[mdhb]

Strong disagree on this one, despite their best efforts to seem otherwise the intel folks aren’t magic and they have very real limitations in terms of how many resources they can throw into something like this. Not everyone is going to get the bin laden treatment.

But they have lots of experience in managing defectors as well, it’s almost always a case of poor adherence to security procedures that exposes people because as the person in hiding you actually have the much stronger hand not the people looking for you.

There’s a long history of people successfully doing this with little to no help in groups such as the IRA for example but when you have a government who will actively support you with things like documents, money, housing and training… your chances are actually very good that you will die of natural causes.