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Former CIA Beirut Officer Baer: Losing Beirut, Tehran Stations a Catastrophe

Former CIA Beirut Officer Baer: Losing Beirut, Tehran Stations a Catastrophe
folder_openToday's News access_time12 years ago
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After the US Central Intelligence Agency received a painful blow with the announcement that more than a dozen spies of its agents have been caught in Iran and Lebanon, US officials admitted defeat warning of the difficulty of the situation.

Former senior CIA officer Robert Baer told ABC News that "the loss of CIA assets was more than a mere setback, and not an isolated incident but part of a disturbing pattern."
 
"When you lose your entire station, either in Tehran or Beirut, that's a catastrophe," said Bob Baer, the so-called legendary CIA agent said.

Baer who was previously part of CIA's Beirut station and current adviser in the Special tribunal for Lebanon blamed the agents for falling in Hizbullah's trap by saying "the disaster was due in part to a new generation of agents that has forgotten, or never learned, the traditional methods of intelligence gathering."
 
"They don't understand tradecraft," Baer said admitting that the "CIA has lost touch in espionage."

Trying to blame technology for CIA's catastrophe, Baer added that "we're very good with drones. However, we've got, at the CIA, targeters that can find the enemy and get rid of them remotely. But all traditional espionage has gone away. And that does concern me because you need both. You just cannot live off drones forever."
 
According to ABC "Baer, who speaks frequently with current CIA officers, also notes that simply serving in war zones has contributed to the atrophy."


Source: ABC Channel, Edited by moqawama.org

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