People seem to have been killed by this CIA mistake. If it wasn't actually a mistake, but purposefully putting people in danger to protect others, I don't know who would ever agree to be a mole for them in the future
The cases where people walk away unscathed and achieve some proper good instead of long bad prisons, torture or outright execution are miniscule. You can be sacrificed by some bureaucrat which has lower intelligence than you, doesnt care a bit, is corrupt or just treats you as a pawn in some bigger game.
Greater good my ass, its almost never the case, its rather one of above.
Thats why they always go for desperate people, who they manipulate, extort, threaten to harm families etc. Normal balanced well off folks have no business with such, you can only lose.
People become moles for the greater good, usually, or protection. Sometimes it works out, sometimes not.
For example, rumours in the grapevine suggest that by 2013 all the efforts of the various agencies combined managed to plant a grand total of 1 mole into the State Council of China.
That's after 40 years of trying since the CIA office in Beijing was established, and likely hundreds of billions spent trying to secure promotions, favours, pay bribes, etc. Allegedly, the CIA had kept index cards on every prospective career official in China, and the filing cabinets took up a football pitch of floorspace.
This amounted to nothing pretty soon after, which would explain the geopolitical movements since.
Doesn't this describe all armed forces, everywhere, ever?