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Assuming this is true "we have now seen our agents and assets being targeted”, there is another explanation why now - other than foreign agencies getting the do
by efoto 11y ago
Assuming this is true "we have now seen our agents and assets being targeted”, there is another explanation why now - other than foreign agencies getting the documents Snowden took.
The explanation is called protecting intelligence sources: Russia, China - or whoever had their spies inside NSA long before, can now act on the intelligence they got without triggering counterintelligence alarms.
- vetinari 11y agoEven then, targeting spies is counterproductive. The spy you know about is much less dangerous than spy that you don't know about.
- sangnoir 11y agoIf they hacked the NSA, I'd suspect most spies are known rather than unknown. There's a curious event where Russia expelled 30 UK diplomats from Moscow - and none of them were intelligence operatives (and this was no coincidence as 1/3rd of the staff were intelligence operatives) - it was just to send a message: "we know who your spies are"[1]. Edit: corrected number of diplomats & added citation 1. http://www.globalresearch.ca/five-reasons-the-mi6-story-is-a-lie/5455740 http://www.globalresearch.ca/five-reasons-the-mi6-story-is-a...
- superuser2 11y agoThis is uninteresting. It is fully expected that foreign countries know about (and extensively surveil) your "official cover" embassy staff intelligence officers. We tailed everyone who stepped out of the Soviet embassy for most of the Cold War. Those people are administrators. Your actual covert operatives will never interact with the embassy in a detectable/obvious way.
- how_about_no 11y agoThat theory is unlikely to gain traction among the public at this point in time. Even with the much-publicised example of an intelligence community insider exfiltrating data and then traveling to both China and Russia, it's considered uncouth and irresponsible to suggest that those nations have any intelligence assets in the U.S.