What does mi6

My dad went upstairs and got the entire collection of John Le Carre novels and said 'You better read these before your interview'. That was, at best, semi-helpful.

I didn't want them to feel they had to protect me. Jo adds: "I told my now-husband about six months into our relationship, which was an interesting conversation. Most tell people they work in "the civil service" or simply deflect the question.

Jo says some candidates who want to join MI5 come with some very strange ideas. Because if I do - I will'. Jo says: "Because we don't tell people what we do or who we work for, it's not something we would ever say out loud. So it's really strange saying it out loud. John, from MI6, says he's happy with the word spy: "I do think of myself as a spy… that's our job, we're here to do espionage, we're doing it for a good purpose, we're going it to keep the country safe and prosperous, but I do very much identify myself as a spy.

Kate who works with John agrees. She adds: "We deal with secrets, that's our trade, that's what we do. John reveals that MI6 has an annual pantomime, which he describes as "hilarious". When competition does arise, he says it involves thing like "who had the best Bake Off". At least some of the six spies we spoke to did go to Oxford or Cambridge, and because they were using false names it's possible that they're called Rupert.

However, Dia says it's not just an old boy's network. All three agencies are keen to recruit people from diverse ethnic and social backgrounds, especially after they were criticised for a lack of diversity in a parliamentary report earlier this year. Jo says they're "making progress" but that "there's so much more that we need to do". While it's true that visitors to MI5 have to check their mobile phones in with security at the door, staff aren't left totally high and dry.

Especially if they have children. Jo, who is also a mum, adds: "We're never in a situation where a school couldn't contact you if a child is poorly. I don't think I'd be able to come to work if my child was ill and I couldn't be contacted. Jo says: "It's actually quite nice not having a mobile phone all the time.

You get used to it. It's entertainment. That's why it's so popular. But yeah there are moments where you just want to, like, smash the TV screen and you're just like 'no that's not true! Click here to listen to Radio 5 Live's Nihal Arthanayake's interview with the spies, recorded at MI5's private museum, in central London. MI6's mission to recruit spies in cinemas. Send a query. Lucky dip. Any answers? Nooks and crannies. Semantic enigmas. The body beautiful.

Red tape, white lies. Speculative science. This sceptred isle. Root of all evil. Ethical conundrums. This sporting life. Stage and screen. Birds and the bees. But I'm not sure which one is which. I also think that some of the other numbers may have been active in intelligence and of the like during the world wars. Conspiracy theorists will have you believe that there is still a clandestine MI7 dealing with matters extraterrestrial.

Interestingly, that makes James Bond a member of MI6. Crudely, MI6 are "our" spies while MI5 is there to catch "their" spies. It gets a little more complicated in that MI6 has its own "counter-intelligence" section. The former is responsible to the Home Office and the latter to the Foreign Office. John Burnes, Manchester Lancashire MI5 investigates matters of national security in the UK investigates terrorists, counterinsurgency, etc.

Equivalent to the US's CIA Central Intelligence Agency NCIS national criminal investigation squad are top ranking police officers dealing with high profile crimes, and have little to do with intelligence, though often co-operate with intelligence agencies for practical reasons.

Equivalent to FBI. NCIS is the National Criminal Intelligence Service, and far from being merely "top ranking police officers dealing with high profile crimes" it busies itself with identifying new criminal trends, acting as a clearing house for information from police forces around the UK, and liaising with Interpol, Europol, and various intelligence service around the world.

One of the principal techniques MI9 used was to mail contraband to prisoners hidden in Red Cross care parcels. German money was hidden inside a Monopoly board, and decks of playing cards were sent containing military-grade maps of Germany. See M. As mentioned above, MI-9 was the escape and evasion apparat.

Foot has apparently also written a book on that entity. John C. Watson, Amherst, MA U. They're all coming to get me They kept the same numbers when Military Intelligence was formed. I think that MI7 dealt with censorship. The author says that the whole series has now been replaced anyway. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the US Intelligence services and is simply the "Federal Bureau of Investigation".

The FBI is a national and federally empowered police force - to investigate crime. They do NOT collect clandestine intelligence or have anything to do with the military. GCHQ collaborates with all the British intelligence services on a daily basis, both cross-checking information or providing useful intelligence for the MI community.

GCHQ regularly recruit analysts, and have large teams who can understand and verify whether information is up to date, or translate documents and coded messages. GCHQ are experts on things like terrorist groups, and can almost immediately decide whether a groups' claim to an attack is genuine. John, London At which time we the british empire have been called upon to defend itself, its allies and dependancies it became nessacery to form a number of departments and agencies.

Do MI6 officers ever carry firearms? I get the official response: "We can neither confirm nor deny that. But another MI6 officer told me: "The idea of having some guy crash-banging his way around the world shooting people up is absolute anathema to us. Someone like that simply wouldn't get in the door. But step back a minute and consider some of the more dangerous parts of the world where Britain's overseas intelligence-gatherers are likely to operate, and it is hard to imagine that if not actually armed themselves, then someone very close to them will be tooled up and watching over them.

Strictly speaking, MI6 officers are not agents. They are intelligence officers who, at the sharp end, try to persuade the actual agents - who could be well-placed individuals, say, inside an al-Qaeda attack-planning cell or a hostile state's nuclear research facility - to steal vital secrets on behalf of Her Majesty's Government. It is the agents who take the biggest risks every day, and it is clear that MI6 goes to great lengths to protect their identities and their families.

So how close does an agent-runner get to their agent, I ask. Can they ever be friends? But there is a category of people that it's our privilege to work with, who, if they were found out to be working with us, would be in grave danger. They could lose their lives, and we take that very seriously from the very first moment of interacting with that person. A lot has happened in the real world of espionage in the six years since the last Bond film, Spectre, in The Islamic State group's self-declared caliphate has come and gone, the deal to contain Iran's nuclear ambitions has all but collapsed and China is making noises about "taking back" Taiwan.

Plenty here to keep MI6 busy. But in an age where almost every action we take leaves a digital footprint, is there still a place for old-school human intelligence, the time-honoured art of persuading some people to help steal other people's secrets?