Also see below:     
Iran to Resume Suspended Nuclear Research    [

    CIA Gave Iran Bomb Plans, Book Says
    By Josh Meyer
    The Los Angeles Times

    Wednesday 04 January 2006

The nuclear designs were intentionally flawed, but Tehran was tipped off and could have made use of them, the writer contends.

    Washington - In a clumsy effort to sabotage Iran's nuclear program, the CIA in 2004 intentionally handed Tehran some top-secret bomb designs laced with a hidden flaw that U.S. officials hoped would doom any weapon made from them, according to a new book about the U.S. intelligence agency.

    But the Iranians were tipped to the scheme by the Russian defector hired by the CIA to deliver the plans and may have gleaned scientific information useful for designing a bomb, writes New York Times reporter James Risen in "State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration."

    The clandestine CIA effort was just one of many alleged intelligence failures during the Bush administration, according to the book.

    Risen also cites intelligence gaffes that fueled the Bush administration's case for war against Saddam Hussein, spawned a culture of torture throughout the U.S. military and encouraged the rise of heroin cultivation and trafficking in postwar Afghanistan.

    Even before the book's release Tuesday, its main revelation - that President Bush authorized a secret effort by another intelligence outfit, the National Security Agency, to eavesdrop on unsuspecting Americans without court-approved warrants - had created a storm of controversy when it was reported last month in the New York Times in an article coauthored by Risen.

    In the book, Risen says he based his accounts on interviews with dozens of intelligence officials who, while unnamed, had proved reliable in the past.

    Bush has confirmed the existence of the program, but condemned the newspaper for the December report and for its use of confidential sources.

    The CIA added its own criticism Tuesday, saying the book contains "serious inaccuracies."

    The NSA domestic spying controversy is at the heart of an intensifying debate over whether the president has overstepped his authority in fighting the U.S.-declared war on terrorism by not adequately consulting or allowing oversight from Congress and the courts.

    The Justice Department disclosed Friday that it was conducting a criminal investigation to find out who leaked classified details of the domestic spying program.

    The book's release date was moved up in the wake of the NSA controversy, and it provides additional details of that domestic spying effort, in which Bush did not seek permission for domestic wiretaps from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

    The New York Times delayed for a year publication of its article on the NSA's domestic spying, in part because of personal requests from the president. Critics have questioned whether the paper could have published the information before last year's presidential election if it had decided against a delay. Newspaper officials have refused to comment on reasons for the delay or on the exact timing.

    Top New York Times officials also refused to publish a news article about the reported CIA plot to give intentionally flawed nuclear plans to Iran, according to a person briefed on the newspaper's conversations by one of the participants. That person said the New York Times withheld publication at the request of the White House and former CIA Director George J. Tenet.

    U.S. officials have long maintained that Iran's rulers want to develop nuclear weapons, but Tehran has insisted that it seeks to develop only a civilian nuclear energy program. Whatever the case, the CIA was desperate to counter what it believed was a clandestine nuclear program, and turned to a Russian defector who had once been a nuclear scientist in the former Soviet republics, according to the book.

    The book says the CIA worked with the U.S.-based defector to concoct a story about how he was destitute, but in possession of valuable nuclear weapons blueprints that had been secreted out of Russia.

    CIA officials had concerns about the man's temperament, Risen says, but sent the defector and the blueprints to Vienna anyway, with orders to hand-deliver them to someone at Tehran's diplomatic mission to the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, the U.N. nuclear watchdog.

    His CIA handlers never imagined that the Russian defector would tip off the Iranians to the fatal flaw that they had hidden deep within the blueprints. But that, the book adds, is exactly what the Russian did, in part because the CIA failed to send anybody to accompany him out of fear that it might make the Iranians suspicious.

    The book does not say whether Iran used the plans, but reports that a senior Iranian official visiting Vienna appears to have taken them immediately to Tehran after the defector dropped them off.

    "He [the Russian] 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 book contends.

    Two nuclear weapons experts who say that they have no knowledge about whether the covert effort described in the book occurred added that a deliberate flaw in the plans could have been easily found by the Iranians.

    "Iran has excellent scientists and any information related to weapons designs could move its program ahead," said a European nuclear weapons expert, who refused to allow his name to be used because his government prohibits comments on nuclear weapons or designs.

    David Albright, a former weapons inspector for the IAEA, agreed with the other expert that the plans could have shaved many years off Iran's nuclear effort.

    "I wouldn't call it a colossal failure" by the CIA, said Albright, now president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington. "But I don't quite understand the purpose of it, why you would want to hand something like this to the Iranians. It's unlikely to work."

    According to the book, the CIA effort to sabotage Iran's nuclear effort came on the heels of another massive intelligence failure, in which a CIA officer mistakenly sent an Iranian agent a trove of information that could help identify nearly every one of the spy agency's undercover operatives in Iran.

    The Iranian was a double agent who turned over the data to Iranian authorities. They used it to dismantle the CIA's spy network inside the country and arrest or possibly kill an unknown number of U.S. agents, the book says.

 

---

    Go to Original

    Iran to Resume Suspended Nuclear Research
    Agence France-Presse

    Wednesday 04 January 2006

    Iran announced it would resume nuclear fuel research after a suspension of over two years, prompting the UN atomic watchdog to warn Tehran that it must maintain a freeze on sensitive nuclear work.

    President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Iran would not "step back" on its decision to resume nuclear fuel work, state television reported.

    "Our country will go forward on the nuclear path with patience, wisdom and planning," the hardline president was quoted as saying after a parliament session on the state budget.

    "We will not make a step back on our path," he said, adding that he had informed the UN atomic agency of Iran's intent in a letter.

    Iran's student-run news agency ISNA further quoted Ahmadinejad as rejecting Western influence on Iranian policies because "research has no restrictions or red lines."

    "We cannot base our national interest on their policy," he said.

    The deputy head of Iran's atomic energy agency, Mohammad Saidi, also said the UN nuclear watchdog has already been informed of the step, which risks creating further strains in talks with European negotiators.

    "In a letter, the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) has been informed that Iran will start research on the technology of nuclear fuel in a few days, with the cooperation and coordination of the agency," Saidi told state television.

    "We think our experts have undergone lots of losses during this period (of suspension). Many of our researchers have lost their jobs," he added.

    Saidi did not specify exactly what the research concerned, but said that the Islamic republic had "voluntarily" suspended such activities for around "the past two-and-a-half years."

    This timescale would correspond to the date when Iran announced in October 2003 that it was temporarily suspending uranium enrichment, a process that can be used to create nuclear fuel for reactors and also the cores of atomic bombs.

    Diplomats have said that were Iran to resume enriching uranium it would deal a fatal blow to the negotiating process, already fragile after Tehran restarted uranium conversion last year - the precursor step to enrichment.

    In a statement confirming receipt of the letter, the IAEA said its director general Mohammed ElBaradei "recalls the importance placed by the IAEA Board that Iran maintains its suspension of all enrichment-related activity as a key confidence building measure."

    It said "he continues to call on Iran to take the steps the IAEA requires to resolve outstanding issues regarding the nature of Iran's nuclear programme."

    However Saidi insisted that the decision was not linked to the production of nuclear fuel.

    "This issue... has nothing to do with production of nuclear fuel. These two are separate things from one another. No decision has been made about nuclear fuel production."

    The IAEA said it was seeking clarifications from Iran as to the "implications" of the decision.

    France on Tuesday called on Iran to reverse its move, saying if Iran was to observe a suspension on enrichment it also had to halt research.

    "We would like Iran to abide by the suspension of all activities related to the enrichment and reprocessing... which includes centrifuges and research," foreign ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei said.

    Meanwhile, a delegation from Moscow is to visit Tehran on Saturday amid continued Russian efforts to break the deadlock between Iran's insistence on maintaining its right to enrichment and EU demands it renounces the practice.

    "A Russian delegation led by Deputy Foreign Minister (Sergei) Kisliak, is due to come on January 7 to discuss the Russian proposal," said foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi.

    Moscow has suggested allowing Iran to conduct uranium enrichment in Russia, giving it access to the nuclear fuel cycle while guaranteeing its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.

    However Asefi reaffirmed Iran would not consider the offer unless it acknowledges the country's right to conduct uranium enrichment operations in Iran, so far the key sticking point in negotiations with the European Union.

    "It's not a structured proposal it is still an idea, we have to discuss it. There are ambiguities but if it says that enrichment can only happen in Russia it's not acceptable, but if it's a parallel and complementary plan we will consider that."

    The United States accuses Iran of trying to master the civil nuclear fuel cycle as a cover for a military programme to obtain atomic weapons - a charge vehemently denied by Tehran.

    Iran is set to have new talks with EU negotiators on January 18 but both sides have acknowledged that wide differences remain.