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Comment by mattbrewsbytes | Hacker News Reader

From my readings of CIA memoirs and spy novels, CIA Agents (aka sources or informants) are really foreign people reporting information to the CIA Officers which are US Government employees.

If these were US government workers reporting secrets to the Chinese I would expect imprisonment, etc. I guess it isn't too shocking they would do the same, albeit more cruelly, to their own traitors.

There was a post recently about how easy it was for foreign governments, in the 1970's, to track the actual CIA Officers on station at an embassy. TL;DR: Reading job titles and observing who they hung out with was one way. Also mentioned was that CIA officers rarely intermingled with actual Diplomats and support staff often knew who was who because of secret areas of the embassy that were off limits.

The article mentions a potential hack into the systems but it could have been good old spy-craft by following people and noticing patterns to find the sources.

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> The article mentions a potential hack into the systems but it could have been good old spy-craft by following people and noticing patterns to find the sources.

I suspect that is the case, too. Especially this:

> Some officers met their sources at a restaurant where Chinese agents had planted listening devices, former officials said, and even the waiters worked for Chinese intelligence.

I sometimes go to some fancy and downtown restaurants in the Eastern European capital where I live, and you very often can see politicians there and people you very often see on TV as having had problems with the law. I often joke with one of my work-colleagues about how most probably all the restaurant tables in those kind of places are wired. It doesn't help that the most fancy party place in the city is partially owned by the daughter of a the director of the Security Services back in the 1990s. All these places are also filled with foreign businessmen and I suspect there are also people working for foreign embassies.

While I used to live and eat out in the poorer parts of the city I never, never saw what looked to be foreign persons eating at those restaurants. They are all gravitating around the same area in downtown city. I suspect a very similar thing is happening in China and in other countries' capitals around the world. Most of the Western diplomats who are also carrying intelligence activity on the side don't seem very capable of just blending in in a foreign environment.

> I sometimes go to some fancy and downtown restaurants in the Eastern European capital where I live, and you very often can see politicians there and people you very often see on TV as having had problems with the law. I often joke with one of my work-colleagues about how most probably all the restaurant tables in those kind of places are wired.

Lol, you don't know how close to truth you are. It has actually happened already in Poland in 2014 - a high-end restaurant in Warsaw, where ruling party's politicians liked to hang out, was wired and the recording subsequently leaked to the press. It was one of the factors that led to this party falling out of favor with voters and the "right-wing" opposition taking over.

But if you can guess that the place is wired, surely they should too?

Ok, since we both know the city, which big restaurant is owned by the blue-eyed daughter?

Club Loft and Anca Magureanu, the daughter of former SRI director Virgil Magureanu. I'm on mobile and am too lazy to link here, but the info is easily searchable.

> From my readings of CIA memoirs and spy novels, CIA Agents (aka sources or informants) are really foreign people reporting information to the CIA Officers which are US Government employees

Yep. If you haven't read it, the Billion Dollar Spy details the efforts the CIA made in Moscow during the Cold War. Pretty good read.

https://www.amazon.com/Billion-Dollar-Spy-Espionage-Betrayal...

> CIA Agents are really foreign people reporting back

Definitely: "one was shot in front of his colleagues in the courtyard of a government building"

If you're running a US-agent embedded spy ring, your ring's members don't hang out together. They probably don't even know of each others' existences.

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