Captured, Killed or Compromised: CIA Admits to Losing Dozens of Informants

[Carlitos Brigante]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/captured-killed-compromised-cia-admits-184027771.html

WASHINGTON — Top American counterintelligence officials warned every CIA station and base around the world last week about troubling numbers of informants recruited from other countries to spy for the United States being captured or killed, people familiar with the matter said.

The message, in an unusual top-secret cable, said that the CIA’s counterintelligence mission center had looked at dozens of cases in the last several years involving foreign informants who had been killed, arrested or most likely compromised. Although brief, the cable laid out the specific number of agents executed by rival intelligence agencies — a closely held detail that counterintelligence officials typically do not share in such cables.

The cable highlighted the struggle the spy agency is having as it works to recruit spies around the world in difficult operating environments. In recent years, adversarial intelligence services in countries such as Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan have been hunting down the CIA’s sources and in some cases turning them into double agents.

Acknowledging that recruiting spies is a high-risk business, the cable raised issues that have plagued the agency in recent years, including poor tradecraft, being too trusting of sources, underestimating foreign intelligence agencies and moving too quickly to recruit informants while not paying enough attention to potential counterintelligence risks — a problem the cable called placing “mission over security.”

[tanyev]

1. "the last several years" as in since January 2017?

Hmmm?

[empedocles]

2. 'traitortrump', who would ever think of such a possibiity?

[Midnight Writer]

3. Hell, we had a National Security Adviser who took secret money from foreign governments.

Not surprising our agencies are compromised.

[Xolodno]

4. Have to wonder, how much of China's ban on crypto currency is involved.

Of course the crypto mining industry was creating havoc in certain areas, but it no doubt was a nice tool in the drawer to pay off informants, spies, etc. No need to give them a briefcase full of cash and then launder the money. Which possibly could draw attention.

And of course, Trump essentially taking a dump on the intelligence agencies, probably causing some to quit or worse...

[Klaralven]

5. story from 2019

Botched CIA Communications System Helped Blow Cover of Chinese Agents

It was considered one of the CIA’s worst failures in decades: Over a two-year period starting in late 2010, Chinese authorities systematically dismantled the agency’s network of agents across the country, executing dozens of suspected U.S. spies. But since then, a question has loomed over the entire debacle.

How were the Chinese able to roll up the network?

Now, nearly eight years later, it appears that the agency botched the communication system it used to interact with its sources, according to five current and former intelligence officials. The CIA had imported the system from its Middle East operations, where the online environment was considerably less hazardous, and apparently underestimated China’s ability to penetrate it.

“The attitude was that we’ve got this, we’re untouchable,” said one of the officials who, like the others, declined to be named discussing sensitive information. The former official described the attitude of those in the agency who worked on China at the time as “invincible.”

https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/15/botched-cia-communications-system-helped-blow-cover-chinese-agents-intelligence/

Going to work for the enemies of your country is generally an unwise life choice.

[Klaralven]

6. The CIA's communications suffered a catastrophic compromise. It started in Iran.

In 2013, hundreds of CIA officers — many working nonstop for weeks — scrambled to contain a disaster of global proportions: a compromise of the agency’s internet-based covert communications system used to interact with its informants in dark corners around the world. Teams of CIA experts worked feverishly to take down and reconfigure the websites secretly used for these communications; others managed operations to quickly spirit assets to safety and oversaw other forms of triage.

“When this was going on, it was all that mattered,” said one former intelligence community official. The situation was “catastrophic,” said another former senior intelligence official.

From around 2009 to 2013, the U.S. intelligence community experienced crippling intelligence failures related to the secret internet-based communications system, a key means for remote messaging between CIA officers and their sources on the ground worldwide. The previously unreported global problem originated in Iran and spiderwebbed to other countries, and was left unrepaired — despite warnings about what was happening — until more than two dozen sources died in China in 2011 and 2012 as a result, according to 11 former intelligence and national security officials.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/cias-communications-suffered-catastrophic-compromise-started-iran-090018710.html

[C_U_L8R]

7. Trumps selling national treasure to the highest bidder?

You can bet on it

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

8. K&R

[joetheman]

9. This is what Trump and the GOP's love of all things Russian brings us to.

Intel officials should be pissed but likely too many are supportive of Trump.