So, he said, did the Russian team that tried to poison a former Russian intelligence officer in Britain in 2018.īut that operation was exposed, not by a foreign intelligence operation, but by Bellingcat, a private group focusing on open-source intelligence.American officials said Saturday they received no warning through intelligence that Hamas was preparing to attack Israel, leading to confusion among some at how Israel failed to detect signs of the rocket assault. 'That entire Israeli team used what we would have considered solid tradecraft,' Norman said. Surveillance camera footage helped the police establish a precise timeline and post photos of dozens of alleged Israeli operatives. It took less than a month for the Dubai police to expose what they said was a plot by Israeli intelligence to assassinate him, and to assemble videos of the alleged Mossad officers as they entered the hotel. In 2010, a high-ranking member of Hamas named Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was found dead in his room in a Dubai hotel.

'Humint is not dead, but you need to be much more careful,' said former CIA Director John Brennan.īut even careful operations have been exposed by technology. And while few go as far as Norman in saying that human intelligence collection as the CIA has done it is finished, many people believe it needs to be substantially re-thought. The House and Senate intelligence oversight committees have been grappling with these issues for years, Congressional officials tell NBC News. If he choses to leave his phone at home, that can also be revealing. An adversary intelligence service is able to paint a picture of that person's movements and associations and can detect any deviation. If a CIA officer is posted abroad pretending to be a business executive or a diplomat, that used to require some detailed backstopping, including fake paperwork and people answering a phone and confirming the cover. One example is obvious: How can an American who grew up posting thousands of photos of herself on social media operate in China under an alias, when the Chinese government has a network of surveillance cameras scanning with facial recognition?īut it goes beyond using false names. The idea that CIA officers can continue to pose as diplomats by day and go out at night to meet and recruit sources using false names - without those agents eventually becoming exposed - is dubious, Norman said. And the number of sensors spitting out data - phones and cars, thermostats and smart watches - is growing by the year. Everyone spews 'digital dust' that reveals key facts about their movements, patterns of life and associations. The main culprit, Norman says, is technology. In Milan, an Italian prosecutor was able to identify CIA officers who kidnapped a cleric by sifting through cell phone records. The agency over the years has lost many sources in Iran, American officials have said, and a number of CIA assets were compromised in Lebanon a decade ago thanks in part to cell phone geolocation analysis that allowed Hezbollah spy-hunters to identify people meeting with American operatives. NBC News reported in 2018, for example, that as many as 20 CIA informants were executed after China compromised a secret communications system the CIA used to talk to sources, with the help of a CIA turncoat recruited to spy for China. Some of the cases reportedly examined in the cable have been publicized. Norman's view that the CIA's traditional human intelligence model can't survive the digital age is an outlier among his current and former colleagues, but nearly everyone agrees that social media, cell phones, facial recognition technology and super computers that crunch big data have dramatically complicated the business of espionage. Instead, he believes they were the logical result of a technology revolution that makes it all but impossible to maintain false identities and disguise relationships. The CIA declined to comment on the cable, which NBC News has not seen.įor Norman, the devastating penetrations of CIA spying networks in recent years were not mainly about incompetence or inattention. The cable from the agency's counterintelligence chief examined dozens of cases in which CIA sources were arrested or executed, the Times reported, and urged officers to focus more on the security of those they convince to spy. This week, a cable sent to the CIA workforce, first reported by the New York Times, raised concerns about whether the CIA had been doing enough to protect the informants it recruits in foreign countries.

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