Countries like China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan tracking, hunting down CIA's informants, suggests report

"In recent years, adversarial intelligence services in Russia, China, Iran, and Pakistan have been tracking down CIA sources and, in some cases, turning them into double agents," according to a New York Times report published on Tuesday.

Counterintelligence officials in the United States are warning CIA stations throughout the world about a "troubling" number of informants recruited from other nations to spy for America who have been apprehended or killed. According to a media report, "adversarial intelligence agencies" in countries like Russia, China, Iran, and Pakistan have been tracking down the agency's sources and, in some cases, turning them into double agents in recent years. According to the New York Times, "top American counterintelligence officials warned every CIA station and base across the world about an increasing number of informants recruited from other countries to spy for the US being jailed or killed."

The letter, which was sent via an extraordinary top-secret cable, said that "the CIA's counterintelligence mission centre had looked at hundreds of cases involving foreign informants who had been assassinated, incarcerated, or most likely corrupted" during the preceding few years. The letter also emphasised "the difficulty the intelligence agency is facing in recruiting operatives all around the world in challenging operational settings. In recent years, adversarial intelligence services in Russia, China, Iran, and Pakistan have been tracking down CIA sources and, in some cases, turning them into double agents," according to a New York Times report published on Tuesday.

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According to the report, informants found by opposing intelligence agencies are not always jailed "instead, they are transformed into double agents who provide misinformation to the CIA, which can have disastrous consequences for intelligence gathering and analysis. Pakistanis have been veryinfluentiale in this regard. According to the article, the brief cable also detailed the number of other intelligence services' executions, noting that this was generally tightly guarded data that counterintelligence officers did not discuss in such dispatches.

Sheetal Patel, the CIA's associate director for counterintelligence, has not been hesitant to give broad warnings to current and past personnel, according to the article. Earlier this year, she sent a letter to retired agency officers warning them against working for foreign governments that are attempting to build up spying capabilities by hiring retired intelligence officials.