Define irony

Efter dagens rapporter om att Iran försöker återuppta sitt påstådda kärnvapenprogram, så är det extra kul att läsa dagens boktips från Los Angeles Times, nämligen "State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration" av New York Times reporten James Risen, en av journalisterna som släppte historien om hur amerikanska myndigheter spionerar på sina medborgare:

In a clumsy effort to sabotage Iran's nuclear program, the CIA in 2004 intentionally handed Tehran some top-secret bomb designs laced with a hidden flaw that U.S. officials hoped would doom any weapon made from them, according to a new book about the U.S. intelligence agency.

But the Iranians were tipped to the scheme by the Russian defector hired by the CIA to deliver the plans and may have gleaned scientific information useful for designing a bomb.

U.S. officials have long maintained that Iran's rulers want to develop nuclear weapons, but Tehran has insisted that it seeks to develop only a civilian nuclear energy program. Whatever the case, the CIA was desperate to counter what it believed was a clandestine nuclear program, and turned to a Russian defector who had once been a nuclear scientist in the former Soviet republics, according to the book.

[This] may have been one of the most reckless operations in the modern history of the CIA, one that may have helped put nuclear weapons in the hands of a charter member of what President George W. Bush has called the axis of evil.

Låt mig förstå saken rätt. Man påstår att iranierna utvecklar kärnvapen men har inga bevis för det, och då passar man på att ge dem ritningarna på kärnvapen så att de kan tillverka dem? Fantastiskt! Givetvis gör amerikanska myndigheter sitt bästa för att förneka att det aldrig ägt rum. Inte nog med det, det blir värre:

According to the book, the CIA effort to sabotage Iran's nuclear effort came on the heels of another massive intelligence failure, in which a CIA officer mistakenly sent an Iranian agent a trove of information that could help identify nearly every one of the spy agency's undercover operatives in Iran.

The Iranian was a double agent who turned over the data to Iranian authorities. They used it to dismantle the CIA's spy network inside the country and arrest or possibly kill an unknown number of U.S. agents, the book says.

Än en gång får vi indikationer på att amerikansk underrättelsetjänst är befolkad av Kling och Klang. För att parafrasera Groucho Marx: American intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
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Andra bloggar om: usa, iran, massförstörelsevapen, wmd, kärnvapen, cia