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posted by Fnord666 on Monday May 22 2017, @05:36AM   Printer-friendly
from the send-the-kingsmen dept.

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


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  • (Score: 1, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Monday May 22 2017, @03:25PM (5 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday May 22 2017, @03:25PM (#513534) Journal

    Did Hillary, or did Hillary not, accept money from Russia - however it may have been laundered?

    https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-foundation-as-russians-pressed-for-control-of-uranium-company.html [nytimes.com]

    When you're doing "fact checking", it helps to look at means and motivation. A lot of money changed hands, and the deal was done. Who raked in money, and who did not? Maybe if this were a one-off thing, it could be dismissed as coincidental. Some Russians really wanted to hear what Clinton had to say on some issue or another, and paid her half a million dollars to flap her gums. But, that's not exactly what Hillary, or history, teaches us. Hillary ALWAYS makes big bucks to ease the way for "investors".

    I'm glad you didn't link to Snopes. They have a proven liberal agenda. Factcheck.org, I'm less sure of, but they didn't dig deep enough into the facts.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @09:53PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @09:53PM (#513792)

    I like squirrels. Do you also like squirrels?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @12:58AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @12:58AM (#513877)

      Sarah Huckabee? That you? Of course I like squirrel! Everyone from Arkansas love them some squirrel! Expecially Runaway and Hillary Clinton, and Gov. Huckabee.

  • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Tuesday May 23 2017, @12:01AM (1 child)

    by butthurt (6141) on Tuesday May 23 2017, @12:01AM (#513850) Journal

    > I'm glad you didn't link to Snopes. They have a proven liberal agenda.

    Interesting! Here's the Snopes link:

    http://www.snopes.com/hillary-clinton-uranium-russia-deal/ [snopes.com]

    Their page about this issue ought to be enough to demonstrate their "liberal agenda" to anyone. For one thing they link to the same New York Times article that you did, which says:

    The Clinton campaign spokesman, Mr. Fallon, said that in general, these matters did not rise to the secretary’s level. He would not comment on whether Mrs. Clinton had been briefed on the matter, but he gave The Times a statement from the former assistant secretary assigned to the foreign investment committee at the time, Jose Fernandez. While not addressing the specifics of the Uranium One deal, Mr. Fernandez said, “Mrs. Clinton never intervened with me on any C.F.I.U.S. matter.”

    They also link to a statement supposedly from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission which states, irrelevantly,

    Neither Uranium One nor ARMZ holds an NRC export license, so no uranium produced at either facility may be exported.

    -- https://web.archive.org/web/20170129043258/https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/news/2010/10-211.pdf [archive.org]

    First off, whether the uranium is exported is beside the point. It's still uranium! Second, the document is hosted by the Internet Archive, which openly states its liberal agenda to "collect published works and make them available in digital formats." Who knows what changes they made to the document?

    Then they link to a statement supposedly made by a donor mentioned in the New York Times article, who claims:

    I sold all of my stakes in the uranium company – Uranium One – in the fall of 2007, after it merged with another company. I would note that those were sold at least 18 months before Hillary Clinton became the Secretary of State. No one was speculating at that time that she would become the Secretary of State.

    -- http://blog.ceo.ca/2015/04/23/statement-of-frank-giustra/ [blog.ceo.ca]

    It quotes the ultra-liberal The Guardian which said

    [...] large donations to the foundation from the chairman of Uranium One, Ian Telfer, at around the time of the Russian purchase of the company and while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, were never disclosed to the public.

    It goes, as you say, on and on. Totally one-sided. Disgusting!

    • (Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Tuesday May 23 2017, @03:06AM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday May 23 2017, @03:06AM (#513938) Journal

      I would note that those were sold at least 18 months before Hillary Clinton became the Secretary of State. No one was speculating at that time that she would become the Secretary of State.

      At the time, they would have been speculating that she would become the President of the US.

  • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Tuesday May 23 2017, @12:23AM

    by butthurt (6141) on Tuesday May 23 2017, @12:23AM (#513856) Journal

    I "forgot" to link to The Guardian's article:

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/05/clinton-cash-bill-hillary-scandal-book [theguardian.com]

    By the way, the creators of Clinton Cash also have a liberal agenda:

    The champagne was flowing as hedge fund executive Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah hosted a reception during the Cannes Film Festival last May to promote “Clinton Cash,” a film by their political adviser Stephen K. Bannon and the production company they co-founded, Glittering Steel.

    -- https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/mercer-bannon/ [washingtonpost.com]

    We had a story about Robert Mercer before.

    /politics/article.pl?sid=17/04/10/0322225 [soylentnews.org]