# Has there ever been an Alias type situation? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 15, 2009, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-an-alias-type-situation/506573 "2009-08-15T23:04:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2009, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-an-alias-type-situation/506573/1 "2009-08-15T23:04:49Z")
In the TV show _Alias_, the protagonists mother was a Soviet spy who had been ordered by the KGB to marry a US CIA officer and she did, the union resulting in the birth of our heroine. Has there ever been such a situation in real life? By which I mean a spy marrying and starting a family with the target? While I know of honey traps and sleeper agent, this strikes me as being unlikely. For one it bys starting a family, the agent would put him/herself in a position where they would be unable to take any offspring (with whom they would have developed an attachment) at the time of extraction. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2009, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-an-alias-type-situation/506573/2 "2009-08-16T04:02:52Z")
I’ve read a lot about espionage and I’ve never heard of that. Spy agencies tend not to take _that_ long a view of things, and as you say there’s always the risk that family ties will eventually prevail over nationalistic, institutional or ideological loyalties. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2010, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-an-alias-type-situation/506573/3 "2010-07-04T18:45:16Z")
Has become quite relevent in light of current events I must say. It seems that the Russian spy ring did just what both I and Elendil’s Heir thought they won’t do. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2010, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-an-alias-type-situation/506573/4 "2010-07-04T19:09:28Z")
I haven’t followed the current Russian spy scandal that closely. Did some of them actually woo or marry “targets”? All I heard about was the pair of single Russian agents who pretended to be married to each other. ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2010, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-an-alias-type-situation/506573/5 "2010-07-04T19:16:30Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > Has become quite relevent in light of current events I must say. It seems that the Russian spy ring did just what both I and Elendil’s Heir thought they won’t do. My understanding is that several of the alleged spies were married couples, but I haven’t heard that the spies actually married anyone working in American intelligence. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-an-alias-type-situation/506573/6 "2010-07-05T12:10:10Z")
Even then, the point holds, they would be in the target country for the longest time (near two decades) for many of them sufficient time to form attachments which would interfere with the mission. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2010, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-an-alias-type-situation/506573/7 "2010-07-05T12:21:16Z")
It reminds me of the 1991 British miniseries [Sleepers](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101200/), in which two Russian agents are sent to the UK in 1965, are forgotten about and “go native”. One marries and has three children, while the other becomes a successful stockbroker. When they’re rediscovered following the upheavals of glasnost they go on the run to avoid getting called back. [del]Penis[/del] Hilarity ensues. ---
**Author:** ![Pushkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ee59a6/32.png) [@Pushkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pushkin)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2010, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-an-alias-type-situation/506573/8 "2010-07-06T23:07:05Z")
Vaguely related I guess, a resident of the former East Germany discovered her husband was a Stasi member, who may have married her (depending on whose linked article you believe) in order to spy on her more effectively. [[link 1](http://archive.peacemagazine.org/v10n4p13.htm)]; > [@](#): > > Vera Wollenberger, member of an independent peace group, found that her own husband, father of her two sons, was an agent who had for years informed the Stasi about every detail of her life. He probably married her in order to do so. [[link 2](http://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/12/magazine/east-germans-face-their-accusers.html)]; > [@](#): > > Wollenberger’s file contained reports submitted by more than 60 different Stasi agents and informers. The most complete reports, from an informer code-named Donald, included full accounts of her anti-Government activities, as well as intimate details of her private life. > > Who was Donald? Vera Wollenberger’s reading of the file left only one possible, terrible conclusion. With what she later called “awful agony,” she realized that the man who had betrayed her to the Stasi was her own husband, Knud, the father of her two young sons. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2010, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-an-alias-type-situation/506573/9 "2010-07-07T01:15:51Z")
I would’ve been suspicious from the outset, when he gave me so obviously fake a name as “Knud.” ---
**Author:** ![Rhythmdvl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/85f322/32.png) [@Rhythmdvl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhythmdvl)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2010, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-an-alias-type-situation/506573/10 "2010-07-07T03:00:13Z")
I hear some are taking a reaalllly long view and arranging to have their children here, just so they can get citizenship and cause havoc years later. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2010, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-an-alias-type-situation/506573/11 "2010-07-07T03:56:00Z")
But againt, its pretty risky that new attachments would be formed or are there ways ti ensure they ain’t formed.