CIA has gone cheapskate....
While I feel it's true, in this case it's both them being cheapskate as well as them picking bad middleman, look at this:
"I'm not actually in mainland and not really cut out to be an organizer. Maybe I was too young too simple blah blah. Don't actually know much about Shanghai. I'm handing over admin rights"
Translation: "shit looks bad, I'm off with all that CIA money, see ya suckers enjoy tea with MSS."
Imagine being a 包工头 recruiting migrate worker to work on building an apartment, and doing all this online out of the country. That's going to be one tofu dreg apartment.
Imagine Mao trying to direct Long March remotely while hiding somewhere safe in Moscow.