U.S. Intel Possibly Duped by Iran

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Posted: 12/4/2007 1:34:48 PM EDT

www.newsmax.com/timmerman/iran_nukes/2007/12/04/54359.html

U.S. Intel Possibly Duped by Iran

Tuesday, December 4, 2007 9:38 AM

By: Kenneth R. Timmerman Article Font Size

A highly controversial, 150 page National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran’s nuclear programs was coordinated and written by former State Department political and intelligence analysts — not by more seasoned members of the U.S. intelligence community, Newsmax has learned.

Its most dramatic conclusion — that Iran shut down its nuclear weapons program in 2003 in response to international pressure — is based on a single, unvetted source who provided information to a foreign intelligence service and has not been interviewed directly by the United States.

Newsmax sources in Tehran believe that Washington has fallen for “a deliberate disinformation campaign” cooked up by the Revolutionary Guards, who laundered fake information and fed it to the United States through Revolutionary Guards intelligence officers posing as senior diplomats in Europe.

Dangerous Game

The National Intelligence Council, which produced the NIE, is chaired by Thomas Fingar, “a State Department intelligence analyst with no known overseas experience who briefly headed the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research,” I wrote in my book "Shadow Warriors: The Untold Story of Traitors, Saboteurs, and the Party of Surrender." [Editor's Note: Get "Shadow Warriors" free — go here now.]

Fingar was a key partner of Senate Democrats in their successful effort to derail the confirmation of John Bolton in the spring of 2005 to become the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations.

As the head of the NIC, Fingar has gone out of his way to fire analysts “who asked the wrong questions,” and who challenged the politically-correct views held by Fingar and his former State Department colleagues, as revealed in "Shadow Warriors."

In March 2007, Fingar fired his top Cuba and Venezuela analyst, Norman Bailey, after he warned of the growing alliance between Castro and Chavez.

Bailey’s departure from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) was applauded by the Cuban government news service Granma, who called Bailey “a patent relic of the Reagan regime.” And Fingar was just one of a coterie of State Department officials brought over to ODNI by the first director, career State Department official John Negroponte.

Collaborating with Fingar on the Iran estimate, released on Monday, were Kenneth Brill, the director of the National Counterproliferation Center, and Vann H. Van Diepen, the National Intelligence officer for Weapons of Mass Destruction and Proliferation.

“Van Diepen was an enormous problem,” a former colleague of his from the State Department told me when I was fact gathering for "Shadow Warriors."

“He was insubordinate, hated WMD sanctions, and strived not to implement them,” even though it was his specific responsibility at State to do so, the former colleague told me.

Kenneth Brill, also a career foreign service officer, had been the U.S. representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna in 2003-2004 before he was forced into retirement.

"Shadow Warrior" reports, “While in Vienna, Brill consistently failed to confront Iran once its clandestine nuclear weapons program was exposed in February 2003, and had to be woken up with the bureaucratic equivalent of a cattle prod to deliver a single speech condemning Iran’s eighteen year history of nuclear cheating.”

Negroponte rehabilitated Brill and brought the man who single-handedly failed to object to Iran’s nuclear weapons program and put him in charge of counter-proliferation efforts for the entire intelligence community.

Christian Westermann, another favorite of Senate Democrats in the Bolton confirmation hearings, was among the career State Department analysts tapped by Fingar and Brill.

As a State Department intelligence analyst, Westermann had missed the signs of biological weapons development in Cuba, and played into the hands of Castro apologist Sen. Christopher Dodd, D, Conn., by continuing to use impeached intelligence reports on Cuba that had been written by self-avowed Cuban spy, Ana Belen Montes.

“After failing to recognize the signs of biological weapons development in Cuba and Cuba’s cooperation with Iran, Westermann was promoted to become national intelligence officer for biological weapons,” I wrote.

“Let’s hope a walk-in defector from Iranian intelligence doesn’t tell us that Iran has given biological weapons to terrorists to attack new York or Chicago,” I added, “because Westermann will certainly object that the source of that information was not reliable — at least, until Americans start dying.”

It now appears that this is very similar to what happened while the intelligence community was preparing the Iran NIE.

The Defector

My former colleague from the Washington Times, Bill Gertz, suggests in today’s print edition of the paper that Revolutionary Guards Gen. Alireza Asgari, who defected while in Turkey in February, was the human source whose information led to the NIE”s conclusion that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003.

But intelligence sources in Europe told Newsmax in late September that Asgari’s debriefings on Iran’s nuclear weapons programs were “so dramatic” that they caused French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his foreign minister to speak out publicly about the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.

Sarkozy stunned his countrymen when he told an annual conference of French ambassadors on Aug. 27, 2007, that Iran faced a stark choice between shutting down its nuclear program, or tougher international sanctions and ultimately, war.

“This approach is the only one that allows us to escape from a catastrophic alternative: an Iranian bomb, or the bombing of Iran,” Sarkozy said.

Three weeks later, Foreign Minister Bernard Koucher warned in a televised interview that the world’s major powers needed to toughen sanctions on Iran to prevent Tehran from getting the bomb and to prevent war. “We must prepare for the worst,” Kouchner said. “The worst, sir, is war.”

Those comments were prompted by reports that were given to the French president about Iran’s nuclear weapons program derived from debriefings of the defector, Gen. Ashgari, a Newsmax intelligence source in Europe said.

Ashgari is the highest-level Iranian official to have defected to the West since the Islamic revolution of 1979. His defection set off a panic in Tehran.

As a senior member of the general staff of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, Asgari had access to highly-classified intelligence information, as well as strategic planning documents, as I reported at the time.

A damage assessment then underway in Tehran was expected to “take months” to complete, so extensive was Asgari’s access to Iran’s nuclear and intelligence secrets.

Asgari had detailed knowledge of Iranian Revolutionary Guards units operating in Iraq and Lebanon because he had trained some of them. He also knew some of the secrets of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, because he had been a top procurement officer and a deputy minister of defense in charge of logistics. But Asgari never had responsibility for nuclear weapons development, and probably did not have access to information about the status of the secret programs being run by the Revolutionary Guards, Iranian sources tell Newsmax.

In an effort to cover up the failure of Iranian counter-intelligence to prevent Asgari’s defection, a Persian language Web site run by the former Revolutioanry Guards Comdr. Gen. Mohsen Rezai claimed in March that Asgari was on a CIA “hit list” of 20 former Revolutionary Guards officers and had been assassinated.

The Senate intelligence committee will be briefed today on the NIE, and the House committee on Wednesday.

But already, the declassified summary has Republicans grumbling on Capitol Hill.

“We want to know why we should believe this,” one congressional Republican told Newsmax. “This is such a departure from the past and there are so many unanswered questions.”

While the intelligence community is supposed to report just the facts and its assessment of those facts and their reliability to policy-makers, this NIE clear advocates policy positions.

“Our assessment that the program probably was halted primarily in response to international pressure suggests Iran may be more vulnerable to influence on the issue that we judged previously,” the NIC wrote in the declassified “Key Judgments” of the NIE.

The NIE opined that the new assessment leads to the policy conclusion that the United States should offer “some combination of threats of intensified international scrutiny and pressures, along with opportunites,” in order to lock in Iranian good behavior.

This carrot and stick approach has been the State Department’s preferred policy for the past 27 years, and has only strengthened the resolve of Iran’s leaders to continue defying the United States. “Those [countries that] assume that decaying methods such as psychological war, political propaganda and the so-called economic sanctions would work and prevent Iran's fast drive toward progress are mistaken," Ahmadinejad said in Tehran in September at a military parade.

By “progress” Ahmadinejad was referring to Iran’s recently-declared success at enriching uranium.

Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees “have been running around with big smiles on their faces,” a Republican source tells Newsmax.

Republicans on the committees intend to ask for more information on the sourcing of this latest NIE during closed door briefings today and tomorrow.
© 2007 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Posted: 12/4/2007 1:43:41 PM EDT

[#1]

They fucking Rick Rolled us!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted: 12/4/2007 1:45:25 PM EDT

[#2]

Quoted:
They fucking Rick Rolled us!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Looks like it.

And of course, the MSM jumoed all over it in their continuing efforts to fuck with Jorge...

Posted: 12/4/2007 1:48:54 PM EDT

[#3]

The thing is, okay, so they were working on how to make a bomb for a while, then they stopped that and started working on making the materials for a bomb. And that makes them not dangerous now?

Posted: 12/4/2007 1:49:11 PM EDT

[#4]

I thought that something fishy was going on.

Posted: 12/4/2007 1:50:19 PM EDT

[#5]

Maybe they're the ones being duped then. Misinformation.

Posted: 12/4/2007 1:50:24 PM EDT

[#6]

Quoted:
The thing is, okay, so they were working on how to make a bomb for a while, then they stopped that and started working on making the materials for a bomb. And that makes them not dangerous now?

sounds like iraq

Posted: 12/4/2007 1:51:42 PM EDT

[#7]

Nonsense, guys.

Iran is our bestest friend evar.

We've got nothing at all to worry about, the leftist media has assured us of this.

Posted: 12/4/2007 1:52:20 PM EDT

[#8]

you guys hear that loud pop?

that was 5subs head exploding

Posted: 12/4/2007 1:55:25 PM EDT

[#9]

Quoted:
Maybe they're the ones being duped then. Misinformation.

but such a move would be disastrous by us. I think we pretty much ruined any chance of stopping Iran now. And they know it. If they didn't have a weapons program up and running they probably do now.

I guess we will just have to let Israel do it when the time comes.

Posted: 12/4/2007 1:55:53 PM EDT

[#10]

I'm putting my tinfoil hat on.

Is the whole fucking world against us? Is half our country against us also? Sometimes I fucking wonder.

Posted: 12/4/2007 1:56:16 PM EDT

[#11]

CIA's been duped before...

Posted: 12/4/2007 2:00:27 PM EDT

[#12]

My understanding of the NIE was that Iran stopped working on the design in 2003. They are still continuing to enrich uranium. The NIE still says Iran poses a threat, just that their program has stopped. Why would it stop? To wait for the uranium perhaps?

Seems like people aren't really reading the NIE, in my estimation.

Posted: 12/4/2007 2:01:36 PM EDT

[#13]

Quoted:
My understanding of the NIE was that Iran stopped working on the design in 2003. They are still continuing to enrich uranium. The NIE still says Iran poses a threat, just that their program has stopped. Why would it stop? To wait for the uranium perhaps?

Seems like people aren't really reading the NIE, in my estimation.

Would that be the DIE?

Posted: 12/4/2007 2:04:35 PM EDT

[#14]

Quoted:
They fucking Rick Rolled us!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I could see GWB open an email click on the link and say "son of a bitch a rick roll".

Posted: 12/4/2007 2:07:14 PM EDT

[#15]

There's something going on behind the scenes, and it's great to see the MSM getting played as part of it-the same intelligence community that was "politically motivated" to cook the data for the invasion of Iraq is all of a sudden completely independent to make their own assessments? We even have Israeli intel giving a slightly different assessment so we can play good cop, bad cop.

My opinion is that it's a ploy to let Iran close down their weapon program while saving face.

Posted: 12/4/2007 2:38:49 PM EDT

[#16]

Quoted:

My opinion is that it's a ploy to let Iran close down their weapon program while saving face.

Could be. Perhaps a deal was reached?

Posted: 12/4/2007 2:44:55 PM EDT

[#17]

Quoted:
CIA's been duped before...

Yep... the scary thing is we do not have good enough intelligence services to know.

Posted: 12/4/2007 2:47:03 PM EDT

[#18]

Quoted:
you guys hear that loud pop?

that was 5subs head exploding

Posted: 12/4/2007 2:47:07 PM EDT

[#19]

Quoted:
My understanding of the NIE was that Iran stopped working on the design in 2003. They are still continuing to enrich uranium. The NIE still says Iran poses a threat, just that their program has stopped. Why would it stop? To wait for the uranium perhaps?

Seems like people aren't really reading the NIE, in my estimation.

They are taking from it what they want to take... cherry picking. Or in other words they are doing exactly what they accuse the Bush Administration of doing.

Posted: 12/4/2007 2:54:07 PM EDT

[#20]

Quoted:
They fucking Rick Rolled us!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

HAHAHAHA

Duped by Iran?

Posted: 12/4/2007 3:11:06 PM EDT

[#21]

Quoted:
My understanding of the NIE was that Iran stopped working on the design in 2003. They are still continuing to enrich uranium. The NIE still says Iran poses a threat, just that their program has stopped. Why would it stop? To wait for the uranium perhaps?

IMO, the prospect of Iran doing ANY nuclear work just plain stinks to high heaven. According to the CIA Factbook, they have the world's second largest reserves of conventional crude oil (133 gigabarrels). They don't need nuclear technology for any conceivable peaceful purpose, and yet they're pouring massive amounts of money into developing and defending it.

Posted: 12/4/2007 3:21:08 PM EDT

[#22]

We ought to junk the CIA and start over. We have no intelligence capability to speak of.

Posted: 12/4/2007 3:23:44 PM EDT

[#23]

Quoted:

Quoted:
My understanding of the NIE was that Iran stopped working on the design in 2003. They are still continuing to enrich uranium. The NIE still says Iran poses a threat, just that their program has stopped. Why would it stop? To wait for the uranium perhaps?

IMO, the prospect of Iran doing ANY nuclear work just plain stinks to high heaven. According to the CIA Factbook, they have the world's second largest reserves of conventional crude oil (133 gigabarrels). They don't need nuclear technology for any conceivable peaceful purpose, and yet they're pouring massive amounts of money into developing and defending it.

There is some thought out there that Iran has overstated their actual reserves.

Posted: 12/4/2007 3:27:46 PM EDT

[#24]

Quoted:

Quoted:
CIA's been duped before...

Yep... the scary thing is we do not have good enough intelligence services to know.

There are people with pretty good information out there and I'm sure the .gov is talking to them. Iran, believe it or not, is a far more open society and government and military than Iraq was under Saddam.

Posted: 12/4/2007 3:28:42 PM EDT

[#25]

Can we get a more reliably news source than newsmax to corroborate this story?

Posted: 12/4/2007 3:37:31 PM EDT

[#26]

I'd like to ask the libs one thing:

How exactly was Iran to "wipe Israel off the face of the map" with out a nuke?

Posted: 12/4/2007 4:22:42 PM EDT

[#27]

Newsmax??????????? Sorry. I don't believe anything I read on that site.

Posted: 12/4/2007 4:55:57 PM EDT

[#28]

hughjafj?

I think he's one of them foreigner trolls.

Posted: 12/4/2007 6:20:53 PM EDT

[#29]

Quoted:

Quoted:
My understanding of the NIE was that Iran stopped working on the design in 2003. They are still continuing to enrich uranium. The NIE still says Iran poses a threat, just that their program has stopped. Why would it stop? To wait for the uranium perhaps?

IMO, the prospect of Iran doing ANY nuclear work just plain stinks to high heaven. According to the CIA Factbook, they have the world's second largest reserves of conventional crude oil (133 gigabarrels). They don't need nuclear technology for any conceivable peaceful purpose, and yet they're pouring massive amounts of money into developing and defending it.

There is some thought out there that Iran has overstated their actual reserves.

Even if they exaggerated by a factor of 5, that still leaves them with more reserves than the United States has - and we're number seven in the entire world! Given the size of their population and their standard of living, it's damned hard to believe that they'll run out of petro-energy...ever.

Posted: 12/4/2007 6:33:34 PM EDT

[#30]

Quoted:

Quoted:
My understanding of the NIE was that Iran stopped working on the design in 2003. They are still continuing to enrich uranium. The NIE still says Iran poses a threat, just that their program has stopped. Why would it stop? To wait for the uranium perhaps?

IMO, the prospect of Iran doing ANY nuclear work just plain stinks to high heaven. According to the CIA Factbook, they have the world's second largest reserves of conventional crude oil (133 gigabarrels). They don't need nuclear technology for any conceivable peaceful purpose, and yet they're pouring massive amounts of money into developing and defending it.

There is some thought out there that Iran has overstated their actual reserves.

Even if they exaggerated by a factor of 5, that still leaves them with more reserves than the United States has - and we're number seven in the entire world! Given the size of their population and their standard of living, it's damned hard to believe that they'll run out of petro-energy...ever.

The former head of Iran's National Oil company believes they are overstated.

"As for Iran, the usually accepted official 132 billion barrels is almost 100 billion barrels over any realistic assay."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Samsam_Bakhtiari

That's pretty significant. And then you have to deal with Iran's command economy.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/08/opinion/edstern.php

So even if their reserves are what they say they are, they may "need" nuclear power just to keep their people happy.

But it does make you wonder why they always seem to oppose production increases:
http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&ct=us/0-0&fp=47565bf6f5268457&ei=yBtWR6b2FI2uygSNxOS5BA&url=http%3A//online.wsj.com/article/SB119678143526613166.html%3Fmod%3Dgooglenews_wsj&cid=1124441302

Posted: 12/4/2007 6:36:53 PM EDT

[#31]

Quoted:
hughjafj?

I think he's one of them foreigner trolls.

You'd be wrong.

Posted: 12/4/2007 6:37:24 PM EDT

[#32]

Quoted:

Quoted:
you guys hear that loud pop?

that was 5subs head exploding

Posted: 12/4/2007 6:49:36 PM EDT

[#33]

Quoted:
CIA's been duped before...

+1

Yeah, the CIA was so on top of 9/11. I mean, they saw it coming a mile away.

Iran is working on getting a nuke. They told us so.

This is like a German Jew reading Mein Kampf and then being shocked when they're forced into the gas chamber a few years later.

Iran is telling us what they're doing and somehow people refuse to believe it.

I'm not saying we should be carpet bombing them with nukes at 6:00AM tomorrow morning, but we need to keep a close eye on them.

Posted: 12/4/2007 6:55:18 PM EDT

[#34]

Soooo...whats the truth?

Doesn't the truth lie somewhere in the middle?

Posted: 12/4/2007 6:56:37 PM EDT

[#35]

The Jews don't seem convinced. And for guys who gave up building a bomb 4 years ago, they sure seem to relish taking a "You can't stop us" approach to rhetoric and telling Israel they're going to annihilate them.

This report is probably the product of the CIA and State Department bureaucrats who were responsible for the Iraq WMD NIE having extreme guilt over their previous work giving Bush a case to get rid of Saddam. I am sure there has been no end to the grief they've been getting from their liberal buddies for their part in justifying the war, just like how the press has gotten grief privately for not doing enough to stop Bush in 2 elections and to stop the war.

I find it impossible to believe the Iranians stopped their project, it makes no sense. They know the USA will never attack after Iraq, and once they actually get a bomb they will have a deterrent. It makes zero strategic sense for them to have stopped, and the suggestion they did because of "international pressure" is ridiculous.

Posted: 12/4/2007 6:57:20 PM EDT

[#36]

Quoted:
CIA's been duped before...

If you're referring to the supposedly non-existant WMD in Iraq, don't buy the MSM's bullshit. There have been nearly 500 chemical and nerve agent munitions found since OIF-I.

Did we find the proverbial "Motherload", the Wal-Mart sized warehouse full of 'em? No. But there have indeed been some found.

But we wouldn't want facts to get in the way, would we?

Posted: 12/4/2007 7:00:11 PM EDT

[#37]

the fucking Iranians rick rolled us right into Iraq

I wouldn't put anything past them

Posted: 12/4/2007 7:00:32 PM EDT

[#38]

Iran has no refining capacity , they have to import most of their gas!!!

What I mean is, they are fucking stupid.Their infrastructure is in the same state of decay as Iraq and N. Korea.

Posted: 12/4/2007 7:01:59 PM EDT

[#39]

Damn Lumpy

Posted: 12/4/2007 7:05:00 PM EDT

[#40]

Letting those POS from the State Dept. author a study is like having Neville Chamberlain write an essay on Sun Tzu's "The Art of War". What kind of critique do you think you're going to get?

Posted: 12/4/2007 7:06:04 PM EDT

[#41]

Quoted:

Quoted:
My understanding of the NIE was that Iran stopped working on the design in 2003. They are still continuing to enrich uranium. The NIE still says Iran poses a threat, just that their program has stopped. Why would it stop? To wait for the uranium perhaps?

IMO, the prospect of Iran doing ANY nuclear work just plain stinks to high heaven. According to the CIA Factbook, they have the world's second largest reserves of conventional crude oil (133 gigabarrels). They don't need nuclear technology for any conceivable peaceful purpose, and yet they're pouring massive amounts of money into developing and defending it.

There is some thought out there that Iran has overstated their actual reserves.

Even if they exaggerated by a factor of 5, that still leaves them with more reserves than the United States has - and we're number seven in the entire world! Given the size of their population and their standard of living, it's damned hard to believe that they'll run out of petro-energy...ever.

The former head of Iran's National Oil company believes they are overstated.

"As for Iran, the usually accepted official 132 billion barrels is almost 100 billion barrels over any realistic assay."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Samsam_Bakhtiari

That's pretty significant. And then you have to deal with Iran's command economy.

Again, even 32 billion is STILL 11 billion more than America's entire reserves.

Posted: 12/4/2007 7:12:26 PM EDT

[#42]

They sell their oil , they have no refining capacity.

Posted: 12/4/2007 7:16:44 PM EDT

[#43]

Quoted:
Can we get a more reliably news source than newsmax to corroborate this story?

I hear what you are saying but I think, in substance, its correct. This NIE reeks to high heaven, and many of the contributors are career gov't employees who came aboard during the Clinton Administration. The old-timers who were not of questionable allegiance left in droves in the 90's. Reid is a world-class POS and wanted this thing made public because it coincides with his world-view, and unfortunately most of the US will take it as gospel. It wouldn't surprise me if some of Reid's money has Iranian fingerprints on it. Any time the State Department gets involved in something, it will inevitably come up with the wrong conclusion. Information is acquired from a variety of sources and gets filtered, so that the final product is often incorrect - it is filtered through the filter of political correctness and leftist politics. If you were to talk to people much closer to the ground, so to speak, I have absolutely no doubt you would hear a different story.

Posted: 12/4/2007 7:16:58 PM EDT

[#44]