[THS] Iran scientist: CIA offered me $50m to lie about nuclear secrets

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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iran-scientist-cia-offered-me-50m-to-lie-about-nuclear-secrets-2027718.html

Iran scientist: CIA offered me $50m to lie about nuclear secrets

By Patrick Cockburn

Friday, 16 July 2010

Shahram Amiri is reunited with his son at Imam Khomeini airport near Tehran

AP

Shahram Amiri is reunited with his son at Imam Khomeini airport near Tehran

    * Photos enlarge

An Iranian scientist who says he was abducted and taken to the United States by the
CIA returned to Tehran yesterday to a hero's welcome and claimed that he had been
pressured into lying about his country's nuclear programme.

Shahram Amiri said that he was on the hajj pilgrimage when he was seized at
gunpoint in the city of Medina, drugged and taken to the US, where he says Israel
was involved in his interrogation. In the US, officials were reported to have admitted
that Mr Amiri was paid more than $5m (£3.2m) by the CIA for information about
Iran's nuclear ambitions.

The US claims to have received useful information from him in return for the money,
but is clearly embarrassed by his very public return to Iran. The offer of a large bribe
is reportedly part of a special US programme to get Iranian nuclear scientists to
defect.

Flashing a victory sign, Mr Amiri returned to Tehran International Airport to be
greeted by senior officials and by his tearful wife and seven-year-old son, whom he
had not seen since he disappeared in Saudi Arabia during a visit 14 months ago. Iran
said it was demanding information about what had happened to him.

The US says that he entered the US of his own free will and had relocated to Tucson,
Arizona. The US is claiming that Mr Amiri, who had worked for Iran's Atomic Energy
Organisation, re-defected because pressure was placed on his family back in Iran,
something he denied yesterday. Officials suggested that Iran had used his family to
get him to leave the US.

"Americans wanted me to say that I defected to America of my own will, to use me
for revealing some false information about Iran's nuclear work," Mr Amiri said at
Tehran airport.

"I was under intensive psychological pressure by [the] CIA... the main aim of this
abduction was to stage a new political and psychological game against Iran."

Iran and the US have been engaged in a semi-covert war involving defections,
seizures and kidnappings in recent years, of which the case of Mr Amiri is only the
latest example.

It reached its peak in Iraq in 2007 when the US abducted Iranian consular officials
from the northern city of Arbil and Iran seized a British navy patrol boat in the Gulf.
Last year, Iran seized three Americans hiking in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan,
claiming they had strayed over the Iranian border, while other accounts said they
had been forced into Iran at gunpoint.

Mr Amiri had appeared in three contradictory videos; in the first he claimed to have
been kidnapped and tortured and in the second, he said he had come to the US to
write his PhD.

In a third video he denounces the second one. On Monday he arrived unannounced
at the Iranian interest section of the Pakistani embassy in Washington and asked for
an air ticket to return to Iran.

At his press conference at Tehran airport, Mr Amiri stressed that he had acted under
compulsion. "Israeli agents were present at some of my interrogation sessions and I
was threatened to be handed over to Israel if I refused to cooperate with
Americans," he said. "I have some documents proving that I've not been free in the
United States and have always been under the control of armed agents of US
intelligence services."

He says he was offered $50m to stay in the US. Mr Amiri denied that he had ever had
any information about the Iranian nuclear programme. "I am an ordinary
researcher... I have never made nuclear-related researches. I'm not involved in any
confidential jobs. I had no classified information."

Mr Amiri had worked at Iran's Malek Ashtar University, an institution closely
connected to the country's elite Revolutionary Guards.

US officials said that Mr Amiri may not be able to access his $5m, because of
sanctions on Iran. The Washington Post said yesterday that the Iranian scientist had
been working with the CIA for a year and officials were "stunned" by his request to
go home this week. The officials added that he had provided useful information,
though not directly on whether Iran was trying to make a nuclear device.
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Kidnapped Iranian Scholar Interrogated by Israeli Agents: 
 
Shahram Amiri, an Iranian scholar who returned home after being kidnapped by CIA in Saudi Arabia last year, said that Israeli agents interrogated him while he was in the US.
http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8904240595
 
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Clues Suggest Amiri Defection Was an Iranian Plant: 
 
Several features of the story of Amiri's defection suggest that Amiri may have been acting on Iranian government orders to defect temporarily in order to embarrass the U.S. government.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25954.htm