Tuesday, December 13, 2011 – Hezbollah militant group on Monday claimed to release identities of CIA officers working undercover in Lebanon.
The identities of the CIA agents were made public in a broadcast Friday night on a Lebanese television station, al-Manar.
The exposure creates new security risks for CIA officers in a country where American espionage operations had already been damaged by Hezbollah’s capture of a group of agency-paid informants.
Hezbollah MP Nawwaf Moussawi quoted by Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation International LBCI said, “There are currently open meetings held by American intelligence agents in Lebanon in restaurants and nightclubs in Dbayyeh and Jounieh,”
Mr. Moussawi further added, among the agents are a doctor, a researcher and a journalist, and asked them to surrender to the Lebanese security services or to the resistance’s security apparatus.
A CIA spokeswoman said the agency would not comment on “spurious claims”.
CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood said, I think it’s worth remembering that Hezbollah is a dangerous organization, with al-Manar as its propaganda arm. That fact alone should cast some doubt on the credibility of the group’s claims.”
This comes as Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah earlier this year said, at least two of his group’s members had confessed to spying for the American intelligence agency but the claim by Hezbollah was denied by CIA.
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