| Submit your comments on this article |
| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Congressman Warns of Iranian Attack on U.S. |
| 2004-12-14 |
| A senior Republican congressman has been warning America's intelligence community for more than a year of an alleged Iranian plot to crash commercial airliners into a New Hampshire nuclear reactor. Since February 2003, Rep. Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania has held a series of secret meetings in Paris with a former high-ranking official in the Shah's government who has correctly predicted, according to Mr. Weldon, a number of internal developments in Iran ranging from the regime's atomic weapons programs to its support for international terrorism, including Al Qaeda. Based on two informants inside the mullahs' inner circle, Mr. Weldon's source, whom he code-named "Ali," relayed allegations to the Pennsylvania lawmaker that an Iranian-backed terrorist cell is seeking to hijack Canadian airliners and crash them into an American reactor. The target of the operation was only identified by Ali as SEA, leading Mr. Weldon to predict it was the Seabrook reactor in New Hampshire, about 40 miles north of Boston. Ali told the congressman that the attack was first planned for between November 23 and December 3, 2003, but was postponed to take place after this year's presidential election. For nearly two years, Mr. Weldon tried to quietly press the CIA and a Senate panel that oversees Langley to follow up on the intelligence his Iranian source in Paris was providing. But these efforts came to nothing, according to Mr. Weldon. So now Mr. Weldon is going public. The congressman said in an interview last week that he intended to publish a book early next year outlining the intelligence he has collected from various sources that he said will detail an Iranian plot to conduct a more lethal attack on America than September 11, 2001. "I get a lot of wackos who come to see me, who claim to have information," he said. "In this case, this source came to me from a former member of Congress, a Democrat. I followed up a lead. That lead developed an ongoing process of information-sharing for two years that I took to the highest levels of the intelligence community." In Washington, the new book from Mr. Weldon, based in part on his meetings with Ali, will provide fresh ammunition for the Republicans against an intelligence community perceived by the White House as hostile to the president's policies. Last month, the new director of the CIA, Porter Goss, a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, sent many of the most senior analysts and operations officers into early retirement. In a speech he gave to the staff at Langley, Mr. Goss had to remind the employees that the president sets national security policy. But if Mr. Weldon's source turns out to be right, America could also be losing a valuable intelligence asset on Iran, a country where most intelligence analysts in America concede the CIA has too few human sources. The congressman's experience with America's spy service in the last year echoes frustrations from other American officials and analysts who have cultivated Iranians willing to provide America with intelligence, but who have been ignored. After a December 2001 meeting in Rome between Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin and Iran-Contra figure Manucher Ghorbanifar, the State Department and CIA went out of their way to shut down the channel. Mr. Franklin is now the target of a grand jury investigation into alleged espionage activities for passing information to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. A summary of Ali's predictions were outlined in a November 2003 letter to the Republican chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Senator Roberts from Kansas. In its opening lines, Mr. Weldon wrote, "This letter is to warn you of an intelligence failure in the process of happening." Later in the letter, Mr. Weldon, who is the vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, wrote, "I am not asserting that such an attack shall occur. But given [Ali's] record of accurate predictions, shouldn't the Intelligence Community at least be investigating his story?" The letter and an accompanying memo titled, "Ali: a Credible Source," goes into detail about information Mr. Weldon's source provided that was later confirmed in the press. For example, Ali first passed on the Iranian threat to the reactor at a Paris meeting on May 17, 2003. On August 22, 2003, the Toronto Star reported the arrest of 19 people in Canada for immigration violations who were suspected of being connected in a terrorist conspiracy. One of the men in the cell was taking flight lessons and had flown an airplane directly over an Ontario nuclear power plant, according to the newspaper. So, impressed with the quality of his source's information, Mr. Weldon met in 2003 with the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, to plead his case to get funding for Ali. But the CIA, according to the Pennsylvania lawmaker, demanded to know the identities of Ali's sources inside Iran, a condition Mr. Weldon said was unreasonable given the high-risk espionage. "I took this straight to the top," Mr. Weldon said in an interview. "I wanted to work through the channels but I did not get anywhere." Frustrated with the CIA's response, Mr. Weldon took his case to the Senate panel that oversees the agency. He pressed them in the 2003 letter to hold a hearing on the matter and urge the CIA to get Ali the money to continue to pay off his sources inside the Islamic republic. According to Mr. Weldon, the committee did not respond in any meaningful way. "One or two senior people called the chief of staff. Not the kind of response I wanted. I had to get this off my shoulders," he said in an interview. Mr. Weldon said more of Ali's intelligence will be shared in his forthcoming book, which he promised would "shake Washington." He said that the manuscript, which he has just completed, details how Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, "has set up a separate entity in the government the president does not know about, which includes all the terrorist groups connected to bin Laden and others. They are avowed to consummate a major attack inside the United States. In the book I name this plot." |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #11 SHUT IT DOWN, goddamnit. This isn't funny anymore. |
| Posted by: lex 2004-12-14 11:36:51 PM |
| #10 I heard Michael "Anonymous" Scheuer on the Medved show today. He is a complete idiot-- more proof positive that the CIA is full of idiots. I heard some of it. I think someone once used "hubris" to describe Scheurer, and he liked the word so much he decided to use it himself. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2004-12-14 11:07:59 PM |
| #9 you think CHENEY WOULD REFRAIN??? Bwahahahahah |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-12-14 9:52:37 PM |
| #8 Whosoever unleashes the nuclear genie will find their atoms scattered to the four winds and their homelands turned into green glass unless W goes in the attack. |
| Posted by: RWV 2004-12-14 9:50:52 PM |
| #7 The mullahs better think long and hard about their plans. Another attack the size of 9/11/2001 or bigger is going to result in a LOT of angry Americans, which won't bode well for the Middle East. |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2004-12-14 9:03:48 PM |
| #6 But.... did he say it was a 'slam dunk'? |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2004-12-14 8:34:04 PM |
| #5 "...maybe it's high time we got cold-hearted and applied some hardcore realpolitik to the entire class of Clintoon Camelot II holdovers - throughout the Gov't." Actually, it is WAY past time, high or otherwise. Should've been done a long time ago. -AR |
| Posted by: Analog Roam 2004-12-14 8:31:17 PM |
| #4 I heard Michael "Anonymous" Scheuer on the Medved show today. He is a complete idiot-- more proof positive that the CIA is full of idiots. |
| Posted by: Wuzzalib 2004-12-14 7:50:47 PM |
| #3 Stunning - and the guy's going public against the tide strikes me, at least in this case, as substance behind the charges. This is the sort of thing that gives many of us gray hair - the sources are definitely there and available, but if the CIA is this far gone then lex has been calling it right all along: tear it down and start over. Get a list of those who were forced out, fired, reprimanded, etc. - especially where prejudice was used, that's credibility considering the CIA management - we'll need a core of competence to start whatever follows on. I don't predict it, but I would not shed a tear if down the road, after one of these attacks is pulled off successfully against us, Tenet got one behind the ear. I got that cold feeling reading this... maybe it's high time we got cold-hearted and applied some hardcore realpolitik to the entire class of Clintoon Camelot II holdovers - throughout the Gov't. |
| Posted by: .com 2004-12-14 7:26:58 PM |
| #2 "In the book I name this plot" "I call it |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-12-14 7:13:27 PM |
| #1 This DOES NOT surprise me. Time is NOT on the insane and DEMONIC Mullah's side. They are facing extermination from their own people AND POSSIBLY even from us. |
| Posted by: leaddog2 2004-12-14 7:12:14 PM |