Jerome Corsi: Riot in Iran

I have been receiving phone calls today from credible Iranians around the world who are saying that the mullahs and their hired thugs are beating and arresting activist dissidents who are outside Evin Prison protesting for the release of Akbar Ganji, who has been on a hunger strike for the last month.

Ganji has gained international attention, not only because of his hunger strike, but also for his series of reports investigating the murders of several prominent dissidents and intellectuals. The mullahs imprisoned Ganji to silence him. His writing was very effective in showing the black hand of the mullahs whom he directly accused of being willing to kill opponents so they could stay in power.

Yesterday, Massoumeh Shafii, Ganji's wife, visited him in prison. She said he has lost considerable weight and is getting progressively weaker by the day. He is subsisting on water and sugar cubes.

In 2001, Ganji was initially sentenced to 10 years in prison. The sentence was reduced to six years on appeal. Ganji was temporarily released in May. But then he gave a statement to Radio Farda attacking the mullahs. For this, he was brought back to prison. His wife is not sure he will ever be released if he continues to criticize the mullahs and their corrupt regime. Dissident voices are not readily tolerated these days in Iran.

What's going on? With the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president in Iran, the mullahs are moving in a more radical direction. And we are again hearing rumblings that the mullahs are about to resume uranium enrichment activities.

The bombing in London has already been traced to al-Qaida operatives. Looking at the modus operandi of the bombing attack, the resemblance to the attacks in Spain are obvious. Moreover, the style of the attack looks like a Hezbollah-style suicide-bombing mission. The only difference is that the trains in Spain and London are not watched by anti-terrorism units, as are the buses in Jerusalem. Had the subways in London been heavily watched, suicide bombers rather than backpacks with timers would have been required.

Terrorism worldwide will not stop as long as the mullahs remain in power. Regardless what the mullahs say, they have in place a clandestine nuclear weapons program. Regardless how many public-relations lies the mullahs publish, they are funding insurgents to cross their border and the Syrian border to disrupt the progress of democracy in Iraq. The mullahs still believe they can win the 1980's war they waged against Iraq and they are very appreciative that the United States has removed Saddam Hussein for them.

Iran funds terrorism worldwide. The master terrorists of the world work like cooperating mafias, not separate organizations. Read pages 240-241 of the 9-11 commission report. There you will find documented how Hezbollah and al-Qaida worked hand-in-hand to bring the 9-11 muscle terrorists into the United States through Iran.

Like it or not, the mullahs have declared war on the United States and on Israel. What will it take to wake us up to this reality?

What would happen if, say, several c-130's full of AK-47's, crates of ammunition and some shoulder fired anti-tank weapons accidentally airdropped all that stuff into certain areas of Iran?

Iranian counter-intelligence would likely have another field day (just like when they rolled up our operations before), and make sure that all of that equipment would be used in furtherance of the Iranian Republic.

There is no significant presence in Iran of people who are opposed to the government. Most eligible voters went and voted a few weeks ago, and chose the hardest of hard-liners.

Iran is daggone close to having a nuclear weapon. In my opinion, the only course of action has to be military action, and sooner rather than later.

Officials debate spying history in Iran

Many informants were killed or imprisoned in 1990s
Saturday, February 12, 2005 Posted: 7:47 PM EST (0047 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Dozens of CIA informants in Iran were killed or imprisoned in the early 1990s when the Iranian government discovered the U.S. intelligence operation, knowledgeable former U.S. officials told CNN on Saturday.
Iranian counter-intelligence agents uncovered the U.S. spy program, set up at the request of the Pentagon, the former officials said.
The events were first reported Saturday in the Los Angeles Times, which quoted unnamed former CIA officials.
Former Pentagon adviser Richard Perle, whose recent congressional testimony sparked interest in the failed operation, told CNN on Saturday that the network of informants referred to in the Times article was "essentially wiped out" by "carelessness" at the CIA, though he did not know the details or exact timing of the incident.
He said he had heard about it after he left government from people who had first-hand knowledge of the operation. Perle stepped down from the Defense Policy Board last year.
On February 2, Perle, a critic of the CIA, told the House Select Committee on Intelligence of "the terrible setback that we suffered in Iran a few years ago, when in a display of unbelievably careless management we put pressure on agents operating in Iran to report with greater frequency and didn't provide improved communications channels for them to do it."
"The Iranian intelligence authorities quickly saw the surge in traffic, and as I understand it, virtually our entire network in Iran was wiped out," he added, using it as an example to support his argument that, in intelligence matters, "we're in very bad shape in Iran."
The former U.S. officials who spoke to CNN on Saturday called Perle's testimony "exaggerated," "inaccurate" in some details and "timed to mislead."
The CIA had no comment when contacted by CNN. A Pentagon spokesman said he had no information. Pentagon requested spy network
One knowledgeable former U.S. official said that in the late 1980s, at the request of the Pentagon, then-CIA director William Casey set up a network of informants in Iran, designed to collect "low-level information on the situation on the ground."
The former official acknowledged the Iranians dismantled the spy network, but rebutted Perle's description of how the Iranians found out about the operation.
Another knowledgeable former U.S. official called the failure in Iran "not a particularly pretty story."
Both former U.S. officials said the United States has been successful in recent years in Iran and cited confirmation by the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, of U.S. intelligence on Iranian nuclear weapons-related sites.
The officials also said it is difficult to gather intelligence in Iran, which has an aggressive counter-intelligence program.
The former officials also noted that in the past Iran has executed accused spies, individuals the CIA said it had not heard of.
U.S. pressure on Iran
The Bush administration has been working to build international pressure on Iran to halt its nuclear program, arguing that the country is operating a clandestine nuclear weapons program and not limiting its activity to civilian purposes.
Iran has insisted that its nuclear program is designed for civilian energy production only.
Because U.S. intelligence on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction turned out to be wrong, some critics of the Bush administration have questioned whether U.S. intelligence on Iran can be trusted.
The U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has said it is being "proactive" on intelligence-gathering capabilities in Iran. (Full story)
The United States has said it would work with European countries in their efforts. Britain, France and Germany have been holding talks with Tehran in an attempt to have Iran's uranium-enrichment program permanently frozen.
"Iran with a nuclear weapon would be a very destabilizing force in the world," President Bush said Wednesday.
Perle said he has "grave reservations" about the quality of CIA intelligence in the Persian Gulf, citing what he called "one failure after another," including not predicting either the Iranian revolution or Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
CNN's David Ensor contributed to this report.

C.I.A. Operation in Iran Failed When Spies Were Exposed
By Greg Miller
The Los Angeles Times
Saturday 12 February 2005
PENTAGON SOURCE: Former Assistant Defense Secretary Richard N. Perle informed members of Congress of a CIA failure in Iran.
Washington - Dozens of CIA informants in Iran were executed or imprisoned in the late 1980s or early 1990s after their secret communications with the agency were uncovered by the government, according to former CIA officials who discussed the episode after aspects of it were disclosed during a recent congressional hearing.
As many as 50 Iranian citizens on the CIA's payroll were "rolled up" in the failed operation, said the former officials, who described the events as a major setback in spying on a regime that remains one of the most difficult targets for U.S. intelligence.
The disclosures underscore the stakes confronting the CIA and its informants as the United States is under pressure to produce better intelligence on Iran and especially its nuclear activities. The Bush administration has indicated that preventing Iran from obtaining an atomic weapon will be a priority of the president's second term.
Like Iraq before the U.S. invasion in 2003, Iran is regarded as a "denied" territory by U.S. intelligence, meaning that the CIA has no official station inside the country and is largely dependent on recruiting sources outside the Islamic Republic's borders.
Details of the setback were first outlined Feb. 2 by former Pentagon advisor Richard N. Perle in testimony before the House Intelligence Committee. During a hearing on security threats, Perle was critical of U.S. intelligence capabilities and cited the crackdown on American sources in Iran as an example of the failures that have beset U.S. espionage in the Mideast.
Perle referred to the "terrible setback that we suffered in Iran a few years ago when in a display of unbelievable, careless management we put pressure on agents operating in Iran to report with greater frequency and didn't provide improved communications."
When the CIA's sources stepped up their reporting, "the Iranian intelligence authorities quickly saw the surge in traffic and, as I understand it, virtually our entire network in Iran was wiped out."
Former CIA officials familiar with the matter confirmed portions of Perle's account and provided additional details. But they said the incident occurred in the late 1980s or early 1990s, not "a few years ago," as Perle suggested, and that it was not clear that the informants were exposed because of any pressure from the agency to file reports more frequently.
The CIA declined to comment, but a U.S. intelligence official rejected Perle's criticism of the agency's record in the Mideast as ill-informed and outdated.
"Intelligence methods evolve constantly," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Trying to use these things from the past to make assertions about the present is in this case ill-advised."
In a phone interview, Perle acknowledged that he had "a poor sense of time" concerning the events he described and was uncertain about details.
"I don't recall the details, or the mechanism by which the [Iranian agents] were communicating," Perle said. "What I was told was that our entire network was destroyed" and that as many as 40 of the informants were executed.
According to a former CIA official who served in the Mideast at the time, the Iranian informants were part of a network of spies that was run by CIA officers based at the agency's station in Frankfurt, Germany.
The Iranian spies communicated with the agency "via secret writing," the former official said, referring to messages printed in invisible ink on the backs of letters that were mailed out of the country. The spies received messages in the same fashion from a CIA officer in Frankfurt.
It is not clear what aroused the Iranian government's suspicion, "but all of the letters went to a handful of addresses in Germany," the former CIA official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"Once they had one agent and they recovered the letters that had come in to him and found out where he was sending his letters out, they quickly identified others who fit that profile," the former official said.
As many as 50 spies were exposed. They included members of Iran's military and were providing information on an array of activities, the former official said.
Iran was a major intelligence priority for the United States at the time. During the 1980s, the U.S. was supporting Iraq in its war against Iran. The regime in Tehran, the capital, had also launched its clandestine nuclear program by then, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog group.
The CIA's Iran operation in Frankfurt was disbanded in the mid-1990s, and portions of it were relocated to Los Angeles, where the CIA still seeks to capitalize on Southern California's large Iranian population by cultivating sources who travel to the country or have relatives there.
Although the spies in Iran were using an old form of secret communication, even high-technology systems have proved vulnerable. During the 2003 war in Iraq, the CIA received regular reports from 87 informants whom it had equipped with satellite telephones, according to an account of the operation in journalist Bob Woodward's recent book, "Plan of Attack."
Calls from sources close to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein provided the intelligence that led to the first strike of the war, when the United States launched missiles at the Dora Farm compound in Baghdad because of reports that Hussein and his sons were staying the night there. Weeks later, it became clear that Hussein and his sons had survived the strike, and the still-standing Iraqi government banned the use of satellite phones.
Perle, who was an assistant Defense secretary in the Reagan administration and was a Pentagon advisor who advocated the invasion of Iraq, is a longtime critic of the CIA. He said he mentioned the Iranian operation to highlight how the agency had struggled in the region.
"I think we're in very bad shape in Iran," Perle said during his testimony.
He also complained that CIA leaders had not been held accountable and noted that the official who had been in charge of the exposed Iran operation was later promoted.
Perle declined to name the individual, but other sources said it was Stephen Richter, who was appointed head of the agency's Near East division in 1994. He has since retired and could not be reached for comment.
Several senior CIA officials who served under George J. Tenet, who stepped down as the agency's director last year, said they were unaware of the matter. One reason could be the length of time that has elapsed since the intelligence breakdown in Iran.
In a recent unclassified report, the CIA says it believes Iran is "vigorously" pursuing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and that its civilian nuclear development program is a cover for efforts to build a bomb. Iran has repeatedly denied the accusation.
Such assessments also are being greeted with some skepticism abroad and in the United States, largely because the CIA's prewar estimates of Iraqi stockpiles of banned weapons have been proved wrong.
Iran's discovery of CIA informants was reminiscent of the exposure of U.S. agents in Iraq a decade ago. In Iraq, hundreds of U.S. informants and sympathizers are believed to have been executed by Hussein, many of them after a CIA-backed coup plan unraveled in the mid-'90s.
The Senate Intelligence Committee recently disclosed that it was launching a "preemptive" review of assessments on Iran to avoid any repetition of the intelligence failures in Iraq.
Inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency have exposed a long-hidden Iranian program to produce fissile material that could be used for nuclear weapons. But IAEA officials believe that Tehran has frozen the program. Iran maintains that its nuclear activities are designed to produce energy, not an arsenal.

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