Autistic people in service in British intelligence

The BBC has been given rare access inside MI5’s headquarters in London to meet a senior intelligence officer who shares what it was like to discover he was neurodivergent.

Liam was chairing a top-level national security meeting when he suddenly realised something was wrong.

An intense pain developed in his head and he began to lose focus. He tried to keep talking and pay attention to the papers his colleagues were discussing, as his phone lit up with new work messages. But with the pain intensifying, Liam rushed from the room.

“I had a sensory overload and started losing the ability to see,” Liam told the BBC’s Access All podcast. “My colleagues had to come and rescue me.”

Liam - not his real name - has worked for MI5 for many years. He’s travelled abroad and worked on complex investigations - some involved disrupting threats that could harm British citizens.

He had always prided himself on his reliability to get the job done, an essential trait for an intelligence officer. But completing tasks came with huge amounts of stress.

“I would be listening in to a meeting, and at the same time I’d be reading emails, at the same time I’d also be thinking about what I would want to write in a report,” he says.

Liam found it difficult to know what to prioritise and often didn’t feel across the detail in a way that he would have liked.

After the meeting, Liam took some time off from his job and spoke to several specialists. He learned he’d experienced autistic burnout, a state of physical and mental fatigue and heightened stress which had built up over years.

Some days he was relieved to understand what had happened - other days he was anxious about whether he would have to find a new job.

“I struggled being off work,” he says. “I was so tired, there were lots of thoughts running through my mind. I was worried how I would be viewed.”

Despite the anxieties, Liam was supported by colleagues when he returned to work. He was offered sessions with occupational health and well-being teams, and neurodiversity coaches helped him learn how to work with his autism.

He learned about the importance of doing one task at a time, having routines, and having conversations about what to prioritise.

Over time things got easier. Liam joined a neurodiverse staff network and was encouraged to share that he is autistic.

He says he can now see the strength in the way he approaches tasks and describes intelligence work as like solving a complex jigsaw puzzle, where neurodivergent people may be able to offer alternative perspectives, and help plug knowledge gaps.

He says his hyperfocus, attention to detail, and good memory have also proved fruitful in the field.

Keeping secrets is a big part of working for MI5 and only Liam’s close family know what he does for a living, but he says his burnout was never linked to this aspect of the job.

“I keep a lot of information inside," he says. "Keeping secrets is never an issue for me.”

MI5 is a Disability Confident employer, which means it has taken steps to provide equal opportunities to disabled people. It employs about 5,000 people, about 4% of whom are disabled, according to figures released in 2022. The think tank, the Institute for Government, says this is below average for civil servants which in 2022 was 14% and 15.5% for the UK working population.

Historically, security services have found recruiting disabled people and other groups such as black and minority ethnic difficult, but MI5 says it has worked hard to change this. Its latest pay gap report shows a quarter of all new joiners in 2022/23 were from an ethnic minority background, and almost 48% were women.

MI5 did not provide information on how many of its neurodiverse staff end up in senior positions, but Liam says being autistic has not held him back. His promotion to senior manager came after his burnout experience and he says he knows others who have also succeeded in the organisation.

“Some people are on the ADHD side, some autistic and some are highly sensitive," he says. “Being neurodiverse brings strength to MI5.”

Gordon Corera, the BBC’s Security Correspondent, says there is a real emphasis on diversifying staff in the UK’s security agencies.

“It’s partly to reflect the population, to be open to the best people, and also to avoid the ’groupthink’ which comes from only having one type of background or one way of understanding the world.”

He says of the three main agencies – MI5, MI6 and GCHQ – the latter appeared to have more visibly disabled staff “and it’s often looking for people with neurodiversity”.

But adds: “MI5 always looked more diverse in terms of ethnic background and has more women in senior positions.”

Kamran Mallick from Disability Rights UK says UK work culture is evolving with regard to neurodivergent people.

“Organisations like MI5 play a crucial role in leading the way to more inclusive and supportive environments for people with conditions like autism,” he says.

But according to the Office for National Statistics, in 2022/23 only 30% of autistic people were in work.

“Often a lack of awareness and understanding about neurodivergent conditions among employers, leads to misconceptions and insufficient support,” says Mr Mallick.

Liam says he has everything he needs to do his job well and is keen to share his story. But when pressed for information about the social spaces where his colleagues might meet to share their experiences, Liam gives nothing away.

“ I can neither confirm or deny whether there is an MI5 pub.”