Spying is a Risky Business
It used to be that the biggest danger in the sell-out-your-country business was that the contact might be a double agent or you could get caught with your hand in the drop, all John LeCarre possibilities.
Who’d have thought you couldn’t trust the payoff?
The real difficulty with getting caught (or getting out, which is a variation on the same thing) is not going to prison or being hanged or even all those messy tortures, although messy tortures can ruin an otherwise fine time of life. The real difficulty is that they go after your family. That’s par for the course in non-western countries. You do something that’s a no-no or that they even think might be a no-no and suddenly everyone remotely related to you is kicked out of their flat and loses their job. So the risk is not your neck, the risk is the future of aunts, uncles, cousins, grandma and grandpa and their kids.
Makes it hard to recruit. It’s supposed to make it hard to recruit. And because there’s not much else to offer, our CIA …