What is the downside of living an undercover life?

You know I have never really given any personal thought about the downside of undercover life. The best cover is one that you live in a normal manner. Live your cover is what all deep cover operatives are taught and if you do it well there is not much on the downside to worry about. Your personal security depends on how well you adopt your cover to your normal life. As a Non-Official Cover (NOC) Case Officer living under commercial cover as the foreign representative of a real commercial company you have a responsibility to yourself, the Company (CIA) and the company providing the cover to live your cover so well that even when you conduct intelligence operations they are not perceived as suspicious or out of the norm for your daily life. Falter and you may raise suspicion of the local security services and wind up under surveillance or worst yet caught in the act of espionage and arrested without diplomatic immunity. The downside, obviously, is that you lose your freedom, your commercial employer becomes embarrassed at least and perhaps suffers financial or even worse loss because of your "inappropriate" spying activities and the US Government disavows your actions.

On a less serious side, perhaps the downside of a life under cover is that you always have to keep up your guard to live your cover. Watch what you say and do and how you live your daily life. Cover maintenance is a subject all NOC's are taught and refers to doing those things that real employees of your cover company actually do on a daily basis. Blend in to the background, do not stand out from the crowd. Furthermore, you must use appropriate techniques - called tradecraft - to always insure your personal security and the security of the operations for which you are responsible. You can never let your guard down!

Your commercial cover as a NOC Case Officer is seldom actually used to perform agent handling operations. It is used to do such things as spotting, assessment, vetting and development of potential agents but not for recruitment or handling. For agent recruitment and handling you will be provided with a devised cover and an alias. Often Case Officers have several active devised covers and aliases that they use for numerous operational activities. When going from your true name NOC cover to conduct an intelligence activity under the devised cover and alias, you must ensure that you property clean yourself - such as going through a surveillance detection route (SDR) to make sure you are not being followed. The same applies going from the devised cover back to your true name and NOC cover position. So again, part of the downside is having to undertake several hours of trains, buses, subways, planes, walking, taxis, etc for the SDR. You may use two or three hours of SDR just for a short agent meeting, brushpass or deaddrop.

There is an aspect of deep cover life that some may see as a downside and this is the long hours you have to work. As a NOC you have two jobs, one for the cover company and the other for the CIA and both will want a piece of you. You can expect to work 60 plus hours a week to fulfill the needs of both organizations. If you are not up to the long hours, then don't become a NOC officer.

Another potential downside of NOC positions is that you are working on the "outside" of the CIA Station. You do not have access on a daily basis to other Station personnel or the services that "inside" officers receive. If your personality is such that you need to have a close association with others in the business, then a NOC position is not for you. If you have no problems working alone without close supervision, if you are a self-starter, highly self-motivated, then this aspect of the NOC position should not be a downside for you.