Workers at Beirut restaurant watch the televised speech of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah accusing the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon of spying for Israel in June.
Doesn't it suck when the enemy actually has a success using old fashioned skills? Hezbollah is not a peaceful organization because it bites back with skill and power when it is attacked, as seen when Israel was defeated a few years ago. We do not hear of Hezbollah starting wars, anymore than Persia Iran. These two work together as is necessary facing their common rapacious Western and Israeli threats.
Debacle is particularly troubling because agency saw it coming, sources tell The Associated Press
By ADAM GOLDMAN and MATT APUZZO
November 21, 2011
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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.
The Lebanon crisis is the latest mishap involving CIA counterintelligence,
the undermining or manipulating of the enemy's ability to gather information.
Former CIA officials have said that once-essential skill has been eroded as the
agency shifted from outmaneuvering rival spy agencies to fighting terrorists. In
the rush for immediate results, former officers say, tradecraft has suffered.
The most recent high-profile example was the suicide bomber who
posed as an informant and killed seven CIA employees and wounded six others in
Khost, Afghanistan in December 2009.
Last year, then-CIA director Leon Panetta said the agency had to
maintain "a greater awareness of counterintelligence." But eight
months later, Nasrallah let the world know he had bested the CIA, demonstrating
that the agency still struggles with this critical aspect of spying and sending
a message to those who would betray Hezbollah.
The CIA was well aware the spies were vulnerable in Lebanon. CIA
officials were warned, including the chief of the unit that supervises
Hezbollah operations from CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., and the head of
counterintelligence. It remains unclear whether anyone has been or will be held
accountable in the wake of this counterintelligence disaster or whether the
incident will affect the CIA's ability to recruit assets in Lebanon.
In response to AP's questions about what happened in Lebanon, a
U.S. official said Hezbollah is recognized as a complicated enemy responsible
for killing more Americans than any other terrorist group before September
2001. The agency does not underestimate the organization, the official said.
The CIA's (ED: Read Israel and Mossad’s) toughest adversaries,
like Hezbollah and Iran, have for years been improving their ability to hunt
spies, relying on patience and guile to exploit counterintelligence holes.
In 2007, for instance, when Ali-Reza Asgari, a brigadier general
in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps of Iran, disappeared in Turkey, it
was assumed that he was either killed or defected. In response, the Iranian
government began a painstaking review of foreign travel by its citizens,
particularly to places like Turkey where Iranians don't need a visa and could
meet with foreign intelligence services.
It didn't take long, a Western intelligence official told the
AP, before the U.S., Britain and Israel began losing contact with some of their
Iranian spies.
The State Department last year described Hezbollah as "the
most technically capable terrorist group in the world," and the Defense
Department estimates it receives between $100 million and $200 million per year
in funding from Iran.
ED: Hezbollah is a powerful army capable, so far, of defeating
Israel and defending Lebanon against the rapine Zionist entity. This, of
course, renders it extremely bad press internationally. As with Iran, when was
the last time Hezbollah began a war through aggression? Is it a criminal
organization because it unites with another so called terrorist nation for
mutual defense? Under such guidelines, would not Britain, France and America be
also terrorist nations?
Backed by Iran, Hezbollah has built a professional
counterintelligence apparatus that Nasrallah ~ whom the U.S. government
designated an international terrorist a decade ago ~ proudly describes as the
"spy combat unit." U.S. intelligence officials believe the unit,
which is considered formidable and ruthless, went operational in about 2004.
Using the latest commercial software, Nasrallah's spy-hunters
unit began methodically searching for spies in Hezbollah's midst. To find them,
U.S. officials said, Hezbollah examined cellphone data looking for anomalies.
The analysis identified cellphones that, for instance, were used rarely or
always from specific locations and only for a short period of time. Then it
came down to old-fashioned, shoe-leather detective work: Who in that area had
information that might be worth selling to the enemy?
The effort took years but eventually Hezbollah, and later the
Lebanese government, began making arrests. By one estimate, 100 Israeli assets
were apprehended as the news made headlines across the region in 2009. Some of
those suspected Israeli spies worked for telecommunications companies and
served in the military.
Back at CIA headquarters, the arrests alarmed senior officials.
The agency prepared a study on its own vulnerabilities, U.S. officials said,
and the results proved to be prescient.
The analysis concluded that the CIA was susceptible to the same
analysis that had compromised the Israelis, the officials said.
CIA managers were instructed to be extra careful about handling
sources in Lebanon. A U.S. official said recommendations were issued to counter
the potential problem.
But it's unclear what preventive measures were taken by the
Hezbollah unit chief or the officer in charge of the Beirut station. Former
officials say the Hezbollah unit chief is no stranger to the necessity of
counterintelligence and knew the risks. The unit chief has worked overseas in
hostile environments like Afghanistan and played an important role in the
capture of a top terrorist while stationed in the Persian Gulf region after the
attacks of 9/11.
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The result of the 2006 Israeli attack on Lebanon.
"We've lost a lot of people in Beirut over the years, so everyone should know the drill," said a former Middle East case officer familiar with the situation.
But whatever actions the CIA took, they were not enough. Like
the Israelis, bad tradecraft doomed these CIA assets and the agency ultimately
failed to protect them, an official said. In some instances, CIA officers fell
into predictable patterns when meeting their sources, the official said.
This allowed Hezbollah to identify assets and case officers and
unravel at least part of the CIA's spy network in Lebanon. There was also a
reluctance to share cases and some files were put in "restricted
handling." The designation severely limits the number of people who know
the identity of the source but also reduces the number of experts who could
spot problems that might lead to their discovery, officials said.
Nasrallah's televised announcement in June was followed by
finger-pointing among departments inside the CIA as the spy agency tried figure
out what went wrong and contain the damage.
The fate of these CIA assets is unknown. Hezbollah treats spies
differently, said Matthew Levitt, a counterterrorism and intelligence expert at
the Washington Institute for Near East Studies who's writing a book about the
terrorist organization
"It all depends on who these guys were and what they have
to say," Levitt said. "Hezbollah has disappeared people before.
Others they have kept around."
Who's responsible for the mess in Lebanon? It's not clear. The
chief of Hezbollah operations at CIA headquarters continues to run the unit
that also focuses on Iranians and Palestinians. The CIA's top
counterintelligence officer, who was one of the most senior women in the
clandestine service, recently retired after approximately five years in the
job. She is credited with some important cases, including the recent arrests of
Russian spies who had been living in the U.S. for years.
Officials said the woman was succeeded by a more experienced
operations officer. That officer has held important posts in Moscow, Southeast
Asia, Europe and the Balkans, important frontlines of the agency's spy wars
with foreign intelligence services and terrorist organizations.
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