Subject: Fw: Emailing: Asia Times Online Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs.htm
From: "fariborz fatemi" <[email-masked]>
To: "fariborz fatemi" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2010 21:47:35 -0700 (PDT)

FYI.  Remember how we were duped into attacking Iraq.

 

Asia Times Online <span id="misspelled"><sp</span>an id="misspelled">:: Mid</span>dle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs

 

 

 

  

  

 

   

   

 

   

    

     

       

    

   

    

  

  

   

 

   

    

    

    
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            Middle East 

          
               Jul 21, 2010  

        

        

         

       

       

    

     

      

       

         
          
          Amiri
          'told CIA Iran had no bomb program'

          By
          Gareth Porter 

          WASHINGTON - Contrary to a news media narrative that Iranian
          scientist Shahram Amiri has provided the United States with
          intelligence on covert Iranian nuclear weapons work, Central
          Intelligence Agency (CIA) sources familiar with the Amiri case say he
          told his CIA handlers that there was no such Iranian nuclear weapons
          program, according to a former CIA officer. 

          Philip Giraldi, a former CIA counter-terrorism official, told Inter
          Press Service (IPS) that his sources were CIA officials with direct
          knowledge of the entire Amiri operation. 

          The CIA contacts say that Amiri had been reporting to the CIA for
          some time before being brought to the United States while the hajj
          (pilgrimage) to Saudi Arabia last year, Giraldi told IPS, initially

            

          using satellite-based communication. But the contacts also say Amiri
          was a radiation safety specialist who was "absolutely
          peripheral" to Iran's nuclear program, according to Giraldi. 

          Amiri provided "almost no information" about Iran's nuclear
          program, said Giraldi, but had picked up "scuttlebutt",
          meaning rumor or gossip, from other nuclear scientists with whom he
          was acquainted, that the Iranians had no active nuclear weapon
          program. 

          Giraldi said information from Amiri's debriefings was only a minor
          contribution to the intelligence community's reaffirmation in the
          latest assessment of Iran's nuclear program of the 2007 National
          Intelligence Estimate (NIE)'s finding that work on a nuclear weapon
          has not been resumed after being halted in 2003. 

          Amiri's confirmation is cited in one or more footnotes to the new
          intelligence assessment of Iran's nuclear program, called a
          "Memorandum to Holders", according to Giraldi, but it is
          now being reviewed, in light of Amiri's "re-defection" to
          Iran. 

          An intelligence source who has read the "Memorandum to
          Holders" in draft form confirmed to IPS that it presented no
          clear-cut departure from the 2007 NIE on the question of
          weaponization. The developments in the Iranian nuclear program since
          the 2007 judgment are portrayed as "subtle and complex",
          said the source. 

          CIA officials are doing their best to "burn" Amiri by
          characterizing him as a valuable long-term intelligence asset,
          according to Giraldi, in part to sow as much distrust of him among
          Iranian intelligence officials as possible. 

          But Giraldi said it is "largely a defense mechanism" to
          ward off criticism of the agency for its handling of the Amiri case.
          "The fact is he wasn't well vetted," said Giraldi, adding
          that Amiri was a "walk-in" about whom virtually nothing was
          known except his job. 

          Although an investigation has begun within the CIA of the procedures
          used in the case, Giraldi said, Amiri's erstwhile CIA handlers still
          did not believe he was a double agent or "dangle". 

          What convinced CIA officers of Amiri's sincerity, according to
          Giraldi, was Amiri's admission that he had no direct knowledge of the
          Iranian nuclear program. A "dangle" would normally be
          prepared with some important intelligence that the US is known to
          value. 

          Amiri's extremely marginal status in relation to the Iranian nuclear
          program was acknowledged by an unnamed US official who told The New
          York Times and the Associated Press on Friday that Amiri was indeed a
          "low-level scientist", but that the CIA had hoped to use
          him to get to more highly placed Iranian officials. 

          Giraldi's revelations about Amiri's reporting debunks a media
          narrative in which Amiri provided some of the key evidence for a
          reversal by the intelligence community of its 2007 conclusion that
          Iran had not resumed work on nuclear weapons. 

          An April 25 story by Washington Post reporters Joby Warrick and Greg
          Miller said the long-awaited reassessment of the Iranian nuclear
          program had been delayed in order to incorporate a "new flow of
          intelligence" coming from "informants, including scientists
          with access to Iran's military programs". 

          They quote Director of National Intelligence Dennis C Blair as
          explaining in an interview that the delay was because of
          "information coming in and the pace of developments". 

          Warrick and Miller reported that Amiri had "provided spy
          agencies with details about sensitive programs including a
          long-hidden uranium-enrichment plant near the city of Qom".
          Their sources were said to be "current and former officials in
          the United States and Europe". 

          Warrick and Miller could not get CIA officials to discuss Amiri.
          Instead they quoted the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI)
          as saying that Amiri "has been associated with sensitive nuclear
          programs for at least a decade". 

          The NCRI is the political arm of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), the
          anti-regime Iranian terrorist organization that has been a conduit
          for Israeli intelligence on the Iranian nuclear program. 

          On June 8, David E Sanger of the New York Times cited "foreign
          diplomats and some American officials" as sources in reporting
          that a series of intelligence briefings for members of the United
          Nations Security Council last spring amounted to "a tacit
          admission by the United States that it is gradually backing
          away" from the 2007 NIE. Sanger referred to "new
          evidence" that allegedly led analysts to "revise and in
          some cases reverse" that estimate's conclusion that Iran was no
          longer working on a nuclear weapon. 

          Sanger cited "Western officials" as confirming that Amiri
          was providing some of the new information. 

          Three days later, the Washington Post ran another story quoting David
          Albright, director of the Institute for Science and International
          Security, as saying that the intelligence briefings for UN Security
          Council members had included "information about nuclear
          weaponization" obtained from Amiri. 

          Albright said he had been briefed on the intelligence earlier that
          week, and the Post reported a "US official" had confirmed
          Albright's account. 

          Subsequently, ABC News reported that Amiri's evidence had
          "helped to contradict" the 2007 NIE, and McClatchy Newspapers
          repeated Albright's allegation and the conclusion that the new
          assessment had reversed the intelligence conclusion that Iran had
          ceased work related to weaponization. 

          In creating that false narrative, journalists have evidently been
          guided by personal convictions on the issue that are aligned with
          certain US, European and Israeli officials who have been pressuring
          the Barack Obama administration to reject the 2007 estimate. 

          For the Israelis and for some US officials, reversing the conclusion
          that Iran was not actively pursuing weaponization was considered a
          precondition for maneuvering US policy into a military confrontation
          with Iran. 

          Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and
          journalist specializing in US national security policy. The paperback
          edition of his latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of
          Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in 2006. 

          (Inter Press Service)  

        

         

        

          

         

           

         

          

          

         

           

         

          

          

          A trail
          of clues .... but few answers

          (Jul 16, '10) 

         

          

          

         

           

         

         

        

         

         

       

      

        

          

         

          

          

         

       

     

    

   

  

    

        

      

          

        

         

        

       

     

    

   

    

      

     
      
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