Jim Geraghty at National
Review offers his take on the report of a Communist Chinese take down of
American intelligence assets in China.
At some point during the
Trump administration, we’re going to hear about something going terribly wrong
in the intelligence community. It’s just the way it is; this is exceptionally
difficult work, going up against relentless and insidious enemies. The list of
recent spy scandals is long and depressing: Aldrich Ames, Robert Hanssen, the
Convicted Spy Formerly Known As Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden… This isn’t
even mentioning the Office of Personnel Management hack or Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton’s e-mails…
We have embarrassing and frustrating setbacks in our
intelligence work under both Republican and Democratic administrations. There
is no policy that can eliminate the motives of spies, turncoats, and traitors,
usually summarized as money, ideology, coercion and ego.
We had another huge
setback to our intelligence efforts during the Obama years that we are only
learning about now. 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 afterward.
You can read the rest of the
piece via the below link:
