THE race to recruit hundreds more MI5 officers to wage war on terrorism has been boosted by “a wave of patriotism”, according to security chiefs.

Thousands of young people have been flooding to join the agency, turning their backs on higher-paid jobs in their eagerness to defend the country.

The Times has learnt that 3,000 people responded in the first week of MI5’s biggest recruitment drive, which would increase the agency’s manpower to its highest level since the end of the Second World War. MI5 has also been given a 50 per cent rise in its budget, to £300 million a year.

The expansion comes after Eliza Manningham-Buller, the Director-General of MI5, gave several warnings about her fear that a terrorist attack in Britain using crude weapons of mass destruction was inevitable.

Whitehall officials said it was likely that out of the applicants so far, only 30 to 40 would be suitable to become intelligence analysts or surveillance specialists. Among those rejected were the substantial number of foreigners who had applied and those discovered to have lied during the interviewing and vetting process.

Intelligence analysis and surveillance are viewed as two of the areas at the top of MI5’s priorities because of the need to mount covert operations against home-grown Islamic terrorists living in Britain. Whitehall officials said although there was no evidence that al-Qaeda had acquired a chemical, biological or radiological capability, it was known from intercepts and other intelligence-gathering sources that the organisation was trying to get its hands on such devices. It is now accepted in the Security Service that the war in Iraq and the subsequent suicide bomb attacks against coalition forces have boosted al-Qaeda’s recruiting power in Britain.

Whitehall officials said yesterday that, despite the urgent need to train more people to become surveillance specialists, there was little chance of recruiting more than about 300 extra staff a year over the next three years.

None of them can be foreign nationals, despite the fact that some British embassies abroad have been approached by people interested in joining MI5. The rule is that an applicant must be a British citizen who has been resident in this country for ten years, although linguists in Arabic and Urdu can be taken on with a shorter residency status.

The recruits will receive an initial annual salary of around £20,000. Asked yesterday why so many people had applied, one senior official said: “They seem genuinely to want to do something to help this country, instead of going for a job with a much higher salary. They’re doing it out of idealism.”

The planned influx of 1,000 more men and women in MI5 may pose a problem for Thames House, the agency’s London headquarters in Millbank, near Lambeth Bridge, as it is running out of space.

The huge exercise of sifting through the 3,000 applications already received is initially being handled by an outside employment firm. Many applicants will be rejected either because they fail the basic qualifications for entry or because they are perceived to have the wrong idea about what a job in MI5 entails.

After the decision last week by the Crown Prosecution Service to drop Official Secrets Act charges against Katharine Gun, the GCHQ Mandarin translator, all potential candidates in MI5’s record recruiting drive will be reminded of the utmost importance of keeping their work confidential.

Whitehall officials said that MI5 staff, like those employed at GCHQ and MI6, were encouraged to speak to special agency counsellors if they had matters of conscience to raise.

MI5 is to employ more vetting staff to cope with the increase in recruits. Every candidate is positively vetted to receive intelligence up to the highest classification, and each member of staff faces further vetting every five years.

Psychologists are used to help in the appraisal of candidates. All successful recruits are warned against covering up any past misdemeanours, including convictions for minor offences.

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