It's About Liberty: A Conservative Forum
Topics => World/Foreign Affairs => Topic started by: BMG on November 21, 2011, 09:03:12 AM
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http://apnews.myway.com/article/20111121/D9R53CD80.html (http://apnews.myway.com/article/20111121/D9R53CD80.html)
The CIA's operations in Lebanon have been badly damaged after Hezbollah identified and captured a number of U.S. spies recently, current and former U.S. officials told The Associated Press. The intelligence debacle is particularly troubling because the CIA saw it coming.
Hezbollah's longtime leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, boasted on television in June that he had rooted out at least two CIA spies who had infiltrated the ranks of Hezbollah, which the U.S. considers a terrorist group closely allied with Iran. Though the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon officially denied the accusation, current and former officials concede that it happened and the damage has spread even further.
In recent months, CIA officials have secretly been scrambling to protect their remaining spies - foreign assets or agents working for the agency - before Hezbollah can find them.
To be sure, some deaths are to be expected in shadowy spy wars. It's an extremely risky business and people get killed. But the damage to the agency's spy network in Lebanon has been greater than usual, several former and current U.S. officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about security matters.
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Well, we are what, maybe 20 years removed from any institutional knowledge of how to conduct proper espionage operations? No doubt people forgot how to deal with situations like this. If they had gone old school and not relied on technology and did simple dead drops etc perhaps they would have been more effective. Plus, who are we putting into these areas? Locals or our people? Each have their strengths and weaknesses. Sounds like this effort was effed up from the get-go and the failure to respond to the Israeli round up shows our leaders just were not paying attention or didn't know what to do....
::facepalm::
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Well, we are what, maybe 20 years removed from any institutional knowledge of how to conduct proper espionage operations? No doubt people forgot how to deal with situations like this. If they had gone old school and not relied on technology and did simple dead drops etc perhaps they would have been more effective. Plus, who are we putting into these areas? Locals or our people? Each have their strengths and weaknesses. Sounds like this effort was effed up from the get-go and the failure to respond to the Israeli round up shows our leaders just were not paying attention or didn't know what to do....
::facepalm::
The Agency has been agressively recruiting arabic speaking Americans for several years now which I feel they should have been doing twenty years ago . Information I have indicates that the individuals who have been outed were not Americans but middle-eastern recruits who have been cultivated and on the payroll for several years . It's going to be some time before our own people will be able to operate under those constraints . It takes a good five years to train up a case officer to the point that he or she would be believable in a covert operation . Otherwise it's like sending lambs to slaughter .
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That makes sense, shame to waste our in-house talent, but the bad thing about having your local talent rounded up and eliminated is the chilling effect it has on finding new recruits and informers, and sets your whole effort back years if not decades. I agree they should have been setting this from the ground up decades ago. Not much we can do about it now but start over and do it right, no matter how much time and effort it takes.
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This right up there with the 30 SEALS in an unarmored Chinook.
Something just doesn't pass the smell test. ::foilhathelicopter::
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How's this smell?
http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/iran-says-arrests-12-cia-agents-amid-reports-of-compromised-u-s-ring-1.397460 (http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/iran-says-arrests-12-cia-agents-amid-reports-of-compromised-u-s-ring-1.397460)