China has killed or jailed some 20 CIA sources between 2010 to 2012, systematically dismantling the spy agency's operations in the country, US officials say.
An intelligence breach lasting for two years led to imprisonment or killing of the informants working for the US Central Intelligence Agency, two American officials told The New York Times.
The blow triggered a joint investigation by the CIA and FBI, code named "Honey Badger," in the north of the US state of Virginia.
The damage to US spy agency, according to the American daily, could have been caused by a Chinese hacking of a CIA communications system or by a mole who betrayed them.
According to former American officials, the Chinese killed at least a dozen of the CIA's sources. According to three of the officials, one was shot in front of his colleagues in the courtyard of a government building - a message to others who might have been working for the CIA.
Still others were put in jail. All told, the Chinese killed or imprisoned 18 to 20 of the CIA spies in China, according to two former senior American officials, effectively unraveling a network that had taken years to build.
The number of American assets lost in China, officials said, rivaled those lost in the Soviet Union and Russia during the betrayals of both Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, formerly of the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., who divulged intelligence operations to Moscow for years.
An FBI employee pleaded guilty to relaying sensitive technology information to Beijing for money and prostitutes last year.
LINK: https://www.ansarpress.com/english/6677
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