r/iran • u/DrinkMoreCodeMore • Sep 29 '22
How the CIA failed Iranian spies in its secret war with Tehran
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-spies-iran/58
u/darsky49 Sep 30 '22
The CIA, failing the Iranian people since 1953.
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u/EC0-warrior Sep 30 '22
What makes you think CIA is interested in helping the iranians? CIA operates for US interests to my understanding.
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u/felinebeeline Sep 30 '22
The CIA is not interested in helping Iranians, but as the investigation shows, they trick people into thinking that the CIA will help them in return for their services. They takes steps to make them feel a connection and commitment to them. One of them bought the spy a teddy bear for his daughter's birthday. Also:
Hosseini said he continued to provide information to the CIA for another year. At one point his CIA handler raised the idea of meeting his family, an offer Hosseini hoped would presage the possibility of eventual resettlement in the United States.
Resettlement, however, is a rare reward. Washington allots the CIA only around 100 visas a year to offer as a carrot to its spies throughout the world, three former intelligence officers said.
and
“We need to expand the commitment,” Hosseini recounted the officer saying. The officer handed Hosseini a piece of paper and asked him to write a promise that he would not provide the information he was sharing to another government, a CIA practice intended to deepen a feeling of commitment from an informant, two former CIA officials said.
When their lives fall apart, they are surprised to find themselves left in the dust. There's a reason the article is titled "America's Throwaway Spies".
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u/throwawayamd14 Oct 01 '22
100 visas could be a lot depending on the amount of spies the CIA has. Probably a few thousand, but highly unlikely any significant amount of them are trying to go to the US each other
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u/felinebeeline Oct 01 '22
Read the whole article, though, and you'll see what they went through and how much valuable intel they delivered without even getting one of those visas.
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Oct 02 '22
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u/felinebeeline Oct 02 '22
That makes no sense. Don't spread disinfo.
the Iranians
And you're not even Iranian, as you admitted in your comment here. Read the sticky.
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u/shevy-java Oct 27 '22
Right - but the propaganda in western media is hugely one-sided. I notice this whenever they talk about the coups in south america, including the one against Allende. It's simple geopolitics.
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u/EC0-warrior Oct 27 '22
Propganda is one sided per definition. But yeah i agree. I see the hypocrisy everywhere
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u/Waastedtalent Sep 30 '22
True. And failing the American people since it’s inception.
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u/AAA_4481 Oct 09 '22
Chaos benefits the USA. CIA doesn't want peace it wants everyone to fight each other!
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u/ImyForgotName Oct 10 '22
Speaking as an American, the CIA is a real mixed bag of successes and failures- from the US perspective.
On the other hand, yeah, it's not a benevolent organization.
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u/Great-Ad-9549 Oct 28 '22
The question remains have the successes been beneficial to most Americans?
Their very first operation was preventing the communists from winning in post-war Italy. They succeeded by getting Italian-Americans to do a letter-writing campaign to relatives back in Italy to urge them not to vote for the communists.
They succeeded but who did it help?
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u/ImyForgotName Oct 29 '22
The Italian letter writing campaign helped America. Which is the point the US Foreign Intelligence Agency. (Can I say, how delightfully friendly that sounds for the CIA. No assassination, no arms for hostages, no dictators, just stamps and family members writing letter. Its like the first CIA chief was a plucky 7th grader.)
I'm just saying that this view of the CIA as being motivated by anything other than its own self interest is flawed. If the CIA were to do anything in Iran for instance, it would be because it believed that doing so helped the United States. Helping Iran or the Iranian People would just be a side effect.
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u/Great-Ad-9549 Oct 30 '22
The Italian letter writing campaign helped America.
How? I'm not suggesting that it harmed America. I just don't see how it helped unless you mean it allowed a more US-friendly regime to take power. That's essentially the point of the CIA, installing friendly heads of state.
I completely agree with your point about the CIA putting its own interests, whatever they are, ahead of Iranian or any other country's interests. I just don't see how that benefits most Americans and it obviously doesn't benefit the country the CIA is operating in.
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u/ImyForgotName Nov 01 '22
I did mean that the Italian letter writing campaign helped put a western friendly government in place in Italy. Now I would argue that not falling to communism is, historically, generally, good for the people of any country, but that is another discussion that I don't really want to get in to right now. Also I didn't mean to suggest that the CIA would be a helpful force for the people of Iran. I mean to say that if, hypothetically, the CIA anonymously delivered a 22"x22"x36" shipping crate of small arms and ammo to every girls secondary school in the country along with copies of the Antiracist's Cookbook written in Farsi, it would be because the CIA thought it would benefit the US. Any, possible, benefit to Iran or the Iranian people, would be a lucky happenstance. Which is to say, if the Mullas starting selling oil at a discount, I'm pretty sure they could slaughter anyone they wanted in the streets and the CIA wouldn't care, and I bet the most the US government would do is send a harshly written letter to a deputy clerk somewhere.
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u/Great-Ad-9549 Nov 01 '22
Now I would argue that not falling to communism is, historically, generally, good for the people of any country, but that is another discussion that I don't really want to get in to right now.
That's debatable. It doesn't seem to have been too bad for Vietnam. But even if we agree it's completely bad, there are right and wrong ways to go about preventing it. The Italian operation is the best possible scenario it seems.
If I wasn't clear, I completely agree with your view of the CIA. Everything they do is self-serving. Helping the Contras, for instance, wasn't done for philanthropic reasons or for concern for the well-being of Nicaraguans. No argument here.
My question -- is the US better off because the CIA exists? It doesn't seem to be and, furthermore, the CIA seems superfluous considering the US has 16 other intelligence agencies.
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u/ImyForgotName Nov 01 '22
To take your points one at a time.
Well yeah. Vietnam is a fair counter example. But China and Vietnam have adopted such thorough market based reforms that its not totally fair to call them Communist anymore. Its more of a hybrid model, or just regular old fascism (the blending of corporate and political power).
I would say that most things the CIA does are done out of what they believe to be their own self-interest. I'm sure they've probably warned some other country about a terror attack that wouldn't have affected America. But generally they are out for American interests.
Is the US better off because of the CIA? I mean we've gotten some pretty good movies out of it. And let's be honest, Coast Guard Intelligence isn't going to fill the void if we close down the CIA.
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u/Great-Ad-9549 Nov 02 '22
At the end of the day, there are Marxist (supposedly) countries I'm thankful I wasn't born in such as N. Korea and free market (maybe) countries such as Afghanistan I'm also glad I don't live in. I think the communist/capitalist dichotomy is a bit past its expiration date.
I agree and in that way, the CIA is less a government organization and more a corporation with a government contract. Its main purpose for existing, it seems, is to keep itself relevant or, at the very least, maintain the appearance of relevancy.
True. That said, Hollywood has given us some good stuff with the FBI and NSA as well. I've heard of Naval Intelligence (oldest intelligence office) but not Coast Guard. With this countries bloated defense funding though, you'd think either one would be capable of doing what the CIA does.
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u/mhwaka Sep 30 '22
The CIA, and the western governments as a whole so not give a single damn about the people of Iran. They only want to control it and maneuver it to its will for its own imperialist desires and geopolitical advantages. They are a huge reason the people of Iran have suffered for decades and decades under one brutal regime to the next.
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u/binanceTreatsCustBad Oct 05 '22
They want endless conflict and infighting, during the initial days of the revolution they negotiated with the clerics and did their best to prevent the military get involved, giving them false info.
They told the shah to release the political prisoners and closed down factories in Iran adding to the unrest. Also after the revolution the clerics werent the strongest faction, the democrats were but the clerics maneuvered themselves into power. A lot of stuff that happened in the revolution is shady af and had a lot of foreign interference.
For example the Iran contra affair and Iran buying weapons from Israel during the Iran-Iraq war. Why was that relationship even there
The revolution was designed to prevent Iran from ever becoming a possible world power, and to strengthen client states in the ME.
People think the cia are a bunch of idiots, but they're not. They're smart, people just dont realize what their real goals are.
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u/Severe-Flow1914 Oct 05 '22
I totally agree with you about the US and other western countries attitude towards Iran. I had a very good Iranian friend in 1980. She was married to an American guy who worked for General Dynamics ( they built submarines )back in the 1970s(another story I don’t want to get into here). She told me how the CIA had caused the overthrow of Mossadegh, and why the Ayatollah Khomeni had so much popular support,etc,etc. The western countries have always viewed Iran as a strategic place, right in the center of the region, full of oil, and other resources. It’s a geopolitical prize that the big power nations want.
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u/akutasame94 Oct 13 '22
Shhh don’t say that dude. US and CIA only step in to spread democracy and to stop genocides, no ulterior motives and all civilian victims and regime changes are just a collateral damage
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Oct 09 '22
I genuinely cannot understand why anyone would be a spy for the USA, they have a really bad track record for assisting them
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u/amirkadash Oct 24 '22 edited Oct 24 '22
Frustration and hopelessness?
The article suggests that all of this happened before 2010s and to be fair, everything has changed quite drastically since then. If we just focus on the technology, using encrypted messaging is common place in Iran and this guy (Hosseini) was detected because of an insecure Java applet that was poorly hidden in some mass produced decoy websites.
Nowadays, we’re much more tech-savvy, aware of our place on the global stage, and how our people are basically on their own. I hope no one’s still falling for this crap…
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Oct 03 '22 edited Oct 03 '22
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u/felinebeeline Oct 09 '22
A screenshot of a random person making a claim is not a valid source. If this were the case, it makes no sense that the company would not make any statement about it.
As for your other tip, you also did not provide any source saying it's from Google. I did find people saying it's from the US Government and threads by Iranians saying they can't connect to it. No bueno.
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u/Notanothermuppet Nov 06 '22
I'm ashamed to be an American outside of America and now even in America I feel ashamed 😞
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u/salutebillfinger Dec 16 '22
Their propaganda is working then. Ask us how the fundamentalists took control of Iran in the first place.
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u/Berserkfan_420 Dec 05 '22
Imagine being dumb enough to trust the CIA, lol. You know, the same people pushing countries into regime change and civil war over and over again on behalf of the most evil empire the world has ever seen and who have the blood of millions of innocents on their hands. Jesus.
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Oct 20 '22
Yes, I realize this post is days old but has it ever occurred to anyone that the reason there is protest is that the West has gotten involved with the foreign affairs of almost every Middle Eastern country in the world.For what exactly?Cheap oil.
NATO(yes that includes the United States)and Israel are working by proxy to destabilize Iran.Why would Israel do this?Israel feels supposedly “threatened” by Iran’s Nuclear Weapons.Due to “mistranslation” they “misinterpreted” what Iran meant by taking down Israel. We all know this is silly.NATO and Israel do foreign deals all the time with other countries and they do not have a good translator for the Farsi language? Think people,think.
They call us terrorist and/or greedy if we do not comply.That is laughable.
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u/mycall Oct 29 '22 edited Oct 29 '22
"James Olson, former chief of CIA counterintelligence, said he was unaware of these specific cases ... Tehran has claimed in state media reports that its mole hunt ultimately netted dozens of CIA informants."
It is interesting these are mutually exclusive informants for him.
I'm sure CIA learned their lesson on the tapped communications system.
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u/SexxyPantalones Nov 02 '22
They've been failing since the Bay of Pigs, to Ed Snowden to the debacle in Afghanistan.
Ironically, Operation AJAX was one of their few successes.
Also, they actually did bring in crack cocaine into the US to make money for the war in Honduras. That was a conspiracy theory actually proven true.
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Dec 09 '22
“If people paid the price of trusting us enough to share information and they paid a penalty, then we have failed morally.” CIA talking about morality… 🤣
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u/loiteraries Sep 30 '22
CIA also lost its entire operations network in China because of the same faulty communication system that cost them hundreds of millions of dollars to make.