cheltenham. One was in my class at school and the other I slept with got to know at university. Apparantly Cheltenham only took on 3 people that year and I knew 2 of them. Never thought of either of them being spies but now you mention it....

I had a flatmate who worked for MI6. She always told people she worked for the Ministry of Defence, and that's who gave her work reference for the flat. I was security checked by them before she moved in and was a bit sulky that I was dull enough to pass without question.
She was shite at confidentiality and told me in the first week when she was pissed. Was always deciding she was utterly in lurve for all eternity with random blokes, so I'm sure she told them too.

My mate who works for an obscure bit of civil service, was at Oxford and was away more than home last year isn't though, he's in Climate Change.

At a wedding my older Drunk cousin was telling me how pleased he was his 19 year old son had been taken on by MI5, that he really owed his brother getting him in. The brother and son seemed right dicks to me! The brother started off as a journo, nuff said!

Actually that may be why the son deleted me from FB soon after, I was always mystified by that till I just added it up now.

Yep, definitely a spook.

Cheltenham not necessarily spies

I don't think she is, she wouldn't be saying civil servant. I say civil servant due to the nature of my job - it is just to avoid the comments/questions

I actually am a civil servant, with the highest security vetting, although not a nudge nudge wink wink "civil servant". Ask her what she does on her overseas trips and what department she works for. Think "compiles stats for the health service" is an odd kind of cover, which makes me think that is what she actually does! Usually it would be working for the Foreign Office or MoD.

There are plenty of civil service jobs which would require you to travel overseas frequently. And plenty of people with Oxbridge degrees (although fewer who also have PhDs from Yale and are fluent Arabic speakers!).

Also, I think lots of people just assume their job is boring to other people, and people do assume that being a civil servant is boring, and so that might explain why she is rather vague about her job - she just thinks people aren't interested.