# What happens to compromised spies when they go home? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 10, 2010, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-to-compromised-spies-when-they-go-home/546208 "2010-07-10T11:57:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2010, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-to-compromised-spies-when-they-go-home/546208/1 "2010-07-10T11:57:40Z")
I know that spys working for foreign agencies are often treated well, note Kim Philby. But what about a country’s own agent who is compromised, by what I mean that the other side knows who they work for. They can’t be active duty spies anymore obviously, but what are there options. 1. Training others? 2. A desk job 3. Pensioned off? 4. Some other government employment 5. Working in espionage (say embassies) where the other sides knowledge is not a handicap or even desired to say put the heat off actual agents. Yes it is inspired by the exchanged Russians. ---
**Author:** ![Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapioca_Dextrin)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2010, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-to-compromised-spies-when-they-go-home/546208/2 "2010-07-10T12:13:09Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > I know that spys working for foreign agencies are often treated well, note Kim Philby. Not according to [Wiki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Philby#Moscow) > [@](#): > > Kim Philby surfaced in Moscow, and quickly discovered that he was not a colonel in the KGB as he had been led to believe, but still just agent TOM. It was 10 years before he walked through the doors of KGB headquarters. He suffered severe bouts of alcoholism. In Moscow, he seduced Maclean’s American wife, Melinda, and abandoned his own wife, Eleanor, who left Russia in 1965. His autobiography, My Silent War, was published in the West in 1968. > > According to information contained in the Mitrokhin Archive, the head of KGB counterintelligence, Oleg Kalugin, met Philby in 1972 and found him to be ‘a wreck of a man’; “The bent figure caromed off the walls as he walked. Reeking of vodka, he mumbled something unintelligible in atrocious, slurred Russian.” ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2010, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-to-compromised-spies-when-they-go-home/546208/3 "2010-07-10T12:35:54Z")
Philby’s alcoholism was well known. But he was given a dacha, a failry high privilage and IIRC he was given the protocal of a senior officer, not the _authority_. As it is, what about the OP? ---
**Author:** ![Indian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c0e974/32.png) [@Indian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indian)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2010, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-to-compromised-spies-when-they-go-home/546208/4 "2010-07-10T16:05:33Z")
_In the bad old days, homecoming spies could expect heroes’ welcomes in Moscow, their faces on commemorative postage stamps and lifelong adulation._ from [BBC.](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/europe/10581574.stm) ---
**Author:** ![Markxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2010, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-to-compromised-spies-when-they-go-home/546208/5 "2010-07-10T19:26:44Z")
They just get new identities and start over. The world’s a big place, it’s not like there is a big blue book of spies you can be looked up in. Unless of course your of the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg fame type of spy ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2010, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-to-compromised-spies-when-they-go-home/546208/6 "2010-07-10T23:15:38Z")
I suspect it has a lot to do with; 1. The Government you worked for. American spies who are compromised can probably expect much more favorable fates than North Korean spies who are compromised. 2. How successful you were in the job. If you served 15 years and provided a boat load of sensitive data, you’d probably be richly rewarded. If you served 15 minutes and were immediately compromised, you’d probably just disappear without a trace. ---
**Author:** ![Declan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecae2f/32.png) [@Declan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Declan)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2010, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-to-compromised-spies-when-they-go-home/546208/7 "2010-07-11T01:58:20Z")
> [@Chimera](#): > > I suspect it has a lot to do with; > > 1. The Government you worked for. American spies who are compromised can probably expect much more favorable fates than North Korean spies who are compromised. > 2. How successful you were in the job. If you served 15 years and provided a boat load of sensitive data, you’d probably be richly rewarded. If you served 15 minutes and were immediately compromised, you’d probably just disappear without a trace. Id say that your second point would probably depend on circumstances. A number of American agents were burned from the get go by traitors, long before their parachutes opened in the late forties. Similarly South Koreans were told to watch for people using outdated or odd phrases , nothing they could really do about it. An example was the movie inglorius bastards, where the english guy was spotted because of his german accent and then nailed with his use of a finger gesture. I would imagine that a North Korean agent would be high on the totem pole , or at least higher than the average guy, for trusting that they are not only, not going to defect when they cross the DMZ, but that they would also either send back the take or attempt to complete their missions. So either the North Koreans keep hostages or those spys are valuable not to ice em. declan ---
**Author:** ![si\_blakely](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d9b06d/32.png) [@si\_blakely](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/si_blakely)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2010, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-to-compromised-spies-when-they-go-home/546208/8 "2010-07-12T14:55:34Z")
Given that these spies were compromised and monitored for many years, their main role will be to tell others what they did, and then state “don’t do that”. 😉 Actually - in the case of the captured French agents involved in the [Rainbow Warrior](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior) affair, they continued with successful careers in the French Security Services. Their handlers/political masters suffered, though. And some of the non-captured agents had travel problems due to outstanding Interpol arrest warrants, long after the political solution had been settled. Si ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-to-compromised-spies-when-they-go-home/546208/9 "2010-07-14T12:01:15Z")
> [@Markxxx](#): > > They just get new identities and start over. The world’s a big place, it’s not like there is a big blue book of spies you can be looked up in. Unless of course your of the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg fame type of spy I would presume that most intel agencies would have such a book, you would want to know who has been burned, who is suspected etc so you can be careful.