[continued from previous message] 
  
 the Iranian agents were arrested and jailed, while the fates of some of 
 the others is still unknown. 
  
 This espionage disaster, of course, was not reported. It left the CIA 
 virtually blind in Iran, unable to provide any significant intelligence 
 on one of the most critical issues facing the US - whether Tehran was 
 about to go nuclear. 
  
 In fact, just as President Bush and his aides were making the case in 
 2004 and 2005 that Iran was moving rapidly to develop nuclear weapons, 
 the American intelligence community found itself unable to provide the 
 evidence to back up the administration's public arguments. On the heels 
 of the CIA's failure to provide accurate pre-war intelligence on Iraq's 
 alleged weapons of mass destruction, the agency was once again clueless 
 in the Middle East. In the spring of 2005, in the wake of the CIA's 
 Iranian disaster, Porter Goss, its new director, told President Bush in 
 a White House briefing that the CIA really didn't know how close Iran 
 was to becoming a nuclear power. 
  
 But it's worse than that. Deep in the bowels of the CIA, someone must be 
 nervously, but very privately, wondering: "Whatever happened to those 
 nuclear blueprints we gave to the Iranians?" 
  
 The story dates back to the Clinton administration and February 2000, 
 when one frightened Russian scientist walked Vienna's winter streets. 
 The Russian had good reason to be afraid. He was walking around Vienna 
 with blueprints for a nuclear bomb. 
  
 To be precise, he was carrying technical designs for a TBA 480 
 high-voltage block, otherwise known as a "firing set", for a 
 Russian-designed nuclear weapon. He held in his hands the knowledge 
 needed to create a perfect implosion that could trigger a nuclear chain 
 reaction inside a small spherical core. It was one of the greatest 
 engineering secrets in the world, providing the solution to one of a 
 handful of problems that separated nuclear powers such as the United 
 States and Russia from rogue countries such as Iran that were desperate 
 to join the nuclear club but had so far fallen short. 
  
 The Russian, who had defected to the US years earlier, still couldn't 
 believe the orders he had received from CIA headquarters. The CIA had 
 given him the nuclear blueprints and then sent him to Vienna to sell 
 them - or simply give them - to the Iranian representatives to the 
 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). With the Russian doing its 
 bidding, the CIA appeared to be about to help Iran leapfrog one of the 
 last remaining engineering hurdles blocking its path to a nuclear 
 weapon. The dangerous irony was not lost on the Russian - the IAEA was 
 an international organisation created to restrict the spread of nuclear 
 technology. 
  
 The Russian was a nuclear engineer in the pay of the CIA, which had 
 arranged for him to become an American citizen and funded him to the 
 tune of $5,000 a month. It seemed like easy money, with few strings 
 attached. 
  
 Until now. The CIA was placing him on the front line of a plan that 
 seemed to be completely at odds with the interests of the US, and it had 
 taken a lot of persuading by his CIA case officer to convince him to go 
 through with what appeared to be a rogue operation. 
  
 The case officer worked hard to convince him - even though he had doubts 
 about the plan as well. As he was sweet-talking the Russian into flying 
 to Vienna, the case officer wondered whether he was involved in an 
 illegal covert action. Should he expect to be hauled before a 
 congressional committee and grilled because he was the officer who 
 helped give nuclear blueprints to Iran? The code name for this operation 
 was Merlin; to the officer, that seemed like a wry tip-off that nothing 
 about this programme was what it appeared to be. He did his best to hide 
 his concerns from his Russian agent. 
  
 The Russian's assignment from the CIA was to pose as an unemployed and 
 greedy scientist who was willing to sell his soul - and the secrets of 
 the atomic bomb - to the highest bidder. By hook or by crook, the CIA 
 told him, he was to get the nuclear blueprints to the Iranians. They 
 would quickly recognise their value and rush them back to their 
 superiors in Tehran. 
  
 The plan had been laid out for the defector during a CIA-financed trip 
 to San Francisco, where he had meetings with CIA officers and nuclear 
 experts mixed in with leisurely wine-tasting trips to Sonoma County. In 
 a luxurious San Francisco hotel room, a senior CIA official involved in 
 the operation talked the Russian through the details of the plan. He 
 brought in experts from one of the national laboratories to go over the 
 blueprints that he was supposed to give the Iranians. 
  
 The senior CIA officer could see that the Russian was nervous, and so he 
 tried to downplay the significance of what they were asking him to do. 
 He said the CIA was mounting the operation simply to find out where the 
 Iranians were with their nuclear programme. This was just an 
 intelligence-gathering effort, the CIA officer said, not an illegal 
 attempt to give Iran the bomb. He suggested that the Iranians already 
 had the technology he was going to hand over to them. It was all a game. 
 Nothing too serious. 
  
 On paper, Merlin was supposed to stunt the development of Tehran's 
 nuclear programme by sending Iran's weapons experts down the wrong 
 technical path. The CIA believed that once the Iranians had the 
 blueprints and studied them, they would believe the designs were usable 
 and so would start to build an atom bomb based on the flawed designs. 
 But Tehran would get a big surprise when its scientists tried to explode 
 their new bomb. Instead of a mushroom cloud, the Iranian scientists 
 would witness a disappointing fizzle. The Iranian nuclear programme 
 would suffer a humiliating setback, and Tehran's goal of becoming a 
 nuclear power would have been delayed by several years. In the meantime, 
 the CIA, by watching Iran's reaction to the blueprints, would have 
 gained a wealth of information about the status of Iran's weapons 
 programme, which has been shrouded in secrecy. 
  
 The Russian studied the blueprints the CIA had given him. Within minutes 
 of being handed the designs, he had identified a flaw. "This isn't 
 right," he told the CIA officers gathered around the hotel room. "There 
 is something wrong." His comments prompted stony looks, but no straight 
 answers from the CIA men. No one in the meeting seemed surprised by the 
 Russian's assertion that the blueprints didn't look quite right, but no 
 one wanted to enlighten him further on the matter, either. 
  
 In fact, the CIA case officer who was the Russian's personal handler had 
 been stunned by his statement. During a break, he took the senior CIA 
 officer aside. "He wasn't supposed to know that," the CIA case officer 
 told his superior. "He wasn't supposed to find a flaw." 
  
 "Don't worry," the senior CIA officer calmly replied. "It doesn't matter." 
  
 The CIA case officer couldn't believe the senior CIA officer's answer, 
 but he managed to keep his fears from the Russian, and continued to 
 train him for his mission. 
  
 After their trip to San Francisco, the case officer handed the Russian a 
 sealed envelope with the nuclear blueprints inside. He was told not to 
 open the envelope under any circumstances. He was to follow the CIA's 
 instructions to find the Iranians and give them the envelope with the 
 documents inside. Keep it simple, and get out of Vienna safe and alive, 
 the Russian was told. But the defector had his own ideas about how he 
  
 [continued in next message] 
  
 --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 
  * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)