Real-life Espionage Incidents Discussion

[DogSoSmall]

I didn't know if anyone would be interested in this discusssion on Woman's Hour about women in MI5

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/search?q=spooks

It starts at 10:38

I was interested because my daughter went to an MI5 career open day when she was at uni. I say "open". Even to just go along to find out a bit more about the job she had to be invited, fill out some sort of application, and then be accepted for the day. She was told the date, but it was in a location "to be advised". She was given the location just beforehand, and was not allowed to divulge it to anyone (that did make me smile a bit - do you think that little touch was just to make it a bit more exciting for potential candidates?). She was very well behaved and I still don't know where she went or what was said, apart from one thing: apparently the people talking to them insisted that they had "not lost a man since the second world war". Bearing in mind the recent story in London as well as the one in South America I find this quite hard to believe and I rather read it as "we haven't lost a man that we couldn't pass off as an unfortunate accident unrelated to work".

Anyway, the impression that she came away with was that working for MI5 really was a job for young men. Not because of the danger, but because of the general ethos of the profession. The woman in this interview seems to rather confirm that, even though she is clearly treading very carefully with what she says!