http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,12858,1678220,00.html She had probably done this a dozen times before. Modern digital technology had made clandestine communications with overseas agents seem routine. Back in the cold war, contacting a secret agent in Moscow or Beijing was a dangerous, labour-intensive process that could take days or even weeks. But by 2004, it was possible to send high-speed, encrypted messages directly and instantaneously from CIA headquarters to agents in the field who were equipped with small, covert personal communications devices. So the officer at CIA headquarters assigned to handle communications with the agency's spies in Iran probably didn't think twice when she began her latest download. With a few simple commands, she sent a secret data flow to one of the Iranian agents in the CIA's spy network. Just as she had done so many times before. But this time, the ease and speed of the technology betrayed her. The CIA officer had made a disastrous mistake. She had sent information to one Iranian agent that exposed an entire spy network; the data could be used to identify virtually every spy the CIA had inside Iran. Mistake piled on mistake. As the CIA later learned, the Iranian who received the download was a double agent. The agent quickly turned the data over to Iranian security officials, and it enabled them to "roll up" the CIA's network throughout Iran. CIA sources say that several of the Iranian agents were arrested and jailed, while the fates of some of the others is still unknown. This espionage disaster, of course, was not reported. It left the CIA virtually blind in Iran, unable to provide any significant intelligence on one of the most critical issues facing the US - whether Tehran was about to go nuclear. In fact, just as President Bush and his aides were making the case in 2004 and 2005 that Iran was moving rapidly to develop nuclear weapons, the American intelligence community found itself unable to provide the evidence to back up the administration's public arguments. On the heels of the CIA's failure to provide accurate pre-war intelligence on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, the agency was once again clueless in the Middle East. In the spring of 2005, in the wake of the CIA's Iranian disaster, Porter Goss, its new director, told President Bush in a White House briefing that the CIA really didn't know how close Iran was to becoming a nuclear power. But it's worse than that. Deep in the bowels of the CIA, someone must be nervously, but very privately, wondering: "Whatever happened to those nuclear blueprints we gave to the Iranians?" The story dates back to the Clinton administration and February 2000, when one frightened Russian scientist walked Vienna's winter streets. The Russian had good reason to be afraid. He was walking around Vienna with blueprints for a nuclear bomb. To be precise, he was carrying technical designs for a TBA 480 high-voltage block, otherwise known as a "firing set", for a Russian-designed nuclear weapon. He held in his hands the knowledge needed to create a perfect implosion that could trigger a nuclear chain reaction inside a small spherical core. It was one of the greatest engineering secrets in the world, providing the solution to one of a handful of problems that separated nuclear powers such as the United States and Russia from rogue countries such as Iran that were desperate to join the nuclear club but had so far fallen short. The Russian, who had defected to the US years earlier, still couldn't believe the orders he had received from CIA headquarters. The CIA had given him the nuclear blueprints and then sent him to Vienna to sell them - or simply give them - to the Iranian representatives to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). With the Russian doing its bidding, the CIA appeared to be about to help Iran leapfrog one of the last remaining engineering hurdles blocking its path to a nuclear weapon. The dangerous irony was not lost on the Russian - the IAEA was an international organisation created to restrict the spread of nuclear technology. The Russian was a nuclear engineer in the pay of the CIA, which had arranged for him to become an American citizen and funded him to the tune of $5,000 a month. It seemed like easy money, with few strings attached. Until now. The CIA was placing him on the front line of a plan that seemed to be completely at odds with the interests of the US, and it had taken a lot of persuading by his CIA case officer to convince him to go through with what appeared to be a rogue operation. The case officer worked hard to convince him - even though he had doubts about the plan as well. As he was sweet-talking the Russian into flying to Vienna, the case officer wondered whether he was involved in an illegal covert action. Should he expect to be hauled before a congressional committee and grilled because he was the officer who helped give nuclear blueprints to Iran? The code name for this operation was Merlin; to the officer, that seemed like a wry tip-off that nothing about this programme was what it appeared to be. He did his best to hide his concerns from his Russian agent. The Russian's assignment from the CIA was to pose as an unemployed and greedy scientist who was willing to sell his soul - and the secrets of the atomic bomb - to the highest bidder. By hook or by crook, the CIA told him, he was to get the nuclear blueprints to the Iranians. They would quickly recognise their value and rush them back to their superiors in Tehran. The plan had been laid out for the defector during a CIA-financed trip to San Francisco, where he had meetings with CIA officers and nuclear experts mixed in with leisurely wine-tasting trips to Sonoma County. In a luxurious San Francisco hotel room, a senior CIA official involved in the operation talked the Russian through the details of the plan. He brought in experts from one of the national laboratories to go over the blueprints that he was supposed to give the Iranians. The senior CIA officer could see that the Russian was nervous, and so he tried to downplay the significance of what they were asking him to do. He said the CIA was mounting the operation simply to find out where the Iranians were with their nuclear programme. This was just an intelligence-gathering effort, the CIA officer said, not an illegal attempt to give Iran the bomb. He suggested that the Iranians already had the technology he was going to hand over to them. It was all a game. Nothing too serious. On paper, Merlin was supposed to stunt the development of Tehran's nuclear programme by sending Iran's weapons experts down the wrong technical path. The CIA believed that once the Iranians had the blueprints and studied them, they would believe the designs were usable and so would start to build an atom bomb based on the flawed designs. But Tehran would get a big surprise when its scientists tried to explode their new bomb. Instead of a mushroom cloud, the Iranian scientists would witness a disappointing fizzle. The Iranian nuclear programme would suffer a humiliating setback, and Tehran's goal of becoming a nuclear power would have been delayed by several years. In the meantime, the CIA, by watching Iran's reaction to the blueprints, would have gained a wealth of information about the status of Iran's weapons programme, which has been shrouded in secrecy. The Russian studied the blueprints the CIA had given him. Within minutes of being handed the designs, he had identified a flaw. "This isn't right," he told the CIA officers gathered around the hotel room. "There is something wrong." His comments prompted stony looks, but no straight answers from the CIA men. No one in the meeting seemed surprised by the Russian's assertion that the blueprints didn't look quite right, but no one wanted to enlighten him further on the matter, either. In fact, the CIA case officer who was the Russian's personal handler had been stunned by his statement. During a break, he took the senior CIA officer aside. "He wasn't supposed to know that," the CIA case officer told his superior. "He wasn't supposed to find a flaw." "Don't worry," the senior CIA officer calmly replied. "It doesn't matter." The CIA case officer couldn't believe the senior CIA officer's answer, but he managed to keep his fears from the Russian, and continued to train him for his mission. After their trip to San Francisco, the case officer handed the Russian a sealed envelope with the nuclear blueprints inside. He was told not to open the envelope under any circumstances. He was to follow the CIA's instructions to find the Iranians and give them the envelope with the documents inside. Keep it simple, and get out of Vienna safe and alive, the Russian was told. But the defector had his own ideas about how he might play that game. The CIA had discovered that a high-ranking Iranian official would be travelling to Vienna and visiting the Iranian mission to the IAEA, and so the agency decided to send the Russian to Vienna at the same time. It was hoped that he could make contact with either the Iranian representative to the IAEA or the visitor from Tehran. In Vienna, however, the Russian unsealed the envelope with the nuclear blueprints and included a personal letter of his own to the Iranians. No matter what the CIA told him, he was going to hedge his bets. There was obviously something wrong with the blueprints - so he decided to mention that fact to the Iranians in his letter. They would certainly find flaws for themselves, and if he didn't tell them first, they would never want to deal with him again. The Russian was thus warning the Iranians as carefully as he could that there was a flaw somewhere in the nuclear blueprints, and he could help them find it. At the same time, he was still going through with the CIA's operation in the only way he thought would work. The Russian soon found 19 Heinstrasse, a five-storey office and apartment building with a flat, pale green and beige facade in a quiet, slightly down-at-heel neighbourhood in Vienna's north end. Amid the list of Austrian tenants, there was one simple line: "PM/Iran." The Iranians clearly didn't want publicity. An Austrian postman helped him. As the Russian stood by, the postman opened the building door and dropped off the mail. The Russian followed suit; he realised that he could leave his package without actually having to talk to anyone. He slipped through the front door, and hurriedly shoved his envelope through the inner-door slot at the Iranian office. The Russian fled the mission without being seen. He was deeply relieved that he had made the hand-off without having to come face to face with a real live Iranian. He flew back to the US without being detected by either Austrian security or, more importantly, Iranian intelligence. Just days after the Russian dropped off his package at the Iranian mission, the National Security Agency reported that an Iranian official in Vienna abruptly changed his schedule, making airline reservations to fly home to Iran. The odds were that the nuclear blueprints were now in Tehran. The Russian scientist's fears about the operation seemed well founded. He was the front man for what may have been one of the most reckless operations in the modern history of the CIA, one that may have helped put nuclear weapons in the hands of a charter member of what President George W Bush has called the "axis of evil". Operation Merlin has been one of the most closely guarded secrets in the Clinton and Bush administrations. It's not clear who originally came up with the idea, but the plan was first approved by Clinton. After the Russian scientist's fateful trip to Vienna, however, the Merlin operation was endorsed by the Bush administration, possibly with an eye toward repeating it against North Korea or other dangerous states. Several former CIA officials say that the theory behind Merlin - handing over tainted weapon designs to confound one of America's adversaries - is a trick that has been used many times in past operations, stretching back to the cold war. But in previous cases, such Trojan horse operations involved conventional weapons; none of the former officials had ever heard of the CIA attempting to conduct this kind of high-risk operation with designs for a nuclear bomb. The former officials also said these kind of programmes must be closely monitored by senior CIA managers in order to control the flow of information to the adversary. If mishandled, they could easily help an enemy accelerate its weapons development. That may be what happened with Merlin. Iran has spent nearly 20 years trying to develop nuclear weapons, and in the process has created a strong base of sophisticated scientists knowledgeable enough to spot flaws in nuclear blueprints. Tehran also obtained nuclear blueprints from the network of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, and so already had workable blueprints against which to compare the designs obtained from the CIA. Nuclear experts say that they would thus be able to extract valuable information from the blueprints while ignoring the flaws. "If [the flaw] is bad enough," warned a nuclear weapons expert with the IAEA, "they will find it quite quickly. That would be my fear" -------------
Just blame the Muslims. It makes the whole problem easier to solve, and there is no having to deal with depressing espionage, lies, and conspiracies.
Um ... well, according to GuardianUnlimited, the article is an excerpt of James Risen's 2006 book State of War. I would imagine, if the scholarship is worth the paper its printed on, there should be some sort of source notes in the book.
While we can neither confirm nor deny such speculation, rest assured we are on top of the situation and will do our best to merit the confidence which the American public entrusts us with...
First story: Heh heh heh. I hate when I accidentally send emails that were meant for ex-girlfriends to my boss. Man, is that embarrassing. Or, I guess in this case, deadly! Second story: Doesn't it read like the Russian fucked up? The CIA gives Tehran fake blueprints, and the Russian puts a letter in there that says "yo, these plans are fucked up, double check 'em." Sounds like the Russian is a double agent! At the very least, he should be hung for treason.
Dear Abby .... Treason? Eh, my definition's probably too narrow. But, come on ... it's like the old "Dear Abby" letters: if he leaves his wife for you, he'll leave you for the next one. Whoever cooked up the scheme to give a Russian defector technical data for nuclear weapons to hand over to the Iranians in order to find out what they knew and had is a complete moron. I mean, somebody at the CIA had to know it was a bad idea. And I mean somebody at the CIA who could do something about it.
Hahaha, yeah, when you say it like that, it's really funny. I'd like a real source for that story, though. Reads too much like spy pulp.
The fluffy and the frothing Yeah. But then again, Americans are involved, and one thing we're good at is surprising folks about stuff like this. I'm sure we've run some pretty stupid schemes over the years. • • • General Note: It's interesting that a couple of people have wondered about the source. To the one, I understand; it's a messed up story that really does sound like a bad movie script. To the other, though, I'm not sure what you mean. The source for our discussion, of course, is the Guardian Unlimited article linked in the topic post. And that informs us that the article is an excerpt from a book, The State of War by James Risen. After our resident journalist made the point about sources, I looked up Risen's book in my local library catalog. Surely enough, it's there. And I would expect it to be there on the shelf when I get there tomorrow. If not, I'll just hold one of the several copies floating around the county library system. And then ... I'll come here and post the relevant bibliography. Really, the source question just stuck out like a dildo in a rosebush. I don't get it. Anyway, sure, I'll dig up the bibliography. And if there is none ...? We can be the first people to actually bust this story since it ran in the Guardian in January, 2006. The book got a really good review from someone who seems obsessed with post-9/11 politics. James Bamford's NYT review is a bit fluffy, including these paragraphs: And if that wasn't enough, the Times sounded off again, about a month later. This time, Walter Isaacson wrote the rave review: Curiously, when the New York Times decided to run with information they'd allegedly held for over a year and not published at the request of the Bush administration, Risen was one of the article authors. (Read both reviews carefully; if you think I've missed on that point, fair 'nuff.) So I'm suddenly dubious about their reviews, as Isaacson especially plays up the merits of anonymous sources. Varifrank (Liberty, Decency, Victory) has a hostile review spread over several blog entries, which he provided for "those of you who wish to know whats actually in the book, but don't necessarily wish to give support to someone who may not be on the same side of the war as the rest of us". I include that note because the last paragraph, especially, rings familiarly. I haven't even read the book, and from the reviews, it's already starting to sound as if it exonerates Bush. This enthusiastic Bushie actually advocates treason charges for Risen's sources while clearly despising Risen. Conservatives are on notice: you have something to complain about. After all, Varifrank is one of you: Now that I've done everyone's homework for them tonight, you can all sleep easy, and I'll find out if there are any sources listed for the book, especially the chapter on the Iranian debacle.
Can we race for the answer? Can I give you a headstart? Okay, okay. Seriously, I have no idea, and I'm not going to promise to find out right now, despite the fact that I have a leftover Google window. • • • Note on Edit: Entering the search term "james risen debunk", I found Ganymede's 9/11 topic in the fourth slot (behind a double entry for the NYT). Heh ... behind a double entry. Heh-heh. Oh, sorry. Wrong topic for the perverted Beavis and Butthead chuckle. • • • Right now he's coming off as curiously clean. I mean, he's not without controversy, but I find myself thinking about Varifrank's review, which I posted earlier. For all that anger, Varifrank didn't seem to know who Risen was. Neither did I, specifically, but I wasn't going out of my way to accuse Risen of treason. There is a reason the two NY Times reviews are so fluffy; Risen is/was a NYT staff reporter who really did help the paper stick it to the Bush administration. In fact, that's part of what's strange. The criticism I'm finding so far isn't much. I'll have to try different terms: S.S.M. "Weekly Standard's Hayes wrongly suggested that passage in CIA report rebutted NY Times article on Iraq-Al Qaeda intelligence". MediaMatters.org. May 2, 2006. See http://mediamatters.org/items/200605020010 Maguire, Tom. "A Question for James Risen". Just One Minute. January 3, 2006. See http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2006/01/a_question_for_.html That's what I found with the first search. Others are welcome to try.
Right, but the story is pretty much in narrative form and doesn't have a lot of primary sources in it. In other words, there aren't many "he said" or "she said" or "according to" clauses in there. On the face of it, there's nothing wrong with that (for a book). I just finished The Looming Tower, and it was organized in similar fashion, with extensive footnotes in the back. I'd have to run the Risen book down to look at it before I gave it more credence. The Bamford comments you dug up are interesting. Bamford is a highly respected author when it comes to espionage subjects. I think it's telling he's bothered by the fact the book "has almost no named sources - not even the comments of former intelligence or government officials, who might provide perspective, context and credibility. It is an unusual move for someone writing about such an important subject." Both Bamford and someone like Seymour Hersh are able to get such sources and still write highly controversial and edgy stories. Hersh, in particular, is good about his documentation, though a lot of what he writes is unsourced and relies on the ubiquitious former officials. However, having nothing but anonymous sources is a tricky prospect. Even Woodward and Bernstein had documents to back up some of their work, and multiple source-work. Did Risen? The question is worth asking, especially about a story that seems so skeptical to me.
Well, I'm still thinking of popping down to the library to have a peek at it. Yes, but both Bamford and Isaacson try to play down the source issue for Risen, a NYT staff writer who really gave the paper's prestige a boost by forcing the editorial staff to capitulate on its decision to hold a story at the request of the White House. But Bamford does have a certain point: "... especially when it is later confirmed by the president himself". So that's one of three primary "scoops", and that's just the idea of the wiretapping. Who knows about the narrative? S.A.M. also has a point: I didn't find anyone rushing forward to actually refute the story, and the book has been out for a while now. We'll see what comes up; it's not like my search was exhaustive.
The silence is understandable. The CIA does not typically "refute" or confirm or deny stories about it and its operations in the press. They have neither the time or the inclination. I'd also wager it's a matter of simplicity. How many employees would it take to sift through the world press and refute all the bogus stories about the agency that get written and published? Too many... I'm not sure Risen was the reporter involved in this story, but I will take your word for it. However, I don't remember the editorial staff holding the wiretapping story and then capitulating on it. In fact, I remember just the opposite. Didn't Bill Keller go to the White House to listen to Bush plead with him to hold the story, then went back to NY and ran it anyway? That's how I remember it. It's a powerful argument for Risen's bona fides, I admit. But we all know being right about one thing doesn't mean you're right about something else. It makes it's more likely you're right, especially if we're talking an assertion being made based on professional skill, but it's nothing is so airtight. Also, there is a reason journalists and editors the world-over are weary of stories with no identifiable sources. For many of us, they just don't feel right. As for Risen's credentials, I don't know enough of his work to judge. However, one always has to consider the mindset of a writer, I think. A good example of what I mean here is the book Legacy of Ashes, written by Tim Weiner, another Times alum. It's a wonderful book, extremely well cited. But Weiner's premise is the CIA stinks, so he makes everything fit in that box, even going so far as to present operations that manipulated elections in Japan and Italy as "failures." Weiner personally might not like such operations, but if the goal was to manipulate the election and the CIA succeeded in doing that, I call that a success. In other words, books that are critical rarely give credit where credit is due, and sometimes can present things outside their proper context to show them even more critically. I'm not saying that's the case with Risen or with this story he tells, all I'm saying is that I'm suspect. Still, to be fair, I imagine it's tough to get sources on CIA operations that are so recent...
Just noticed that Risen apparently co-authored a book with Milton Bearden, a highly-respected, former CIA operative. So that's another feather in Risen's cap for me...
Risen was the reporter, or one of them. And few others remember it that way - I've never even heard that version. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/13/opinion/13pubed.html http://www.slate.com/id/2133356/ http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Clearer_timeline_emerges_for_New_York_0812.html The NYT, in the person of Keller, delayed publication until suitably conservative people gave their OK. That continued a pattern, still visible, in which the NYT bends its editorial decisions to the domestic political needs of the current administration in crucial matters. From WMDs to election fraud to Gitmo to signing statements to remember these ? : (http://correntewire.com/times_editor_helps_bush_nail_constitution_into_its_coffin_trashes_democracy) the NYT has been a remarkably compliant media outlet for several years now. Risen pushed, but he was too lefty to swing it - facts have to be verified by people who aren't "war on terror doves", to be delivered as news in - what was that word - " respectable" publications.
Really? Crawl out of your hole... http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5063326 The pertinent section of the above is this: "Newsweek magazine reports that President Bush recently summoned Times Executive Editor Keller and Publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. to the White House to try to talk them out of printing the article. They omitted some details, but ran it." Or read your own link: "It's my hunch that Keller and the Times did as Bradlee did—kept pushing and published once 1) enough of the story was verified and 2) all were confident that the story would not compromise U.S. security. The Times ultimately sourced its scoop to "[n]early a dozen current and former officials," indicating that it constructed an invincible work of journalism." In other words, once they got leaned on, they wanted to be sure. That's your bullshit subjective take on it, and it stands in direct contrast to what numerous media outlets reported. Bush wanted the story killed. It wasn't. So how does that square with "getting an OK"? It doesn't. I don't know what to say, other than you really are crazy, do you know that? The NYT has been one of the administration's harshest and most consistent critics. Have you heard of Frank Rich? Maureen Dowd? Paul Krugman? They're on the editorial page every week reaming the president. Seriously, do you even read the paper, because you're really starting to bore me with these gross overreaches of yours and this ridiculous position that you keep espousing about the media being in cahoots with Bush et al? You need to reestablish some kind of contact with reality...
