UK’s MI5 looking for ‘handlers’ to turn IS members into agents

Britain’s domestic counter- intelligence agency MI5 is looking for “handlers” who will be deployed to “turn” members of Islamist networks, cyberhacking groups and espionage rings into agents.

Applicants for the jobs, which command a salary of 41,900 pounds plus benefits, face a nine-step qualification process beginning with an online “pre-screening” test and ending with an eight-week “foundation agent-handling course”.

With more than 700 British jihadists fighting alongside the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and an estimated 300 already back in the UK, the recruitment of agents, from “subjects of interest” who are already under surveillance, is seen as vital to combat the threat of terrorist attacks.

The operational intelligence officers, known as “handlers”, will be deployed to “turn” members of Islamist networks, cyberhacking groups and espionage rings into agents, or informants, providing vital information to the security services, The Sunday Times reported. 

According to advertisements to appear on MI5’s website and in the media this week, prospective handlers will learn how to “elicit information and deploy persuasion and negotiation to find the truth and gain...life-saving intelligence.” “The recruitment of agents is driven by leads ?- from among those people we have an interest in, of which there are several thousand,” a senior MI5 manager said, adding that handlers could also help deal with threats posed by terrorists in Northern Ireland, foreign spies and cybercriminals.