6 ms·

The Chinese Government Killed Over a Dozen CIA Sources from 2010-2012

63 points by dforrestwilson 9y ago

themodelplumber 9y ago
Why release this information now?
- Spooky23 9y ago
  Perhaps to give the president pause before he blabbers information that will get some operative killed?
  - tyingq 9y ago
    Like Oleg Erovinkin?
  - averagewall 9y ago
    You say "blabbers" like it's a bad thing. Spies are criminals and they should be caught. Killing isn't very good but at least they should be locked up to protect people from the harm they cause.
- 6stringmerc 9y ago
  It's the NYT so my initial hunch would be verifying sources in duplicate and/or triplicate depending on the claims. This is international spycraft. Not quite Gary Powers getting shot down over the USSR, but very high stakes nonetheless.
  - natch 9y ago
    The NYT is not all that. Read with care, and you'll notice a lot of stuff is couched, and rather than statements of fact, there are statements of fact about statements. For example, notice how many times the word pair "officials said" appears in the article. In other words, yes it may be a fact that a source said X, but a lot of people read that as "NYT said X" which is not at all what NYT is saying.
    - 6stringmerc 9y ago
      What you have described to me is a "bounce house" of dealing with the world, so, my only question to you is how much are you paid per word for the Government service you are representing? I'm inquiring for the sake of market value. I certainly don't want to become a shill and be underpaid for my services.
      - natch 9y ago
        Ignoring the silly reddit-style rhetoric and getting to your underlying implied suspicion: On the contrary, the perspective I was offering, if understood, would tend to deflate the value of statements that the government spoon feeds to the media, often intentionally and through anonymous officials. The problem is that many people don't read the NYT literally. They read the statements as vetted statements of fact about the matters at hand, instead of vetted statements of fact about statements. The NYT knows this. The government knows this. So they use it to advance their agendas. Not that their interests are often aligned, but they sometimes are. And when their interests are not aligned, they still try to use each other and use the basic misunderstanding many people have about facts about statements versus facts about events. I do believe the NYT tries to be factual when a close reading is done.
Kenji 9y ago
I'm almost never on China's side, but in this case... Good riddance.
- Para2016 9y ago
  This comment should be dead.
  - Kenji 9y ago
    The US invades and bombs other countries to kill persons of interest and the Chinese aren't even allowed to kill spies in their own country? Give me a break, this double standard is sickening.
    - Para2016 9y ago
      How about you read TFA before sounding off with your jingoistic nonsense. The particular spies weren't preparing for some kind of invasion or attack. They were also Chinese themselves and not given a trial. One of them was even gunned down.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
    - hueving 9y ago
      Are you okay with execution of your own citizens without a trial in your own country? Even those suspected of treason in the US go through the court system.
      - tyingq 9y ago
        Unless you can classify their treason as terrorism, then all rules are out the window.
        bpodgursky 9y ago
6stringmerc 9y ago
This has all the makings for a screenplay right up my alley. I have the utmost respect for Clandestine Operatives and the conditions and considerations. It's not playing a game on a board with pieces, these are people's lives. In 2003, I heard about China organ harvesting in its prisons and wrote a short story about it. 10+ years later, I made it into a screenplay. It's a Morality Play. https://www.scriptrevolution.com/scripts/infamy https://www.scriptrevolution.com/scripts/infamy The line "We've lost another one" could almost be the goddamn title of my take on events. Nobody wants to make that call.
- averagewall 9y ago
  Do you have the same respect for the 911 hijackers and all the preliminary work they did in America to prepare for it? Spying is preparing to kill.
  - Para2016 9y ago
    This is a false equivalency. Odd couple of very anti-American commenters in this thread already.
    - hueving 9y ago
      This article does not put China in a very good light. A ruthless shooting in the middle of a government agency of a spy to send a message is pretty barbaric. I suspect articles about these events will have a significant amount of pro-China or anti-US comments to "put it in context".
  - 6stringmerc 9y ago
    Nope because using Civilians as "Point-Making' Intentional Victims (not Collateral Damage engaging Combatant targets, e.g. human shields) out of combat sectors is simply fighting dirty (YMMV in 2000s), because those 9/11 hijackers had bankroll and were intent not on collecting information but inflicting damage. There is a significant difference between being an "observer" and an "assassin" if you want to get down to it. Spying is akin to foreshadowing, to have knowledge before action. If you don't understand the difference between inserting Assets for Information Gathering versus Mass Murder then we probably won't be able to communicate very well. There are nuances. Your conclusion is a false premise.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
tanilama 9y ago
They are spies right? It is an essential part of the professional risk.
- txru 9y ago
  Absolutely. What makes this newsworthy, though, isn't that the spies are dead-- it's that twelve died in a ~year. Something happened that the CIA wasn't ready for. Take this as a sign of a few possible things-- A) The US may have had a mole, B) China's security apparatus got much much better very quickly, C) The US is complacent in foreign human intelligence, D) Hacking may have killed more people. We're not sure of which one, or if it's any of those things, which leaves us the article-- 12 spies are dead.
  - thevardanian 9y ago
    or E) They gathered a tremendous amount of information over a long period of time, and played the CIA's game by giving it to them easy. That way more is revealed, and then China executed, no pun intended, the plan all at once when the time seemed right. But again who knows.
  - Veratyr 9y ago
    > it's that twelve died in a ~year Per the original NYT article, it was 2 years: "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."
greenyoda 9y ago
As noted in the first sentence, this story is based on the NY Times report. The Times article is more comprehensive: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14385359 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14385359 As per HN Guidelines, "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter."
IBM 9y ago
Original story https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-cia-spies-espionage.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-cia-spie...
salesguy222 9y ago
The former PM of Kosovo, Ramush Haradinaj, had 9 witnesses against him killed while he was on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia in the Hague. It is a growing trend for extrajudicial killings to occur at the hands of the state (think Russia and journalists, Duerte and alleged druggies) for pretty much any reason. What a sad and complex world we live in.

themodelplumber 9y ago

Why release this information now?

Spooky23 9y ago
Perhaps to give the president pause before he blabbers information that will get some operative killed?
- tyingq 9y ago
  Like Oleg Erovinkin?
- averagewall 9y ago
  You say "blabbers" like it's a bad thing. Spies are criminals and they should be caught. Killing isn't very good but at least they should be locked up to protect people from the harm they cause.
6stringmerc 9y ago
It's the NYT so my initial hunch would be verifying sources in duplicate and/or triplicate depending on the claims. This is international spycraft. Not quite Gary Powers getting shot down over the USSR, but very high stakes nonetheless.
- natch 9y ago
  The NYT is not all that. Read with care, and you'll notice a lot of stuff is couched, and rather than statements of fact, there are statements of fact about statements. For example, notice how many times the word pair "officials said" appears in the article. In other words, yes it may be a fact that a source said X, but a lot of people read that as "NYT said X" which is not at all what NYT is saying.
  - 6stringmerc 9y ago
    What you have described to me is a "bounce house" of dealing with the world, so, my only question to you is how much are you paid per word for the Government service you are representing? I'm inquiring for the sake of market value. I certainly don't want to become a shill and be underpaid for my services.
    - natch 9y ago
      Ignoring the silly reddit-style rhetoric and getting to your underlying implied suspicion: On the contrary, the perspective I was offering, if understood, would tend to deflate the value of statements that the government spoon feeds to the media, often intentionally and through anonymous officials. The problem is that many people don't read the NYT literally. They read the statements as vetted statements of fact about the matters at hand, instead of vetted statements of fact about statements. The NYT knows this. The government knows this. So they use it to advance their agendas. Not that their interests are often aligned, but they sometimes are. And when their interests are not aligned, they still try to use each other and use the basic misunderstanding many people have about facts about statements versus facts about events. I do believe the NYT tries to be factual when a close reading is done.

Kenji 9y ago

I'm almost never on China's side, but in this case... Good riddance.

Para2016 9y ago
This comment should be dead.
- Kenji 9y ago
  The US invades and bombs other countries to kill persons of interest and the Chinese aren't even allowed to kill spies in their own country? Give me a break, this double standard is sickening.
  - Para2016 9y ago
    How about you read TFA before sounding off with your jingoistic nonsense. The particular spies weren't preparing for some kind of invasion or attack. They were also Chinese themselves and not given a trial. One of them was even gunned down.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - hueving 9y ago
    Are you okay with execution of your own citizens without a trial in your own country? Even those suspected of treason in the US go through the court system.
    - tyingq 9y ago
      Unless you can classify their treason as terrorism, then all rules are out the window.
      - bpodgursky 9y ago

6stringmerc 9y ago

This has all the makings for a screenplay right up my alley. I have the utmost respect for Clandestine Operatives and the conditions and considerations. It's not playing a game on a board with pieces, these are people's lives. In 2003, I heard about China organ harvesting in its prisons and wrote a short story about it. 10+ years later, I made it into a screenplay. It's a Morality Play. https://www.scriptrevolution.com/scripts/infamy https://www.scriptrevolution.com/scripts/infamy The line "We've lost another one" could almost be the goddamn title of my take on events. Nobody wants to make that call.

averagewall 9y ago
Do you have the same respect for the 911 hijackers and all the preliminary work they did in America to prepare for it? Spying is preparing to kill.
- Para2016 9y ago
  This is a false equivalency. Odd couple of very anti-American commenters in this thread already.
  - hueving 9y ago
    This article does not put China in a very good light. A ruthless shooting in the middle of a government agency of a spy to send a message is pretty barbaric. I suspect articles about these events will have a significant amount of pro-China or anti-US comments to "put it in context".
- 6stringmerc 9y ago
  Nope because using Civilians as "Point-Making' Intentional Victims (not Collateral Damage engaging Combatant targets, e.g. human shields) out of combat sectors is simply fighting dirty (YMMV in 2000s), because those 9/11 hijackers had bankroll and were intent not on collecting information but inflicting damage. There is a significant difference between being an "observer" and an "assassin" if you want to get down to it. Spying is akin to foreshadowing, to have knowledge before action. If you don't understand the difference between inserting Assets for Information Gathering versus Mass Murder then we probably won't be able to communicate very well. There are nuances. Your conclusion is a false premise.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

tanilama 9y ago

They are spies right? It is an essential part of the professional risk.

txru 9y ago
Absolutely. What makes this newsworthy, though, isn't that the spies are dead-- it's that twelve died in a ~year. Something happened that the CIA wasn't ready for. Take this as a sign of a few possible things-- A) The US may have had a mole, B) China's security apparatus got much much better very quickly, C) The US is complacent in foreign human intelligence, D) Hacking may have killed more people. We're not sure of which one, or if it's any of those things, which leaves us the article-- 12 spies are dead.
- thevardanian 9y ago
  or E) They gathered a tremendous amount of information over a long period of time, and played the CIA's game by giving it to them easy. That way more is revealed, and then China executed, no pun intended, the plan all at once when the time seemed right. But again who knows.
- Veratyr 9y ago
  > it's that twelve died in a ~year Per the original NYT article, it was 2 years: "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."

greenyoda 9y ago

As noted in the first sentence, this story is based on the NY Times report. The Times article is more comprehensive: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14385359 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14385359 As per HN Guidelines, "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter."

IBM 9y ago

Original story https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-cia-spies-espionage.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-cia-spie...

salesguy222 9y ago

The former PM of Kosovo, Ramush Haradinaj, had 9 witnesses against him killed while he was on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia in the Hague. It is a growing trend for extrajudicial killings to occur at the hands of the state (think Russia and journalists, Duerte and alleged druggies) for pretty much any reason. What a sad and complex world we live in.