Monday, December 10, 2007
The CIA's legacy of failure in Iran
Thomas Joscelyn gives us five reasons to doubt the National Intelligence Estimate's conclusion that Iran is not -- any longer -- developing atomic weapons. One of them -- the bungling at the CIA that has led to the destruction our our humint capability inside Iran -- is almost too idiotic to be believed:
Despite not having a formal diplomatic presence, the CIA apparently did have a spy network inside Iran. But according to the New York Times, that network was lost due to bureaucratic bungling long ago.
In "Legacy of Ashes," Tim Weiner explains that as of 1989 the CIA "maintained a network of more than 40 Iranian agents, including midlevel military officers." The Iranians shut down the network, however, when "a CIA clerk mailed letters to all of the agents, all at the same time, all from the same mailbox, all in the same handwriting, all to the same address." This yielded a predictable result: "Every one of the CIA's Iranian spies was imprisoned, and many were executed for treason."
The CIA managed to reconstitute a human spy network inside Iran after this fiasco, but that too was lost. According to James Risen, Weiner's colleague at the Times, a well-intending CIA agent inadvertently e-mailed a list of all of the CIA's spies inside Iran to a double agent, who was merely posing as our ally, in 2004.
Risen explains in his book, "State of War," that "several of the Iranian agents were arrested and jailed," and we do not know what happened to others. "It left the CIA virtually blind in Iran," Risen explains, and "unable to provide any significant intelligence on one of the most critical issues facing the United States — whether Tehran was about to go nuclear."
The CIA has not won one in Iran for more than a generation, at least that we know about. It makes you wonder how much longer it will take for us to overcome the legacy of the Carter administration.
8 Comments:
By 
, at
Mon Dec 10, 11:41:00 PM:
I'm with Hitchens on this one. The CIA is such a total and irredeemable mess that it cannot be fixed. Shut it down and start from scratch.
By 
Ray, at
Tue Dec 11, 01:39:00 AM:
dear God. I'm speechless. Forced to agree. Shut the place down, hire back the good people, start over.
By davod, at
Tue Dec 11, 09:40:00 AM:
" a well-intending CIA agent inadvertently e-mailed a list of all of the CIA's spies inside Iran to a double agent, who was merely posing as our ally, in 2004."
Who lets a foreign national know who all your in-country spies are. At some stage you have to ask whether this is a mistake or deliberate.
Where's James Jesu Angleton when you need him.
By antithaca, at
Tue Dec 11, 10:36:00 AM:
I heard Mark Steyn call for the destruction of the CIA about a year or so ago (euphamistically of course). I brushed it off...
Now, I'm convinced.
By Cardinalpark, at
Tue Dec 11, 10:53:00 AM:
I suspect Israel has outstanding humint within in Iran. Russia too.
By , at
Tue Dec 11, 11:49:00 AM:
CP, regarding Israel: They better have.
By , at
Tue Dec 11, 08:23:00 PM:
A few of these ideas set off my BS meter:
1) A mere clerk had access to the real names and addresses of sensitive sources. Such people are given code names and numbers for a reason, and desk clerks don't have access their personal data. Sometimes, even the collection managers don't know that.
2) Davod already honed in on the other one; supplying such information to a double agent. While it could be done in order to validate questionable agents of your own, (anyone see The Good Shepherd?) you don't send them all at once. You do it in pieces exactly so something like this doesn't happen to you. But at least this one can be chalked up to stupidity, unlike the above.
3) Both of these tidbits are supplied by NYT journalists.
By CW, at
Tue Dec 11, 10:42:00 PM:
Another reason to doubt the NIE is not even touched upon by the IBD. The first atomic bomb was made from enriched uranium with a conventional artillery shell as a trigger and an altimeter as a fuse. The biggest obstacle the US faced in constructing this bomb was developing the massive cascade of centrifuges to refine the ore into more concentrated fissile material. Therefore, Iran's cascade of centrifuges, in and of themselves, should be considered as a weapons program.
CW
