Yeah... not a good idea. That's the type of info you might divulge on your deathbed to adult children. Absolutely insane to tell teens while still working there.
This is a different world and I didn't realize how different until I went away to college.
This will lead to family suspecting their mother of cheating or crime.n
Generally not with the proper cover story. Stuff like working as a civilian purchasing agent for the military or other government agency provides an element of truth and can be strongly consistent with the realities of the true job. Travel for purchasing deals vs espionage, etc look the same for the family. Even better is if they actually are involved with the purchasing deals since it makes for a more solid cover.
The Financial Times article is, of course, intended to promote the service to women and it really doesn't hide that fact. You can bet that MI6 reviewed the article before it went to publication and everything in there was vetted a thousand times. It wouldn't shock me if small, fake biographical details were added into the article to obscure who these people really are. We don't know. The fact is, though, that since this piece is probably meant to advertise the service and-- given where it was printed-- it's probably directed at Oxbridge women. That is, women who have more job mobility than most. MI6 wants women to know that they won't be viewed as honey pots and that they can have a family. So the article is probably going to be an accurate representation at some level: since these particular women can leave if they want to, you don't want to misrepresent what they're getting into if you intend to keep them.
The article is a recruiting piece targeting well-educated females; but the same (Oxbridge) females can earn six digits in finance and stay safe, instead of earning 22k and getting shot in Kandahar or stabbed in Najaf. One wonders if that combination of compensation and dangerous job spec attracts reckless or idealists personalities.
Anyone interested in the history of the British SIS can be referred to K. Jefferey's (2010) "MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949" (London: Bloomsbury), which is detailed but of course suffers from selection bias due to the nature of the topic and the fact that the book was commissioned (if I recall correctly) by the organization it describes.
I always found that the pay scale for the security services is the same as the rest of the civil service really hard to justify. Why would I go work at GCHQ if I could make many multiples more, as a starting salary, in the private sector?
Other possibilities: Perhaps the headline pay is low but there’s a ton of special allowances and other benefits that make the whole package competitive. Perhaps, like academics, there’s some gifted people who are a much better personality fit for the civil service rather than FANG culture?
Sure but if you take a student loan in the U.K. starting pay in the civil service wouldn’t even put you above the repayment threshold. I get that there are levels, but unless you have support or a partner the starting pay really isn’t enough especially if you’re in London. Cheltenham or Manchester - maybe.
Really, this isn't about targeting a specific level of education, it's about targeting a specific class.
A key thing to appreciate is that the women in this article, including Rebecca, are not spies. They are civil servants [1] working in a very sensitive area of government. None of them are undercover, or sneaking into Russian bases. It's a sensible precaution for them to keep quiet about what they do, but it's not like their ability to do their job depends on absolute secrecy.
By way of comparison, the US equivalent of Rebecca, who is the deputy to the chief of the service, would be the deputy director of the CIA. The identity of that person is not only public, he has a wikipedia page [2]!
[1] Well, diplomatic servants, but that's basically an alternative flavour of civil servant that exists for historical reasons
While you're right that these folks aren't undercover in the sense that their identities are known, that those identities are linked to an intelligence gathering agency is not known. A lot does happen out in the open and it always has. Being a member of the diplomatic service gives them protection when they're operating in a foreign country. You operate out of an embassy and if you're arrested they usually trade you back to your home country, because diplomatic immunity.
Most spies don't go into forbidden places and physically dig up secrets themselves. It's infinitely easier to get to know someone who already knows those secrets and persuade them to tell.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Five
Or Aldrich Ames:
https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/aldrich-ames
Someone who manages spies is an intelligence officer.
Had her children ever accidentally found out at near any time in their lives, they may have never been able to trust their mother again - severing what arguably should be one of the strongest bonds one can have.
Would you (rhetorically) find it reasonable that she, or anybody with children, is required to live with that thought in the back of their mind? In an occupation she’s otherwise taken an oath (highly presumably) to devote her allegiance to?
I’m not sure. It definitely seems like a question with a hard answer.
That's a real stretch. Anyone with the maturity to understand that information should also have the maturity to delineate between lies for inconsequential things in the sake of national security vs personal lies affecting their lives.
"Between a duty to family & country,"
The logic goes that duties to country are inclusive of duties to family because without a stable country your family is less protected. That's what they say. Whether you agree or not is another matter. Not agreeing means that job likely wasn't for you anyways.
This is all to say, it's highly doubtful that this had the impact to their relationship that you're imagining here.
It's just proof that not all the people are up for this job.
I remeber when my brother spilled the beans on a "family secret" to some close family friends in front of my mother...good that was just a silly thing. Now imagine that could get her fired or worse, cause someone's death.
I wonder if she(or the remaining parent) would find it sensible to share that as well with the children.
> It's just proof that not all the people are up for this job.
It's understood that family members will know to some extent. If nothing else, this is so that they know to be wary of security threats many people would otherwise ignore. She's almost certainly not sharing details of operations, she's instead sharing with her daughters why things are the way they are in their household.
I've said in other comments, this is another world and the concerns here are different. It's not like it is in the movies.
Again, that family members will know to some extent is understood, which is why she felt comfortable admitting it in the interview, otherwise she would have lost her job and the article would have been kiboshed by the security services.
So you likely never had to handle top secret information and couldn't spy his way out of a paper bag, has just declared that one of the most successful spies is a failure.
So typical.