Spy Who Turned Tide With Libya Is Brought Back (from self-imposed exile)To Target Teheran

Telegraph.co.uk ^ | Filed: 18/06/2006 | Toby Harnden in Washington

[fight_truth_decay]

The American spy who persuaded Libya to renounce its weapons of mass destruction is to return to the Central Intelligence Agency, where he will direct an aggressive drive to recruit informants inside Iran to aid possible negotiations over Teheran's nuclear capability.

Stephen Kappes, a former United States Marines officer who resigned from the CIA after a clash with its then director, Porter Goss, has been brought back from self-imposed exile in London by George W Bush.

Iran will be top of his agenda. "He's a remarkable guy, a talented leader and among the finest officers of his generation," said Gary Berntsen, the CIA's key commander during the invasion of Afghanistan, who has worked for Mr Kappes in the Middle East. "He knows the target [Iran] intimately."

The return to CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia, of Mr Kappes, 54, has boosted flagging morale at the spy agency. A former CIA station chief in Moscow, he led successful efforts to penetrate the network of A Q Khan, the rogue Pakistani scientist, who supplied Iran and Libya with nuclear know-how.

He will be deputy to Gen Michael Hayden, who took over from Mr Goss and characterised his predecessor's tenure as "amateur hour". Mr Kappes is the first career undercover operative to ascend to this level for more than 30 years.

The CIA's first priority is to gather intelligence from inside Iran about the theocratic regime's nuclear capabilities and intentions, and the locations of its secret weapons sites. Such information would be crucial in the event of direct talks - or in launching military strikes if negotiations collapsed.

Mr Kappes is a Farsi and Russian speaker who, while stationed in Frankfurt in the late 1980s, was in charge of collecting information about Ayatollah Khomeini's regime and debriefing Iranian exiles.

Mr Kappes is understood to have told friends months ago that he favoured direct engagement with Iran, even suggesting that there might be a case for restoring diplomatic relations with the country and reopening the American embassy in Teheran, closed since the 1979 hostage crisis.

Earlier this month, the Bush administration made an about-face by proposing direct talks on the nuclear issue if Teheran suspended uranium enrichment. Mr Kappes would be a likely candidate to lead any such negotiations.

Robert Baer, a former CIA agent handler in the Middle East, said: "The CIA has a terrible track record in Iran. In the late 1980s, they lost all their human resources [informants] after the Iranians got into the mail." More than 30 CIA informants were arrested when the Iranians intercepted and deciphered CIA communications in 1989.

In October 2003, Mr Kappes led a 15-strong American and British team that went into Libya to test an overture by President Muammar Gaddafi, suggesting that he might be willing to give up his weapons of mass destruction. The information gathered by Mr Kappes helped to persuade the Libyans that the West had clear evidence of the military intent of their nuclear programme.

Mr Baer, author of Blow The House Down, a novel about 9/11, said that a similar outcome would be difficult to achieve with Teheran while America had poor intelligence-gathering capability in Iran. "We have to open up a negotiating channel to Iran, if nothing else to figure out what they're thinking."

But Mr Berntsen said he believed that negotiations were unlikely to succeed and military action against Iranian nuclear sites would have to be taken.

[strategofr]

"He'll need to continue the housecleaning begun by Goss."

More housecleaning is certainly needed, but on balance I doubt it will occur. First, for all the pro forma fuss made about him, the approval ended up being pretty smooth, without a strong Democratic opposition. Not a good sign, in my opinion.

Second, if the rumor you picked up that Bush stabbed Goss in the back is true, that means, in my view, Bush's impetus to clean house in the CIA was over. Even aside from that, I am doubting that Bush has this type of energy at this point in his administration. He seems to be in more of a rear guard battle.

As to the rest of your answer, thanks for your perspectives.

[txhurl]

bttt

[RCNOVA]

In contrast, what you and Baer want the world to believe is that our spy network inside Iran was given those unwise data dump orders by the FORMER DIRECTOR of CIA, George HW Bush (as President in 1989)!

You keep harping on "data dumps" as the cause of a wrap up. A simple understanding of how agents are managed and the kinds of communications they use would show the absurdity of your argument. Agents use communications systems which don't reveal the source of the communications. Further, the communications are encrypted or in some form that makes reading the content virtually impossible to do. That is fundamental and true of every half decent intelligence service in the world. A huge data dump might allow an intelligence service to know there is something big going on, but it would not reveal the source or the nature of the communications. Furthermore, if every agent was given the same kind of communications system as every other, or most other agents in a specific country it would be counter to the most basic of rules for handling agents. You have not specified how a big data dump revealed those agents. How were the communications decrypted and how did those communications point to specific agents? It would not take a data dump to locate any agent if the opposition was able to read the traffic or be led to the source of the clandestine message. A single message, which could easily be identified as spy traffic would be all it would take. Many countries can identify spy traffic, the difficult if not impossible task is to identify the source. But you still haven't made clear how a data dump was able to reveal the source of the traffic. Furthermore, how does one gauge what is the limit of traffic an agent can send before he is uncovered. Is it 5, 10, 15? How does one possibly know when too much is being sent?

You also stated in an earlier posting that our "sleeper cells" in Iran were uncovered. No professional intelligence service since WWII has used sleeper cells. They were found by the Russians to be of little value when they sent what were called "illegals" into the US. Many of them became so culturized to the US they simply ignored wake up calls. Sleeper cells are complicated to manage since their communications systems become outdated rather quickly. Furthermore, a good agent is constantly being vetted for loyalty during most of his career as a spy. You can't do that with a sleeper cell, so when the wake up call is given they are so untrustworthy as to be more of a danger than help. You make a lot of claims about how the Iranians were wrapped up but it is clear you lack even the most basic understanding of agent operations, so it weakens your entire argument. I don't blame GWB for what happened in 1989 since it hardly reasonable to expect the president to micro-manage agent operations. The country was not well served by the low quality of agent operations in Iran. Bush Senior used the CIA well and understood their value and limitations since he had previously served as the DCI. Clinton not only did not understand the importance of intelligence, he virtually decimated the CIA during most of his tenure through the placing of an incompetent (Deutch) in charge. It wasn't until terrorists struck our Embassies in Iraq that he realized his lack of intelligence was due to his badly weakened CIA. Late in his tenure a hiring blitz was initiated but it was too little too late. We are still paying the price. You are right that the Clinton administration was surprised by the Indian nuclear tests, but if he did request more data from Iranian assets (highly doubtful) it would only have spiked the reporting from agents who had any information on Indian nuclear efforts. How many of those agents do you suppose had that kind of access? I doubt it was more than two or three. Your argument is certainly interesting, but it falls completely apart when you analyze the details. If you can explain how a big data dump revealed the identity of agents in Iran, you ought to let everyone know.

[RCNOVA]

You should read more and talk less. All of the Iranian letters went to the same maildrop in Frankfurt

Those are what are known as accomodation addresses. The data dumps you are referring to would have been the letters being sent out by the agents to their accomodation addresses. Since the agents would not have put their return addresses on the letters there is no way that those letters, even in great volume, would have led the Iranians to the source. On the other hand, a suspect letter sent to an Agent could. However, you claim it was the data dump that caused the compromise. You don't need too many secret messages to the agent to tell him to send you everything he knows on Indian nuclear programs. But, let's assume it was the letters to the agents that wrapped them up. How is it Clinton's fault the CIA was so stupid they were sending letters to Iranian agents from one single location? That is so beyond stupid it is mind boggling.

[Southack]

"If you can explain how a big data dump revealed the identity of agents in Iran, you ought to let everyone know."

The Iranians noticed a sudden, enormous amount of handwritten mail coming out of the same post office heading to the same Frankfurt building (honestly, this was probably something as simple as a single mail-sorter becoming suspicious). They proceded to intercept and analyze this mail. They discovered invisible ink therein.

They posted counter-intel in this post office to look 24/7 for anyone dropping off a letter to that address (apparently there isn't a lot of mail from Tehran to Frankfurt, anyway).

Then they followed that courier. Game over.

[Southack]

" How is it Clinton's fault the CIA was so stupid they were sending letters to Iranian agents from one single location? That is so beyond stupid it is mind boggling."

The 3 surprise nuclear blasts in India in May of 1998 sent the Clinton Administration into a mad scramble.

Clintonistas were afraid that Pakistan would likewise test next...and then it dawned upon them that Iran might surprise them just as did India.

This led to a Presidential demand for all information, immediately, (report "everything that they know whether they think it is important or not") from all Iranian assets regardless of the personal risk to them.

The surge in traffic in response to this demand aroused Iranian suspicions. This led to the downfall of our entire Iranian network.

[RCNOVA]

The Iranians noticed a sudden, enormous amount of handwritten mail coming out of the same post office heading to the same Frankfurt building (honestly, this was probably something as simple as a single mail-sorter becoming suspicious). They proceded to intercept and analyze this mail. They discovered invisible ink therein.

You are close. With a lot of wounded Iran/Iraq war veterans needing jobs they could have placed them in positions to sort through all the mail coming out of Iran. It's simple minded but a monumental effort, but could easily have been done. However, the effort to find the invisible ink would have been virtually impossible since the only way to find it is through destructive methods and if you pick the wrong chemicals (highly likely) you find nothing. Furthermore you would alert something was up because that mail would go undelivered. But more importantly, those letters would have been mailed in mail boxes all over the city, not in a post office. What the Iranians could have done was kept a data base of all mail to specific address and when it started. You then compare it to the list of people with access and their recent travels overseas. If you are the Iranian government you can bring in a suspect, torture him till he confesses or you are convinced he is not a suspect. This does not take a surge in mail, just a single letter.

They posted counter-intel in this post office to look 24/7 for anyone dropping off a letter to that address (apparently there isn't a lot of mail from Tehran to Frankfurt, anyway).

If an agent was told to post his letters at a post office he was using incredibly poor tradecraft. The instant an agent presents a letter to frankfurt to a postal worker in Iran he has compromised himself dramatically. It wouldn't take but one incident to compromise him. It wouldn't require the data dump you claim. There is in fact, a huge amount of mail going from Iran to Germany, which is probably why it was selected.

Then they followed that courier. Game over.

Return secret writing to an agent is for emergency contact only. There had to be other means of communicating with the agent. If not, whoever dreamed up thise scenario is a fool. Not sure what courier you are referring to anyway. Agents, except in very rare circumstances do not use couriers. It's an extremely weak link in the chain. Couriers are good in spy movies or Ludlum novels but are almost never used in real life, except by terrorists who have no alternative.

If you want to blame Clinton for the failures of the CIA I am all with you. But, you have made a huge leap with your view that the CIA made up the date 1989 to cast the blame on Bush senior and not on Clinton. I've never heard that theory expounded and it is so obscure not even the press picked it up. In your efforts to find Clintonistas in the CIA you have overlooked the incredible success they had in late 2001 under Tenet and Coffer Black to recontact all the old Afghan members of the Northern Alliance and put together a strategy that liberated Aghanistan from the Taliban. It was the old warhorses who pulled this off using their contacts and knowledge of the region even after the US military said it would take months to mount an efffective campaign. The disputes in the CIA were not over Clinton versus Bush it was over the direction the Agency should take in light of the new paradigm of fighting terrorism versus the old way of fighting the cold war.

But bottom line, the iranian agents were wrapped up in 1989/90 because of very poor tradecraft on the part of the CIA officers running the program. No one did or can blame Bush senior for that since he had no reason to be involved at that level. The CIA did not deny Perle's main claim of what happened, just corrected the time line. You are the only person you can point to that sees something nefarious in that. As to the data dump....most agents in Iran who had access to Iranian nuclear information would have been reporting that information on a regular basis. Asking them to provide more information would have been pointless since nuclear issues in Iran would have been a Tier one target anyway and would not have required any sudden prodding to get them to provide more. Every analyst in the CIA and DOD would have been constantly asking for as much information as possible. Your understanding of agent operatons and communications is simplistic and lacking in any fundamental understanding of tradecraft or agent operations.

[Southack]

You're just going to push "1989" as long as you're here, aren't you?

As if the Iranian government wouldn't have used such a roundup back then, had it really happened, to stab just-leaving President Reagan in the back as well as mock former CIA Director and acting President (in 1989) GHW Bush. It would have been a two-fer.

Oh yeah, the mad mullahs sat on that propaganda opportunity out of good will. ...rolls eyes...

What rubbish. The round up was 1998 (India and Pakistan's nuclear tests), not 1989, and the mad mullahs didn't sit on the story, they used it as leverage to send the U.S. Air Force on bombing runs into Serbia the next year.

[RCNOVA]

Ok, I guess you are right, the CIA made up the 1989 date to blame Bush Sr. Unfortunately, you are the only one who has had the common sense to see the "reality." The CIA's efforts to blame Bush Sr escaped everyone's notice except you. The fact that you know nothing about spy techniques or tradecraft, or the fact that secret writing as a spy tool hasn't been used since the mid to early 90's isn't really something we should bring up if it conflicts with your tin foil hat conspiracy.

But just to throw a small monkey wrench in your conspiracy I am attaching a link to an article in a 1989 TIME magazine in which the Iranians claimed to have captured several very important american spies in Iran. This is 1989 mind you. I know it doesn't fit your conspiracy, so you'll figure out somehow that either Time magazine was making it up, or the "mad Mullahs" were blowing smoke. Would you care to explain the amazing coincidence?

http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,957585,00.html

[knews_hound]

Not to pee in your Cheerios or anything, but it is considered to be very poor form to come into this forum and on your first day, proceed to get into a pissing contest with one of the most venerated members of the site.

Your points may or may not have merit, but frankly you do yourself a disservice by this line you are taking.

Many of us know Southhack, you are a stranger.

Whom do you think we are paying attention to?

The guy thats been here for a coons age or the guy who signed up today and started a pissing contest?

Do what you will but you are in an unenviable position.

Just my 2 cents.

Cheers,

knewshound

[RCNOVA]

I have been browsing FR for a long time before I decided to post. I guess your point is one should accept what is clearly inaccurate simply because someone has been posting for longer than someone else. I'm not sure I would label it a pissing contest, simply a disagreement on some fundamental facts. He has made some fairly wild claims and he can't back them up. If he is venerated I am sure he can defend himself, and he has certainly done so. It doesn't mean anyone has to agree with him. If FR if is about time in service making one automatically right, that is a shame. As for being in an unenviable position....I didn't come here to be envied or necessarily liked. It's forum for the exchange of ideas among conservatives, and I think I have stayed within those bounds. Except for his claim about the Iran spy wrap up happening in 1989 vice 1991, I agree with everything else he says. But, thanks for the comments.

[knews_hound]

Do what you must, I obviously cannot know what you may or may not have done on the site in the past, I only know what that I see.

What I see looks like a newbie going after a Veteran.

Perhaps you know what you are talking about, perhaps not.

Regardless, your approach is not making a lot of converts.

Do what you must however.

I was only suggesting that you are doing yourself a disservice in this case.

Welcome to FR

Cheers,

knewshound

[Southack]

"But just to throw a small monkey wrench in your conspiracy I am attaching a link to an article in a 1989 TIME magazine in which the Iranians claimed to have captured several very important american spies in Iran. This is 1989 mind you. I know it doesn't fit your conspiracy, so you'll figure out somehow that either Time magazine was making it up, or the "mad Mullahs" were blowing smoke. Would you care to explain the amazing coincidence?"

There is no "conspiracy" and your Time article supports my point that if the mad mullahs had rolled up the entire U.S. spy network that they would not have sat on the story...as your article notes that they immediately broadcast the capture of our moles in their Naval operations. Such small things happen.

Your claims that I'm not substantiating my argument are a bit out of line. You've only posted a single link to support your own "story," whereas I've posted several already in this thread above.

What I've done is to show motive: the Clinton Administration was scrambling madly in 1998 due to India's 3 surprise nuclear tests...they did not want Pakistan to test, and they did not want to be further surprised by an Iranian test. Hence, the Clinton Administration had the **motive** to do something stupid.

Even you have agreed that our agents were rolled up in Iran due to frighteningly awful fieldcraft. Where you differ is that you hold the fieldcraft solely responsible, whereas I point out the surge in data traffic and the single physical address (multiple PO Boxes, one building) that combined to bring down our network in Iran.

To support the above, I've posted links above in this very thread with **CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY** and published interviews to that effect.

I've further pointed out the global events of the day that **precisely** align with my points. India tested nukes. Pakistan tested nukes. It was documented that the Clinton Administration went into a diplomatic mad scramble. Iran was feared to be working on a nuke. South Africa had already surprised the world by testing a nuke (1979), etc.

And then there are the subsequent events. After the India/Pakistan nukes, and after our Iranian spy network was rolled up in 1998 (not 1989 as you keep claiming), the U.S. suddenly began "overlooking" the Iranian mujahedeen illegally inside Kosovo fighting against the Serbs.

Why? What leverage did Iran possess to swing U.S. foreign policy from declaring the KLA as a terrorist group in 1998 to physically supporting the KLA with U.S. Air Force bombs by April of 1999?!

And the asnwer is simple: the mad mullahs had a politically-explosive story that they were willing to sit on...that of rolling up our network in 1998.

[RCNOVA]

But you've built your theory simply on the basis that the CIA wanted to defend Clinton so they lied about the dates, thus casting the blame on Bush. You have no idea if in fact there was a request of Iranian agents to send more data, you presume that based on nuclear tests in India. It's kind of a huge leap on which to base a theory. Even if he had asked for more information from Iranian assets it would only have required more info from those assets who had access to Iranian nuclear data and not all of them. I find it incredibly difficult to believe that agents with access to Tier one information would be given antiquated communication system such as secret writing. When the president asks for more information on a subject he generally raises it with the DCI or more likely the officer who delivers the Presidential Daily Brief (Clinton was the first president to practically forego that daily briefing). The word then gets passed down to the analysts specializing in Iranian nuclear activity. They go through all their information and provide whatever updated information they can. Much of it would come from overhead, open source, equipment purchasing data and agents. Clearly, in tandem with that goes word to whatever Station supports that effort to contact agents and ask specific questions about nuclear tests being planned. In this case the word would go to the base in Frankfurt which handled Iran. They would then communicate with their agents to answer very specific questions about nuclear activity in Iran. Those agents would, in this case, write a secret message with everything they knew and had not already provided in previous messages. Why they would not have already provided such critical information is a question worth considering. But, why would it have required a data dump? These agents should have been communicating on a regular basis and providing answers to specific tasking on an ongoing basis. A data dump would not have been required.

As to the Iranians sitting on a propaganda bonanza by not divulging the breakup of the spy network... the Iranians have a first class intel service. Intel services never give out information on their counter-espionage activities lest it warn agents they are closing in. This investigation by them probably went on for years in hopes of catching other agents making the same tradecraft mistakes as the ones they wrapped up. So, not talking about it in broad terms would have been quite logical. Mentioning a few naval officers could even have been a ruse to make non naval officer agents feel safe and continue communicating with their case officers.

If you want to argue that Clinton used every government agency to his own political advantage regardless of what it did to our national security, I think you are right on the mark. 9/11 would never have happened had he not prevented people like Coffer Black and other committed operations officers from doing their job. Clinton was risk averse to the point of putting the country in grave danger, time and time again.

The problem I have with your argument is that you claim the CIA lied about the dates of the wrap up in order to protect Clinton. If that was their intent, it certainly had no impact whatsoever. I've never heard anyone blame Bush sr for the debacle, nor is it logical to blame the president because a section of the CIA did a lousy job. Mosty likely there were so many Iranians offering to spy for us (for money and patriotism) that the case officers were overwhelmed and got sloppy, duplicating MOs in their rush to give them communications packages before they had to return to Iran. But, that is pure speculation.

Accomodation addresses generally are not PO Boxes and there has been no evidence provided by anyone that it was PO boxes which were used. I think you have made that assumption. If you have data that shows PO Boxes were used, please provide it. A letter from an agent never has a return address on it for obvious reasons and it is why an agent would drop his letter in a mail box and not take it to a post office box. Were he asked for ID to match the return address he would be finished. So figuring out that a lot of letters are going to a specific region in Frankfurt would certainly alert a local service, but there is no reason it would lead them to the writers of the letters. It's bad tradecraft, but not mortal. More likely they would take that information, put a lot of their own people watching a lot of mailboxes and try to link frankfurt mail to individuals. It would take an extraordinary amount of time and resources but they had that kind of time. In any case, it would take years to wrap up a few agents. There is no question that the over use of frankfurt mail drops by all the agents played a part in the wrap up, but it doesn't follow that a surge in activity would either follow Clintons request for more info, or that the surge would make it significantly easier for them to wrap up most or all of the network. The likely scenario is they caught one and got the entire MO from him. They took that MO, matched it against the travel and activities of other similarly placed Iranians and through a process of eliminiation, torture, and other means they began wrapping them up.

[Southack]

"But you've built your theory simply on the basis that the CIA wanted to defend Clinton so they lied about the dates, thus casting the blame on Bush."

Nope. That's a leap of logic that you've jumped all on your own.

The switch in dates is to protect Clinton, not blame the first President Bush.

[Southack]

"You have no idea if in fact there was a request of Iranian agents to send more data, you presume that based on nuclear tests in India. It's kind of a huge leap on which to base a theory."

Nope. In the public domain source links that I posted to this very thread, anonymous CIA sources specifically blame the use of a "handful of addresses" as well as allude to a surge in traffic from an Executive request...as bringing down our Iranian spy network.

[Southack]

"When the president asks for more information on a subject he generally raises it with the DCI or more likely the officer who delivers the Presidential Daily Brief (Clinton was the first president to practically forego that daily briefing). The word then gets passed down to the analysts specializing in Iranian nuclear activity. They go through all their information and provide whatever updated information they can. Much of it would come from overhead, open source, equipment purchasing data and agents. Clearly, in tandem with that goes word to whatever Station supports that effort to contact agents and ask specific questions about nuclear tests being planned. In this case the word would go to the base in Frankfurt which handled Iran. They would then communicate with their agents to answer very specific questions about nuclear activity in Iran. Those agents would, in this case, write a secret message with everything they knew and had not already provided in previous messages. Why they would not have already provided such critical information is a question worth considering. But, why would it have required a data dump?"

The processes that you identify above require time. The Clinton Administration was panicked; they rushed; secure processes were not followed.

[Southack]

"The problem I have with your argument is that you claim the CIA lied about the dates of the wrap up in order to protect Clinton. If that was their intent, it certainly had no impact whatsoever. I've never heard anyone blame Bush sr for the debacle, nor is it logical to blame the president because a section of the CIA did a lousy job. Mosty likely there were so many Iranians offering to spy for us (for money and patriotism) that the case officers were overwhelmed and got sloppy, duplicating MOs in their rush to give them communications packages before they had to return to Iran. But, that is pure speculation."

There's no need to speculate. There was only one case officer in Frankfurt in 1998.

[Southack]

"So figuring out that a lot of letters are going to a specific region in Frankfurt would certainly alert a local service, but there is no reason it would lead them to the writers of the letters. It's bad tradecraft, but not mortal. More likely they would take that information, put a lot of their own people watching a lot of mailboxes and try to link frankfurt mail to individuals. It would take an extraordinary amount of time and resources but they had that kind of time. In any case, it would take years to wrap up a few agents. There is no question that the over use of frankfurt mail drops by all the agents played a part in the wrap up, but it doesn't follow that a surge in activity would either follow Clintons request for more info, or that the surge would make it significantly easier for them to wrap up most or all of the network."

Rubbish. You're Iran. You've got one bored mail sorter at one post office. You're dutifully sorting mail into stacks.

You do this every day. You can do it in your sleep.

Then one day you sort a stack of letters all going to the same building in Frankfurt. Suddenly, you aren't bored any longer. Something isn't right.

You call your buddy in Intel. He thinks something isn't right, either. Intel takes over. Agents are posted 24/7 at numerous mail drop locations and post offices. These agents are looking for anything going to the known address in Frankfurt...as well as who dropped off said letter.

That courier is followed. Game Over.

...All because a data dump caused a surge in letters to one address that struck one mail sorter wrong.

[eureka!]

Re#12 Belatedly, nice job Southack. But for the internet (thanks Al!) and talk radio, the left would successfully rewrite the 'Toon's failures. That is why the Cleaning Lady, Richard Clarke etc. blah blah all are so vocal, and critically so. May karma exist and the truth out....