Former CIA Agent: U.S. Has Lost Its Spy Mojo
With ABC News reporting this week that more than a dozen spies working for the CIA in Iran and Lebanon have been caught and are feared dead, one U.S. official said the losses had occurred because espionage is inherently a “risky business” in which there are “occasional setbacks.”
But former senior CIA officer Robert Baer told ABC News this week that the loss of 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, a legendary CIA agent whose Middle East exploits were fictionalized in the George Clooney film “Syriana.” Baer said 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. “And we have lost our touch in espionage.”