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Government
Follow-up: 6 Questions About The Huge CIA Blunder That Allowed Enemies To Kill 70 U.S. Spies
2018-11-07
[Federalist] More than 70 foreign nationals working as spies for the CIA in Iran and China were systematically identified and slaughtered in the past decade, due to a ridiculously weak web-based system the CIA used to communicate with foreign assets it couldn’t reach directly. This according to a devastating November 2 report in Yahoo News written by journalists Zach Dorfman and Jenna McLaughlin (center-left, but generally trustworthy).

Skipping down to the 6 ques:

1. Have the specific problems been dealt with?
Considering the order of ineptitude on display, are there still exploitable copies of the web sites up on archive.org or elsewhere?

2. Are CIA foreign source communications actually fixed?
Have tried and true, centuries-old spycraft behaviors such as dead drops, brush passes, cypher pads, and the like been adapted and put in place in a modern setting? How anybody can be stupid enough to place the personal identities of spies for the United States in an electronic directory in the first place beggars the understanding. We don’t need to know the exact details, but has this practice been nixed and something better put in place?

3. Who let this happen?
Although Reidy’s reports were ignored during the Bush years, the real catastrophe got rolling during the Obama administration. As Michael Walsh points out at PJ Media, it played out under a carousel of changing directors. Walsh convincingly contends that administrative churn in an area the president disliked was a large reason for the failures. Can we get an accounting, and maybe even an apology to the American people for screwing up so badly?

4. Is the CIA itself fixed?
This is an agency that seems lately given to fantasy and bureaucratic truculence, especially for its role in the idiotic Russia collusion imbroglio. Did former director Mike Pompeo address any of these issues during his tenure? Most of all, can we trust that current director and CIA lifer Gina Haspel has gotten rid of the fools who set up, maintained, and defended the horrific transient communication system, and paid the knaves who ignored and hounded the stalwart Reidy out of a job?

5. Who are the spies who were killed?
Might as well tell us now. Whatever was going to be compromised is already shot to pieces. Whether these folks did it for money, revenge, sex, love, or purity of heart and love of freedom, they were doing the citizens of the United States, and the people of the free world, a huge service, obviously risking their lives in the process.

Have their surviving families been protected? Covertly rewarded with cash, tickets out, spots for their children in U.S. universities? We should do them right and take care of this debacle American-style, with more than an anonymous star on some wall at Langley. It is a pity we could not keep our spies safe, but at least we should honor their ultimate sacrifice.

6. What was revealed to China and Iran when these spies were interrogated?
How and when is this catastrophic failure going to come back and haunt us? Because it will.

Posted by:Besoeker

#1  Another face palm moment for the spirits of Adm. Bellinger & Gen. Martin.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418   2018-11-07 19:42  

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