In June, Hezbollah announced that it had captured two, perhaps three, CIA spies who had infiltrated its organization. Last week, the story finally made headlines in the U.S. press. According to some former U.S. officials, Hezbollah may have identified as many as a dozen CIA informants within its organization.
This is only the agency’s latest setback at the hands of a terrorist organization. In December 2009, an al-Qaida suicide bomber killed seven CIA officers at an American compound in Afghanistan. In April 1983, a Hezbollah car bomb destroyed the U.S. embassy in Beirut, killing 60 people, including 17 Americans, eight of whom were CIA employees. Given the agency’s track record, very few intelligence and Middle East experts were surprised by last week’s revelation that the CIA had been handed another loss in the region.
Read Full Article »