CIA Determines Documents Were Fabricated
PakistanPal
By GARETH PORTER
U.S. intelligence has concluded that the document published recently
by the Times of London, which purportedly describes an Iranian plan to
do experiments on what the newspaper described as a "neutron
initiator" for an atomic weapon, is a fabrication, according to a
former Central Intelligence Agency official.
Philip Giraldi, who was a CIA counterterrorism official from 1976 to
1992, told me that intelligence sources say that the United States had
nothing to do with forging the document, and that Israel is the
primary suspect. The sources do not rule out a British role in the
fabrication, however.
The Times of London story published Dec. 14 did not identify the
source of the document. But it quoted "an Asian intelligence source" -
a term some news media have used for Israeli intelligence officials -
as confirming that his government believes Iran was working on a
neutron initiator as recently as 2007.
The story of the purported Iranian document prompted a new round of
expressions of U.S. and European support for tougher sanctions against
Iran and reminders of Israel's threats to attack Iranian nuclear
programme targets if diplomacy fails.
U.S. news media reporting has left the impression that U.S.
intelligence analysts have not made up their mind about the document's
authenticity, although it has been widely reported that they have now
had a full year to assess the issue.
Giraldi's intelligence sources did not reveal all the reasons that led
analysts to conclude that the purported Iran document had been
fabricated by a foreign intelligence agency. But their suspicions of
fraud were prompted in part by the source of the story, according to
Giraldi.
"The Rupert Murdoch chain has been used extensively to publish false
intelligence from the Israelis and occasionally from the British
government," Giraldi said.
The Times is part of a Murdoch publishing empire that includes the
Sunday Times, Fox News and the New York Post. All Murdoch-owned news
media report on Iran with an aggressively pro-Israeli slant.
The document itself also had a number of red flags suggesting possible
or likely fraud.
The subject of the two-page document which the Times published in
English translation would be highly classified under any state's
security system. Yet there is no confidentiality marking on the
document, as can be seen from the photograph of the Farsi-language
original published by the Times.
The absence of security markings has been cited by the Iranian
ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Ali Asghar
Soltanieh, as evidence that the "alleged studies" documents, which
were supposedly purloined from an alleged Iranian nuclear weapons-
related programme early in this decade, are forgeries.
The document also lacks any information identifying either the issuing
office or the intended recipients. The document refers cryptically to
"the Centre", "the Institute", "the Committee", and the "neutron
group".
The document's extreme vagueness about the institutions does not
appear to match the concreteness of the plans, which call for hiring
eight individuals for different tasks for very specific numbers of
hours for a four-year time frame.
Including security markings and such identifying information in a
document increases the likelihood of errors that would give the fraud
away.
The absence of any date on the document also conflicts with the
specificity of much of the information. The Times reported that
unidentified "foreign intelligence agencies" had dated the document to
early 2007, but gave no reason for that judgment.
An obvious motive for suggesting the early 2007 date is that it would
discredit the U.S. intelligence community's November 2007 National
Intelligence Estimate, which concluded that Iran had discontinued
unidentified work on nuclear weapons and had not resumed it as of the
time of the estimate.
Discrediting the NIE has been a major objective of the Israeli
government for the past two years, and the British and French
governments have supported the Israeli effort.
The biggest reason for suspecting that the document is a fraud is its
obvious effort to suggest past Iranian experiments related to a
neutron initiator. After proposing experiments on detecting pulsed
neutrons, the document refers to "locations where such experiments
used to be conducted".
That reference plays to the widespread assumption, which has been
embraced by the International Atomic Energy Agency, that Iran had
carried out experiments with Polonium-210 in the late 1980s,
indicating an interest in neutron initiators. The IAEA referred in
reports from 2004 through 2007 to its belief that the experiment with
Polonium-210 had potential relevance to making "a neutron initiator in
some designs of nuclear weapons".
The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the political arm
of the terrorist organisation Mujahedeen-e Khalq, claimed in February
2005 that Iran's research with Polonium-210 was continuing and that it
was now close to producing a neutron initiator for a nuclear weapon.
Sanger and Broad were so convinced that the Polonium-210 experiments
proved Iran's interest in a neutron initiator that they referred in
their story on the leaked document to both the IAEA reports on the
experiments in the late 1980s and the claim by NCRI of continuing
Iranian work on such a nuclear trigger.
What Sanger and Broad failed to report, however, is that the IAEA has
acknowledged that it was mistaken in its earlier assessment that the
Polonium-210 experiments were related to a neutron initiator.
After seeing the complete documentation on the original project,
including complete copies of the reactor logbook for the entire
period, the IAEA concluded in its Feb. 22, 2008 report that Iran's
explanations that the Polonium-210 project was fundamental research
with the eventual aim of possible application to radio isotope
batteries was "consistent with the Agency's findings and with other
information available to it".
The IAEA report said the issue of Polonium-210 - and thus the earlier
suspicion of an Iranian interest in using it as a neutron initiator
for a nuclear weapon - was now considered "no longer outstanding".
New York Times reporters David Sanger and William J. Broad reported
U.S. intelligence officials as saying the intelligence analysts "have
yet to authenticate the document". Sanger and Broad explained the
failure to do so, however, as a result of excessive caution left over
from the CIA's having failed to brand as a fabrication the document
purporting to show an Iraqi effort to buy uranium in Niger.
The Washington Post's Joby Warrick dismissed the possibility that the
document might be found to be fraudulent. "There is no way to
establish the authenticity or original source of the document...,"
wrote Warrick.
But the line that the intelligence community had authenticated it
evidently reflected the Barack Obama administration's desire to avoid
undercutting a story that supports its efforts to get Russian and
Chinese support for tougher sanctions against Iran.
This is not the first time that Giraldi has been tipped off by his
intelligence sources on forged documents. Giraldi identified the
individual or office responsible for creating the two most notorious
forged documents in recent U.S. intelligence history.
In 2005, Giraldi identified Michael Ledeen, the extreme right-wing
former consultant to the National Security Council and the Pentagon,
as an author of the fabricated letter purporting to show Iraqi
interest in purchasing uranium from Niger. That letter was used by the
George W. Bush administration to bolster its false case that Saddam
Hussein had an active nuclear weapons programme.
Giraldi also identified officials in the "Office of Special Plans" who
worked under Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith as
having forged a letter purportedly written by Hussein's intelligence
director, Tahir Jalail Habbush al-Tikriti, to Hussein himself
referring to an Iraqi intelligence operation to arrange for an
unidentified shipment from Niger.
Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist with Inter-
Press Service specialising in U.S. national security policy. The
paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance
of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.
Article Source : http://www.counterpunch.org/porter12292009.html