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01/05/2006:

"George Bush insists that Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. So why, six years ago, did the CIA give the Iranians blueprints to build a bomb?"

In an extract from his explosive new book, New York Times reporter James Risen reveals the bungles and miscalculations that led to a spectacular intelligence fiasco

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?"
guardian.co.uk

What if it wasn't bungling incompetence at all?

Clandestine nuclear deals traced to Sudan
International investigators and western intelligence have for the first time named Sudan as a major conduit for sophisticated engineering equipment that could be used in nuclear weapons programmes.

Hundreds of millions of pounds of equipment was imported into the African country over a three-year period before the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington in 2001 and has since disappeared, according to Guardian sources.

Western governments, UN detectives and international analysts trying to stem the illicit trade in weapons of mass destruction technology are alarmed by the black market trade.

Madsen Jan. 2: Intelligence indications and warnings abound as Bush administration finalizes military attack on Iran.
...There has been a rapid increase in training and readiness at a number of U.S. military installations involved with the planned primarily aerial attack. These include a Pentagon order to Fort Rucker, Alabama, to be prepared to handle an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 trainees, including civilian contractors, who will be deployed for Iranian combat operations. Rucker is home to the US Army's aviation training command, including the helicopter training school.

In addition, there has been an increase in readiness at nearby Hurlburt Field in Florida, the home of the U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command. The U.S. attack on Iran will primarily involve aviation (Navy, Air Force, Navy-Marine Corps) and special operations assets.

There has also been a noticeable increase in activity at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms, California, a primary live fire training activity located in a desert and mountainous environment similar to target areas in Iran.

From European intelligence agencies comes word that the United States has told its NATO allies to be prepared for a military strike on Iranian nuclear development and military installations.

On November 17, 2005, Russian President Vladimir Putin spent seven hours in secret discussions with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan during the the opening ceremonies in Samsun, Turkey for the Russian-Turkish underwater Blue Stream natural gas pipeline, festivities also attended by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

According to sources knowledgeable about the meeting, Erdogan promised Putin, who has become a close friend, that Turkey would not support the use of its bases by the United States in a military attack on Iran. That brought a series of high level visits to Turkey by Bush administration officials, including CIA chief Porter Goss, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Iran Elbows Afghanistan From Pipeline Project With Turkmenistan
Kabul, 2 January: Iran has wrested the opportunity from Afghanistan by nearing an accord with Pakistan and India on a 7bn- dollars gas pipeline project.

The opportunity for Afghanistan was in the shape of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan gas pipeline but it was snatched by Iran as the three countries have agreed in principle to implement the multi-billion dollars gas project.

Earlier, officials of the three countries had held nine meetings to reach an accord on the gas pipeline from the Central Asian state via Afghanistan to Pakistan. The US will be dismayed as its oil and gas company UNOCAL's efforts to pass gas pipeline from Turkmenistan via Afghanistan to Pakistan had been delayed because India and Pakistan have opted to sign an accord with Iran, analysts say.

Replies: 1 Comment

Thursday, January 5th, mr. bungle posted:

"What if it wasn't bungling incompetence at all?"

* EXACTLY! This whole thing has been a long time in the works - much "bungling incompetance" such as chaos in Iraq is part of the plan. I have a sneaking suspicion that the current leader of Iran is also a shill for the "great work" to be done in the middle east. He fits the bill in so many ways - they want this war to re-order the middle east, nothing like a radical in power to push all the right buttons for an escalation. Europe will be a big part of the grand coalition this time.