Do you think it's bad when a spy gets killed in a foreign nation? (independent, crime)

[Brandono]

Of course a lot of countries have spies in foreign nations, but if they were to get killed due to their spying do you think it's a bad thing? I know people may call it heartless, but I don't. Far as I am concerned they never should have been spying to begin with.

[nurider2002]

It's kind of hard to feel sorry for a spy, regardless of whom they are spying on or why. You know the risks going in. Sort of like Americans who choose to visit North Korea. If you lack common sense, ain't my problem.

[dothetwist]

What's your point? Shut down the CIA??

[banjomike]

Originally Posted by dothetwist

What's your point? Shut down the CIA??

Yeah. I don't understand the point of this topic.

Foreign spies aren't always spying on us when they are here doing their work. The Russians are spying on the Chinese who are spying on the Germans here on our soil.

It's part of the tradecraft. If a spy wants to dig something up, going to a 3rd country and gaining intel there is often more productive than attempting to crack the security in the mother country.

And since the United States is the center of the world in much of everything that affects the world, this is a natural spot for intelligence and counter-intelligence that might not have much at all to do with us.

If the Russians want to find a weakness in Estonia, for example, it's a lot easier to poke around the Estonian embassy and it's workers here than it is in Estonia. Estonia is a former unwilling member of the Communist bloc that went independent after the fall of the Soviet empire, and is now a member of the European Union (and possibly NATO).

The Estonians are the most tech savvy of all the former Soviet states. Much could be learned by a Russian spy operating here to learn what's going on in Estonia.

So an Estonian spy might die trying to learn Russian secrets on our soil, or vice versa, but neither was ever out to work on America. This was just a good place to conduct espionage.

There's nothing new about this. In the past, Germany, Britain, France, Belgium, Pakistan, Jordan, and many other nations have been hotbeds for spies. National interests don't stop at national boundaries.

.... and sometimes there's a shootout. There's no place better to kill a spy than in a disinterested country.

Is it bad? Yes. A crime is a crime. Murder is murder.

When a murder is committed on our soil, it does not matter whether a citizen was killed or not; when caught, the killer get exactly the same justice he would for killing a citizen. Because we don't allow people to kill each other with no consequences here, and never have.