officers in order to discover their sources. The large number of compromised informants in recent years also demonstrated the growing prowess of other countries in employing innovations like biometric scans, facial recognition, artificial intelligence and hacking tools to track the movements of C.I.A. In recent years, adversarial intelligence services in countries such as Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan have been hunting down the C.I.A.’s sources and in some cases turning them into double agents. The cable highlighted the struggle the spy agency is having as it works to recruit spies around the world in difficult operating environments. Although brief, the cable laid out the specific number of agents executed by rival intelligence agencies - a closely held detail that counterintelligence officials typically do not share in such cables.

The message, in an unusual top secret cable, said that the C.I.A.’s counterintelligence mission center had looked at dozens of cases in the last several years involving foreign informants who had been killed, arrested or most likely compromised. station and base around the world last week about troubling numbers of informants recruited from other countries to spy for the United States being captured or killed, people familiar with the matter said.

WASHINGTON - Top American counterintelligence officials warned every C.I.A.

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