America’s Declining Spycraft Led to Spies’ Capture in Lebanon and Iran

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America’s Declining Spycraft Led to Spies’ Capture in Lebanon and Iran

‘We’ve lost the tradition of espionage,’ says former intelligence official.

Terrorist group Hezbollah has captured several American spies and disrupted the cia’s operations in Lebanon, writes the Associated Press citing current and former American officials. In June, Hezbollah’s leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah claimed they’d uncovered two spies who had infiltrated the terrorist group. The U.S. Embassy in Lebanon denied this, but the officials who spoke to AP said that this did happen, and the situation has only gotten worse.

The officials said that the cia’s counterintelligence “has been eroded as the agency shifted from outmaneuvering rival spy agencies to fighting terrorists,” writes the AP. “In the rush for immediate results, former officers say, tradecraft has suffered.”

“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,” it writes.

“We were lazy and the cia is now flying blind against Hezbollah,” abc’s Good Morning America quotes an anonymous source as saying.

“We’ve lost the tradition of espionage,” it quotes a former official still consulted by the U.S. intelligence community as saying. “Officers take short cuts and no one is held accountable,” he said.

This counterintelligence problem isn’t just in Lebanon. Iran has also been able to track down American, British and Israeli spies. Last May it claimed to have found over two dozen American and Israeli spies.

“If you lose an asset, one source, that’s normally a setback in espionage,” said Hezbollah expert and former cia operations officer Robert Baer. “But when you lose your entire station, either in Tehran or Beirut, that’s a catastrophe, that just shouldn’t be. And the only way that ever happens is when you’re mishandling sources.”

The AP writes: “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.”

Hezbollah is a dangerous enemy. “Hezbollah’s security is as good as any in the world’s,” said Baer. “It’s the best. It’s better than that of the kgb.”

According to the U.S. State Department, Hezbollah is “the most technically capable terrorist group in the world.”

The decline of the cia is just part of America’s decline in the Middle East and around the world.