Friday, July 16, 2010
Persian "informant"
This smells worse than the Russian spy swap.
You don't need to know the details. You only need to observe that he is willingly returning to Persia. That means he doesn't expect to be executed. And that means he was not working for us at all. He was purely working for Persia, and any information he gave us was disinformation.
CIA always tries double-agent games, sometimes successfully. Nothing wrong with that. But it's just silly to portray this case as a success for our side. ¶ 3:59 AM
The Iranian nuclear scientist who says he was abducted a year ago by U.S. agents was an informant for the CIA inside Iran for several years ...
Shahram Amiri returned to Tehran early Thursday, saying he was pressured to lie about Iran's nuclear program. Washington denied kidnapping Amiri and insisted he had lived freely in the United States.
Officials said the scientist described to U.S. intelligence officers details of how a university in Tehran became the covert headquarters for Iran's nuclear efforts. While still in Iran, he was also one of the sources for a much-disputed National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's suspected weapons program, published in 2007.
You don't need to know the details. You only need to observe that he is willingly returning to Persia. That means he doesn't expect to be executed. And that means he was not working for us at all. He was purely working for Persia, and any information he gave us was disinformation.
CIA always tries double-agent games, sometimes successfully. Nothing wrong with that. But it's just silly to portray this case as a success for our side. ¶ 3:59 AM
