CIA sets up 'China mission center' to counter potential threats from Beijing: Report

The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on Thursday established a 'China mission centre' in an attempt to counter the potential threats from Beijing. According to a CIA statement, the centre was established to address the worldwide challenge posed by the People's Republic of China, which spans across all of the Agency's mission areas, reported news agency Sputnik. Earlier this week, media reports claimed that CIA officers stationed abroad have been warned that a worrying number of informants hired to spy for the US are being detained or assassinated.

The CIA's counterintelligence mission centre had looked at hundreds of cases in recent years involving foreign informants who had been detained, assassinated or most likely compromised, reported the New York Times on Tuesday, October 5. According to the report, adversarial intelligence services in countries like Russia, China, Iran, and Pakistan have been tracking down CIA informants and turning them into double agents in recent years. The increased prowess of other countries in using biometric scanning, facial recognition, artificial intelligence, and hacking technologies to follow the activities of CIA officers has been demonstrated by a large number of compromised informants in recent years, the report claimed. 

'CIA case officers advised to be cautious while recruiting sources'

The warning was directed particularly at front-line officers, who were most directly involved in source recruitment and screening, the report said citing unnamed sources who had read a top-secret cable. The cable cautioned CIA case officers to concentrate not only on recruiting sources, but also on security considerations such as vetting informants and avoiding adversarial intelligence services, according to the report. In July, Director William Burns had stated that the US is considering the deployment of China specialists amid a growing tussle with Bejing. 

Burns had remarked that the United States is no longer the 'only big kid' on the geopolitical block, admitting that China is the US's biggest geopolitical challenge in the 21st century. He noted that the technology sector is the biggest area of conflict between the two rival countries. Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, had previously chastised China for refusing a new World Health Organization (WHO) probe into the origins of COVID-19. Psaki had told reporters during her briefing that the Biden administration was "utterly disappointed" by China's refusal.

Image: AP