How The CIA May Have Caused Armageddon

By Don White

James Risen is a New York Times writer covering national security. He covered the 9/11 terrorist attack on the Twin Towers and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting. He authored State of War, The Secret History of The CIA And the Bush Administration and coauthored Wealth of Angels and The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of The CIA’s Final Showdown With The KGB.

It may seem unfair to call Risen a liberal who reports favorably on liberal politics in America and unfavorably on Republicans, but that’s how it works out.

One must only look at the book’s organization to recognize he was anxious to zing President Bush for starting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But in the book he leaves the best for last, which is how the CIA in 2000 during the Clinton Administration gave Iran blueprints for a nuclear bomb. Those plans only had to be tweaked by experts in the Iranian employ to make sense of the “decoy mistakes”, all of which backfired against the United States.

After reading the book,

I believe Risen was on a reporter’s witch hunt against George Bush. In Risen’s defense, the Bush premise for going into Iraq was flawed. Was Bush innocently mistaken when he told the American people in a nationally televised speech just days before attacking Iraq that he had intelligence that there were Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) in Iraq?

No, quite the contrary. He wasn’t mistaken. He lied. Bush had more than a dozen CIA reports rejecting the idea that Sadam Hussein possessed WMDs.

Risen makes a good case that Bush knew – he had to know – there were no such weapons (except chemical) and, thus, the war shouldn’t have been waged. America should not have had to put its national treasure at risk and lay out billions of dollars on an expensive war merely to kill a dictator, Sadam Hussein.

Bush could have hired a hit man. Why didn’t he? Observers believe it could have destabilized Iraq, creating panic, schisms, and chaos, opening the door to Iran to occupy Iraq.

Today, because of mistakes of the CIA and lack of attention by the Clinton administration, Iran confidently forges ahead in its quest to destroy Israel.

With blinders clouding its judgment, Iran has belligerently defied United Nations orders and sanctions because it is hell bent to become a nuclear force majeure. Thus, Chapter Nine is the most important and intriguing chapter in State of War.

Risen wrote much about Bush and his “failings.” He didn’t get to the misconduct of Bill Clinton and his administration until Chapter Nine. Even three years ago when the book came out, this subject should have been Chapter One material, not buried in 25 pages at the end of the book.

At a time when the Israelis want America to loan them some bunker-buster bombs to take out Iran’s nuclear capabilities, out comes the story that further denigrates our intelligence community. We, of all people, now have the onus of having provided Iran with a blueprint, though flawed, to build a nuke.

Shocking – America Helping Iran To Blow Up Israel?

Many people wish America would destroy the Iranian nukes and help defend Israel, not help destroy it. It’s ironic, but no one has refuted this secret op story I’m about to tell you.

“Not since the CIA and FBI abuses of the 1970s,” says Risen, “have so many scandals in the intelligence community come to light.”

Merlin – A Secret Op

This CIA gaffe-of-all-gaffes is neatly tied up in a secret op named Merlin.

Merlin was born out of frustration and I will briefly tell the story that affects all of us today during a time when Iran’s leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is killing or jailing innocent civilians by the hundreds.

But it is in this decade that we learn that the U.S. did the unthinkable – we were unknowing, vacuous, and stupid co-conspirators in this madman’s quest to possibly blow up Israel and start the war of all wars, Armageddon.

Amidst perestroika and following the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1989 and 1990 there occurred a sudden dismantling of the Soviet empire. In 1991 we witnessed the extension of the collapse of communist rule to the imperial heartland itself. Toward the close of
the year it was not clear whether rogue nations or terrorists would bribe someone to get those bombs in satellite countries.

The territory of the former USSR contained some 27,000 nuclear warheads scattered among several of the former republics, many of which were now actively pursuing their sovereign independence. Who

controlled these weapons and their potential involvement in internal civil conflict were serious issues for international stability.

To limit the possibility that terrorist groups got control of nuclear bombs located in Russian satellite states like Belorussia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, where most of the nukes outside of Russia were located, the United States began a program of purchasing those weapons and importing the science technology, and getting the actual scientists to defect from those places to the United States. It wasn’t that difficult. We merely offered them a better life style and more money.

One such scientist brought with him a Russian bomb blueprint. That was when someone in the Clinton administration and/or the CIA leadership devised a cockamamie plan to thwart or delay Iran from bomb development. It was that the CIA would alter the blueprint sufficiently to make whoever received these plans unable to immediately make a bomb, using up valuable time chasing their tails.

The frightened courier to Iran from the U.S. was the defected Soviet Scientist who did not know what was in the envelope he was to deliver to the Iranians. He experienced much difficulty in handing off the plans – you just don’t show up one day in Vienna, knock on the Iranian Embassy door and say, “Hi, I’m your friendly Soviet scientist spy, now American, here to give you plans on how your country can blow up the world.”

Here’s how James Risen described his problem. I’m not a spy, he (the Russian defector) thought to himself, I’m a scientist. What am I doing here?

“He fingered the package stuffed in his overcoat, making sure these priceless documents were still there and that this crazy job wasn’t just a bad dream.”

Long story short: The scientist knew nothing about Vienna and got lost time after time, ending up in his hotel room unsuccessful. Once again, he looked at the envelope, finally opening it carefully, reading the letter and wondering what was missing. The scientist had good reason for being scared. He had been walking around Vienna with blueprints for a nuclear bomb and a TBA high-voltage block “firing set” for a Russian-designed nuclear weapon. He held in his hands knowledge to create a perfect implosion that could trigger a nuclear chain reaction inside a small spherical core.

He Couldn’t Believe His Assignment

“It was one of the greatest engineering secrets in the world (in year 2000), providing solution to one of a handful of problems which separated countries like Russia and the United States from rogue countries like Iran that were desperate to join the nuclear club but had so far fallen short.”

He couldn’t believe his assignment. He was to sell or give the blueprints to Iranian representatives to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna who would then give them to the Iranians in Tehran. It appeared the CIA was going to let a former soviet scientist do the bidding of Langley to help Iran ”leapfrog the last remaining engineering hurdles blocking its path to a nuclear weapon.”

A Strange Hand-Off Locus

The CIA’s use of the IAEA, which is situated in strange blocks of buildings along the Danube River, was itself dubious and strange. This is the very international group that is charged with preventing rogue countries like North Korea and Iran from getting their hands on nukes. It is the venue to where American diplomats come to level charges against those countries, saying that their nuclear development wasn’t for peaceful, energy purposes, but to build nuclear bombs.

By hook or crook, this scientist defector was to get the blueprints to the Iranians. But the whole idea seemed so bazaar and preposterous that he couldn’t understand why America would do this.

Finally, he could stand it no longer and opened the envelope and discovered the blueprints were faulty. When he spoke to an agent of Iran, he told them the plans were defective, but that if Iran paid him enough he would correct the plans so that they would work. Of course, Iran bought this story, took the plans and we don’t know how much contact they had with the scientist in America after that. Probably none.

CIA’s Merlin Ploy Could Create a World Disaster

But now, with Iran on the precipice of developing a bomb, I believe that it was these blueprints that helped Tehran get over the hurdles and develop a bomb, scaring everyone in the West including Israel to the point that many are urging the United States to start World War III over this.

Is it any wonder why the CIA and Bill Clinton have for years been discredited? Wouldn’t the irony of ironies be for the Nobel Prize Committee to give that once prestigious award to this president who, like Barak Obama, has helped cause huge world problems but hasn’t done anything constructive? It could happen.

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