The New York Times in a report has revealed that a “troubling” numbers of informants recruited from other nations to spy for America by CIA being captured or killed or most likely compromised.
“In recent years, adversarial intelligence services in countries such as Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan have been hunting down the C.I.A.’s sources and in some cases turning them into double agents,” the NYT said in a report Tuesday.
The New York Times said in a report that “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.”
The message was sent in an unusual top secret cable and 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.”
In the last two decades, the Central Intelligence Agency has heavily invested in countries like Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan in its war against terrorism. They have also been reportedly focusing on improving intelligence collection in China and Russia and US policymakers demand more insight on adversarial powers.
While the loss of informants isn’t a new problem for American intelligence agencies, the cable underscores the gravity of the situation, the report suggests.
The use of artificial intelligence, facial recognition, and other sophisticated tools have made it easier for foreign governments to track US intelligence officers operating in their country, according to the report. The monitoring of the intelligence officers could easily lead them to the agents working for the CIA.
“The collapse of the American-backed government in Afghanistan means that learning more about Pakistan’s ties to the Taliban government and extremist organisations in the region is going to become ever more important. As a result, the pressure is once again on the CIA to build and maintain networks of informants in Pakistan, a country with a record of discovering and breaking those networks,” the NYT report said.
The brief cable had also laid out the specific number of agents executed by rival intelligence agencies, the report said, noting that this was usually a closely held detail that counterintelligence officials typically did not share in such messages.
With the CIA devoting bulk of its attention for the last two decades to terrorist threats and the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, the report said improving intelligence collection “on adversarial powers, both great and small, is once again a centerpiece of the CIA’s agenda, particularly as policymakers demand more insight into China and Russia.”