How a drunk American envoy outed a CIA operative under cover in Zimbabwe
HARARE – A U.S. government official working for USAID in Zimbabwe allegedly compromised the identity of a CIA agent after excessive drinking, according to newly declassified U.S. documents.
This was revealed in declassified US government papers obtained by Bloomberg reporter Jason Leopold under America’s Freedom of Information Act, which allows the public limited access to some classified reports.
The reports show how the employee told an official “I know who you are”, and accused multiple others of being CIA agents.
Revealing the identity of intelligence agents is illegal in America, and so the US embassy reported this to the Office of the Inspector General (OIG).
“OIG found five instances related to where information related to the identity of (the) covered intelligence officer was potentially disclosed. The investigative findings were referred to USAID/Zimbabwe and USAID’s Office of Security,” the report said.
According to the documents, the employee, in September 2019, “approached a US Direct Hire (USDH3) while intoxicated and stated ‘I know who you are, I know what you do. It’s cool. It’s cool. I know who you are’….This occurred at a representational event where foreign nationals were present”.
The same staffer then joked out aloud, at a public lunch, about another officer being a “CIA guy”. In November 2021, a Political Officer from the Australian Embassy Zimbabwe, a close friend of the employee who made the claims, told “an uncleared U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) fellow that USDH2 (another officer) was a covered CIA officer”. The Australian officer then approached USDH2 at a busy restaurant in Harare, and said “you CIA guys should be more open.”
Investigations showed that the accused employee was frequently drunk.
“One witness told OIG that there were several occasions when (the accused official) could not recall what had said to them the day or night before while had been drinking”, the report says. The staffer admitted to investigators that it was possible that they could have made the CIA claims while blacked out.
The employee was later placed on administrative leave, stripped of their security clearance, and then retired.
NewZWire
