Absolutely. It’s just that such a character would fit into the category of former intelligence or security officers or former military men, both of which are categories which the people hiring the PCs are also interested in. However, not all their fellow recruiters will have intelligence or military backgrounds, and some of them, specifically, will be former or current journalists, successful or otherwise.
I’m looking for some background on such characters. What would make it plausible that someone would seem open to recruitment as a candidate for something secretive and publicity-averse, while counterintelligence people could rule out that they were simply agreeing in order to collect enough information for a major scoop?
How do you find people with journalist skills whom you can trust to help you keep secrets from the press and never, ever reveal them, not even in a memoir decades from now?