Clinton's CIA Handed Iran the Bomb

This is actually old, and I've linked it before. But the Telegraph is noting it again, and if the MSM can continue brining up Abu Ghraib, we should be allowed to push on this revelation.

In addition, last time 'round there was some dispute as to which President was in office when a fiasco of a mission codenamed "Merlin" wound up delivering workable nuke blueprints to the Mad Mullahs. This article is pretty clear on the point it happened in February 2000, when Clinton was in office.

Botched CIA operations may have handed Iran vital information on how to make nuclear weapons and betrayed the identities of America's spies in the country, according to a new book on US intelligence.

The latest account of American intelligence failures includes details of how the CIA allegedly tried to slip Teheran some Russian designs for an atomic bomb, which contained hidden flaws that would have made any device inoperable.

The Iranians, however, were tipped off by the very agent sent to give them the documents.

...

The CIA says the book contains "serious inaccuracies", but has not elaborated.

The claims about Iran are startling because of the scale of bungling that Mr Risen claims has taken place.

He highlights one operation, known as Merlin, in February 2000, when the CIA allegedly sent a Soviet-era defector to Vienna where, posing an unemployed scientist selling nuclear secrets, he was supposed to contact the Iranians.

The Russian scientist, who had previously worked as an engineer on the Soviet nuclear weapons programme, was given Soviet documents for a key bomb component.

These had been provided by another Russian defector and then doctored by the CIA. Had they used the documents, "instead of a mushroom cloud the Iranian scientists would witness a disappointing fizzle", Mr Risen writes.

But the Russian scientist immediately spotted the flaw and told his CIA handlers: "This isn't right." When told to go ahead with his mission, he apparently feared the Iranians would find the errors and decided to include a letter that alerted them to the flaws in the designs.

Mr Risen describes Operation Merlin as "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' ".

Mr Risen also claims that in 2004 a CIA officer mistakenly sent one of its agents some information that was used by Iran to "roll up" the CIA espionage network in Iran.

"It left the CIA virtually blind in Iran, unable to provide any significant intelligence on one of the critical issues facing the United States - whether Teheran was about to go nuclear," Mr Risen writes.

Hitchens related an unfortunately accurate joke in a column the other day.

The CIA always claims that you don't hear about their success, only their failures, because their successes remain secret, as they should.

Hitchens countered that there were in fact only two sorts of CIA missions -- those you've heard about, because they were such spectacular failures they embarrassed the country and the Agency itself, and those you haven't heard about, as the Agency has been successful in covering up how spectactularly they failed there as well.

The CIA is the Special Olympics of spycraft. Everything they do is a Very Special Episode of espionage where a mentally-challenged individual attempts to gain the acceptance of those prejudiced against the handicapped, except they wind up just embarrassing themselves further.

Remember Blair's cousin with cerebral palsy who used to do really, really bad comedy routines on The Facts of Life? Well, now she's Deputy Director for Operations.

It's high time we gave the lot of them "Certificates of Effort" and colorful caps with the slogan "I Was A Super-Special Spy" and brought in a whole new crew.

First questions on the new CIA job application:

1) Are you frigging retarded?

4) Suppose that Mary has six apples and John has three apples. If Mary gives John two of her apples, would you like to stop thinking about this question and begin finger-painting unicorns frolicking under a happy-happy rainbow and/or Godzilla taking a poop on the Chrysler Building?

posted by Ace at 12:22 PM

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