CIA's Lebanon network almost completely compromised

[Cain]

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/ap-exclusive-spies-outed-cia-suffers-lebanon-14995830#.TspR_WPTrzs

Hezbollah has partially unraveled the CIA's spy network in Lebanon, severely damaging the intelligence agency's ability to gather vital information on the terrorist organization at a tense time in the region, former and current U.S. officials said.

Officials said several foreign spies working for the CIA had been captured by Hezbollah in recent months. The blow to the CIA's operations in Lebanon came after top agency managers were alerted last year to be especially careful handling informants in the Middle East country.

Hezbollah's longtime leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, boasted in June on television he had unmasked at least two CIA spies who had infiltrated the ranks of the organization, which the U.S. considers a terrorist group closely allied with Iran.

Though the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon officially denied the accusation, American officials concede that Nasrallah wasn't lying and the damage spread like a virus as Hezbollah methodically picked off the CIA's informants.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-cia-spy-20111121,0,868084.story

The CIA was forced to curtail its spying in Lebanon, where U.S. operatives and their agents collect crucial intelligence on Syria, terrorist groups and other targets, after the arrests of several CIA informants in Beirut this year, according to U.S. officials and other sources.

"Beirut station is out of business," a source said, using the CIA term for its post there. The same source, who declined to be identified while speaking about a classified matter, alleged that up to a dozen CIA informants have been compromised, but U.S. officials disputed that figure.

U.S. officials acknowledged that some CIA operations were suspended in Beirut last summer. It's unclear whether full operations have resumed. Beirut is considered a key watching post for turmoil in the Middle East.

Senior CIA officials have briefed congressional staffers about the breach, and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, visited Beirut recently to interview CIA officers. Committee staff members want to determine whether CIA operatives used sloppy practices that revealed sensitive sources and methods.

All of which is incredibly embarrassing for the CIA, and further testament to the effectiveness of Hezbollah as a group.

Abu Muquwama asks:

I am also, if I am a member of the U.S. Congress, going to be asking whether or not CIA tradecraft has eroded over the past decade as the agency has chased the bright shiny ball we'll call "drone-strikes-in-Pakistan". (A question that, quite frankly, needed to be asked after the 2009 bombing in Khost.) It's great to have an intelligence agency with a knife in its teeth, but the primary mission of an intelligence organization is to gather and analyze intelligence, not to thwack bad guys. If you fail in that primary mission, questions have to be asked as to why you are failing.

However, and I'm fairly sure I remember this from Chalmers Johnson, the CIA was never intended to be an "intelligence agency" and was always primarily meant to be a covert action group, with intelligence gathering as its "cover".  After setbacks in the early 60s, the CIA decided perhaps it was better at intelligence gathering than covert action, which would be a fair assessment (to put it mildly).  However, structurally, it was always more geared to assassination, insurgency and regime change than it ever was to debriefing assets and gathering information.  To use a British analogy, the CIA like to make out that they are MI6, when in fact they are the SOE.  The SOE had lots of fun blowing up Nazis and putting sugar in tank engines and so on, but they weren't exactly the best people to ask if you wanted to know what was going on in Germany at the time.

Either way though, it doesn't really look good for the CIA, being caught out like this.  People seem to consistently underrate Hezbollah's capacity for covert warfare and intelligence gathering.  The Israelis also had their networks of informants compromised, post-2006, and I would expect them to have greater regional knowledge and expertise to hand.

[Prince Glittersnatch III]

I never would have agreed to the formulation of the
Central Intelligence Agency back in forty-seven,
if I had known it would become the American Gestapo.

Harry Truman about 19 years too late.

[Cain]

Iran is claiming to have caught CIA operatives as well

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-15879086

Iran has arrested 12 spies of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the official IRNA news agency reports.

Parviz Sorouri, an influential lawmaker, said the agents were targeting Iran's military and its nuclear programme.

He said they were operating in co-ordination with Israel's Mossad and other regional agencies.

The United States and its allies suspect Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon program, a charge Tehran denies.

Mr Sorouri, a member of the powerful National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, did not give the nationality of the alleged agents, nor when they were arrested.

"The US and Zionist regime's espionage apparatuses were trying to use regional intelligence services, both inside and outside Iran, in order to deal a strong blow to our country," he was quoted as saying.

"Fortunately, these steps failed due to the quick measures taken by Intelligence Ministry officials," Mr Sorouri said.

The Iranian claim follows reports in the US that Lebanon's Hezbollah has unravelled a CIA spy ring within the Shia militant organisation. Hezbollah has close ties to Iran.

Reports quoting US intelligence officials emerged this week appearing to suggest that a number of US spies had been unmasked and that their lives were now in danger in Lebanon.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah MP Hassan Fadlallah said the reports were true. "Lebanese intelligence vanquished US and Israeli intelligence in what is now known as the intelligence war," he told the AFP news agency.

In June the group's leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, said on TV that he had unmasked at least two CIA spies who had infiltrated the ranks of the organisation.

Although the US Embassy in Beirut initially said there was no substance to the accusations, the Associated Press reports that American officials later conceded that Nasrallah had been telling the truth.

In May, Iran said it had arrested 30 people after breaking up a spy network run by the CIA.

It said the network had operated out of American diplomatic missions in the Malaysia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates to recruit Iranians as spies.

[Phox]

Hmm. Cain, what is your take on that? Does it seem legit, or might it be a set up?

[Cain]

Always hard to say, with Iran.  Recall the American backpackers hilarity.  However, they're making some fairly concrete claims here about who they were working with and what they were doing, which suggests the claims should be taken a little more seriously.

It's also possible the old intelligence-sharing pipeline between Hezbollah and Tehran has been reopened.  Iran compromises a CIA network in May...Hezbollah builds on information gleaned from that to take out informants in its own organization, which then leads to more useful evidence in locating spies in Iran.  The relationship between Tehran and Hezbollah is more complex than the media like to make out, Hezbollah sees itself as an equal partner and co-religionist with the Iranian regime, not as a mindless and supplicant proxy force, but there is nevertheless a great deal of communication between the two, and it is possible that information being passed through the two different CIA networks somehow opened them to exposure and capture.

[Phox]

Always hard to say, with Iran.  Recall the American backpackers hilarity.  However, they're making some fairly concrete claims here about who they were working with and what they were doing, which suggests the claims should be taken a little more seriously.

It's also possible the old intelligence-sharing pipeline between Hezbollah and Tehran has been reopened.  Iran compromises a CIA network in May...Hezbollah builds on information gleaned from that to take out informants in its own organization, which then leads to more useful evidence in locating spies in Iran.  The relationship between Tehran and Hezbollah is more complex than the media like to make out, Hezbollah sees itself as an equal partner and co-religionist with the Iranian regime, not as a mindless and supplicant proxy force, but there is nevertheless a great deal of communication between the two, and it is possible that information being passed through the two different CIA networks somehow opened them to exposure and capture.

Hmm. That is disconcerting.

[Cain]

How so?  It's not like the CIA were up to any good there?  Sure, I feel bad for the families of the informants (who, unlike the CIA officers, won't have diplomatic immunity), but if you're going to poke around someone elses country looking to sabotage critical infrastructure, you gotta assume the possibility of being caught in the act.

[Phox]

How so?  It's not like the CIA were up to any good there?  Sure, I feel bad for the families of the informants (who, unlike the CIA officers, won't have diplomatic immunity), but if you're going to poke around someone elses country looking to sabotage critical infrastructure, you gotta assume the possibility of being caught in the act.

I'm thinking about the consequences of this and how it will be spun in the American media more than anything.  And I don't think the CIA are up to any good anywhere, but this is still a bad thing no matter how you slice it.

[Cain]

Going by how they treated the Iraq War, the American media will probably just report on the thousands of schools the CIA is building in Lebanon and Iran.  And anything that diminishes American hegemony is a good thing in my book, since if the last decade has taught us anything, it is that the American government cannot be trusted with a preponderance of global force.

[Phox]

Going by how they treated the Iraq War, the American media will probably just report on the thousands of schools the CIA is building in Lebanon and Iran.  And anything that diminishes American hegemony is a good thing in my book, since if the last decade has taught us anything, it is that the American government cannot be trusted with a preponderance of global force.

Good points. Will ponder this.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Going by how they treated the Iraq War, the American media will probably just report on the thousands of schools the CIA is building in Lebanon and Iran.  And anything that diminishes American hegemony is a good thing in my book, since if the last decade has taught us anything, it is that the American government cannot be trusted with a preponderance of global force.

Good points. Will ponder this.

It's a tricky thing. At the end of the day we still see things from an American perspective, because Cain, at the end of the day, Phox and I are still Americans. We know that our government is fucked, and that our presence on the world stage is fucked, and that our media is fucked.

But we still view the world through American eyes.

Twid,
just comically quoted RATM.

[Cain]

It's easy to decouple your personal interests from nationalism.  Just ask yourself this much: how much money are you, personally, making as a result of CIA covert operations in Lebanon or the lack thereof?  Unless you work in defence/security/intelligence or with a MNC with offices/suppliers/customers in Lebanon, the chances are: not much.

Anyway, here is an interesting, older piece about CIA covert action in Lebanon:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/03/05/070305fa_fact_hersh?printable=true

In Lebanon, the Administration has cooperated with Saudi Arabia's government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda...

The clandestine operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by leaving the execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other ways to work around the normal congressional appropriations process...

So now the Saudis are out of pocket as well.  If we hear about a slew of suspicious Saudi deaths in the next few months, we will know what's up.