Spycrash -- David Kenner, Foreign Policy
5 CIA operations that went south -- spectacularly.
The Associated Press yesterday revealed that Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent, was working for the CIA when he disappeared on Iran in March 2007. But perhaps more surprising than Levinson's ties to the CIA was the reckless way in which the operation was carried out: He was sent to Iran's Kish Island, a smuggling hub in the Persian Gulf, by a team of analysts who had no authority to run intelligence operations, and who would eventually be accused by CIA investigators of hiding the fact that they were running an off-the-books spy mission from top officials at the agency.
The fiasco caused a behind-the-scenes uproar in Congress and the CIA, which eventually forced three veteran analysts to leave the agency. Meanwhile, the White House, FBI, and State Department continued to publicly state that Levinson was a private citizen when he disappeared. The U.S. government urged the AP for years to avoid publishing news about Levinson's CIA ties, and paid a $2.5 million settlement to his family to avoid a lawsuit that could have revealed the truth.
The Levinson saga, however, is far from the first time that a CIA operation not only failed, but failed so badly that outsiders were left wondering how officers for America's premier spy agency could be so rotten at their jobs. Here are just a few of the most spectacularly botched operations in the Agency's history.
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My Comment: Here are a few honorable mentions .... Bay of Pigs, the arrest and assassination of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, trying to kill Fidel Castro, and Iran Contra.
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