Top American counterintelligence officials warned every CIA station and base around the world last week about troubling numbers of informants recruited from other countries to spy for the United States being captured or killed, people familiar with the matter said.

The message, in an unusual top-secret cable, said that the CIA’s counterintelligence mission centre had looked at dozens of cases in the last several years involving foreign informants who had been killed, arrested or most likely compromised. Although brief, the cable laid out the specific number of agents executed by rival intelligence agencies — a closely held detail that counterintelligence officials typically do not share in such cables.

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The cable highlighted the struggle the spy agency is having as it works to recruit spies around the world in difficult operating environments. In recent years, adversarial intelligence services in countries such as Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan have been hunting down the CIA’s sources and in some cases turning them into double agents.

Acknowledging that recruiting spies is a high-risk business, the cable raised issues that have plagued the agency in recent years, including poor tradecraft, being too trusting of sources, underestimating foreign intelligence agencies and moving too quickly to recruit informants while not paying enough attention to potential counterintelligence risks — a problem the cable called placing “mission over security.”

The large number of compromised informants in recent years also demonstrated the growing prowess of other countries in employing innovations like biometric scans, facial recognition, artificial intelligence and hacking tools to track the movements of CIA officers in order to discover their sources.

While the CIA has many ways to collect intelligence for its analysts to craft into briefings for policymakers, networks of trusted human informants around the world remain the centerpiece of its efforts, the kind of intelligence that the agency is supposed to be the best in the world at collecting and analyzing.

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Recruiting new informants, former officials said, is how the CIA’s case officers — its front-line spies — earn promotions. Case officers are not typically promoted for running good counterintelligence operations, such as figuring out if an informant is really working for another country.

The agency has devoted much of its attention for the last two decades to terrorist threats and the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, but improving intelligence collection on adversarial powers both great and small is once again a centerpiece of the CIA’s agenda, particularly as policymakers demand more insight into China and Russia.

The loss of informants, former officials said, is not a new problem. But the cable demonstrated the issue is more urgent than is publicly understood.

The warning, according to those who have read it, was primarily aimed at front-line agency officers, the people involved most directly in the recruiting and vetting of sources. The cable reminded CIA case officers to focus not just on recruiting sources but also on security issues including vetting informants and evading adversarial intelligence services.

Among the reasons for the cable, according to people familiar with the document, was to prod CIA case officers to think about steps they can take on their own do a better job managing informants.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/us-spy-plane-crash-in-afghanistan-277115">Now, Iran media claims CIA chief behind Soleimani’s assassination killed in Afghanistan plane crash</a>

Former officials said that there has to be more focus on security and counterintelligence, among both senior leaders and front-line personnel, especially when it comes to recruiting informants, which CIA officers call agents.

“No one at the end of the day is being held responsible when things go south with an agent,” said Douglas London, a former agency operative. “Sometimes there are things beyond our control, but there are also occasions of sloppiness and neglect, and people in senior positions are never held responsible.”

London said he was unaware of the cable. But his new book, “The Recruiter: Spying and the Lost Art of American Intelligence,” argues that the CIA’s shift toward covert action and paramilitary operations undermined traditional espionage that relies on securely recruiting and handling agents.

Sheetal T. Patel, who last year became the CIA’s assistant director for counterintelligence and leads that mission centre, has not been reluctant to send out broad warnings to the CIA community of current and former officers.

In January, Patel sent a letter to retired CIA officers warning against working for foreign governments who are trying to build up spying capabilities by hiring retired intelligence officials. (The letter, promptly leaked, also included warnings about talking to journalists.)

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/cia-vienna-station-chief-removed-amid-havana-syndrome-criticism-report-415559">CIA Vienna station chief removed amid 'Havana syndrome' criticism: Report</a>

Former officials say the broadsides are a way of pushing CIA officers to become more serious about counterintelligence.

The memo sent last week suggested that the agency underestimated its adversaries — the belief that its officers and tradecraft were better than other intelligence services. But the results of the study showed that countries being targeted by the US&nbsp;are also skilled at hunting down informants.

Some former officials believe that the agency’s skills at thwarting adversarial intelligence services have grown rusty after decades of focusing on terrorism threats and relying on risky covert communications. Developing, training and directing informants spying on foreign governments differs in some ways from developing sources inside terrorist networks.

While the memo identified specific numbers of informants that were arrested or killed, it said the number turned against the United States was not fully known. Sometimes, informants who are discovered by adversarial intelligence services are not arrested but instead are turned into double agents who feed disinformation to the CIA, which can have devastating effects on intelligence collection and analysis. Pakistanis have been particularly effective in this sphere, former officials said.

The collapse of the US-backed government in Afghanistan means that learning more about Pakistan’s ties to the Taliban government and extremist organizations in the region is going to become ever more important. As a result, the pressure is once again on the CIA to build and maintain networks of informants in Pakistan, a country with a record of discovering and breaking those networks.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/south-asia/cia-says-al-qaeda-is-regrouping-post-taliban-takeover-in-afghanistan-report-413469">CIA says Al Qaeda is regrouping post Taliban takeover in Afghanistan: Report</a>

Similarly, the focus by successive administrations on great power competition and the challenges of China and Russia has meant that building up spy networks and protecting those sources are more important than ever.

In those countries, technology has also become a problem, former officials said. Artificial intelligence, biometric scans, facial recognition and other technology has made it far easier for governments to track American intelligence officers operating in their country. That has made meeting and communicating with sources far more difficult.

A breach of the classified communications system, or “covcom,” used by the CIA helped to expose the agency’s networks in China and in Iran, according to former officials. In both cases, informants were executed. Others had to be extracted and resettled by the agency.

In Iran and China, some intelligence officials believe that Americans provided information to the adversarial agencies that could have helped expose informants. Monica Elfriede Witt, a former Air Force sergeant who defected to Iran, was indicted on a charge of providing information to Iran in 2019. The Iranians leveraged her knowledge only after determining she could be trusted. Later that year, Jerry Chun Shing Lee, a former CIA officer, was sentenced to 19 years in prison for providing secrets to the Chinese government.

Watch |&nbsp;Early signs of Al-Qaeda regrouping in Afghanistan, notes CIA

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/early-signs-of-al-qaeda-regrouping-in-afghanistan-notes-cia-413465/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

Former officials say there is no shortage of examples of where the agency has been so focused on the mission that security measures were not given proper consideration. And in some cases, a turned agent can have deadly consequences.

The 2009 bombing at a CIA base in Khost, Afghanistan, that killed seven agency employees was a good example of mission over security, London said. In that suicide attack, a Jordanian doctor the CIA thought it had persuaded to penetrate al-Qaida had in fact been turned against the United States.

“We were in such a rush to make such a big score,” London said. “Those were tradecraft mistakes.”

He added it is important to remind the CIA’s workforce of the damage that can happen when tradecraft lapses.

“Do your job and don’t be lazy,” he said. “It’s a willingness to say we are not as perfect as we think we are. That’s a positive thing.”

Top American counterintelligence officials warned every CIA station and base around the world last week about troubling numbers of informants recruited from other countries to spy for the United States being captured or killed, people familiar with the matter said.

Top American counterintelligence officials warned every CIA station and base around the world last week about troubling numbers of informants recruited from other countries to spy for the United States being captured or killed, people familiar with the matter said. The message, in an unusual top-secret cable, said that the CIA’s counterintelligence mission centre had looked at dozens of cases in the last several years involving foreign informants who had been killed, arrested or most likely compromised. Although brief, the cable laid out the specific number of agents executed by rival intelligence agencies — a closely held detail that counterintelligence officials typically do not share in such cables. Also read | Havana syndrome cases may be linked to crickets, claims report The cable highlighted the struggle the spy agency is having as it works to recruit spies around the world in difficult operating environments. In recent years, adversarial intelligence services in countries such as Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan have been hunting down the CIA’s sources and in some cases turning them into double agents. Acknowledging that recruiting spies is a high-risk business, the cable raised issues that have plagued the agency in recent years, including poor tradecraft, being too trusting of sources, underestimating foreign intelligence agencies and moving too quickly to recruit informants while not paying enough attention to potential counterintelligence risks — a problem the cable called placing “mission over security.” The large number of compromised informants in recent years also demonstrated the growing prowess of other countries in employing innovations like biometric scans, facial recognition, artificial intelligence and hacking tools to track the movements of CIA officers in order to discover their sources. While the CIA has many ways to collect intelligence for its analysts to craft into briefings for policymakers, networks of trusted human informants around the world remain the centerpiece of its efforts, the kind of intelligence that the agency is supposed to be the best in the world at collecting and analyzing. Also read | New report claims CIA planned gun battle & abduction to snatch Assange Recruiting new informants, former officials said, is how the CIA’s case officers — its front-line spies — earn promotions. Case officers are not typically promoted for running good counterintelligence operations, such as figuring out if an informant is really working for another country. The agency has devoted much of its attention for the last two decades to terrorist threats and the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, but improving intelligence collection on adversarial powers both great and small is once again a centerpiece of the CIA’s agenda, particularly as policymakers demand more insight into China and Russia. The loss of informants, former officials said, is not a new problem. But the cable demonstrated the issue is more urgent than is publicly understood. The warning, according to those who have read it, was primarily aimed at front-line agency officers, the people involved most directly in the recruiting and vetting of sources. The cable reminded CIA case officers to focus not just on recruiting sources but also on security issues including vetting informants and evading adversarial intelligence services. Among the reasons for the cable, according to people familiar with the document, was to prod CIA case officers to think about steps they can take on their own do a better job managing informants. Also read | Now, Iran media claims CIA chief behind Soleimani’s assassination killed in Afghanistan plane crash Former officials said that there has to be more focus on security and counterintelligence, among both senior leaders and front-line personnel, especially when it comes to recruiting informants, which CIA officers call agents. “No one at the end of the day is being held responsible when things go south with an agent,” said Douglas London, a former agency operative. “Sometimes there are things beyond our control, but there are also occasions of sloppiness and neglect, and people in senior positions are never held responsible.” London said he was unaware of the cable. But his new book, “The Recruiter: Spying and the Lost Art of American Intelligence,” argues that the CIA’s shift toward covert action and paramilitary operations undermined traditional espionage that relies on securely recruiting and handling agents. Sheetal T. Patel, who last year became the CIA’s assistant director for counterintelligence and leads that mission centre, has not been reluctant to send out broad warnings to the CIA community of current and former officers. In January, Patel sent a letter to retired CIA officers warning against working for foreign governments who are trying to build up spying capabilities by hiring retired intelligence officials. (The letter, promptly leaked, also included warnings about talking to journalists.) Also read | CIA Vienna station chief removed amid 'Havana syndrome' criticism: Report Former officials say the broadsides are a way of pushing CIA officers to become more serious about counterintelligence. The memo sent last week suggested that the agency underestimated its adversaries — the belief that its officers and tradecraft were better than other intelligence services. But the results of the study showed that countries being targeted by the US are also skilled at hunting down informants. Some former officials believe that the agency’s skills at thwarting adversarial intelligence services have grown rusty after decades of focusing on terrorism threats and relying on risky covert communications. Developing, training and directing informants spying on foreign governments differs in some ways from developing sources inside terrorist networks. While the memo identified specific numbers of informants that were arrested or killed, it said the number turned against the United States was not fully known. Sometimes, informants who are discovered by adversarial intelligence services are not arrested but instead are turned into double agents who feed disinformation to the CIA, which can have devastating effects on intelligence collection and analysis. Pakistanis have been particularly effective in this sphere, former officials said. The collapse of the US-backed government in Afghanistan means that learning more about Pakistan’s ties to the Taliban government and extremist organizations in the region is going to become ever more important. As a result, the pressure is once again on the CIA to build and maintain networks of informants in Pakistan, a country with a record of discovering and breaking those networks. Also read | CIA says Al Qaeda is regrouping post Taliban takeover in Afghanistan: Report Similarly, the focus by successive administrations on great power competition and the challenges of China and Russia has meant that building up spy networks and protecting those sources are more important than ever. In those countries, technology has also become a problem, former officials said. Artificial intelligence, biometric scans, facial recognition and other technology has made it far easier for governments to track American intelligence officers operating in their country. That has made meeting and communicating with sources far more difficult. A breach of the classified communications system, or “covcom,” used by the CIA helped to expose the agency’s networks in China and in Iran, according to former officials. In both cases, informants were executed. Others had to be extracted and resettled by the agency. In Iran and China, some intelligence officials believe that Americans provided information to the adversarial agencies that could have helped expose informants. Monica Elfriede Witt, a former Air Force sergeant who defected to Iran, was indicted on a charge of providing information to Iran in 2019. The Iranians leveraged her knowledge only after determining she could be trusted. Later that year, Jerry Chun Shing Lee, a former CIA officer, was sentenced to 19 years in prison for providing secrets to the Chinese government. Watch | Early signs of Al-Qaeda regrouping in Afghanistan, notes CIA Former officials say there is no shortage of examples of where the agency has been so focused on the mission that security measures were not given proper consideration. And in some cases, a turned agent can have deadly consequences. The 2009 bombing at a CIA base in Khost, Afghanistan, that killed seven agency employees was a good example of mission over security, London said. In that suicide attack, a Jordanian doctor the CIA thought it had persuaded to penetrate al-Qaida had in fact been turned against the United States. “We were in such a rush to make such a big score,” London said. “Those were tradecraft mistakes.” He added it is important to remind the CIA’s workforce of the damage that can happen when tradecraft lapses. “Do your job and don’t be lazy,” he said. “It’s a willingness to say we are not as perfect as we think we are. That’s a positive thing.”

Captured, killed or compromised: CIA admits to losing dozens of informants

CIA contractors likely breached security and handed over documents about the agency&#39;s use of hacking tools to anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, US&nbsp;intelligence and law enforcement officials told Reuters on Wednesday.

Two officials speaking on condition of anonymity said intelligence agencies have been aware since the end of last year of the breach, which led to WikiLeaks releasing thousands of pages on Tuesday.

According to the documents, Central Intelligence Agency hackers could get into Apple Inc iPhones, devices running Google&#39;s Android software and other gadgets in order to capture text and voice messages before they were encrypted with sophisticated software.

The White House said on Wednesday that President Donald Trump was &quot;extremely concerned&quot; about the CIA security breach that led to the WikiLeaks release.

&quot;Anybody who leaks classified information will be held to the highest degree of law,&quot; spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters.

The two officials told Reuters they believed the published documents about CIA hacking techniques used between 2013 and 2016 were authentic.

One of the officials with knowledge of the investigation said companies that are contractors for the CIA have been checking to see which of their employees had access to the material that WikiLeaks published, and then going over their computer logs, emails and other communications for any evidence of who might be responsible.

On Tuesday in a press release, WikiLeaks itself said the CIA had &quot;lost control&quot; of an archive of hacking methods and it appeared to have been circulated &quot;among former US&nbsp;government hackers and contractors in an unauthorised manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive.&quot;

A US&nbsp;government source familiar with the matter said it would be normal for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the CIA both to open investigations into such leaks. US&nbsp;officials previously have confirmed that prosecutors in Alexandria, Virginia for years have been conducting a federal grand jury investigation of WikiLeaks and its personnel.

A spokesman for the prosecutors declined to comment on the possibility of that probe being expanded. It is not clear if the investigation of the latest CIA leaks is part of the probe.

Some cyber security experts and technology companies have criticized the government for opting to exploit rather than disclose software vulnerabilities, though an interagency review process set up under former President Barack Obama was intended to err on the side of disclosure.

Those concerns would grow if US&nbsp;authorities did not notify companies that CIA documents describing various hacking techniques had been compromised.

Apple, Alphabet Inc&#39;s, Google, Cisco Systems Inc&nbsp;and Oracle Corp did not immediately respond when asked if they were notified of a CIA breach before WikiLeaks made its files public.

At Apple, none of the vulnerabilities described in the documents provoked a panic, though analysis was continuing, according to a person who spoke with engineers there.

&nbsp;

Larger number of contractors

One reason the investigation is focused on a potential leak by contractors rather than for example a hack by Russian intelligence, another official said, is that so far there is no evidence that Russian intelligence agencies tried to exploit any of the leaked material before it was published.

One European official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the WikiLeaks material could in fact lead to closer cooperation between European intelligence agencies and US&nbsp;counterparts, which share concerns about Russian intelligence operations.

US&nbsp;intelligence agencies have accused Russia of seeking to tilt last year&#39;s US&nbsp;presidential election in Trump&#39;s favour, including by hacking into Democratic Party emails. Moscow has denied the allegation.

One major security problem was that the number of contractors with access to information with the highest secrecy classification has &quot;exploded&quot; because of federal budget constraints, the first US&nbsp;official said.

US&nbsp;intelligence agencies have been unable to hire additional permanent staff needed to keep pace with technological advances such as the &quot;internet of things&quot; that connects cars, home security and heating systems and other devices to computer networks, or to pay salaries competitive with the private sector, the official said.

Reuters could not immediately verify the contents of the published documents. On Tuesday, several contractors and private cyber security experts said the materials appeared to be legitimate.

A person familiar with WikiLeaks&rsquo; activities said the group has had the CIA hacking material for months, and that the release of the material was in the works &quot;for a long time&quot;.

Both US&nbsp;Senate and US&nbsp;House of Representatives intelligence committees have either opened or are expected to open inquiries into the CIA breach, congressional officials said.

&nbsp;

German concern

In Germany on Wednesday, the chief federal prosecutor&#39;s office said that it would review the WikiLeaks documents because some suggested that the CIA ran a hacking hub from the US&nbsp;consulate in Frankfurt.

&quot;We will initiate an investigation if we see evidence of concrete criminal acts or specific perpetrators,&quot; a spokesman for the federal prosecutor&#39;s office told Reuters.

Chancellor Angela Merkel is scheduled to visit Washington on March 14 for her first meeting with Trump, who has sharply criticized Berlin for everything from its trade policy to what he considers inadequate levels of military spending.

The WikiLeaks documents may also complicate intelligence ties that have just begun to recover after a series of scandals, including news in 2013 that the US&nbsp;National Security Agency had bugged Merkel&#39;s cellphone. The Frankfurt consulate was investigated by German lawmakers after that incident.

Merkel told lawmakers last month she did not know how closely Germany&#39;s spies cooperated with their US&nbsp;counterparts until 2015 when former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed the BND spy agency had for years passed on information to the NSA about European companies and politicians.

Germany reduced the level of cooperation with the NSA after those revelations.

US&nbsp;officials have acknowledged that the consulate in Frankfurt is home to a CIA base. A facility adjacent to the city&rsquo;s airport and the Rhein-Main Air Base has for many years been home to the CIA&rsquo;s &ldquo;Tefran&rdquo; station, a US&nbsp;centre for collecting intelligence on Iranian activities in Europe, maintaining surveillance on Iranian officials and targeting potential defectors working in Iran&rsquo;s nuclear weapons program.

Foreign ministry spokesman Sebastian Fischer told a regular government news conference that Germany took the issue seriously, but more work needed to be done to verify the authenticity of the documents. Berlin was in close touch with Washington about the case and such matters generally, he said.

Government spokesman Steffen Seibert said Germany&#39;s domestic intelligence agency had the job of uncovering espionage activities in Germany, and carried out its work comprehensively.

WikiLeaks reported that CIA employees had been given diplomatic passports and State Department identities to carry out their work in Frankfurt, focused on targets in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The documents included advice for CIA experts about life in Germany, noting that shops are closed on Sundays, and to have &quot;your cover-for-action story down pat&quot; when they were asked by German authorities when entering the country.

(Reuters)

WikiLeaks had detailed how CIA hackers could get into iPhones and Android software devices to capture text and voice messages

CIA contractors likely breached security and handed over documents about the agency's use of hacking tools to anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, US intelligence and law enforcement officials told Reuters on Wednesday. Two officials speaking on condition of anonymity said intelligence agencies have been aware since the end of last year of the breach, which led to WikiLeaks releasing thousands of pages on Tuesday. According to the documents, Central Intelligence Agency hackers could get into Apple Inc iPhones, devices running Google's Android software and other gadgets in order to capture text and voice messages before they were encrypted with sophisticated software. The White House said on Wednesday that President Donald Trump was "extremely concerned" about the CIA security breach that led to the WikiLeaks release. "Anybody who leaks classified information will be held to the highest degree of law," spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters. The two officials told Reuters they believed the published documents about CIA hacking techniques used between 2013 and 2016 were authentic. One of the officials with knowledge of the investigation said companies that are contractors for the CIA have been checking to see which of their employees had access to the material that WikiLeaks published, and then going over their computer logs, emails and other communications for any evidence of who might be responsible. On Tuesday in a press release, WikiLeaks itself said the CIA had "lost control" of an archive of hacking methods and it appeared to have been circulated "among former US government hackers and contractors in an unauthorised manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive." A US government source familiar with the matter said it would be normal for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the CIA both to open investigations into such leaks. US officials previously have confirmed that prosecutors in Alexandria, Virginia for years have been conducting a federal grand jury investigation of WikiLeaks and its personnel. A spokesman for the prosecutors declined to comment on the possibility of that probe being expanded. It is not clear if the investigation of the latest CIA leaks is part of the probe. Some cyber security experts and technology companies have criticized the government for opting to exploit rather than disclose software vulnerabilities, though an interagency review process set up under former President Barack Obama was intended to err on the side of disclosure. Those concerns would grow if US authorities did not notify companies that CIA documents describing various hacking techniques had been compromised. Apple, Alphabet Inc's, Google, Cisco Systems Inc and Oracle Corp did not immediately respond when asked if they were notified of a CIA breach before WikiLeaks made its files public. At Apple, none of the vulnerabilities described in the documents provoked a panic, though analysis was continuing, according to a person who spoke with engineers there. Larger number of contractors One reason the investigation is focused on a potential leak by contractors rather than for example a hack by Russian intelligence, another official said, is that so far there is no evidence that Russian intelligence agencies tried to exploit any of the leaked material before it was published. One European official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the WikiLeaks material could in fact lead to closer cooperation between European intelligence agencies and US counterparts, which share concerns about Russian intelligence operations. US intelligence agencies have accused Russia of seeking to tilt last year's US presidential election in Trump's favour, including by hacking into Democratic Party emails. Moscow has denied the allegation. One major security problem was that the number of contractors with access to information with the highest secrecy classification has "exploded" because of federal budget constraints, the first US official said. US intelligence agencies have been unable to hire additional permanent staff needed to keep pace with technological advances such as the "internet of things" that connects cars, home security and heating systems and other devices to computer networks, or to pay salaries competitive with the private sector, the official said. Reuters could not immediately verify the contents of the published documents. On Tuesday, several contractors and private cyber security experts said the materials appeared to be legitimate. A person familiar with WikiLeaks’ activities said the group has had the CIA hacking material for months, and that the release of the material was in the works "for a long time". Both US Senate and US House of Representatives intelligence committees have either opened or are expected to open inquiries into the CIA breach, congressional officials said. German concern In Germany on Wednesday, the chief federal prosecutor's office said that it would review the WikiLeaks documents because some suggested that the CIA ran a hacking hub from the US consulate in Frankfurt. "We will initiate an investigation if we see evidence of concrete criminal acts or specific perpetrators," a spokesman for the federal prosecutor's office told Reuters. Chancellor Angela Merkel is scheduled to visit Washington on March 14 for her first meeting with Trump, who has sharply criticized Berlin for everything from its trade policy to what he considers inadequate levels of military spending. The WikiLeaks documents may also complicate intelligence ties that have just begun to recover after a series of scandals, including news in 2013 that the US National Security Agency had bugged Merkel's cellphone. The Frankfurt consulate was investigated by German lawmakers after that incident. Merkel told lawmakers last month she did not know how closely Germany's spies cooperated with their US counterparts until 2015 when former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed the BND spy agency had for years passed on information to the NSA about European companies and politicians. Germany reduced the level of cooperation with the NSA after those revelations. US officials have acknowledged that the consulate in Frankfurt is home to a CIA base. A facility adjacent to the city’s airport and the Rhein-Main Air Base has for many years been home to the CIA’s “Tefran” station, a US centre for collecting intelligence on Iranian activities in Europe, maintaining surveillance on Iranian officials and targeting potential defectors working in Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Foreign ministry spokesman Sebastian Fischer told a regular government news conference that Germany took the issue seriously, but more work needed to be done to verify the authenticity of the documents. Berlin was in close touch with Washington about the case and such matters generally, he said. Government spokesman Steffen Seibert said Germany's domestic intelligence agency had the job of uncovering espionage activities in Germany, and carried out its work comprehensively. WikiLeaks reported that CIA employees had been given diplomatic passports and State Department identities to carry out their work in Frankfurt, focused on targets in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The documents included advice for CIA experts about life in Germany, noting that shops are closed on Sundays, and to have "your cover-for-action story down pat" when they were asked by German authorities when entering the country. (Reuters)

CIA contractors may have helped WikiLeaks in latest release: US

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Captured, killed or compromised: CIA admits to losing dozens of informants

CIA contractors may have helped WikiLeaks in latest release: US