I’ve become curious (thanks to, of all things, the current Mary Worth storyline) about just how Witness Protection works. Do protected witnesses just “disappear” from their old lives? Do they fake their deaths? Are adult PW allowed to tell their parents (if still living) that they’re going away or do they have to severe ties without any explanation? Is Witness Protection permanent, or does it end at some point and you get to go back to your old life?
No, I don’t need answer fast… 
Most of the answers are - it depends.
I don’t think they fake deaths, but you do completely disappear from your old life. You’re not allowed to contact anyone outside the program although messages can be sent through the marshalls office to update you on major issues like deaths and illness. ie, your father could contact the marshalls in his location to have a message sent to you telling you that your mother is ill.
In most cases WP is long term although it is voluntary and you can opt out anytime you feel you’re safe. The exception to this would be when you’ve made a deal to testify in exchange for some consideration (usually the forgiveness of your own criminal charges). In that case you would be required to stay in the program until your testimony is completed. It is occasionally used up to trial only when the belief is that after you have testified you will be safe again.
You might be interested in John Partington’s The Mob and Me. Partington set up the federal witness protection program and had to basically make it up as he went along. He personally ran the protection details for a lot of high-profile mobsters.
I listened to the audiobook of it, and my memory is fading a bit now, but I recall how much of his job was trying to keep the mobsters happy and comfortable so they would stay in the program. As I recall, Partington couldn’t force them to stay in the program, and these were tough guys who were often willing to take their chances on the street, so he didn’t want to piss them off. There was a lot of massaging of egos and deflection of crazy requests and so forth going on. One example was a mobster who would ask for all kinds of crazy things, and Partington was reduced to pretending that he forgot so he wouldn’t have to say “No” to the guy. Partington almost comes off as a little bit of an ass-kisser in his attemtps to keep the mobsters happy enough long enough to testify. And Partington didn’t come right out and say it, but to me it sounded like he developed something close to friendship for many of the goons under his care.
Partington spends some time settling old scores, criticizing the direction of the program after he left. He seems like a guy whose creation outgrew him. Anyway, it’s an interesting memoir.
I’ve always kind of wondered how witness protection works for people in jobs where intense scrutiny of your past accomplishments determines your success (in terms of salary level, promotions, etc.). Take academia, for example—universities tend to hire professors, and set their salaries, based on the number and quality of research papers they write. If an upwardly mobile professor suddenly assumes a new identity, then she won’t be able to openly refer to her past body of work when applying for a new position. Would the witness protection program help her find a professorship at a new university? Assuming they were able to get her hired with the complicity of the administration, wouldn’t her new colleagues find her utter lack of past work suspicious? And quite apart from this, wouldn’t she have to start an entirely new line of research, since publication of any continuation of her previous work could easily be traced to her new identity? Does entering a witness protection program as an academic therefore not pretty much doom you to starting an entirely new career? I imagine the same might go for other high-visibility occupations, such as television actors.
My understanding is that in many cases you cannot continue your previous occupation.
The short answer is that those people don’t get in.
Witness Protections does not usually protect law-abiding citizens. A great number seem to be criminals themselves, since those are the people who know can bear witness in court and have the most to fear from reprisal.
I dunno; if I had the misfortune of witnessing a mob murder and was going to testify about it, I’d be just as scared about reprisals whether I were a professor or a mobster myself.
Details on the programfrom the source: the US Marshall’s Service. That site has links to some PDFs which explain some details about how the program works. There’s also as fact sheet, and I find these three data points the most interesting:
[ul]
[li]More than 8300 witnesses and 9800 if their family members have participtaed in the program since it began in 1971.[/li][li]Not one person participating in the program has been harmed or killed.[/li][li]When a protected witness has testified, federal prosecutors have secured convictions in 89 percent of those trials.[/li][/ul]
Caveat: My knowledge of WP comes entirely from In Plain Sight.
Yes, it does pretty much doom you to start an entirely new career. Possibly no matter what you did before, as staying in the same profession will make it that much easier for bad people looking for you to find you.
I dunno; I think if you were in a blue-collar or manual labour job it wouldn’t be so dangerous to stay in the same career. These positions are much more numerous and don’t require you to make a name for yourself in the field, so it’s easy to take on a new identity and blend in somewhere far away.
Does the program pick a new career for you (with a possibility for you to suggest something), do they give you a very short list of choices, or do they just require that your coordinator (or whatever they are called) doesn’t have a panic attack when they see your selection?
E.g.:
US Marshall: “Mr. Doe, as part of your witness protection program, we are sending you to auto mechanics school to learn your new career”
Witness: “Umm, but I’m a health and life insurance benefits adjustor - I don’t know anything about cars except how to turn them on and drive to work.”
US Marshall: “Well, this is the only slot we have open. I might be able to convince the Chief to let you wait until January - we may have a slot available to us at the State Police Academy for a new cadet. Or, I might be able to pull enough strings to let you clean toilets at Parkview Elementary School.”
Witness: “Grr…”
What about when you apply for your new job and the employer runs a criminal history check? First, doesn’t the employer deserve to know that you plead out to a felony in exchange for witness protection? Second, what would show up?
And then what would happen when they ran a social security number history or a credit check?
We have a guy who is in the program because he testified against the mob, he committed no crime himself.
My knowledge of witness protection also comes primarily from In Plain Sight, which, I should stress, should not be taken for a documentary. I believe the FBI crafts a completely new identity for the person in the program, including a new Social Security number, educational history, employment history, credit history, etc. So nothing about your real identity should show up in a background check. Also, most people in the program are not criminals themselves. They are witnesses with knowledge of criminal actions, but no direct involvement in the crime itself. Many are just unlucky people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Also, people are allowed to bring their immediate family, such as wives and children into the program with them.
You should watch more closely… all of the characters in the show are with the US Marshall’s Service. The FBI has nothing to do with the witness protection program. 
But you would only be at risk until you had testified. After that, it doesn’t matter. (Well, the mob could order you hit just for revenge, but they usually don’t bother. Added cost & risk, with little benefit for them.)
And the prosecutor could have you make a video deposition under oath right away. That could be used in court later, even if you are ‘hit’ in the meantime. It will likely influence the jury, probably even more so if you were rubbed out by the mob in the meantime. So as soon as you make a deposition the value to the mob of killing you goes way down.
Isn’t “ordering a hit for revenge” exactly the same thing as “reprisal”?
Years ago, I read an article about Winess Protection in the Washington Post, one of the people they had talked to was a non-criminal who had gone into the program He found out his place of work was a mob front and he went to the authorities and later testified, he complained that he was constantly being treated like a criminal by the Marshals although he had taken risks to do the right thing.
Who is “we?” Are you a US Marshal? Are you an employer of a person in the program?
Criminals, while not always bright, are usually pretty keen abut risk/reward. Once the damage is done, revenge is a poor investment. It’s much more useful to attack someone before they testify.