[bredren]

The CIA is tasked with intelligence gathering and covert foreign operations.

So there may have well been CIA officers around the FBI mission, they would not have played a public role.

If I understand it correctly, the CIA would offer their assessment of the blast to the United States DNI and President. This report might contain unflattering information, evidence of corruption or recommendations of subjects of new or continued surveillance.

Whereas, the FBI, per their publicly accepted invitation would share a classified report with the Lebanese government as an expected result of their visit.

The FBI report would likely be be more consultative, the mechanism of the explosion. Sort of like a car mechanic explaining why your car is making this squeak sound.

Whereas, the Lebanese government would neither have insight into the amount of CIA resources aimed at Lebanon or this particular event, nor how these intelligence conclusions affect US foreign policy in the Mideast.

[newsclues]

Or the CIA can just get the report from the FBI and debrief the field team when they get back?

[wincy]

So like the CIA agent would be posing as an FBI agent though right?

[bredren]

While possible, I do not believe this would be very likely.

FBI agents must regularly serve in a domestic capacity. That precludes availability for foreign missions.

A CIA officer contributing intelligence would not be obviously investigating because the things they can learn are not so directly gleaned from visiting the site of the explosion themselves.

An example of a CIA officer gathering intelligence on the explosion might be a business person who happens to have trade regularly passing through the port. Perhaps they employ many Lebanese to assist with this effort, some of whom are unwitting sources of intelligence.

By conducting legitimate business, this ambient familiarity with the port, officials working there, gossip of the locals, would provide one point of insight that contributes to an overall assessment by the CIA.

Information from the FBI report would likely be shared with the CIA via the DNI and / or from a direct classified briefing between the agencies. This would probably offer some information that is not shared with Lebanon.

Presumably, the FBI’s opinion on the matter is valuable enough to Lebanon that they okay’d the investigation. Or perhaps the explosion was so egregious that they knew the US would be crawling all over it so Lebanon might as well let some amount of that happen with cooperation so at least they get some information out of it.

[viewtransform]

<FBI agents must regularly serve in a domestic capacity. That precludes availability for foreign missions.>

https://www.fbi.gov/about/leadership-and-structure/internati...

"we have 63 legal attaché offices—commonly known as legats—and more than two dozen smaller sub-offices in key cities around the globe, providing coverage for more than 180 countries, territories, and islands."

[bredren]

> FBI personnel abroad serve under the authority of the Department of State, chief of mission at United States embassies, at the pleasure of ambassadors and host country governments.

These are known agents of the United States.

I had meant “precludes availability for covert foreign missions.”

I am not sure of this, however, to me, it does not stand a reason test to use an FBI agent as a CIA agent when they have entirely separate functions and responsibilities.

[ganoushoreilly]

Yep, not uncommon for FBI HRT agents to be embedded with Joint Special Operations command deployments. I imagine other teams are as well.