16 ms·
Killing C.I.A. Informants, China Crippled U.S. Spying Operations
- williamle8300 9y agoBut Obama was so kewl!
- freshyill 9y agoDo you even understand what you're trying to say? Do you even know why you're saying it?
- ChrisClark 9y agoThe Chinese government, killing Chinese citizens, is obviously Obama's fault to a certain group of people.
- dogruck 9y agoPerhaps pointing out that if the same happened during the first months of the Trump admin, the NYT would surely repeatedly emphasize Trump?
- wavefunction 9y agoThough in Trump's case it would be Trump bragging to Xi Jinping about all the great spies the US has and probably listing off their names.
- williamle8300 9y agoThe Hillary servers were so woefully unprotected that we don't even know who/how many foreign actors pranced around her emails and had a hey-day. That's why CIA informants were killed. I would imagine. Previous to Obama's "legacy" the US govt was strict about employing state-of-the-art security for the IT. EDIT: hay-day is actually hey-day
- ChrisClark 9y agoUh, wait, you're a parody account, right? There aren't truly people still shouting 'But her emuls!' anymore, right? Speaking for everyone outside of the US, how did you guys unearth this crazy? Was it always there? If there are still those doing this un-ironically, Trump betrays Israel's secret intel and they cry about emails instead. The mental gymnastics are insane.
- jjoonathan 9y ago> EDIT: hay-day is actually hey-day My sides.
- jjoonathan 9y agoI think freshyill got that and was asking if williamle8300 had an actual argument in mind (e.g. Obama supported X policy which prevented the CIA from doing their job effectively in manner Y, precipitating the loss of assets in TFA), or if his comment was just a low-effort "Thanks Obama" knee-jerk based on the conservative "liberals suck at military" yarn. Of course, the answer to that question is just as obvious, but it's a fool's game to meet a low-effort jab with a high-effort, specific reply.
- panzer_wyrm 9y agoHe appointed a person that was leaking information after leaking bodily fluids as the chief of CIA. And he got raised eyebrow and stern talking in return. That sends very strong signal about how should be treat secrets. The it is not a big deal narrative about Clinton server also helped in instilling the right sense of respect towards protecting information. If you think that Uber culture problems and failures are Travis' fault, you cannot let Obama off the hook.
- williamle8300 9y agoYes
- jjoonathan 9y agoProve it.
- pknopf 9y agoI feel like this comment belongs in a YouTube chat...
- williamle8300 9y agoWell, I believe in freedom of speech so I don't see why it can't be in HN and YouTube. But you like to put things in boxes dontcha.
- avaer 9y agoI wholeheartedly recommend reading about the right to free speech, because I think you might be confused about what it means.
- panzer_wyrm 9y agoThere is also principle of free speech — you know allowing opinions you don't agree with in your private spaces. Of course unless having bad manners is piece of performance art it is good to observe them and articulate one's position eloquently. There is a lot to be said about obama era failures on a lot of different levels. Which includes intelligence agencies performance.
- yequalsx 9y agoI believe in freedom of speech too. That means that the government should not stifle speech. HN and other such entities have the right regulate speech on their properties.
- dang 9y agoThat's an uncivil swipe. We've warned you a whole bunch of times about this. If you do it again, we will ban you.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jonstewart 9y agoIs there good Sino-Western spy fiction?
- iamacynic 9y agoi liked spy game, the movie with robert redford and brad pitt.
- arca_vorago 9y agoWho needs fiction, just read up on Kissinger and Mao (and Chiang Kai-shek) and how the two intersect if you want stuff most people wouldn't beleive.
- grue2 9y agoLook into The Tourist/Milo Weaver trilogy by Olen Steinhauer. The third book (An American Spy) is where you'll find the US/Chinese intrigues (and an incident that has a similar ring to it as the above news article). I recommend the full trilogy, as the first two books set up the third. You might also try The Honourable Schoolboy by John Le Carré. Set primarily in Hong Kong, it's part spy novel, part sweeping tour of Southeast Asia just as the last dominos are falling to Communism in the 1970s. Although it's technically in the George Smiley series, I don't think you really need to read those in any particular order. Steinhauer if you like beach reads/page turners. Le Carré if you like a more literary slow-burner.
- jonstewart 9y agoI've read just about everything by Le Carré, including, of course, The Honourable Schoolboy. I might check out Steinhauer. I think I read something by him, but can't remember what.
- lukewrites 9y agoNight Heron is a fun read. Haven't gotten around to the sequels though. Also, Tiger Trap was an interesting nonfiction read on US-China spying.
- matt_s 9y agoFrom my readings of CIA memoirs and spy novels, CIA Agents (aka sources or informants) are really foreign people reporting information to the CIA Officers which are US Government employees. If these were US government workers reporting secrets to the Chinese I would expect imprisonment, etc. I guess it isn't too shocking they would do the same, albeit more cruelly, to their own traitors. There was a post recently about how easy it was for foreign governments, in the 1970's, to track the actual CIA Officers on station at an embassy. TL;DR: Reading job titles and observing who they hung out with was one way. Also mentioned was that CIA officers rarely intermingled with actual Diplomats and support staff often knew who was who because of secret areas of the embassy that were off limits. The article mentions a potential hack into the systems but it could have been good old spy-craft by following people and noticing patterns to find the sources.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- sleepingeights 9y agoEvidently, CIA Officers are notoriously sloppy and negligent in handling their agents in the east and south east. Just rumours from people who escaped Vietnam, etc... The US doesn't like the Asians and have systematically killed them as part of their institutional organization. In the Korean War they dropped more bombs, including napalm and experimental bombs, on the Koreans than all of the bombs dropped in WWI and WWII combined. They dropped two atomic bombs on cities full of civilians in Japan. And these are two of the US' closest Asian "allies". The US simply hates the Asians and the CIA (and FBI) are firmly part of that dogma. Edit: Just looking into US' history and pattern of extreme aggression and negativity directed at Asia, as well as anyone sharing genetic similarities, no one feels sorry for the CIA or the FBI. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if a vast majority of people outside the American Anglosphere think the CIA informants deserved it, let alone were put out of their misery from whatever shit the CIA and FBI had, did and/or put on them.
- jimjimjim 9y agowow, did you read a history book backwards?
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago>But the C.I.A.’s top spy hunter, Mark Kelton, resisted the mole theory, at least initially, former officials say. Mr. Kelton had been close friends with Brian J. Kelley, a C.I.A. officer who in the 1990s was wrongly suspected by the F.B.I. of being a Russian spy. The real traitor, it turned out, was Mr. Hanssen. Mr. Kelton often mentioned Mr. Kelley’s mistreatment in meetings during the China episode, former colleagues say, and said he would not accuse someone without ironclad evidence. You would think that a counter-espionage chief would be much more "paranoid". I would guess that in the world of intelligence, getting "ironclad evidence" of something is probably the exception and not the rule.
- mzs 9y agoImagine the Chinese here were more paranoid and they killed a dozen honest folk instead. They would have not hampered US efforts in the least and only shot themselves in the foot. See why it's not good to be more paranoid?
- ddalex 9y agoYou have to consider the risks of false positive vs false negative identification. From a state point of view, a false positive will cost you the life of a citizen - very unfortunate, and a tragedy - but in the end nobody is irreplaceable. A false negative exposes the state at risk, which affects everybody, possibly leading to catastrophe. In a risk vs reward scenario, it's vastly better to have a false positive vs a false negative. But this is not an easy decision to make. We are humans, and emotions and empathy are very strong - we don't want to hurt anybody, and normal people are reluctant to hurt other people no matter how logical it seems. This is why you want a paranoid in charge - somebody that is so afraid of making a disastrous mistake that the emphaty and emotions are suppressed.
- mzs 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Nidal_Organization_internal_executions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Nidal_Organization_interna...
- 9y ago
- smhost 9y agoIt this implying that America's informants in Russia are all being killed right now, or am I reading too much into it?
- pcurve 9y ago"Candace Marie Claiborne, accused of lying to investigators about her contacts with Chinese officials. ...Chinese agents wired cash into her bank account and showered her with gifts ...iPhone, a laptop and tuition at a Chinese fashion school...fully furnished apartment and a stipend." Recklessness of this is beyond my comprehension, not just accepting cash but also communication and computing devices like iphone and laptop that may have been tampered with. Details of the charges and bribery here. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/state-department-employee-arrested-and-charged-concealing-extensive-contacts-foreign-agents https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/state-department-employee-arr... Unbelievable lapse in judgement.
- x0x0 9y agoCheck this out: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/05/02/fbi-translator-secretly-married-islamic-state-leader/309137001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/05/02/fb... FBI translator secretly married Islamic State leader People are cray.
- smsm42 9y agoThese people are not carefully selected and trained spies, well versed in opsec. More often they would be weak people given to temptations, and finding the source that could provide them with money and other goodies in exchange for access to whatever information they can lay their hands on. Given how many people work for the government, it's hard to expect every one of them to be impervious to bribery. Actually, we know for a fact many of them are not. So the only difference is that in this case foreigners do the bribing. Otherwise it's nothing new - e.g. when somebody becomes a multimillionare while working for government or makes some spectacularly lucky investments and gets some unexplainably lucrative deals from people needing the influence in the government - it's completely routine. Most of the times they get away with it. So no one could blame a state dept worker for thinking maybe she could get away with it too.
- kevando 9y agoEvery time I read news like this, I remember that nyt has many choices of what to publish and they CHOSED to publish this. Why? It feels like this article is designed to increase sympathy for the CIA.
- RachelF 9y agoThis is historical, being 7 years old. No one knows for sure when the Office of Personnel Management hack began, only that it was detected, by accident in 2015. This OPM hack is probably the most damaging for the US government's spying efforts, even more than the Snowden disclosures.
- dredmorbius 9y agoFair point. Information technology needs refreshing every 3-9 years or so (Moore's Law and such, though Moore treads more lightly over algorithms than he does microchips). People ... need a years to develop, and could potentially provide useful service for decades. Having an entire cohort of agents removed is a substantial blow.
- permadefroster 9y agoU.S. reliance on technology is so beyond reasonable at this point that, I'd imagine there's the very real, serious liklihood of something on the level of an Enigma/Lorenz cypher botch that gives away the whole country on a platter. It's something that I've wondered about for a while now, but really, who am I to question such things?
- guscost 9y agoThat's an interesting and scary idea, but keep in mind that a lot has happened since WWII. Back then industrial-mechanical cryptography was seen as this magic wand that made all communications completely inscrutable. Then the Polish and British and others went to such crazy lengths building brute-forcing machines, etc, to actually break these ciphers, and since then the idea of an infallible crypto system is out of style. So I think the strategy is much different and much more durable now. The military designs ciphers to be resistant to theoretical future quantum computer architectures. They fund research every year to prove various properties of crypto systems. And I'll bet there are lots of fallbacks for any critical infrastructure.
- 9y ago
- zaroth 9y agoWow, a piece i could read on the NYT. I hope it's not just me, reading this thinking; this story reads so much differently than their typical Trump hit piece. It doesn't take a side, it doesn't try to fire you up, it just informs. I like being informed. This story is incredible - it shows a massive failure of the US system. The most likely source, a leak inside. A leak they were never truly able to detect. It bodes for sloppiness. The incredible level of sheer sloppiness we are seeing from the deep state is beyond incredible. If the reality is the intel services need a bad and serious reshaping, and we are watching them actively try to avoid that possibility. This article exposes a little more truth of the matter. Our spies have been assassinated. Our most sensitive databases breached. Our own weapons stolen and used for bullshit crap coded ransom-ware. I would hope this story sticks around and becomes a talking point, but the media will strangle this out.
- Consultant32452 9y agoIt's really terrifying how much the deep state seems to be unraveling.
- Terr_ 9y agoThe so-called "deep state" is just a Trumpian label for "any bureaucracy once gets in the way of my autocracy." At best, it's a complete reversal of Hanlon's razor, where witches and commies and whatnot are hiding behind every corner.
- 3131s 9y agoThe term deep state has been around for a long time. It is the group of non-elected people who exert considerable influence from behind the scenes, and that remain from administration to administration. But whatever you want to call it, it is exactly the deep state that facilitates things like yesterday's $350B arms deal with Saudi Arabia.
- Bakary 9y agoThe absence of a deep state would be much scarier than the alternative!
- mysterypie 9y ago> By 2013, China’s success in identifying C.I.A. agents had been blunted — it is not clear how. If I can make a software analogy here, this is the least satisfying resolution to a bug in your program. Imagine a devastating but intermittent bug, that simply disappears after a period of time or after innocuous changes to your program. Not knowing what happened or how it "fixed itself" is very frustrating. Alternate theory: The F.B.I. and the C.I.A. know exactly how they fixed it, but they won't tell The New York Times that part.
- Lordarminius 9y agoYour alternate theory is likely to be the correct one. As a general rule with very few exceptions, read espionage tales published in the popular press for entertainment not accurate information. The first rule of spying is : EVERYBODY. LIES.
- angry_octet 9y agoOr in fact they have no meaningful agent program, but they want the Chinese to think they do, so they spend vast resources looking for the CIA's sources and randomly arresting the wrong people. How easy would it be to plant cyber evidence on someone these days? Especially with everyone in China running on devices with govt backdoors, it must be easy.
- apozem 9y agoI thought the same thing about your alternate theory. If they did figure out how to fix the problem, they absolutely would not reveal that.
- arthur_trudeau 9y agoReading between the lines, a lot of the mole suspicion seems to focus on ethnically Chinese CIA employees.
- michaelt 9y agoBetween speaking the language fluently and not sticking out when meeting sources, it makes sense to me there would be a lot of ethnically Chinese employees in the spying-on-china division.
- mmport80 9y agoInteresting how American citizens / informants are seduced and reckless, whereas Chinese sources act out of worries about corruption. E7ther biases, or possibly about to change sharply in age of Trump.
- Bakary 9y agoWe only know about the informants who get clapped, there's perhaps not enough information available to make pronouncements.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoHave you ever seen the anti spying posters in china? They totally are oriented around seduction and recklessness (Chinese girls are warned about handsome foreigners, and so on).
- mmport80 9y agoI suppose, I expect more from NYT
- kobeya 9y agoHoneypots are literally the oldest trick in the book. Everybody uses them.
- appleflaxen 9y ago> By 2013, the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. concluded that China’s success in identifying C.I.A. agents had been blunted how can the CIA conclude the problem is resolved when they have no idea what the problem is? this sounds exactly like a government report to CYA (all too familiar if you've ever worked for the USG).
- kobeya 9y agoIf they knew, would they tell the New York Times?
- rbg246 9y agoMaybe there was never a problem, maybe this is to make the Chinese think that they got the right people, I mean the NYT is not the CIAs therapist what good is it telling your top secret problems to the press unless you have an angle. But all the same it was a fascinating read.
- sergior 9y agoI don't know how CIA differs from any other terror group, China was within their rights to do what they did.
- secretbern 9y agoFrom the article: > 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. Hillary Clinton was secretary of State from 2009 to early 2013. In October 2010, she traveled to Vietnam for the ASEAN conference while using a personal, older model Blackberry. This timeframe also overlaps with her personal email server. > In Vietnam in particular, analysts say, there’s a concern Chinese government hackers could pull information from the Vietnamese government-owned telecom — either through an intelligence-sharing agreement with Vietnam or because Vietnamese officials make little effort to keep Chinese spies out of their networks. http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/hillary-clintons-personal-blackberry-less-secure-116200 http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/hillary-clintons-perso...
- mtw 9y agoIs it legal to spy on another country's government? This article suggests it is legal. Does the US government let chineese operatives work in the US government?
- knz 9y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_espionage_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_espionage_in_the_Uni... It goes both ways. Geopolitical peers and adversaries always spy on each other.
- ilaksh 9y agoWhy do people keep acting like we are living in a poorly scripted movie from the 70s? Its a small world. Can it really not be civilized?
- nyolfen 9y agohuh, can't believe no one has ever thought of this before
- Flenser 9y agonon-survivor bias? We don't know how many spies remain undetected.
- prirun 9y agoWe (the US) imprison people indefinitely for not turning over encryption keys and passwords. We search and copy laptops and phones at borders, with no kind of court order. We put non-dangerous people in jail for weeks because they can't pay $500 bond, even though it costs us more to have them in jail than to just forgo the bond payment. It was just on 60 Minutes last night that in Cook County IL, people are being held in prison so long before being convicted, that by the time they are convicted, they've already served their sentence, and often have served way more than their sentence. I can forgive the Chinese for killing or imprisoning US spies. I'm sure we do the same thing or worse. As far as I'm concerned, the US has lost any moral high ground when it comes to imprisonment.