Several former members of the CIA who were stationed in Iran have said that Iran was able to uncover their secret internet-based communications system that the Agency had used in order to communicate with sources.
However, it is believed that the weakness in the system was discovered prior to Iran.
Defence contractor John Reidy worked for the CIA in Iran and would contact and manage human sources that they had.
In 2008, Mr Reidy says that he warned the CIA about a “massive intelligence failure” related to “communications” with sources.
Irvin McCullough
While the CIA could have avoided this massive intelligence failure if they listened to Mr Reidy’s warning, a year later the very “nightmare scenario” that he had described became a reality.
He was ultimately fired for conflicts of interest according to his superiors.
According to him, the real reason was retaliation.
A national security analyst with the Government Accountability Project Irvin McCullough said: “This is one of the most catastrophic failures since September 11.
“And the CIA punished the person who brought the problem to light.”
According to the exposé of the failure, the Iranians were able to overcome the system because it was not meant to withstand more elaborate counterintelligence without any issues.
One former official told Yahoo news: “It was never meant to be used long-term for people to talk to sources.
“The issue was that it was working well for too long, with too many people.
“But it was an elementary system.”
One report claims this system was also compromised in China before Tehran made the discovery.
The former intelligence officers claim these risks following the issues in China were overlooked by their superiors.
It was in 2010 that Tehran announced that they had made progress when it comes to exposing and identifying CIA agents.
A year later they said that they had dismantled an entire CIA spy network.
The individuals who wrote the report detailing the flaws wrote in 2011 that an Iranian broadcast stated that the US spies created fake websites for fake companies in order to try to recruit Iranian agents through promises of perks such as jobs, visas and education abroad.
In reality, these Iranians met with CIA agents who tried to make them into their operatives.
A former official said that the CIA was in “shock and awe” with how simply the Iranian uncovered the network.
While they are unsure exactly how Tehran infiltrated their network, it is believed that the had hired a double agent who ultimately told them about the communications system.
The report says that Iran had used Google to find the CIA’s fake websites that they were using to communicate with their sources and used its search engine to find other sites with similar digital signatures.
From there, Tehran just traced anyone who visited these sites and uncovered the network.
US intelligence is still not sure if China and Iran had worked together on this or if they did it on their own.
An official added that both of the systems that had been used in each country were very similar.
