Iran Tests Triggering Device for A-Bomb
If the following report is true, it would mean that Iran is one step closer to having a nuclear weapon before 2008!
Report: Israeli spies active in Iran
JPost.com Staff, THE JERUSALEM POST
Nov. 20, 2006
Iran has developed and tested a trigger device for a nuclear bomb, Israeli agents stationed there have told the White House, according to a report published in the New Yorker on Monday morning.
According to the report, written by Seymour M. Hersh, the White House received the information but did not hand it to the CIA.
The report also stated that in the past six months, Israel and the United States had been working together to support a Kurdish resistance group known as the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan.
The group had been conducting clandestine cross-border forays into Iran, Hersh said he was told by a government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon civilian leadership, as “part of an effort to explore alternative means of applying pressure on Iran.”
The government consultant said that Israel was supplying the Kurdish group “equipment and training.” The group had also been given “a list of targets inside Iran of interest to the US” An Israeli government spokesman denied that Israel was involved.
The Israeli intelligence presented a stark contrast to recent CIA estimates on Iran’s nuclear program, which claimed that Teheran was far from attaining a nuclear bomb.
The New Yorker article seemed to suggest that there was a difference of opinion between the CIA, the White House and the Pentagon with regards to the progress of Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
The CIA’s opinion was based on technical information gathered form satellites and other high-tech devices that suggested, that high levels of radiation had not been detected.
However, the White House and the Pentagon dispute the CIA’s findings. Pentagon officials urged that the Israeli intelligence to be given due consideration and said that data gathered by satellites and ground sensors was insufficient. He added that more emphasis should be given to information supplied by agents (human intelligence).
“We live in an era when national technical intelligence” – data from satellites and on-the-ground sensors – “will not get us what we need. HUMINT may not be hard evidence by that standard, but very often it’s the best intelligence we can get,” said a Pentagon consultant.
Reportedly, the White House was refusing to reveal to the CIA the source of the Israeli information, the location of the site of the experiments, or the number of tests that had been carried out.
“The problem is that no one can verify it,” a former senior intelligence official told Hersh. “We don’t know who the Israeli source is. The briefing says the Iranians are testing trigger mechanisms” – simulating a zero-yield nuclear explosion without any weapons-grade materials – “but there are no diagrams, no significant facts. Where is the test site? How often have they done it? How big is the warhead – a breadbox or a refrigerator? They don’t have that.”
And yet, he said, the report was being used by White House hawks within the administration to “prove the White House’s theory that the Iranians are on track. And tests leave no radioactive track, which is why we can’t find it.”
Still, he said, “The agency is standing its ground.”
If you’ve read this far, here’s an EasterEgg for you:
# 35 nations meet on denying Iran technical help for building plutonium-producing reactor
20 November, 2006 at 5:19 pm
This one is just silly. Not only did Israeli agents get close enough to discover Iranian secrets they also knew ours. Somehow the Israelis learned both what the Iranians have been doing with uncanny accuracy and uncovered a White House plot to keep this newfound knowledge from our CIA. Since the CIA’s job is to supply secrets like this to the White House I find it very disturbing the President and his cleaver staff reversed the process and withheld information from them.
My hat is off to the cleaver Israelis and I give a slap on the head for anyone who falls for this one.