Intel failures

CIA Fooled by Massive Cold War Double-Agent Failure

The CIA was fooled by scores of double agents pretending to be working for the agency but secretly loyal to communist spy agencies during the Cold War and beyond, according to a former CIA analyst, operations officer, and historian.

The large-scale deception included nearly 100 fake CIA recruits in East Germany, Cuba, as well as the Soviet Union (and later Russia) who supplied false intelligence that was passed on to senior U.S. policymakers for decades.

“During the Cold War, the Central Intelligence Agency bucked the law of averages by recruiting double agents on an industrial scale; it was hoodwinked not a few but many times,” writes Benjamin B. Fischer, CIA’s former chief historian.

“The result was a massive but largely ignored intelligence failure,” he stated in a journal article published last week.

Intel failures

Questions for French security services after it emerges three major intelligence failures may have let the killers get through 

French intelligence and security services had been reorganised in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacres, which left 16 dead in January. It emerged that the brothers behind the killings, Cherif and Said Kouachi, were well known to the authorities and were being watched – but surveillance was called off just six months before they launched their attack.

Since then counter-terrorist forces say they have thwarted several plots and in August passengers overpowered a gunman who opened fire on a high-speed train bound for Paris.

But it is feared there was a fatal breakdown in communication between European law enforcement agencies earlier this month. During a routine check of a VW Golf on the Salzburg to Munich autobahn on November 5, police discovered a ‘professionally built’ secret compartment crammed with weaponry and munitions.