Brazil Fires Agent Seen as U.S. Intelligence Source

Brazil fired an intelligence officer last year believed to have disclosed government secrets to a CIA agent, O Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper said Sunday.

The newspaper said that the Brazilian agent provided the Central Intelligence Agency around mid-2012 with information pertaining to a border standoff between Brazil and its neighbors Paraguay and Argentina.

The United States reportedly had a particular interest in the dispute because of fears that the region is a source of support for Middle East extremists.

The report said that the agent's CIA contact, whose name was not divulged and who has since left the country, had a diplomatic post at the U.S. Embassy in Brasilia.

Citing various intelligence sources, the daily said that the agent working with the Brazilian Intelligence Agency, or ABIN, provided the CIA officer with a list of informants that Brasilia was working with in Brazil's Middle Eastern community.

The Brazilian agent, who also was not named in the article, was forced to leave the intelligence service at the end of last year.

The latest disclosures come with Washington embroiled in a major row with its closest allies in Europe and Latin America over alleged U.S. electronic eavesdropping on their leaders by the U.S. National Security Agency.

Washington allegedly also intercepted Brazilian government communications, those of state-run energy giant Petrobras, as well as phone calls and emails of millions of Brazilians.

Those disclosures, part of a trove of revelations by former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, led Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff to publicly reprimand the United States and scrap a planned state visit to Washington.