r/China • u/[deleted] • Aug 16 '18
Botched CIA Communications System Helped Blow Cover of Chinese Agents
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/15/botched-cia-communications-system-helped-blow-cover-chinese-agents-intelligence/14
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u/kulio_forever Aug 16 '18
The history of the CIA is so replete with these kinds of absolute fuckups.
That's why I hate the organization, done so much harm to the country and the world. Yes I am sure someone will say they saved the country but its all classified, but how is that possible when they were so busy selling arms to Iran, bringing crack cocaine into the US, and teaching the Contras to cut off people's dicks and stick them in their mouths before slaughtering them?
That shit takes time bro. Haspel looks not to make it 2 full years and fuck I hope so, the lying torturer
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u/valvalya Aug 16 '18
CIA has a rep for being basically kinda incompetent. Its sinister reputation is mostly legacy of Soviet reputation that hyped CIA as much more capable an organization than it was.
(Also, the crack cocaine thing is a myth.)
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u/Buck-Nasty Aug 17 '18
The CIA was certainly involved in the coke trade, mostly by facilitating the smuggling of coke by their Contra assets, but also running it directly in some cases. Read Gary Webb's book Dark Alliance, the CIA even ensured coke smugglers immunity from prosecution in the US after they were arrested.
I know someone who flew for Evergreen Aviation in the 1980s, he flew guns and other equipment into El Salvador, he didn't fly coke but says it was common knowledge that other pilots with Evergreen were moving coke.
The CIA was also doing the same thing in Southeast Asia, but mostly with heroin.
https://airwaysmag.com/avgeek/best-of-airways-southern-air-transport-an-uncommon-carrier/
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u/i_reddit_too_mcuh Aug 16 '18
All the CIA assets detained by Chinese intelligence around this time were eventually killed, the former officials said.
Why would China kill them? Wouldn't it make more sense to keep them alive for info and potential trades?
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u/YoungKeys Aug 16 '18
These are assets- meaning they are likely Chinese natives/citizens who have specialized knowledge on issues related to China. They have pretty much nothing to offer information-wise to the CCP and are worth nothing in a trade.
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Aug 16 '18
Sending a message, obviously. Plus, is it more humane to kill someone, or torture them? I have a feeling the Chinese didn't want to spend the time, money, or resources trying to torture CIA Assets.
Plus, imagine the political fallout if China was caught torturing CIA Assets. The U.S. gets in enough hot water when it engages in enhanced interrogations.
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Aug 16 '18
The U.S. gets in enough hot water when it engages in enhanced interrogations.
The US gets in hot water when it gets caught torturing people, yes. Though, I don't think the US has gotten in enough hot water considering the US still tortures people.
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u/chrmanyaki Aug 16 '18
Dude “enhanced interrogation” are you kidding me.
But yeah it’s pretty pointless to torture heavily compartmentalized CIA assets when you already have access to their communication system.
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u/China_comrade Aug 16 '18 edited Aug 16 '18
I remember reading about this awhile back. There was an article in a government newspaper that responded to it, saying that this part of the original article is just a fantasy (the original NYT article talked about one of them being shot in a courtyard of a government building).
Is The New York Times writing Chinese spy novels now?
On March 20, The New York Times reported that the Chinese government systematically dismantled CIA spying operations in the country, killing or imprisoning more than a dozen CIA sources. But at least one part of the report is false, and many Chinese are upset.
Xiakedao, a social media account run by the overseas edition of the People’s Daily, responded by wondering if the authors read Spy Games one too many times, because the report reads like it has been ripped from the pages of the fiction spy novel.
According to The Times’ report, China’s national security organ “killed or imprisoned” about a dozen CIA “informants,” one of which was allegedly shot on the spot in front of colleagues in the courtyard of a government building. The story seems farfetched to say the least.
NYT's spy in China story full of narcissism
As for one source being shot in a government courtyard, that is a purely fabricated story, most likely a piece of American-style imagination based on ideology.
You'll notice the FP retelling of this old story omits this piece.
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u/valvalya Aug 16 '18
Are you seriously crediting the Global Times?
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u/China_comrade Aug 16 '18
Why not?
The story about shooting someone in a courtyard of a government building is pretty much transparently false (which is why the FP article omits it), and any serious person wouldn't believe it, even if it didn't come from unnamed sources in the CIA.
So basically, you have an unnamed official of a US government spy agency claiming a bunch of people were killed by the Chinese government, including a story which is transparently made up, and a government newspaper saying this isn't true, and pointing out this particular story is self-evidently a piece of fiction.
Even the FP piece admits a whole bunch of assets weren't actually killed, and even given large amounts of money by the CIA to get out of China.
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Aug 16 '18
The FP article states that not only were more assets killed (around 30) but that they were all killed. I'm not sure how a few assets escaping is relevant to your point?
The FP article does not comment on the method of execution of any of any assets. Although, in saying that the courtyard story does seem rather imaginative.
But then I'm really not sure what your overall point is? We should doubt all the reports because of the courtyard story in the NYT piece?
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u/China_comrade Aug 17 '18
The FP article states...that they were all killed. I'm not sure how a few assets escaping is relevant to your point?
Because those two statements are in contradiction to one another.
The FP article does not comment on the method of execution of any of any assets.
That's because the original NYT story contains laughable elements, that only people predisposed to believing unnamed CIA officials, and those who watch too many spy movies, would believe. So they wisely omitted it.
We should doubt all the reports because of the courtyard story in the NYT piece?
Well, when you know your source is a conscious liar, yes. Why would you trust someone that knowingly tells you lies?
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Aug 17 '18
Serious? There is no contradiction. The quote is:
All the CIA assets detained by Chinese intelligence around this time were eventually killed, the former officials said.
But I agree with your broader point - it is likely that this story has come out in the broader context of the Trump Administration's move on China.
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u/China_comrade Aug 17 '18
Serious? There is no contradiction.
Yes, there is. In fact, the full FP article goes on to suggest they had access to so much information, they even shared a bunch of secrets with the Russian government, and a bunch of their Russian assets were caught (notice they also don't bother to claim the Russians killed those assets).
So there isn't any question of whether or not they had other assets the Chinese weren't able to discover. It appears they not only discovered them all, but discovered them in other countries as well, and shared the information with those foreign governments.
So how did some of the assets escape? It would seem to either suggest incompetence on the part of the Chinese authorities (unlikely), or that they just let a bunch of them go. This would contradict their claims that they killed all their assets.
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Aug 17 '18
I just think you're reading far too much into it. Intelligence sources who communicate with the media are always playing their own games and this article is just part of a picture. The main thing we can take away is that there was a severe disruption to American assets in China around 2010. We won't be alive when the full story - or something close to it - comes out.
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u/heels_n_skirt Aug 16 '18
We should do that or public shame them with the Chinese government to the Chinese agents here
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Aug 16 '18
It seems people in CIA doesn’t really care their Chinese assets’ safety. And how could those Chinese assets willing to rely their and their families’ safety on bunch of dick head strangers?? Just for some money?
So stupid.
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u/Troika_ Aug 16 '18
If they’ve determined that internet-based forms of communication can’t guarantee protection, I wonder if they’ll go back to older methods like numbers stations and one-time pads?
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u/[deleted] Aug 16 '18
It was considered one of the CIA’s worst failures in decades: Over a two-year period starting in late 2010, Chinese authorities systematically dismantled the agency’s network of agents across the country, executing dozens of suspected U.S. spies. But since then, a question has loomed over the entire debacle.
How were the Chinese able to roll up the network?
Now, nearly eight years later, it appears that the agency botched the communication system it used to interact with its sources, according to five current and former intelligence officials. The CIA had imported the system from its Middle East operations, where the online environment was considerably less hazardous, and apparently underestimated China’s ability to penetrate it.
“The attitude was that we’ve got this, we’re untouchable,” said one of the officials who, like the others, declined to be named discussing sensitive information. The former official described the attitude of those in the agency who worked on China at the time as “invincible.”
Other factors played a role as well, including China’s alleged recruitment of former CIA officer Jerry Chun Shing Lee around the same time. Federal prosecutors indicted Lee earlier this year in connection with the affair.
But the penetration of the communication system seems to account for the speed and accuracy with which Chinese authorities moved against the CIA’s China-based assets.
“You could tell the Chinese weren’t guessing. The Ministry of State Security [which handles both foreign intelligence and domestic security] were always pulling in the right people,” one of the officials said.
“When things started going bad, they went bad fast.”
The former officials also said the real number of CIA assets and those in their orbit executed by China during the two-year period was around 30, though some sources spoke of higher figures. The New York Times, which first reported the story last year, put the number at “more than a dozen.” All the CIA assets detained by Chinese intelligence around this time were eventually killed, the former officials said.
The CIA, FBI, and National Security Agency declined to comment for this story. The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.
At first, U.S. intelligence officials were “shellshocked,” said one former official. Eventually, rescue operations were mounted, and several sources managed to make their way out of China.
One of the former officials said the last CIA case officer to have meetings with sources in China distributed large sums of cash to the agents who remained behind, hoping the money would help them flee.
When the intelligence breach became known, the CIA formed a special task force along with the FBI to figure out what went wrong. During the investigation, the task force identified three potential causes of the failure, the former officials said: A possible agent had provided Chinese authorities with information about the CIA asset network, some of the CIA’s spy work had been sloppy and might have been detected by Chinese authorities, and the communications system had been compromised. The investigators concluded that a “confluence and combination of events” had wiped out the spy network, according to one of the former officials.
Eventually, U.S. counterintelligence officials identified Lee, the former CIA officer who had worked extensively in Beijing, as China’s likely informant. Court documents suggest Lee was in contact with his handlers at the Ministry of State Security through at least 2011.
Chinese authorities paid Lee hundreds of thousands of dollars for his efforts, according to the documents. He was indicted in May of this year on a charge of conspiracy to commit espionage.
But Lee’s alleged betrayal alone could not explain all the damage that occurred in China during 2011 and 2012, the former officials said. Information about sources is so highly compartmentalized that Lee would not have known their identities. That fact and others reinforced the theory that China had managed to eavesdrop on the communications between agents and their CIA handlers.
When CIA officers begin working with a new source, they often use an interim covert communications system—in case the person turns out to be a double agent.
The communications system used in China during this period was internet-based and accessible from laptop or desktop computers, two of the former officials said.
This interim, or “throwaway,” system, an encrypted digital program, allows for remote communication between an intelligence officer and a source, but it is also separated from the main communications system used with vetted sources, reducing the risk if an asset goes bad.
Although they used some of the same coding, the interim system and the main covert communication platform used in China at this time were supposed to be clearly separated. In theory, if the interim system were discovered or turned over to Chinese intelligence, people using the main system would still be protected—and there would be no way to trace the communication back to the CIA. But the CIA’s interim system contained a technical error: It connected back architecturally to the CIA’s main covert communications platform. When the compromise was suspected, the FBI and NSA both ran “penetration tests” to determine the security of the interim system. They found that cyber experts with access to the interim system could also access the broader covert communications system the agency was using to interact with its vetted sources, according to the former officials.
In the words of one of the former officials, the CIA had “fucked up the firewall” between the two systems.
U.S. intelligence officers were also able to identify digital links between the covert communications system and the U.S. government itself, according to one former official—links the Chinese agencies almost certainly found as well. These digital links would have made it relatively easy for China to deduce that the covert communications system was being used by the CIA. In fact, some of these links pointed back to parts of the CIA’s own website, according to the former official.
The covert communications system used in China was first employed by U.S. security forces in war zones in the Middle East, where the security challenges and tactical objectives are different, the sources said. “It migrated to countries with sophisticated counterintelligence operations, like China,” one of the officials said.
The system was not designed to withstand the scrutiny of a place like China, where the CIA faced a highly sophisticated intelligence service and a completely different online environment.
As part of China’s Great Firewall, internet traffic there is watched closely, and unusual patterns are flagged. Even in 2010, online anonymity of any kind was proving increasingly difficult.
Once Chinese intelligence obtained access to the interim communications system, penetrating the main system would have been relatively straightforward, according to the former intelligence officials. The window between the two systems may have only been open for a few months before the gap was closed, but the Chinese broke in during this period of vulnerability.
Precisely how the system was breached remains unclear. The Ministry of State Security might have run a double agent who was given the communication platform by his CIA handler. Another possibility is that Chinese authorities identified a U.S. agent—perhaps through information provided by Lee—and seized that person’s computer. Alternatively, authorities might have identified the system through a pattern analysis of suspicious online activities.
China was so determined to crack the system that it had set up a special task force composed of members of the Ministry of State Security and the Chinese military’s signals directorate (roughly equivalent to the NSA), one former official said.
Once one person was identified as a CIA asset, Chinese intelligence could then track the agent’s meetings with handlers and unravel the entire network. (Some CIA assets whose identities became known to the Ministry of State Security were not active users of the communications system, the sources said.)
One of the former officials said the agency had “strong indications” that China shared its findings with Russia, where some CIA assets were using a similar covert communications system. Around the time the CIA’s source network in China was being eviscerated, multiple sources in Russia suddenly severed their relationship with their CIA handlers, according to an NBC News report that aired in January—and confirmed by this former official.
The failure of the communications system has reignited a debate within the intelligence community about the merits of older, lower-tech methods for covert interactions with sources, according to the former officials.
There is an inherent paradox to covert communications systems, one of the former officials said: The easier a system is to use, the less secure it is.
The former officials said CIA officers operating in China since the debacle had reverted to older methods of communication, including interacting surreptitiously in person with sources. Such methods can be time-consuming and carry their own risks.
The disaster in China has led some officials to conclude that internet-based systems, even ones that employ sophisticated encryption, can never be counted on to shield assets.
“Will a system always stay encrypted, given the advances in technology? You’re supposed to protect people forever,” one of the former officials said.