In the year 2000 the CIA gave nuclear weapons plans to Iran

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/30110-focus-in-convicting-jeff-sterling-cia-revealed-more-than-it-accused-him-of-revealing

Some Americans have heard of New York Times reporter and book author James Risen and his refusal to expose a source. But, because most reports on that matter scrupulously avoided the subject of what it was Risen had reported, relatively few people can tell you. In fact, Risen reported (in a book, as the New York Times obeyed a government request to keep it quiet) that back in the year 2000 the CIA gave nuclear weapons plans to Iran. Flaws had been introduced into the plans, with the stated intention of slowing down an Iranian nuclear weapons program if one existed. Risen's reporting that the flaws were glaringly obvious, including to the former-Russian asset assigned to deliver the plans to Iran, made the scheme look even worse than it at first sounds.

Jeffery Sterling, a CIA handler of the former-Russian asset, was convicted earlier this year of being Risen's source. He was convicted on the basis of the sort of circumstantial evidence known as "meta-data" that the NSA maintains we're not supposed to worry about, but which an appeals court on Thursday ruled the bulk collection of unconstitutional. Sterling is expected to be sentenced Monday to a lengthy prison term.

During the course of Sterling's trial, the CIA itself made public a bigger story than the one it pinned on Sterling. The CIA revealed, unintentionally no doubt, that just after the nuclear weapons plans had been dropped off for the Iranians, the CIA had proposed to the same asset that he next approach the Iraqi government for the same purpose. The CIA revealed this by entering into evidence this cable:

[Segami]

1. So, this scheme originated from the Clinton presidency,..

"...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".


Operation Merlin has been one of the most closely guarded secrets in the Clinton and Bush administrations. It's not clear who originally came up with the idea, but the plan was first approved by Clinton. After the Russian scientist's fateful trip to Vienna, however, the Merlin operation was endorsed by the Bush administration, possibly with an eye toward repeating it against North Korea or other dangerous states...."

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2006/jan/05/energy.g2

[Recursion]

2. This is entirely what the Plame outing was about.

What did Plame do? She watched WMD developments in Iran.

[leveymg]

3. This goes back to the mid-1970s when the AQ Khan network was set up with CIA protection

to provide Saudi Arabia with a proxy nuclear force. Google "Safari Club," or see http://journals.democraticunderground.com/leveymg/280

Sterling was jailed for essentially the same crime as Scooter Libby, only the Bushies got their sentences commuted. The AQ Khan network and Merlin (a Clinton era offshoot to Iran), was originally blown by a leak from Armitage to The Times of London a couple months after Team Shrub came into office.

[PADemD]

4. George Tenet, 18th DCI

December 15, 1996 – July 11, 2004

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

[riderinthestorm]

5. K&R nt

[okaawhatever]

6. Oh please, they gave the Iranians design plans with a flaw in them. That sort of thing happens

frequently just not with nuke plans. What a bullshit story