What happens when spies defect to the U.S.?

The United States has the most robust intelligence apparatus in the world. We’ve got officers working in the field, people monitoring and analyzing all manner of signals, and an enormous infrastructure to help facilitate everything from logistics to politics. But often we rely upon foreign sources on the ground, embedded everywhere from al-Qaida’s ranks to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s office — and in return for their service, the U.S. sometimes rescues them when they’re at risk of being caught. So what happens to foreign spies once they defect? That’s where the National Resettlement Operations Center comes in. Yahoo News National Security and Investigations Reporter Jenna McLaughlin explains.

Video transcript

JENNA MCLAUGHLIN: The United States has the most robust intelligence apparatus in the world. We've got officers working in the field, people monitoring and analyzing all manner of signals, and an enormous infrastructure to help facilitate everything from logistics to politics. But often, we rely upon foreign sources on the ground embedded everywhere from al-Qaida's ranks to Russian President Vladimir Putin's office. And in return for their service, the US sometimes rescues them when they're at risk of being caught. So what happens to foreign spies once they defect?

That's where the National Resettlement Operation Center comes in. The NROC, pronounced [? n-rock ?] internally, is a little discussed part of the CIA that helps to exfiltrate, relocate, and resettle people who spy for the agency. The center exists thanks to an obscure section included in the legislation that formed the CIA, Public Law 110, which allows the agency to resettle up to 100 people each year for their services to the United States.

NROC operates a bit like a social service agency for spies providing resettled families with help getting jobs, a house and car, psychological and substance abuse counseling, language training, and even legal assistance. In many cases, the NROC also operates a bit like the FBI'S Witness Protection Program providing the spas with new identities to protect them from possible retribution. According to former CIA officers who both recruited and resettled Russian spies during their careers, those resettled can face exceptional danger these days given Vladimir Putin's penchant for vengeance against Russians who commit espionage. Family members of former Russian spies for the United States have mysteriously disappeared or had accidents in the Putin era while some former assets have been lured back to Russia under some pretense only to be arrested and imprisoned.

Not all former spies live under false identities. Some find it too difficult to cut themselves off from friends and family for life. But living in the open carries risks. For example in 2019, reporters showed up on a former spy's doorstep. Most famously, former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal spied for the British was poisoned with a nerve agent, Novichok, alongside his daughter Yulia on a park bench in Salisbury, England in 2018. The Kremlin is suspected of using that same deadly nerve agent last summer against Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny who barely survived.

It's that threat that makes it vital for NROC to work in secrecy. The vast majority of spies relocated to the US go unnoticed by the public. We don't hear about them or their families until something happens. And there's evidence that even when it does, the CIA is there to sweep it under the rug.