Question not asked: How did Iran learn of our intelligence?
Posted by Clyde Middleton
on Sep 26 2009 Filed under Politics.
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The plethora of press reports on the Qom nuclear-enrichment program focus largely on the history of our intelligence and President Obama’s joint press conference, passing quickly through what appears to be a compromise of that intelligence to the Iranians. The central question becomes: How did our intelligence become known to the Iranians? Secondary question: Is this CIA payback for the Holder and Pelosi agendas? Perhaps: What did Iran know and when did it know it?
Let’s dispel of an early thought: Was the joint press conference and accompanying disclosures by us the culmination of a long-planned effort to disclose our knowledge at this place and time? Short answer: No. Long answer:
Late Thursday night, two hours after it sent out President Barack Obama’s Friday schedule, the White House told reporters it was adding another event – a statement that he would give in the morning. Amid all the hoopla of the G-20 economic summit in Pittsburgh, there was scant indication the announcement would be dramatic.
But behind the scenes, the Obama administration was furiously preparing for a major public intelligence disclosure that it had not planned to make: that the U.S. had known for years about a previously undisclosed clandestine nuclear enrichment facility Iran has been building since 2005 in a mountain near Qom. [Emphasis added]
The White House held an non-attribution background briefing on the Qom facility and related intelligence. The quick setting from the background statement:
So the obvious option for Iran [after one secret facility was previously discovered] would be to build another secret underground enrichment facility, and our intelligence services, working in very close cooperation with our allies, for the past several years have been looking for such a facility. And not surprisingly, we found one. So we have known for some time now that Iran was building a second underground enrichment facility. And as the President mentioned this morning, it’s located near the city of Qom, a very heavily protected, very heavily disguised facility. We believe that it’s not yet operational. We think it’s most likely at least a few months, perhaps more, from having all of the centrifuges installed and being capable of operating if the Iranians made a decision to begin operating it.
In the background briefing we get some feel for the Iranian side:
Now, earlier this week, as President Obama said, we learned that Iran sent a letter to the IAEA which in very vague terms disclosed that Iran was constructing a “pilot-scale enrichment plant” designed to produce 5 percent enriched uranium, and that the Iranians would provide additional information in the future as appropriate.
Why would Iran disclose anything about a secret facility, even if done in “vague terms”? Here’s some speculation:
Iran kept the facility, located 100 miles southwest of Tehran, hidden from the IAEA until revealing it in a letter to the IAEA on Monday. That suggests it may have done so only because it wanted to go on record before being exposed.
Let’s rip away much of the speculation – continuing:
“The Iranians learned that the secrecy of the facility was compromised. So they came to believe that the value of the facility as a secret facility was no longer valid,” the senior U.S. administration official said.
Back to the WH backgrounder and when the Iranians learned that we knew of the Qom facility. here’s the Q&A:
Q When was that? When did they learn that?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I can’t be precise. All I can say is that fairly recently — and recognizing that they might then choose to disclose the facility themselves, we worked with our allies — the U.K. and the French — to put together a briefing, an extraordinarily detailed briefing, for the IAEA, because we anticipated that we would need to provide that briefing to the agency so that they would be able to conduct a proper investigation — not just of the facility itself, but of the support facilities that are producing materials and equipment for this facility, what the Iranian decision-making process and intent was to build this facility.
And, here’s the kicker, speaking of our years-running watching of the project:
This was very sensitive intelligence information.
Another formulation:
Yesterday’s revelations about Iran’s secret uranium enrichment facility at Qom came after three years of intensive investigation and surveillance by the most trusted of America’s intelligence allies: Britain, France and Israel.
The Iranians learned, in some measure, of this “very sensitive intelligence.” They came to know that we knew. We were not planning the Friday disclosure.
So the question becomes: How, under Obama’s watch of eight months which followed President Bush’s management of the intelligence since 2005, did the Iranians learn of our surveillance? Is this CIA blowback from the Holder and Pelosi agendas? After all, the CIA comes out looking good, if even by their own account:
The announcement also provided a boost for the CIA at a time when the agency is facing harsh attacks — and possible prosecution — for detainee interrogations. In a statement on the Iranian revelations, CIA Director Leon Panetta said, “We gave our government the information and insights it needed. . . . Most intelligence successes never become public.” He added: “This one has.”
Payback, perhaps, through control of the public agenda. Good rule: “Thou shalt not fool with the CIA.”
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