A leak that really changes things
Snowden's leaks were totally unsurprising to anyone with tech knowledge. Some interesting details, but all details were derivable from the basic PERFECTLY WELL KNOWN fact that NSA monitors everything. NSA monitors American citizens? Yeah, American citizens are part of everything, so NSA monitors us. NSA monitors Merkel? Well, Merkel is part of everything, so NSA monitors her. It's like those idiotic studies "discovering" that some human taste or tendency or talent is partly innate. We've known for 100 years that ALL ALL ALL ALL ALL ALL ALL human tastes and tendencies and talents are partly innate, so we DON'T NEED "studies" to separately examine each item contained in everything.

Trans Thing Manning's leaks weren't even negative. He only showed us that ambassadors have normal emotions. They don't like dealing with foreign tyrants. Might have been embarrassing to the ambassadors, but overall made the State Dept look more human. If he had made those leaks from a higher rank (like Petraeus), he probably would have been rewarded instead of punished.

This new set of leaks by BBC, though highly incomplete and unclear, is REAL SHANNON INFORMATION. It tells us something that we EMPHATICALLY DID NOT KNOW beforehand, and couldn't even have guessed from available info.

In short, Khomeini was our SOB at first, just as the Shah had been our SOB at first. Our agents took steps to slow down a pending military coup against the Shah, so Khomeini could take over without interference.

What went wrong? Not yet revealed, maybe not present in this set of leaks. Did Carter break a promise, or did Khomeini simply decide to turn against us? If the latter, did we send Saddam into Persia to punish the Ayatollah? The timing is right. Open questions pending more info.

BBC also verifies a less surprising set of observations, that US and Persia have been working together quietly for a long time. This continuous contact has surfaced a few times, and finally culminated in Obama's one good achievement, officially normalizing relations. If Khomeini was always our SOB, this line of contact looks less mysterious.


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Later: Matthew Ehret explains in more detail why we were running Khomeini.
  ¶ 11:57 AM