The Chinese government systematically dismantled CIA spying operations in the country starting in 2010, killing or imprisoning more than a dozen sources over two years and crippling intelligence gathering there for years afterwards.
Current and former US officials described the intelligence breach as one of the worst in decades.
It set off a tension in Washington’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies to fallout, but investigators were divided over the cause.
Some were convinced that a mole within the CIA had betrayed the United States.
Others believed that the Chinese had hacked the covert system the CIA used to communicate with its foreign sources. Years later, that debate remains unresolved.
But there was no disagreement about the damage. The Chinese killed or imprisoned 18 to 20 of the CIA’s sources in China, according to two former senior US officials, effectively unravelling a network that had taken years to build.
At a time when the CIA is trying to figure out how some of its most sensitive documents were leaked onto the internet two months ago by WikiLeaks. The
FBI investigates possible ties between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia, the unsettled nature of the China investigation demonstrates the difficulty of conducting counterespionage investigations into spy services like those in Russia and China.
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