MI5 recruitment drive draws flood of Islamic applicants after attacks

Telegraph
Aug. 21, 2005

The number of people applying to join MI5 has increased by more than 150 per cent since London was attacked by suicide bombers.

Applications have included a "significant proportion" from the Asian and Muslim communities, according to a Whitehall official.

Before July 7, MI5 would routinely receive about 1,000 applications a week from people seeking a career in the Security Service.

In the weeks after the attacks, however, that number has risen to 2,500, with peaks of interest occurring on July 7, the date of the Tube and bus bombings, and July 21, the date of the failed attacks.

In addition to applications to work in the organisation's surveillance and language unit, many inquiries have come from graduates applying to be "desk officers", responsible for assessing the threat to national security posed by any terrorist group.

MI5 has also been inundated with offers of information, some of which is understood to have led to significant advances in the investigation into the attacks.

On average, MI5 receives between 500 and 650 e-mails a month from the public with offers of help in investigations. That number has risen to 2,500 a month, more than 50 per cent of which contained "very useful pieces of information", according to the Whitehall official.

He said that of the 2,500 e-mails received, only 19 were critical of the organisation.

He said: "The response from the public has been phenomenal in all areas. People want to help in the fight against terror, it's a natural reaction. They want to do something to prevent these attacks from happening again and contacting MI5 with anything they think might be useful is one way of doing that. MI5 has responded to every e-mail, even to the few that have been critical."

The increase in the number of applications comes at time when MI5 is undertaking the biggest expansion in its 96-year history. Eliza Manningham-Buller, MI5's director general, has ordered that the organisation must increase the size of its staff from 2,000 to 3,000 by 2008.

Processing applications can take more than a year because of the extensive security checks that need to be carried out.

MI5 has been operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week since the attacks of July 7. Its personnel have been split into three eight-hour shifts so that it can function at full capacity around the clock.

MI5 is usually manned only by a small team of duty officers outside normal working hours unless it is conducting a covert operation.

The official said that MI5 could sustain the 24/7 operation indefinitely and added that the main problem, at the moment, was convincing members of staff to take leave.

He said: "Morale is very high within the organisation and everyone, from filing clerks to the catering staff, want to play their part in this investigation.

"While that is entirely admirable, it does pose problems. People are being ordered to leave the front line so that they can get some 'down time' so that they don't exhaust themselves. This is the greatest post-war challenge MI5 has faced and it must be capable of meeting that challenge."