China slaughtered or imprisoned up to 20 USA spies in 2010-12
Beijing deliberately destroyed CIA spying endeavors in China starting in 2010, killing or imprisoning more than twelve incognito sources, in a profound mishap to US knowledge there, The New York Times detailed.
The Circumstances, citing 10 present and previous American authorities who talked on state of secrecy, portrayed the knowledge break as one of the most exceedingly awful in decades.
It said that even now knowledge authorities are uncertain whether the US was double-crossed by a mole inside the CIA or whether the Chinese hacked an incognito framework utilized by the CIA to speak with outside sources.
Of the damage inflicted on what had been one of the most productive US spy networks, however, there was no doubt: at least a dozen CIA sources were killed between late 2010 and the end of 2012, including one who was shot in front of colleagues in a clear warning to anyone else who might be spying, the Times reported.
In all, 18 to 20 CIA sources in China were either killed or imprisoned, according to two former senior American officials quoted. It was a grave setback to a network that, up to then, had been working at its highest level in years.
Those losses were comparable to the number of US assets lost in the Soviet Union and Russia because of the betrayals of two infamous spies, Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, the report said.
The CIA's mole hunt in China, following the severe losses to its network there, was intense and urgent. Nearly every employee of the US Embassy in Beijing was scrutinized at one point, the newspaper said.
Meantime, then-president Barack Obama's administration was demanding to know why its flow of intelligence from China had slowed.
The revelations come as the CIA seeks to determine how some of its highly sensitive documents were released two months ago by WikiLeaks, and the FBI examines possible links between the Donald Trump campaign and Russia.
Both the CIA and the FBI declined to comment.
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