China ‘killed dozens’ as it smashed CIA ring

BEIJING systematically took apart all the CIA’S spying operations in China, beginning in 2010, and killed or jailed more than a dozen covert sources, a report in The New York Times claims.

The newspaper, quoting 10 current and former US officials speaking anonymously, described the intelligence breach as one of the worst in decades.

Even now, it said, intelligence officials are unsure whether there was a mole within the agency or if the Chinese managed to hack a covert system to intercept CIA communications.

Of the damage inflicted on what had been one of the most productive US spy networks, there is 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 as part of a clear warning to anyone else who might be spying, The New York Times reported.

In all, 18 to 20 CIA sources in China were either killed or imprisoned, according to two former senior US officials. It was a grave setback to a network that, up until then, had been working at its highest level in years.

Those casualties were on a scale comparable to the number of US assets lost in the Soviet Union and (later) Russia as a result of the betrayals of two infamous moles, the CIA’S Aldrich Ames and FBI agent Robert Hanssen, the report said.

Western espionage services have traditionally found it exceptionally hard to develop spy networks in China and Russia.

The CIA’S hunt for the mole in China, following the severe losses to its network there, was intense and urgent. Nearly every employee of the US Embassy in Beijing was scrutinised at one point, the newspaper said.

Meanwhile Barack Obama’s White House administration was demanding to know why its flow of intelligence from China had slowed.

Both the CIA and the FBI declined to comment on the press claims.

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.