Do you remember during the Obama years there was a catastrophe within the U.S. intelligence community where dozens of American spies in China were uncovered and executed? I do remember that vividly. We went dark. It was really ominous. What the hell happened? Keystone Cops CIA statecraft is what happened. This Reuters article today exposes how CIA mishandled homegrown spooks in Iran, failures that occurred "in at least 20 countries, among them China, Brazil, Russia, Thailand and Ghana..."
China was always difficult for us to penetrate because of racial, linguistic and nationalistic distinctness. An American, with our distinctive looks, stands out in China. I encountered this on both occasions I went to Beijing when I caught Chinese taking photos of me and my American girlfriends. When I met with Mr. Wang one time it was by his choice in the empty lobby of a Bally's fitness center. Very difficult to recruit within China. The U.S. hasn't had a diplomatic presence in Iran since 1979. Embassies are full-service spy headquarters. Without an embassy to act as clearinghouse we had to recruit online.
The most vivid example of CIA bungling for a techno-luddite like me was a series of "clandestine" websites created by CIA for spooks to contact them. The sites were created with off-the-shelf software bought online. One website name was "Iraniangoals."
Nothing to see here, only a soccer website.
But a non-spook stumbling onto Iraniangoals trying to perform a search would get no results. A right click on the page spelled out the real purpose of the search bar:
So guess what Iran's intelligence did? Just waited around for some dope to login. Hooo, hard! Result? The homegrown spook was arrested by Iran, along with dozens of others, and CIA went blind in Iran. Way to go, CIA!
