WASHINGTON — More than a dozen spies working for the CIA in Iran and Lebanon have been caught, and US officials fear they have been or will be executed, ABC News reported.
The spies were paid informants recruited by the CIA for two espionage operations — one targeting Iran and the other focused on Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed organization based in Beirut and designated by the State Department as a terror group.
“Espionage is a risky business,” a US official briefed on the developments told ABC.
The official confirmed that several spies had disappeared over the past six months and were possibly killed, but did not say how many spies were involved.
“If they were genuine spies, spying against Hezbollah, I don’t think we’ll ever see them again,” former CIA officer Robert Baer told ABC.
Current and former intelligence officials told ABC that the discovery of the spy rings in Tehran and Beirut occurred separately, but were significant setbacks in efforts to track developments in Iran’s nuclear program and Hezbollah’s activities against Israel.
Some intelligence community sources told ABC that sloppy “tradecraft” by the CIA was to blame for the spies being uncovered.
The ABC report points to one example of how Hezbollah agents might have infiltrated CIA operations in Beirut. Working as double agents, two Hezbollah members were able to learn that several CIA officers were apparently meeting secret agents and other contacts at a Beirut Pizza Hut, according to four US officials with knowledge of the matter.
One former senior intelligence official told ABC that CIA officers “ignored warnings that the operation could be compromised by using the same location for meetings with multiple assets.”