FOR MORE THAN 30 YEARS THE FBI AND THE US INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES  HAVE DEMONSTRATED A REMARKABLE INEPTNESS IN  PREVENTING FOREIGN PENETRATIONS BY HOSTILE SPY SERVICES.

For more than 30 years the FBI and the US intelligence agencies  have demonstrated a remarkable ineptness in  preventing foreign penetrations by hostile spy services.

As a result many brave foreign nationals who risk their lives inside extremely brutal regimes to provide the United States with essential information have been detected, imprisoned,  tortured and executed.

One of the colossal intelligence failure under the Obama administration was  the loss of all recruited agents in China  [Between 20 and 30 of  the US   recruited agents in China were killed or imprisoned.] Media sources blamed the loss on a former CIA officer, Jerry Chung Shin Lee, who was arrested in January 2018 and is suspected of passing along their names to China.

Another colossal intelligence failure under the Obama administration  occurred in  May 2011 when, according to Iranian state media,  30 people were arrested as CIA spies and 42 others were suspected of involvement with U.S. intelligence. It is not known how the agents were discovered, but a likely cause was a breakdown in agent-handler communications.

Insiders attribute this failure to information that  was  provided to Iran by Monica Witt, a former Air Force counterintelligence officer (and later an intelligence contractor) who  defected to Iran 1n 2013 [where she is immune from any US criminal prosecution.]

Additional information  on this case  became available  when a federal grand jury  indicted Ms. Witt  on charges of passing extremely sensitive secrets to agents of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.  

Below, we share Pam Geller’s assessment: DOJ  and FBI officials portray Ms. Witt’s indictment as a victory   lauding the exposure of a foreign spy after a multiyear probe. Yet the real story is not Ms. Witt’s indictment but her defection to Iran in 2013. She brought with her details of a secret communications system American handlers use to talk to their recruited agents.

The FBI fumbled the case in 2012 by warning Ms. Witt she might be targeted for recruitment by Iranian intelligence. A trained counterspy, she knew that the tip-off meant she was under investigation and surveillance. It likely set in motion her flight to Iran a year later. 

As she boarded the plane, she texted her handler: “I’m signing off and heading out! Coming home.” Other texts reveal she “told all” to an Iranian ambassador in Central Asia and had plans to go public. 

The spy charges cover the period from 2012-15. The indictment is largely symbolic, since the prospects of bringing the case to trial are slim to none. The FBI’s assistant director for national security, stated that she became an “ideological” defector after converting to Islam. Her actions, he added, inflicted “serious damage to national security.”

According to prosecutors, Ms. Witt worked at the Air Force Office of Special Investigations from 2003-08 and then as a contractor, running an ultra secret Special Access Program, or SAP, until August 2010. The program gave her access to details about counterintelligence operations, true names of recruited agents, and identities of U.S. intelligence operatives in charge of recruiting foreign agents.Ms. Witt left the contractor in August 2010 for unspecified reasons.