China seriously crippled U.S. Intelligence operations by systematically killing or imprisoning more than a dozen sources which some believe was enabled by the hacking of the covert system the CIA used to communicate with its foreign sources.
Investigators are split over whether or not the fallout was caused by a mole or a hack that resulted in the imprisonment or arrest of 18 to 20 CIA sources from between 2010 and 2012, one of which was shot in front of his colleagues in the courtyard of a government building, according to the New York Times.
Some officials that reject the mole theory believed the hack in conjunction with sloppy espionage practices, such as using the same routes and meeting in the same places, were to attribute for the losses.
The FBI and CIA launched a joint investigation into the matter which analyzed every operation run in Beijing that has yet to conclude the reasoning.
