Two Slices and the Spooks To Go

CIA agents spying on Hezbollah and Iran nabbed at Pizza Hut
Voltaire Network – 22 November 2011

Several dozen spies working for the CIA in Iran and Lebanon have been caught, ABC News said, citing U.S. officials with connections to the intelligence community.

The CIA has basically lost its spy network in Lebanon and suffered a major setback in its efforts to infiltrate Iran, all because “of a lack of professionalism in the U.S. intelligence community.” When the agency decided to cryptically refer to its secret meet-up spot as “PIZZA,” Hezbollah double-agents logically inferred that the location may have been a pizza restaurant. And it was!

Hezbollah kept an eye on a Beirut Pizza Hut, a tactic that – ABC News said – allowed “Hezbollah’s internal security arm [to identify] at least a dozen informants, and the identities of several CIA case officers.”

Almost at the same time, Iranian counter-intelligence “cracked” a secret internet communication method used by CIA-paid assets in Iran, leading to alleged arrests of at least 30 U.S. and Israeli spies.

The officials, cited by ABC, admitted that the loss of the two U.S. spy rings in the Middle East represents “a setback of significant proportions in efforts to track the activities of the Iranian nuclear program and the intentions of Hezbollah against Israel.”

There have been no official comments by the U.S. authorities on the exposure of CIA spy networks in the Middle East …source