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Middle East


Jul 21, 2010


Amiri
'told CIA Iran had no bomb program'

By
Gareth Porter


WASHINGTON - Contrary to a news media narrative that Iranian
scientist Shahram Amiri has provided the United States with
intelligence on covert Iranian nuclear weapons work, Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) sources familiar with the Amiri case say he
told his CIA handlers that there was no such Iranian nuclear weapons
program, according to a former CIA officer.


Philip Giraldi, a former CIA counter-terrorism official, told Inter
Press Service (IPS) that his sources were CIA officials with direct
knowledge of the entire Amiri operation.


The CIA contacts say that Amiri had been reporting to the CIA for
some time before being brought to the United States while the hajj
(pilgrimage) to Saudi Arabia last year, Giraldi told IPS, initially


using satellite-based communication. But the contacts also say Amiri
was a radiation safety specialist who was "absolutely
peripheral" to Iran's nuclear program, according to Giraldi.


Amiri provided "almost no information" about Iran's nuclear
program, said Giraldi, but had picked up "scuttlebutt",
meaning rumor or gossip, from other nuclear scientists with whom he
was acquainted, that the Iranians had no active nuclear weapon
program.


Giraldi said information from Amiri's debriefings was only a minor
contribution to the intelligence community's reaffirmation in the
latest assessment of Iran's nuclear program of the 2007 National
Intelligence Estimate (NIE)'s finding that work on a nuclear weapon
has not been resumed after being halted in 2003.


Amiri's confirmation is cited in one or more footnotes to the new
intelligence assessment of Iran's nuclear program, called a
"Memorandum to Holders", according to Giraldi, but it is
now being reviewed, in light of Amiri's "re-defection" to
Iran.


An intelligence source who has read the "Memorandum to
Holders" in draft form confirmed to IPS that it presented no
clear-cut departure from the 2007 NIE on the question of
weaponization. The developments in the Iranian nuclear program since
the 2007 judgment are portrayed as "subtle and complex",
said the source.

CIA officials are doing their best to "burn" Amiri by
characterizing him as a valuable long-term intelligence asset,
according to Giraldi, in part to sow as much distrust of him among
Iranian intelligence officials as possible.


But Giraldi said it is "largely a defense mechanism" to
ward off criticism of the agency for its handling of the Amiri case.
"The fact is he wasn't well vetted," said Giraldi, adding
that Amiri was a "walk-in" about whom virtually nothing was
known except his job.


Although an investigation has begun within the CIA of the procedures
used in the case, Giraldi said, Amiri's erstwhile CIA handlers still
did not believe he was a double agent or "dangle".


What convinced CIA officers of Amiri's sincerity, according to
Giraldi, was Amiri's admission that he had no direct knowledge of the
Iranian nuclear program. A "dangle" would normally be
prepared with some important intelligence that the US is known to
value.


Amiri's extremely marginal status in relation to the Iranian nuclear
program was acknowledged by an unnamed US official who told The New
York Times and the Associated Press on Friday that Amiri was indeed a
"low-level scientist", but that the CIA had hoped to use
him to get to more highly placed Iranian officials.


Giraldi's revelations about Amiri's reporting debunks a media
narrative in which Amiri provided some of the key evidence for a
reversal by the intelligence community of its 2007 conclusion that
Iran had not resumed work on nuclear weapons.


An April 25 story by Washington Post reporters Joby Warrick and Greg
Miller said the long-awaited reassessment of the Iranian nuclear
program had been delayed in order to incorporate a "new flow of
intelligence" coming from "informants, including scientists
with access to Iran's military programs".


They quote Director of National Intelligence Dennis C Blair as
explaining in an interview that the delay was because of
"information coming in and the pace of developments".


Warrick and Miller reported that Amiri had "provided spy
agencies with details about sensitive programs including a
long-hidden uranium-enrichment plant near the city of Qom".
Their sources were said to be "current and former officials in
the United States and Europe".


Warrick and Miller could not get CIA officials to discuss Amiri.
Instead they quoted the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI)
as saying that Amiri "has been associated with sensitive nuclear
programs for at least a decade".


The NCRI is the political arm of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), the
anti-regime Iranian terrorist organization that has been a conduit
for Israeli intelligence on the Iranian nuclear program.


On June 8, David E Sanger of the New York Times cited "foreign
diplomats and some American officials" as sources in reporting
that a series of intelligence briefings for members of the United
Nations Security Council last spring amounted to "a tacit
admission by the United States that it is gradually backing
away" from the 2007 NIE. Sanger referred to "new
evidence" that allegedly led analysts to "revise and in
some cases reverse" that estimate's conclusion that Iran was no
longer working on a nuclear weapon.


Sanger cited "Western officials" as confirming that Amiri
was providing some of the new information.


Three days later, the Washington Post ran another story quoting David
Albright, director of the Institute for Science and International
Security, as saying that the intelligence briefings for UN Security
Council members had included "information about nuclear
weaponization" obtained from Amiri.


Albright said he had been briefed on the intelligence earlier that
week, and the Post reported a "US official" had confirmed
Albright's account.


Subsequently, ABC News reported that Amiri's evidence had
"helped to contradict" the 2007 NIE, and McClatchy Newspapers
repeated Albright's allegation and the conclusion that the new
assessment had reversed the intelligence conclusion that Iran had
ceased work related to weaponization.


In creating that false narrative, journalists have evidently been
guided by personal convictions on the issue that are aligned with
certain US, European and Israeli officials who have been pressuring
the Barack Obama administration to reject the 2007 estimate.


For the Israelis and for some US officials, reversing the conclusion
that Iran was not actively pursuing weaponization was considered a
precondition for maneuvering US policy into a military confrontation
with Iran.


Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and
journalist specializing in US national security policy. The paperback
edition of his latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of
Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in 2006.


(Inter Press Service)


A trail
of clues .... but few answers

(Jul 16, '10)


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