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The New York Times reports that the Central Intelligence Agency faced one of its worst intelligence gathering setbacks in decades when many of its informants in China were killed or imprisoned between 2010 and 2012. To this day, it is unknown how the identities of the informants were compromised:
From the final weeks of 2010 through the end of 2012, according to former American officials, the Chinese killed at least a dozen of the C.I.A.'s sources. According to three of the officials, one was shot in front of his colleagues in the courtyard of a government building — a message to others who might have been working for the C.I.A.
Still others were put in jail. All told, the Chinese killed or imprisoned 18 to 20 of the C.I.A.'s sources in China, according to two former senior American officials, effectively unraveling a network that had taken years to build.
Assessing the fallout from an exposed spy operation can be difficult, but the episode was considered particularly damaging. The number of American assets lost in China, officials said, rivaled those lost in the Soviet Union and Russia during the betrayals of both Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, formerly of the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., who divulged intelligence operations to Moscow for years.
The previously unreported episode shows how successful the Chinese were in disrupting American spying efforts and stealing secrets years before a well-publicized breach in 2015 gave Beijing access to thousands of government personnel records, including intelligence contractors. The C.I.A. considers spying in China one of its top priorities, but the country's extensive security apparatus makes it exceptionally hard for Western spy services to develop sources there.
Also at BBC, which notes:
Last year, China warned government officials to watch out for spies - and not fall in love with them
This CIA story really helps put that "Don't date a foreigner!" campaign in perspective. You don't want to see your significant other bleeding out in the street, do you? DO YOU?!
Update: Chinese paper applauds anti-spy efforts after report CIA sources killed
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Monday May 22 2017, @06:38AM (2 children)
The New York Times article says "by the end of the year [2010], the flow of information began to dry up." It also uses the expression "unraveling a network that had taken years to build." Those are odd things to say, if the situation is as you suppose.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @07:06AM (1 child)
Hash: SHA256
NYTimes says a lot of odd things. Or, to phrase it in a more sensible way, they are full of shit. Here's a taste: https://chomsky.info/20150406/
"unraveling a network that had taken years to build"... Evidence? No, I didn't think so. I personally do not even trust their report of CIA agent exposure incidence, but like I said, I find that plausible, given the actual, factual conditions I described. I understand how and why the recruiting is up, and if the recruiting is up, then of course the counter-intel impact is up, and it's a simple proportion. Are you intercepting 10 times more heroin at the border? Congratulations! Now you know the shipment rate is up 1000%. This is the simplest inference available to us: people with no inside knowledge of CIA or its Chinese counterparts.
~Anonymous 0x9932FE2729B1D963
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(Score: 2) by butthurt on Monday May 22 2017, @07:54AM
> [...] they are full of shit.
They may be; we needn't believe that the events described in the article happened. I suppose someone who wished to check could request records regarding the Honey Badger investigation.
> [...] the actual, factual conditions I described.
Conditions that would lead an increasing number of Chinese to collaborate with the CIA, right? I reread your earlier post and "an amazing level of access to ideas such as democracy" was the closest I saw to that. Why that would apply especially between 2010 and 2012 is unclear.