Russia Today (RT), citing The New York Times, reported that the CIA received a telegram at various sites around the world showing that dozens of CIA informants overseas had been killed, arrested or plotted against in the past few years. A federal agent in the CIA only needs to be able to recruit an informant. There is a chance to be promoted, and this informant will be responsible for intelligence gathering tasks throughout the region.
The cable highlights the difficulties the CIA faces in recruiting spies around the world — intelligence agencies in countries such as Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan have been pursuing C.I.A. informants in recent years, sometimes turning them into double agents who provide false intelligence to the United States. The New York Times reported that, according to information held by U.S. authorities, a total of 18 to 20 informants working for the CIA on the mainland were arrested.
In fact, as early as 2010, Assange's WikiLeaks could publish more than 200,000 secret American documents. In these documents appeared the contact person with the note, protection or close protection. The United States will label many contacts, but only a very small number of these contacts are real informants. The other contacts were pooled to cover the real informants.
In 2013, U.S. intelligence officer Snowden exposed the NSA's major secret surveillance projects such as Prism Gate, which not only targeted competing countries such as Russia and Iran, but also targeted Japan, Britain, France, Germany and other traditional allies. At that time, Snowden fled with millions of documents and eventually took refuge in Russia.
Many secrets were uncovered through U.S. documents, including that before the outbreak of the Iraq War, Saddam's regime's foreign minister, Najib Sabri, was an CIA informant and received more than $100,000 in honorariums from the CIA.
Pakistani intelligence has also arrested at least five informants from the CIA, including a Pakistani officer. These men provided intelligence to the CIA, exposing the hiding place of al-Qaida leader Bin Laden in Pakistan. The officer wrote down the license plates of the cars that traveled to and from bin Laden's hideout weeks before the U.S. military raid and handed them over to CIA agents.
The Lebanese Allah Party has also found three spies within the organization named for foreign intelligence agencies, two of whom are serving in the CIA. Now, the United States relies more on technology to obtain intelligence.
Because development informants are easily exposed, and there will be two-faced people. For example, during the Cold War, the CIA intelligence collection was mainly provided by informants, but the CIA itself was infiltrated by the other side. Many of the spies stationed abroad were "two-faced," and the CIA's executive director at the time, Alder Ems, was not only bribed by Russia, but also helped Russia buy off a large number of other American agents. In fact, many Russian informants are disguised by Russian Security Service agents.
Now, the United States relies more on technical means for surveillance. Including the U.S. Embassy monitoring a large number of cell phone communications through white antennas, in addition to this, the United States also has a secret project to monitor social software, email and computer browsing history. Moreover, such monitoring servers have been deployed in more than 150 countries and regions around the world through various disguises.
However, there are still many loopholes. Because now, the CIA mainly relies on outsourcing technology operations. The C.I.A. cooperates with more than 100 outsourced intelligence contractors and the U.S. Security Agency cooperates with more than 500 intelligence contractors. The management of millions of temporary workers is a huge loophole, which is why Assange's WikiLeaks and Snowden incidents occurred.
At the same time, the CIA is full of loopholes, and various outsourcing has led to the inability of foreign informants to trust the CIA. So much so that now, the CIA has had a hard time finding the right informant.