22 November 2011
BEIRUT: The capture of several CIA informants in Lebanon earlier this year has damaged the U.S. agency’s intelligence operations in Lebanon, the Associated Press reported Monday.
According to the AP report, current and former U.S. officials told the agency that despite official denials by the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon, Hezbollah did apprehend at least two CIA spies over the summer. The officials also said the damage to the agency’s operations in the country runs deeper than the captures themselves, as the CIA must now find out where it went wrong.
In June, Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah said two members of the group were found to be working for the CIA, and a third member was working for another unidentified foreign entity.
“When Israel failed to break into Hezbollah’s body, it requested the assistance of the most powerful intelligence agency ... we have two cases of spies affiliated with the CIA and one more might be affiliated with either the CIA, European intelligence or Mossad,” Nasrallah said in a TV address at the time.
He said the two members, whom he described as low-level, had been in contact with diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut.
“Our investigation has found that ... intelligence officers [with the CIA] have recruited two of our members, but we’ll not name [them] out of respect for the privacy of their families,” he said.
“The U.S. Embassy ... is a nest of spies recruiting [spies] to serve Israel. We have become a direct target of U.S. intelligence. This put us in a new stage of a security struggle,” Nasrallah said.
At the time, the U.S. Embassy in Beirut denied Nasrallah’s claims.
“These are the same kind of empty accusations that we’ve repeatedly heard from Hezbollah,” the embassy spokesman told The Daily Star, adding that “there is no substance to them.”
The U.S. officials who spoke to AP countered this statement, telling the agency that the alleged agents had been captured and that the damage to the CIA’s capabilities in Lebanon had been greater than usual, even in the already risky world of intelligence.
In June, Nasrallah said the spies, one of whom had been recruited five months before being apprehended, did not pose a serious threat to Hezbollah or its military capabilities. He called the discovery of the three cases “a true security achievement” that would help the party confront “security penetrations” in the future.”
Hezbollah has a counterintelligence unit that Nasrallah calls the “spy combat unit.” According to AP, U.S. intelligence officials believe the unit began work around 2004. Nasrallah’s June speech was the first time Hezbollah acknowledged that spies had penetrated its ranks, a rare acknowledgment of a group which takes pride in its ability to prevent infiltration.
By the time of these captures the CIA had already known that its assets in Lebanon were vulnerable, AP reported. Hezbollah had previously analyzed mobile phone data to search for phones that were used infrequently or for a short period of time. Both Hezbollah and the Lebanese government eventually detained suspects and one figure cited by AP puts the number of alleged Israeli spies apprehended by 2009 at 100.
The arrests set off alarm bells at CIA headquarters. U.S. officials told AP that the CIA had prepared a study on its vulnerabilities, and determined that the CIA’s agents in Lebanon could be found out using the same methods that were used to catch the alleged Israeli agents.
A U.S. official told AP that recommendations had been made to deal with the potential threat. Both the head of the unit that handles Hezbollah from CIA headquarters in Virginia and the head of counterintelligence were made aware of the threats.
It is not clear what moves were taken in response. Former officials told AP that the Hezbollah unit chief had worked in Afghanistan and had played a key role in the capture of a top “terrorist” while he or she had been stationed in the Persian Gulf post-Sept. 11, and so was well aware of the importance of counterintelligence.
“We have lost a lot of people in Beirut over the years, so everyone should know the drill,” a former Middle East case officer familiar with the case told AP.
The number of people in the CIA who could identify potential threats to informants’ identities was limited by the fact that some files were put on “restricted handling,” according to the AP report. This was meant as a measure that would ensure that less people in the CIA knew the identity of informants.
An official told the AP that CIA agents in Lebanon were too predictable when meeting their sources.
In a Sunday report, The Los Angeles Times said that Lebanese informants met their CIA case officers at a local Pizza Hut. This meeting point, according to the Time’s source, allowed Lebanese and Hezbollah authorities to discover who was working with the agency.
The report said that U.S. officials “strongly” denied agents were compromised at a Pizza Hut.
The Times’ said that up to 12 CIA informants have been compromised in Beirut, and that, using the CIA’s term for its post, “Beirut station is out of business.”
U.S. officials confirmed to the Times that some CIA operations had been suspended in Beirut last summer, but disputed the figure of a dozen. It is unclear, said the Times, whether operations have resumed.
The location of the three spies Nasrallah mentioned in June is unknown, AP reported.
It said that the Hezbollah unit chief remains in their Virginia position, but the CIA’s top counterintelligence officer recently retired.
AP quoted officials saying her successor is a more experienced officer who has held posts in Moscow, Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Balkans.
The U.S. labels Hezbollah as a terror group. The party last fought a devastating war with Israel in the summer of 2006 during which it fired missiles deep into Israel.
At least 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers, were killed during the war.
Copyright The Daily Star 2011.
