![]() The Chinese activities began to emerge in 2010, when the American spy agency had been getting high quality information about the Chinese government from sources deep inside the bureaucracy, including Chinese upset by the Beijing government's corruption, four former officials told the Times. Nearly every employee of the US Embassy in Beijing was scrutinised at one point, the newspaper said. The CIA's mole hunt in China, following the severe losses to its network there, was intense and urgent. The breach was considered particularly damaging, with the number of assets lost rivaling those in the Soviet Union and Russia who perished after information passed to Moscow by spies Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, the report said. In all, 18 to 20 CIA sources in China were either killed or imprisoned, according to two former senior American officials quoted. "One was shot in front of his colleagues in the courtyard of a government building - a message to others who might have been working for the CIA," the report said. Others believed that the Chinese had hacked the covert system the CIA used to communicate with its foreign sources." Of the damage inflicted on what had been one of the most productive US spy networks, there was no doubt that at least a dozen CIA sources were killed between late 2010 and the end of 2012, it said. Some were convinced that a mole within the CIA had betrayed the United States. The Times, quoting 10 current and former US officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, described the intelligence breach as one of the worst in decades.Īccording to the article, "Investigators were bitterly divided over the cause. China systematically dismantled CIA spying efforts in the country from 2010, killing or jailing more than a dozen covert sources, in a deep setback to US intelligence there, according to a report by The New York Times.
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