pjmedia.com by Rick Moran
Top American counterintelligence officials sent a memo that warned every CIA station around the world about a troubling number of intelligence assets who had been killed, disappeared, or captured in recent years. The memo actually gave a specific number of agents â a highly unusual inclusion but one that demonstrates the seriousness of the situation.
The CIA is an agency in transition with the focus of intelligence moving from rooting out terrorism in Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan to concentrating on our enemies in Russia and China. But the loss of agents is particularly troubling because there doesnât seem to be a major intelligence leak. The problem is with the agents themselves.
Acknowledging that recruiting spies is a high-risk business, the cable raised issues that have plagued the agency in recent years, including poor tradecraft; being too trusting of sources; underestimating foreign intelligence agencies, and moving too quickly to recruit informants while not paying enough attention to potential counterintelligence risks â a problem the cable called placing âmission over security.â…
