A former CIA officer who negotiated with terrorists says she was mistaken as a honeytrap and men accuse her of lying about her old job.

Brittany Butler Jennings, 40, worked as a targeting officer for nine years in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) before leaving in 2014.

Now a married mum-of-three, she previously helped to recruit informants from terrorist groups in Afghanistan and Iraq for American counter-terrorism missions.

Brittany would have to conduct meetings with terrorists and convince them to inform on their own to help the CIA.

She said because she was young woman working in counter-terrorism operations, often stationed in the Middle East, she would be constantly underestimated by terrorists.

Brittany claims terrorists would often assume she was there as a seductress in a "honeypot" operation - but she says this allowed her to catch people off-guard and get more information."

Even to this day, she said whenever she tells men she used to work in the CIA, she says many accuse her of lying - or ask if she was a secretary - and now her aim is normalise seeing women in the counter-terrorism field.

Brittany, from Charleston, South Carolina, US, said: "As an officer, I helped to identify an individual of interest with access to a terrorist group we were targeting - such as the Taliban or Al-Qaeda."

"Then I would be deployed to the Middle East to meet with that individual to see if they would be willing to provide information to the US Government to help dismantle the network."

"You might be able to do this by convincing them their objectives align with yours - they may be sick of the chaos and violence in their country - we want peace there too."

"We would provide them with a salary to be an informant, but it's more important to develop a rapport with the source to understand what they want to achieve."

"It wasn't a quick process - we would have to corroborate what they say, like questioning how they have access to people or information, or asking them to take a lie-detector test or meet a psychologist."

Brittany, who is now a full-time author, joined the CIA in 2006 after being recruited while working as a case officer at the American Embassy in Paris, France, after finishing university.

From then to 2010 she worked on intelligence operations between the CIA's HQ in Langley, Virginia, and Iraq, then did the same between 2010 and 2014 for counter-terrorism projects in Afghanistan.

She said the hardest part of the role would be walking into a meeting with a terrorist, not knowing whether she would be safe.

She explained in 2009 one of her own close colleagues, Darren LaBonte, along with six other members of the CIA, were killed in the Camp Chapman attack - where a suicide bomber entered a CIA base under the guise of providing intelligence.

But one of the biggest hurdles she had to overcome in the role was being a woman working in intelligence - as she says CIA jobs were more typically held by men.

Brittany said she would often be mistaken as a seductress working on a 'honeypot' operation, because she was young and female.

But she said there were situations where it did work to her advantage.

Brittany said: "If they see you how they portray women in intelligence in a James Bond film they won't trust you."

"But there's a delicate balance, because you can use it to your advantage - maybe a source would want to impress you."

"You don't need to do anything, but if they want to impress you because they think you're good looking, go for it."

"They don't really expect you to be as smart because you're young and attractive, and they don't expect you to know a whole lot."

"So you can catch them off guard with your knowledge - I could confront people with information and they would think 'wow, she does know her stuff'."

"Sometimes people don't understand your value and you can use that to your advantage."

Brittany left the CIA after she and husband, Matthew Jennings, 43, had their first child together, a son, who is now 13.

They have since had two more sons, aged 10 and four.

She said even since leaving the CIA, people don't believe her when she explains her former career - because they can't imagine her doing it.

She said: "I have been asked so many times if I was ever involved in a honeypot, but I wasn't, not that I would have wanted to."

"I find the question offensive!"

"Is that the only value you see in me or other women in intelligence? Can't we both care about our looks and work in intelligence?"

"It's unnecessary to assume you're hired because you're attractive."

"Some people say they don't believe I worked there or ask if I was a secretary."

"I talk about this and write books about it now because the female perspective isn't out there and I want to change that."

Brittany, who posts on Instagram under @formerspy1, has written a fiction novel inspired by her former CIA work: https://a.co/d/0cixhrmK