BBC reporter ditches fiance and career for FBI agent

A FORMER BBC Bristol reporter has shocked colleagues by leavingher job and her fiance to marry an FBI agent she met while reportingin Iraq.

Jane O'Brien, who was the West of England correspondent for theBBC until she moved to the corporation's headquarters in London 12months ago, met her husband while she was covering the run-up to thewar.

She was sent to the Gulf on March 20 as part of the BBC's war teamand met the agent in Kuwait.

Ms O'Brien, who had a flat in Bristol which she has now sold,decided just hours before she was due to return to England, followingthe end of fighting, that she wasn't coming back.

Instead, she flew to the USA and they were married in a secretceremony in New York, leaving behind her former fiance, who is amember of the armed forces but was not serving in Iraq, as well asher GBP50,000 job.

A BBC source said: "One minute she was filing reports, the next wewere told she had met some guy and was jacking everything in to go toAmerica." Ms O'Brien, who started work on a small weekly paper inWest Wales, was considered one of the BBC's most up-and-comingreporters.

It is understood that her bosses were delighted with her hard-hitting reports from the Gulf.

A former colleague said: "She was always destined for big things.It is amazing she cast it aside for love." Ms O'Brien's parents, wholive in West Wales, refused to comment.