[THS] Amiri Told CIA Iran Has No Nuclear Bomb Program

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http://www.truth-out.org/amiri-told-cia-iran-has-no-nuclear-bomb-program61505

Amiri Told CIA Iran Has No Nuclear Bomb Program

Monday 19 July 2010

by: Gareth Porter  |  Inter Press Service | Report

Washington - Contrary to a news media narrative that Iranian scientist Shahram Amiri
has provided intelligence on covert Iranian nuclear weapons work, CIA sources
familiar with the Amiri case say he told his CIA handlers that there is no such Iranian
nuclear weapons programme, according to a former CIA officer.

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA counterterrorism official, told IPS that his sources are 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 U.S. during Hajj 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 programme, according to
Giraldi.

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

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
programme 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 programme, 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 presents no clear-cut departure from the 2007 NIE on the
question of weaponisation. The developments in the Iranian nuclear programme
since the 2007 judgment are portrayed as "subtle and complex", said the source.

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

But Giraldi said it is "largely a defence 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 do 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 programme.

A "dangle" would normally be prepared with some important intelligence that the
U.S. is known to value.

Amiri's extremely marginal status in relation to the Iranian nuclear programme was
acknowledged by an unnamed U.S. official who told The New York Times and
Associated Press 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 Apr. 25 story by Washington Post reporters Joby Warrick and Greg Miller said the
long-awaited reassessment of the Iranian nuclear programme 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".

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

On Jun. 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 U.N. 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 Security Council members had included "information about
nuclear weaponisation" obtained from Amiri.

Albright said he had been briefed on the intelligence earlier that week, and the Post
reported a "U.S. 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 weaponisation.

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

For the Israelis and for some U.S. officials, reversing the conclusion that Iran is not
actively pursuing weaponisation is considered a precondition for manoeuvring U.S.
policy into a military confrontation with Iran.

*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. 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.