But Really, Are Maher Bitar And Ariane Tabatabai Secret Agents?

This post on Xwitter sums up the questions many Republicans have been posing in recent weeks:

Maher Bitar, a Palestinian activist, Ariane Tabatabai, an Iranian with deep ties in Iran are heading up our intelligence and defense. Robert Malley, who hired Tabatabai, had his security clearance removed. @MTG can oversight get answers? pic.twitter.com/L0Zk83cx5S

— #ProblemSolved (@ProblemSolved57) October 21, 2023

In other words, are Bitar, Tabatabai, and certain other figures like Reema Dodin currently working in sensitive jobs in the US government, actually agents of one sort or another for Iran or the Palestinians? If they are, while I acknowledge I'm a total outsider to that business, there are things that don't fit.

Let's just compare Bitar and Tabatabai to one of the most successful spies in recent history, Robert Hanssen, whose photo is at the top of this post. According to Wikipedia,

Robert Philip Hanssen (April 18, 1944 – June 5, 2023) was an American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent who spied for Soviet and Russian intelligence services against the United States from 1979 to 2001. His espionage was described by the Department of Justice as "possibly the worst intelligence disaster in U.S. history".

In 1979, three years after joining the FBI, Hanssen approached the Soviet Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) to offer his services, beginning his first espionage cycle, lasting until 1981. He restarted his espionage activities in 1985 and continued until 1991, when he ended communications during the collapse of the Soviet Union, fearing he would be exposed. Hanssen restarted communications the next year and continued until his arrest. Throughout his spying, he remained anonymous to the Russians.

For starters, Hanssen had a long career as a spy that extended, with breaks, over a 22-year period, nearly as long as his career with the FBI itself. While Hanssen was remarkably careless at times in risking exposure through his sexual activities, the FBI appears to have discounted them and relied instead on his regular attendance at Catholic mass -- typically at times and parishes where his FBI superiors would see him -- to protect him. This appears to have worked for quite some time.

Hanssen's motives appear to have been enitirely financial, and he had an MBA, which suggests that his efforts were purpose-driven, methodical, and supplemented by his own growing background in counterintelligence. In general, his aim was to increase his value to his handlers by building credibility over a lengthy period of activity. As part of the overall effort, he at least made routine attempts to avoid bringing attention to himself while reinforcing a conservative Catholic public profile.

The Wikipeida entry on clandestine human intelligence says, at least of couriers,

Any involvement of the courier in activities that may draw attention from counterintelligence is unwise. For example, if there is a political party, friendship society, or other organization that would be considered favorable to Service B, couriers, under no circumstances, should be identified with them.

But wouldn't this apply to practically any clandestine operative? For instance, the Soviet government never showed serious interest in Lee Harvey Oswald's attempts to recruit himself as a Soviet spy, concerned that his various endorsements of communism indicated either mental instability or a likelihood that he was himself a CIA agent.

This would apply as well to Bitar's, Tabatabai's, and Dodin's fast-rising and high-profile careers as Iranian or Palestinian apologists, and in Bitar's and Dodin's cases well-documented participation in pro-Palestinian organizations and demonstrations. These immediately called attention to their potential subversive loyalties -- why would a clandestine organization want them in sensitive positions where they'd likely be constantly under suspicion? And even if they were placed in sensitive positions by a compromised superior, wouldn't this just throw immediate suspicion on the superior?

This may have happened, in fact, with Robert Malley, who is sometimes now thought to be the master spy responsible for recruiting Ariane Tabatabai. Maybe so, but if that was the case, he blew it, because he had his security clearance suspended and was put on leave from his job -- and i wouldn't be unusual for counterintellegence to leave Tabatabai in place to watch her and see whom she contacts.

So a real spy, a real mole, like Robert Hanssen, works over a much longer term and goes to some length not to draw attention to himself. His handlers will expect the same circumspection if only to protect themselves. Tabatabai and Bitar have had only short careers and by now are thoroughly blown -- from late adolescence, they did the opposite of keep a low profile. Instead, they come off as narcissistic self-promoters from the start.

I don't see them as spy material. They may well have influential sponsors who want to further their protégés' careers in intelligence or foreign affairs, but those sponsors have to be rank amateurs who if anything are doing damage to the causes they support. The decisions to hire them for sensitive positions are mainly incredibly bad personnel choices, but they've been made primarily through incompetence. At this point, they're more valuable to counterintelligence if they stay in their positions, because then they can be carefully watched.

And there's the other distinction, between actual agents of influence and useful idiots. At best, it seems to me that Tabatabai and Bitar are more on the useful idiot side, but I'm not sure if smart handlers on the Palestinian or Iranian side would even want them as useful idiots. They're narcissistic self-promoters playing in their own little personal dramas.