> “I am so and so of the Egyptian intelligence service and would like to blackmail you” No, but practically by definition the target has to know they’re being

> “I am so and so of the Egyptian intelligence service and would like to blackmail you” No, but practically by definition the target has to know they’re being forced to “help” and therefore know someone is targeting the project. Some percentage of the time the target comes clean about whatever compromising information was gathered about them, which then potentially alerts the project to the fact they’re being targeted. When it does work you have to keep their mouth shut long enough for your operation to succeed which might mean they have an unfortunate accident, which introduces more risks, or you have to monitor them for the duration which ties up resources. It’s way simpler just to insert a trusted asset into a project.