
Killing C.I.A. Informants, China Crippled U.S. Spying Operations - georgecmu
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-cia-spies-espionage.html
======
matt_s
From 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.

~~~
paganel
> 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.

I suspect that is the case, too. Especially this:

> Some officers met their sources at a restaurant where Chinese agents had
> planted listening devices, former officials said, and even the waiters
> worked for Chinese intelligence.

I sometimes go to some fancy and downtown restaurants in the Eastern European
capital where I live, and you very often can see politicians there and people
you very often see on TV as having had problems with the law. I often joke
with one of my work-colleagues about how most probably all the restaurant
tables in those kind of places are wired. It doesn't help that the most fancy
party place in the city is partially owned by the daughter of a the director
of the Security Services back in the 1990s. All these places are also filled
with foreign businessmen and I suspect there are also people working for
foreign embassies.

While I used to live and eat out in the poorer parts of the city I never,
never saw what looked to be foreign persons eating at those restaurants. They
are all gravitating around the same area in downtown city. I suspect a very
similar thing is happening in China and in other countries' capitals around
the world. Most of the Western diplomats who are also carrying intelligence
activity on the side don't seem very capable of just blending in in a foreign
environment.

~~~
ddalex
Ok, since we both know the city, which big restaurant is owned by the blue-
eyed daughter?

~~~
paganel
Club Loft and Anca Magureanu, the daughter of former SRI director Virgil
Magureanu. I'm on mobile and am too lazy to link here, but the info is easily
searchable.

------
pcurve
"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-
arr...](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/state-department-employee-arrested-and-
charged-concealing-extensive-contacts-foreign-agents)

Unbelievable lapse in judgement.

~~~
x0x0
Check this out: [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-
now/2017/05/02/fb...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-
now/2017/05/02/fbi-translator-secretly-married-islamic-state-
leader/309137001/)

FBI translator secretly married Islamic State leader

People are cray.

~~~
ryanmarsh
To be fair the dating scene in DC is pretty rough.

------
mysterypie
> _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
Your 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.

------
RachelF
This 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.

~~~
nabla9
> even more than the Snowden disclosures.

Snowden took only documents that describe the overall global surveillance
infrastructure.

Snowden had access to raw data streams for almost all SIGINT operations.
System administrators like Snowden received special "root access like"
clearance called PRIVAC (Privileged Access) where people allowed to be exposed
to information of any classification, regardless of what their position
actually needs, apparently because they are sysadmins and need to see what's
going on. Snowden had 'technical' access to live feeds for all active
operations, drone feeds and other information regardless of classification all
over the world was wider than anyone participating in operations had.

It's not hard to imagine that there are other people with PRIVAC access who
are actual spies. Just by observing important stuff and not taking anything
compromises the system. If they downloaded some of that stuff, it has been
open doors all this time.

Only after Snowdon's revelations NSA has added the two-man rule for sysadmins.
Apparently it was too costly before. Increasing the data collection was more
important than building the system.

I think there is systemic failure in US/UK intelligence organizations. They
constantly emphasize offense over defense even when they know that they are
very vulnerable. It's hard to show results for good defensive posture.

~~~
ianhawes
FYI even users with low access can view drone feeds.

~~~
nabla9
Access to drone feeds from basically all CIA/DIA operations provides breath of
access that compromises the security at completely different level than being
part of a operation.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
>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.

~~~
jonstewart
No, I imagine that the biggest fear a CIA counterintelligence chief has is of
becoming the next Angleton.

~~~
briandear
Although Angleton ultimately was proven correct by Mitroyken.

------
smhost
It this implying that America's informants in Russia are all being killed
right now, or am I reading too much into it?

------
prirun
We (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.

------
jonstewart
Is there good Sino-Western spy fiction?

~~~
grue2
Look 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
I'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.

------
mmport80
Interesting 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.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Have 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
I suppose, I expect more from NYT

------
appleflaxen
> 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
If they knew, would they tell the New York Times?

------
arthur_trudeau
Reading between the lines, a lot of the mole suspicion seems to focus on
ethnically Chinese CIA employees.

~~~
michaelt
Between 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.

------
ilaksh
Why 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
huh, can't believe no one has ever thought of this before

------
mtw
Is 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
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_espionage_in_the_Uni...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_espionage_in_the_United_States)

It goes both ways. Geopolitical peers and adversaries always spy on each
other.

------
Flenser
non-survivor bias? We don't know how many spies remain undetected.

------
kevando
Every 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.

~~~
peteretep

        > they CHOSED to publish this. Why?
    

Is "they think people will click on it" too complicated an answer?

------
secretbern
From 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-
perso...](http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/hillary-clintons-personal-
blackberry-less-secure-116200)

------
zaroth
Wow, 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.

~~~
bsder
> The most likely source, a leak inside. A leak they were never truly able to
> detect.

This is pure conjecture.

It is quite easy to do data mining on your subjects if you aren't actually
bound by laws, evidence, or human rights.

The drug lords were using AS/400 mainframes decades ago to ferret out
traitors. Sure, they killed a few people who weren't, but, meh, who cares,
right? I can't imagine the Chinese government actually cares to any greater
degree.

Unless an informant doesn't actually want any tangible benefit, there is going
to be _SOME_ trail in the electronic ether nowadays. Even the act of
_disabling_ your phone is going to be a trail nowadays.

If you simply kill off anybody who falls afoul of your "standard profile"
you're going to get your intelligence agents.

~~~
nyolfen
>The drug lords were using AS/400 mainframes decades ago to ferret out
traitors.

do you have any reading on this?

~~~
bsder
2002 article date--arrests were 8 years earlier:
[http://cocaine.org/cokecrime/](http://cocaine.org/cokecrime/)

