Hezbollah has partially unraveled the CIA’s spy network in Lebanon, severely damaging the intelligence agency’s ability to gather vital information on the terrorist organization at a tense time in the region, former and current U.S. officials said.
Officials said several foreign spies working for the CIA had been captured by Hezbollah in recent months. The blow to the CIA’s operations in Lebanon came after top agency managers were alerted last year to be especially careful handling informants in the Middle East country.
Hezbollah’s longtime leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, boasted in June on television he had unmasked at least two CIA spies who had infiltrated the ranks of the organization, which the U.S. considers a terrorist group closely allied with Iran.
Though the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon officially denied the accusation, American officials concede that Nasrallah wasn’t lying and the damage spread like a virus as Hezbollah methodically picked off the CIA’s informants.
To be sure, some deaths are to be expected in these shadowy spy wars. It’s an extremely risky business and people get killed. But the damage to the agency’s network in Lebanon has been greater than usual, several former and current U.S. officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about security matters.
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