Croak and Dagger
The Raw Story has this just up:
CBS News has confirmed, in advance of a 60 Minutes interview with outed CIA agent Valerie Plame to be run this Sunday, that Plame "was involved in operations to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons."
"Our mission was to make sure that the bad guys, basically, did not get nuclear weapons," Plame told 60 Minutes. Plame also indicated that her outing in 2003 had caused grave damage to CIA operations, saying, "All the intelligence services in the world were running my name through their databases" to see where she had gone and who she had met with.
It continues:
CBS states further that Plame "was involved in one highly classified mission to deliver fake nuclear weapons blueprints to Tehran. It was called Operation Merlin, and it was first revealed in a book by investigative reporter James Risen."
Reached on Saturday morning, Alexandrovna said she had known of Project Merlin when she wrote her 2006 article but was not allowed to discuss the operation, as per her agreement with sources, just the country involved. "I cannot confirm or deny that Plame was connected with Project Merlin, only that I was aware of it," Alexandrovna told Raw.
A Guardian story explaining the Risen reference to Merlin does not inspire confidence.
She had probably done this a dozen times before. Modern digital technology had made clandestine communications with overseas agents seem routine. ... by 2004, it was possible to send high-speed, encrypted messages directly and instantaneously from CIA headquarters to agents in the field who were equipped with small, covert personal communications devices. So the officer at CIA headquarters assigned to handle communications with the agency's spies in Iran probably didn't think twice when she began her latest download. With a few simple commands, she sent a secret data flow to one of the Iranian agents in the CIA's spy network. Just as she had done so many times before.
But this time, the ease and speed of the technology betrayed her. The CIA officer had made a disastrous mistake. She had sent information to one Iranian agent that exposed an entire spy network; the data could be used to identify virtually every spy the CIA had inside Iran.
Mistake piled on mistake. As the CIA later learned, the Iranian who received the download was a double agent. The agent quickly turned the data over to Iranian security officials, and it enabled them to "roll up" the CIA's network throughout Iran. CIA sources say that several of the Iranian agents were arrested and jailed, while the fates of some of the others is still unknown.
This espionage disaster, of course, was not reported. It left the CIA virtually blind in Iran, unable to provide any significant intelligence on one of the most critical issues facing the US - whether Tehran was about to go nuclear.
Ha-ha-ha. Somebody prop me up. If that story is false I can hardly stand from laughing. If it's true I can hardly stand for crying. But there's more.
But it's worse than that. Deep in the bowels of the CIA, someone must be nervously, but very privately, wondering: "Whatever happened to those nuclear blueprints we gave to the Iranians?" ...
The story dates back to the Clinton administration and February 2000, when one frightened Russian scientist walked Vienna's winter streets. The Russian had good reason to be afraid. He was walking around Vienna with blueprints for a nuclear bomb. To be precise, he was carrying technical designs for a TBA 480 high-voltage block, otherwise known as a "firing set", for a Russian-designed nuclear weapon. ...
The Russian's assignment from the CIA was to pose as an unemployed and greedy scientist who was willing to sell his soul - and the secrets of the atomic bomb - to the highest bidder. ... But Tehran would get a big surprise when its scientists tried to explode their new bomb. Instead of a mushroom cloud, the Iranian scientists would witness a disappointing fizzle. ... The Russian studied the blueprints the CIA had given him. Within minutes of being handed the designs, he had identified a flaw. "This isn't right," he told the CIA officers gathered around the hotel room. "There is something wrong."
In Vienna, however, the Russian unsealed the envelope with the nuclear blueprints and included a personal letter of his own to the Iranians. No matter what the CIA told him, he was going to hedge his bets. There was obviously something wrong with the blueprints - so he decided to mention that fact to the Iranians in his letter. They would certainly find flaws for themselves, and if he didn't tell them first, they would never want to deal with him again. ...
Just days after the Russian dropped off his package at the Iranian mission, the National Security Agency reported that an Iranian official in Vienna abruptly changed his schedule, making airline reservations to fly home to Iran. The odds were that the nuclear blueprints were now in Tehran.
The Russian scientist's fears about the operation seemed well founded. He was the front man for what may have been one of the most reckless operations in the modern history of the CIA, one that may have helped put nuclear weapons in the hands of a charter member of what President George W Bush has called the "axis of evil".
The point of the Guardian's breathless account is that the CIA may have managed to send the Iranians useful weapons design information by mistake, just like that unnamed "officer" at headquarters sent a list of intel assets in Iran to the Iranians by mistake. And now I guess we're going to hear about how George Bush recklessly endangered National Security by exposing Valeria Plame, thus compromising this travesty of an operation.
The Press is supposed to be the public's intelligence agency. On occasion one gets the impression that it too is a participant in a Wilderness of Mirrors. And not a very smart one either, which isn't to say those on the other side of the fence are always better. Imagine working in an environment where a serious intelligence operation is just a fancy name for planting rumors in a Risen book. And where the press sees itself as "players" in the great game. What is the truth or are they all recycling each other's sea stories? Should I laugh or should I cry?
posted by wretchardthecat at 10/20/2007 05:09:00 PM
46 Comments:
Let's assume worst case.
The CIA took the design of a proven, functional firing component and proceeded to cheese one or more components of the design. This hamhanded attempt at subterfuge was executed in such a manner that the flaw was instantly obvious to someone holding precisely the skill set the CIA hoped to fool.
Then they delivered said document to a regime heavily invested in fissionable material but handicapped by engineering pinch on the controls side.
Back in WW2, allied cryptographers and mathematicians constructed a "concept" model of what one of the Axis (can't remember if it was ENIGMA or the IJN code) coding machine was supposed to have looked like, simply from observing the different permutations of the code sequences. If I recall correctly, the box they came up with was within fractions of an inch from being identical to the genuine article, down to the number and placement of input keys...
Our CIA isn't ours any more.
Can somebody explain to me why me, along with my fellow citizens, funding the most damaging covert assault on our government since the sixties?
"that Plame "was involved in operations to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons.""
I have as much faith that this is true as I do in the Dan Rather TANG memos. Plame and Wilson have both lied repeatably and 60 Minutes has an even worse record.
Then again the incompetence that tmjutah talked of above would be just the kind of op I would expect from that bunch.
Why is the CIA handling military intelligence? The CIA should be confined strictly to political counterintelligence.
The reports of CIA incompetence ring true -- because the only thing we each know from our own experience is that the CIA cannot (will not?) keep a secret from the New York Times. Beltway partisan advantage seems a much higher priority for the CIA than national security.
On the other hand -- perhaps the CIA benefits from being "misunderestimated". Maybe there is a public CIA which serves up stupidities such as Valerie Plame, and a background CIA which benefits from the enemy's low assessment of the CIA that the public CIA works so diligently to maintain.
Maybe I am grasping at straws. But if the known CIA is all that stands between us and the bad guys, we are in deep doo-doo.
Cry. The CIA is far from the organisation that is promulgated by Hollywood (Bourne Series, Syriana &c). It is more like the bumbling CIA presented in the Bond series (sometimes presented as bumbling, incompetent and useless). I would have more confidence in the Mossad and some of the CIA's European counterparts. Very, very sad indeed.
Trevanian used to write wonderful satires of the incompetence of the thinly-disguised "CII". The problem with the CIA is the same one Microsoft and Airbus and Congress has right now, bureaucratic inertia and entropy. All organizations, empires, religions, etc., have a wonderful period of creativity and growth, then rot sets in. The solution is to disband the CIA and start all over from scratch with General Petraus' people, for instance.
her efforts at halting iran's nuke program failed. repeat: failed.
the only thing which will stop it is war or revolution.
she should be charged with perjury and treason.
tried.
convicted.
and executed.
One interesting bit in the article: "Tehran would get a big surprise when its scientists tried to explode their new bomb. Instead of a mushroom cloud, the Iranian scientists would witness a disappointing fizzle"
Remeber when North Korea set off its bomb? All it got was a fizzle.
North Korea sells missiles to Iran, did Iran share its bomb plans with North Korea?
Wheels within wheels...
That is only well wish. She has media,CIA, behind her, Reliapundit.
Wretchard you can cry, there is reason for that.
That is only well wish. She has media,CIA, behind her, Reliapundit.
Wretchard you can cry, there is reason for that.
Everything about the Plame-Wilson travesty stinks of ham-handed Democratic Party political scheming.
(1) Wilson was at no time qualified to do the investigation. He was a Diplomat, not an investigator, not a detective, not an intelligence analyst nor field agent; neither was he trained in the forensics of accounting & bookkeeping. His only claim to competence was that his diplomatic postings had resulted in some vague “personal relationships” so he could breeze into town, have a few conversations with his old friends, and sort things out. What colossal arrogance.
(2) If it had been a serious intelligence investigation, Wilson should have been debriefed privately by the CIA immediately he returned. Instead he skipped that step, and gave his alleged analysis to be published as an OP-ED article by the NYT. This was never a serious investigation; it was a blatant political effort to raise doubts on the administration’s war justifications.
(3) Considering that the ONLY action of any substance to emerge from Wilson’s trip was his OPINION piece published famously in one of the most widely-circulated journals in the English-speaking world, and considering the inflammatory and controversial nature of his attack on the administration, it was INEVITABLE that public scrutiny would sooner or later illuminate his wife’s clandestine relationship with the intelligence community. For her to have advanced her husband to be designated for this supremely politicized mission means either that she is surpassingly naive and so unqualified to be in intelligence, or stupid, or perversely reckless.
Well, Hell... This latest claim of hers just confirms that she’s a delusional sorry rascal.
(Thanks to TmjUtah for the reminder about Enigma.)
By the way, It seems acutely revealing that Joseph Wilson's immediate strategy to exploit the the publicity he stirred up, was to sign an exclusive representation contract with Greater Talent Network Speakers Bureau.
It's worth visiting the site to see the sterling characters you can hire to speak at your garden club or PTA meeting, if you have the bucks.
www.treatertalent.com
For instance:
Michael Moore
Jimmy Carter
You can find others who are NOT moral lepers, and I'm not criticising anyone for putting their fame to gainful employment.
But let's recall that Wilson's fame derives directly from a pack of lies.
Not unlike some of the current members of Congress.
oops.
www.greatertalent.com
with a G, not a T...
Kinuachdrach said -
"On the other hand -- perhaps the CIA benefits from being "misunderestimated". Maybe there is a public CIA which serves up stupidities such as Valerie Plame, and a background CIA which benefits from the enemy's low assessment of the CIA that the public CIA works so diligently to maintain."
You know, I used to hold to that theory myself. I'll go even further - I am sure that there are intelligence gatherers and analysts working under the CIA's rubric that do develop valuable, sometimes even actionable, intelligence.
But... that smoking hole in New York City represents the norm, not the exception, of the Company's track record against terror. The failure of the CIA to provide anything approaching credible data on Iraq's (or anyone else's, for that matter)WMD capabilities OR intentions is damning. Further, the continued and blatant Company agenda aimed at destroying this administration via targeted leaks and derelict performance have pretty much broken me from the "I must not have the whole story" school of thought.
I expected Tenet to be fired within days of 9/11. When that didn't happen, I surmised that DHS was going to be the instrument to supplant the obviously flawed legacy structure of the Company.
Then again, I also expected Bush to name the enemy and fight a war to a defined objective, too.
I sure spend a lot of time being wrong.
If blonde, upwardly mobile trophy wife Valerie Plame was a covert operative then I'm Donald Trump.
The idea that a sheltered cubicle dweller like Plame could be covert is laughable. Particularly being both a woman and very blonde-American looking. Meeting with questionable characters in the Middle East? Again laughable.
I certainly CAN believe that Plame was responsible for the idiot move of sending the entire network to a double agent. The skill set for being a competent spy are not the skill set for landing an A-Lister husband.
The CIA of course is filled with upwardly mobile Ivy and near-Ivy league grads looking for that Georgetown mansion. As Mark Steyn says, societies in decline can be at first quite pleasant. I'm sure Georgetown is pleasant and comfortable. But who knows, perhaps it will be nuked first.
Should I laugh or should I cry?
It might be helpful if you stop to consider the level of competence we can assume the other guys have, too. Just how able do we think Iranian spies are? Or Russian spies? Or North Korean spies?
The fact that Israel was able to get into Syria, bomb their nuke plant and get out again (while the UN is still dithering about whether or not here even *was* nukes) makes me think that neither Iran or Russia have *any* competence or capability at all on the world stage.
I'm starting to have concerns about Chinese spies, but I think they are limiting themselves to buying secret stuff, as are the Arabs (i.e., Hillary's own personal Chinese fund-raiser Hsu). I don't think Arabs and probably not Persians either have the capability of doing too much with the Secret Stuff they've managed to acquire after they've bought it.
I mean, how long did it take America's Manhattan Project to create a nuclear bomb? Five years, from 1941-1946. Iran's been working on theirs for that long now, AND they had the headstart of not having to build it from the ground up like America had to.
If you want to cry about the CIA, there's probably a lot to cry about there. But it seems to me that most of the rest of the world is laughable in comparison, so it makes up for it.
I had the same thoughts as Fiddler:
She's involved in a super-important super secret operation, so she gets her dope-smoking husband a job looking for yellowcake so he can come back and tell the government one thing, and then tell the World, via the NY Times, something else.
Really hangs together well, in a late-life Rather sort of way.
The story was dishonest nonsense,
but accurate.
Birdbrains of a feather:
Iran to fire '11,000 rockets in minute' if attacked...
Outing Plame resulted in the transfer of the
Doomsday Instalaunch Technology tm
to Iran!
We're Doomed!
Back in the Real World, the first really good GOP News in a long, long time:
---
Jindal becomes Youngest Governor
An Oxford-educated son of Indian immigrants has won the Louisiana governor's election, becoming America's youngest and the first non-white to hold the state's post since the 1870s.
Bobby Jindal, 36, carried more than half the vote against 11 opponents. With about 87% of the vote in, Jindal had 53% with 588,002 - more than enough to win outright and avoid a November 17 run-off.
Jindal, a Republican member of the US House of Representatives, had lost the governor's race four years ago to Kathleen Blanco. He won a congressional seat in conservative suburban New Orleans a year later, but was widely believed to have his eye on the governor's mansion.
Blanco opted not to run for re-election
This story is “Horrifying, absolutely horrifying!”
Couric: “Are you familiar with that (Merlin)?”
Plame: “I don’t think that I can say?”
Couric: “Were you surprised to read about operation Merlin in the press?”
Plame: “Indeed, immhimm”
I hope Plame cleared that vigorous head nod with her handlers.
Balderdash, and just enticing enough to have many believe it.
I am no fan of the CIA, but this is too, much too incredulous. Sad thing is, folks are going to believe it opposed to (real evidence) the centrifuge and the plans held by Saddam’s head Nuclear Scientist. We know he had the ability, and the technology, all he lacked was the materials?
Wasn’t that what Embarrassment Wilson was supposed to prove or deny?
I am also not going to believe that sensitive of an e mail was sent using a BCC. It is not a matter of complacency…, it would be criminal, were it not such a fiction.
Hey, everybody look; a distraction.
Special Forces Ops in Iran
Britain’s Sunday Times reports that British SAS and American and Australian Special Forces have been engaged in operations inside the Iranian border to interdict weapons shipments.
Do agentlists really exists outside Hollywood movies?
I always assumed that only the handler knows the identity of his agents.
NahnCee,
Not when you consider who's really in the employ of the MSM and who the MSM is in the employ of.
NahnCee:
The Chinese have been spying on the USA to get everything they can. This is not just a technology effort.
Report shows FBI missed Chinese spy
Palme-Wilson, CBS, New York TImes retelling an old, thoroughly discredited story. No need to ask if these folks have any shame but shouldn't somebody in the organization care at least a little bit about the brand?
The story is all about "Me,me,me....I'm important...look at me". Its why the CIA is a pathetic joke. Its a bunch of butt kissing self promoters who live a risk free life in the Washington swamp.Maybe when the Hezbollah terrorists killed William Buckley ; they killed more than a station chief.They killed the ethos of daring adventurers who would go to dark places for their country. Now those kind only exist in Vince Flynn novels. "Vanity Fair" was a good venue for the Wilson/Plame misfits. Vanity vanity, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.
I agree with geoffb and whiskey_199.
Notoriety is equivalent to money in the bank for Valerie Plame. The more headlines she receives the more revenue she takes in on books and the like.
Her story is probably no better that Liberal Larry’s version (but Liberal Larry’s version is more humorous):
...While some repugs are quick to shrug her off as a "pencil pusher" or a "cubicly monkey", the frontline of the War on Terror ran right across Agent Plame's desk. When she pushed her seemingly nondescript pencil, nations burned. Empires rose and fell at the flick of her super-duper top secret wrist. So when the Agency ordered her to investigate reports that Saddam Hussein had tried to obtain yellowcake uranium from Niger, she devised a cunning plan to assign the most unqualified, inexperienced boob with zero credentials to the task. It would be the exact opposite of what the Nigerites expected… After hours of painstaking research, she whittled the list of candidates down to two potentials. Big Bird from Sesame Street refused the assignment, so she placed a call to Mr. Joseph Wilson Codename: Shmoopsie, - former Ambassador to Lower Slobovia and, by pure coincidence, her husband...when Agent Plame, Codename: Mumsy-Wumsy explained the mission to him, he turned his yacht around and headed for Nigeria at once. It was a daunting task, requiring long hours in a third world country with shitty golf courses…
After spending several grueling hours sipping dreadful martinis at the Lagos Hilton, Shmoopsie made two very shocking discoveries:
1. For a nation full of Black people, it was next to impossible to get a decent shoe shine in Nigeria, and
2. Nigerian leaders vehemently denied selling yellow cake, or any other form of tasty dessert to Saddam Hussein. Alas, Bush's entire reason for invading Iraq was a farce…
For humor see: Karl Rove, The NARCitect
Ledger--that was hilarious. At least I thought so--but I'm not Scooter Libby, of course.
The Chinese have been spying on the USA to get everything they can. This is not just a technology effort.
I refuse to be concerned about, or to consider as peers, any country that has to steal their secret stuff from somebody else. As long as we are the ones everyone wants to steal from, all is right with the world.
When the U.S. has to start stealing CHINA's secret stuff (or Russia's or Iran's), then I'll get worried.
Buddy, I decided to throw a little humor in (Liberal Larry's place is a spoof site). But, I think it closer to the truth than many believe.
I'm confused. Exactly how did Plame get authorization to tell about this mission? Isn't this supposed to be a secret. Isn't it against the law for a CIA 'operative' to just go blabbing about these things without permission?
The only way this could be legal is if it is a fiction. But wouldn't it be fraud then?
What gives?
Wonder how long--after such shenanigans--Plame/Wilson would've been around in, say, Russia or China? Just wonderin'.
India shoots itself in the foot
India’s Communist Party, part of Prime Minister Mammohan Singh’s ruling coalition, has killed the very important deal on nuclear technology negotiated over several years between India and the United States.
The MSM are players, they just not playing on our side.
India's communists have been very unhappy with the improving relationship between India and the US, to them, this is a victory.
Doug, they haven't killed the nuke deal yet, just put it on ice for 4 weeks.
Singh is trying very hard to get it through because he knows it's best for India.
Is Valerie Plame a Physicist?
I'll bet the last math course she took was single variable Calculus and the last physics class she took was had F=Ma as its main equation!!
Trackbacked by The Thunder Run - Web Reconnaissance for 10/22/2007
A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day...so check back often.
Dear Sirs,
The CIA was certainly justified in planting fake plans. In 1982 a jiggered piece of software triggered a cataclysmic explosion in Russia's main gas pipeline causing grave economic damage.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4394002
Regards,
Roy Lofquist
Proper link:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4394002
Fershlugginer software!!!
proper link:
msnbc.msn.com/id/4394002
The best of all worlds would be to create a decoy technology that is allowed to be stolen by evil bastards, but the stuff is riddled with unidentifiable but nasty trojan horses and landmines. Millions of lines of code allow plenty of places to hide functions that cannot be assessed without lots of analysis. If the Evil Bastards had the expertise to sort out the code, they wouldn't need to be stealing somebody elses software.
Poop heads.
The best of all worlds would be to create a decoy technology that is allowed to be stolen by evil bastards, but the stuff is riddled with unidentifiable but nasty trojan horses and landmines.
We already have that, it's called Microsoft Vista.
This seems a perfect setup by a "fellow traveller" for what I've seen the Left try to do many times in the past - that is, blame teh US for something they are actively doing themselves.
The Iranians don't need blueprints for nuclear triggers fromt eh US, faulty or otherwise. They are getting everything they need already from Putin. One would assume anything they can't get from that venue can be procured from the Chinese. Both countries have fully capable nuclear programs, and both seem intent on doing whatever they can to "inconvenience" the US - no matter how stupidly reckless, and no matter what the long-term ranmifications might be.
I simply don't believe any such stories anymore. The intent seems to put up a smoke screen for the Left's own vile actions while helping to embarrass and stymies the intelligence assets of their foes. Too many of these active ops have already ruined my trust in the anti-CIA crowd.
This is the same CIA, after 9/11, "truth" came out that their computer system(s) were hopelessly outdated and obsolete, their desktops couldn't communicate within their own bureau, thus the need to create a cabinet-level, Dept of Homeland Security, to overhaul, supervise the information flow?
And we are to believe super-secret stuff was going on even during the Clinton years by super-secret emails?
I dearly hope we have a dummy front CIA in Langley, and the real CIA entrance/bunker is in some homely mom's kitchen. Something along the line of the "Man In Black".
Anyone remember the Russian who had managed the Iranian nuclear projects? He had fled to Switzerland where the US asked for extradition to the States. The Swiss court denied that and instead let the Russians have him again.
One wonders about the internal solidarity of the Russian government. Maybe some internal dissession over the Iranian deal(s)?
Post a Comment
<< Home