..and in further developements TRACY CONNOR'S uncle may have inadvertently been the father of her first born.
pic here:
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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| CIA inadvertently gave Iran formula for a nuke |
| 2006-01-04 |
| The CIA may have handed Iran the formula for building a nuclear bomb in a clumsy covert operation involving a double-crossing Russian agent, a new book charges. The blueprint that was funneled to Tehran contained an error that was meant to derail the Islamic state's efforts at building a nuclear arsenal. But the built-in flaw was so transparent the Russian engineer doing the CIA's dirty work spotted it immediately - and even offered to help Iran fix it. The stunning account is one of the revelations in the new book "State of War," which details how the CIA repeatedly bungled its dealings with Iran. The nuclear snafu happened in February 2000 when the CIA enlisted the Russian defector to supply misinformation to Iran as part of a program code-named Merlin. He was given plans for a "firing set" for a Russian-designed bomb - the trigger for a chain reaction that Iran needed to build its own nukes. As ordered, he got the documents to a high-ranking Iranian official visiting Tehran's mission to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. But in a renegade act, he included a letter red-flagging the flaw in the instructions and offering to help Iran overcome it - for a price, the book says. Author James Risen called the escapade "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 called `the axis of evil.'" Risen, who exposed the Bush administration's controversial domestic eavesdropping program, also chronicles how a simple mistake destroyed the agency's network in Iran. In 2004, an officer accidentally sent a computerized message to an Iranian agent that revealed the identities of virtually every spy inside the country. The Iranian who got the message was a double agent and turned over the information to security officials in Tehran, and many of the CIA operatives were arrested and jailed. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #19 Risen is a fuckwick. Let's suppose that the CIA gave the Iranian Moolahs all the nuke "secrets" it could stick in their wacked out minds. What the hell does that mean? Nothing. It's not the gun (or nuke "secrets") as much as the intended use and motivation that is at issue. |
| Posted by: Captain America 2006-01-04 16:55 |
| #18 Here's a link on the pipeline software story. The CIA seems to have had a bit of a comeback under Casey. Risen sets my BS detector off too. |
| Posted by: JAB 2006-01-04 16:27 |
| #17 great thread. |
| Posted by: 2b 2006-01-04 15:10 |
| #16 Cool posts Zenster and Ptah! I really enjoy reading about things like that. |
| Posted by: Yosemite Sam 2006-01-04 15:05 |
| #15 My understanding is that the plans the Pakis got from China/NKor were detailed to the point of specifying the torque settings for nuts and bolts on the device. Get those numbers subtily wrong, and things go very wrong very quickly. Zenster's comment reminds me of another such operation: the Soviets also stole the source codes for a computer program to automatically control the thousands of valves on oil and gas pipelines. However, the copies they got were also subtily altered so as to semi-randomly bollix things up. Not hard to do: change a few constants by 5 to 10% in non-conservative directions, and you'll yield a class of bugs that have caused stadiums and airport terminals to collapse, and space probes to wander off into the void. The report *I* saw said this, but DID back up their assertions by noting the very public explosions that seemed to occur with great frequency in the Soviet Union, including one rather spectacular one in Siberia that bid fair to rival the Halifax explosion of a FRENCH (who else?) munitions ship. (People miles away from the harbor were blinded when the blast shattered the windows out of which they were looking and drove splinters into their eyes. The people of Halifax are still thankful to the Americans for taking the victims in and restoring sight to many of them) |
| Posted by: Ptah 2006-01-04 14:01 |
| #14 Why would Iran need to purchase American nuclear bomb plans when they could get them risk-free for Pakistan's Dr. Khan, like everybody else? I seem to recall that the plans Libya got from Dr. Khan were still untranslated from the Chinese... The writer is flogging his quarter-baked conspiracy theories to the gullible. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2006-01-04 13:59 |
| #13 This is reminiscent of another classic reverse-misinformation operation America carried out in the late 1980s. While much of the space shuttle's blueprints are available through the GCA (NASA is a civilian agency), some key packages are most definitely not. Avionics, propulsion, re-entry flight control and thrusters were not in the public domain. During that time frame, the Soviets were in town buying up all of the GCA's shuttle plans they could get their hands on. It was also common knowledge that they were seeking the classified document sets as well. Word has it that they obtained all of these and trundled back home to begin their own shuttle program. One look at Buran, the Soviet shuttle, shows how much in common it has with the Soviet's SST program. Both were blatant knock-offs of western designs, with one difference. Beltway scuttlebutt has it that shuttle plans bought by the Soviets contained some crucial differences. Wing dihedral angles, thermal conductivity quotients and other niggling little details had been subtlely altered in ways that only extensive analysis and testing could reveal. Not having the budget or expertise to completely review these highly complex data, the Soviets went ahead with a 2/3 scale copy of America's shuttle design and the rest is history. It warms the cockles of my heart to think of how many bazillion rubles were dumped into this little unflyable black hole. Final Point: If we were able to pull this one off, and the distinct lack of an operational Russian shuttle program certainly bespeaks this, then just how hard should it have been to leak a completely persuasive, yet totally non-operational set of nuclear weapon plans to Iran? Leaking an atomic bomb plan set with only one glaring alteration would be grounds for charges of treason. I doubt if anyone was that incredibly stupid. My bu||shit detector is pegging, too. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2006-01-04 13:34 |
| #12 Well you see the CIA really purposefully gave then the blueprint so Bushhitler would have an accuse to invade. /moonbat :) |
| Posted by: djohn66 2006-01-04 13:17 |
| #11 Considering the source... this guy should be shot. This sounds like a triple cross, as if someone inside the CIA was pretending to be double-crossing the Russians and gave them the majority of the docs that had "flaws in them" - Then for an additional amount in someone's swiss bank account - they were given, the fix. If not BS, which who knows, considering the source, it sounds like another example where forces inside the CIA sold us out. They didn't see the collapse of the Soviet Union, they didn't see Global Jihad spreading world wide. They leaked Iran Contra and everything else. Maybe there is an entrenched group inside the CIA that is completely corrupt. Just a thought. |
| Posted by: 2b 2006-01-04 11:27 |
| #10 "But in a renegade act, he included a letter red-flagging the flaw in the instructions and offering to help Iran overcome it - for a price, the book says" If true, why isn't this Russian defector punished, or has he been already? "Risen, who exposed the Bush administration's controversial domestic eavesdropping program.." and why isn't he being punished as well for this? Just boggles... |
| Posted by: Jan 2006-01-04 10:54 |
| #9 This is just b*%sh*t. |
| Posted by: 49 pan 2006-01-04 08:39 |
| #8 Risen a NY Times reporter and is the fellow who wrote or co-authored "Wrath of Angels," Here is an excerpt where he talks about what we would refer to as the silent majority speaking out against Roe vs Wade: A new, religion-based social protest movement was born, one that drew Protestant Evangelicals out of their churches and to the barricades. These activists set out to transform the law, but in the process they transformed themselves, transformed their theological beliefs, and ended generations of isolation. You can make your decisions about this guy and his publications. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2006-01-04 08:28 |
| #7 Another Clinton f*ck-up. If this is true, the whole agency should be bulldozed. We'd be better off with no agency that with these bungling idiots. |
| Posted by: Spot 2006-01-04 08:28 |
| #6 CIA inadvertently gave Iran formula for a nuke ..and in further developements TRACY CONNOR'S uncle may have inadvertently been the father of her first born. pic here: |
| Posted by: Shoboater Angelton6948 2006-01-04 04:06 |
| #5 Might as well - Clinton already gave them US cruise missle and Stealth during the Yugoslav-Bosnian crisez. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2006-01-04 04:01 |
| #4 Or just kill him as a National Security risk. I'd be down wid dat. Let his fucking widow get his royalty checks. I think there'd be a message in there somewhere for others. I kinda favor hunter / killer teams, y'know. Spielberg's angst and idiocy in Munich (At least one of the people he characterized as having heart-rending guilt says, "What? Not true!"), notwithstanding. Put the Big S on the list, in fact... right after the other Big S, Stone. |
| Posted by: .com 2006-01-04 03:52 |
| #3 Someone from the FBI ought to have a chat with "Mr Risen." Every email he sends or recieves, every bit of mail and all his converstions should be monitored in the national interest. He shouldn't be able to take a dump without the man knowing how much it weighed etc. |
| Posted by: Mahou Sensei Negi-bozu 2006-01-04 03:44 |
| #2 Someone please tell me again why the CIA shouldn't be subject to a top-to-bottom purge? |
| Posted by: Scooter McGruder 2006-01-04 03:29 |
| #1 Author James Risen, already identified as the asshole who is peddling the faux-controversial domestic eavesdropping pseudo-scandal, is peddling a new book - and, of course, we are the bad guys. Observation 1: If Tenet's CIA was this clumsy, and the story is as simplistic as Risen claims, then Tenet and everyone involved at management level should be shot. Observation 2: I would wager a sizable amount that, if ANY of this is true, then there were multiple flaws. Think about it. What better way to generate confidence in the messenger than to put in a simple flaw, have him tell them and demand money to help them fix it? Greed would be something they could understand and trust. So he establishes his bona-fides both as technically credible, when the flaw is passed along for confirmation to the Khan network or other source, and as no friend of the US for demanding a bribe to help them - against the US. Instant street cred with the MMs. And the deep, subtle and complex flaw, is still there. The odor of bullshit is overwhelming in these exposé books...  |
| Posted by: .com 2006-01-04 03:28 |