Did Clinton Give Nuke Plans To Iran?

Wow! Lots of stuff on Iran today. AJ Strata alerts me to the news Bill Clinton authorized the leaking of flawed nuke plans to Iran via the CIA during his administration. Some may be suprised that this is according to James Risen, the same Risen that leaked the NSA details.

Last night, radio talk show host and former US Justice Department official Mark Levin shocked many listeners when he reported that President Bill Clinton gave nuclear technology to the Iranians in a harebrained scheme.

He said that the transfer of classified data to Iran was personally approved by then-President Clinton and that the CIA deliberately gave Iranian physicists blueprints for part of a nuclear bomb that likely helped Tehran advance its nuclear weapons development program.

The CIA, using a double-agent Russian scientist, handed a blueprint for a nuclear bomb to Iran, according to a new book “State of War” by James Risen, the New York Times reporter, who exposed the Bush administration’s controversial NSA spying operation, claims the plans contained fatal flaws designed to derail Tehran’s nuclear drive.

Quite a dangerous game to be playing with this kind of information, and trusting a Russian double-agent scientist who could easily fix the flaws for the right price. As a matter of fact, according to WND that just might have happened.

But the Russian inserted a note in the package indicating he could help fix the flaws if he were paid the right price.

But the deliberate errors were so rudimentary they would have been easily fixed by sophisticated Russian nuclear scientists, the book said.

The operation, which took place during the Clinton administration in early 2000, was code named Operation Merlin and “may have been one of the most reckless operations in the modern history of the CIA,” according to Risen.

Absolutely reckless, and a huge risk without any obvious good side to it that would justify the risk factor involved.

It called for the unnamed scientist, a defector from the Soviet Union, to offer Iran the blueprint for a “firing set” — the intricate mechanism which triggers the chain reaction needed for a nuclear explosion.

…

Risen said the Clinton-approved plan ended up handing Tehran “one of the greatest engineering secrets in the world, providing the solution to one of a handful of problems that separated nuclear powers such as the United States and Russia from rogue countries such as Iran that were desperate to join the nuclear club but had so far fallen short.”

AJ Sums it up for us:

So much for having an obvious indicator of where the Iranians may be in their weapon design. Since this was done out of apparent stupidity it cannot be treason. But it is definitely one of the most dangerous ‘leaks’ I have ever seen. Making a pile of uranium go critical is the difference between a nuclear weapon and a pile of biohazardous material. We need to find what idiot decided to dangle the most closely held element of nuclear weapons, and what the ‘logic’ was in taking this risk.

Quite shocking news that definitely needs getting to the bottom of.

In other Iran news, Iran’s leader says Israel will be annihilated

The president of Iran again lashed out at Israel on Friday and said it was “heading toward annihilation,” just days after Tehran raised fears about its nuclear activities by saying it successfully enriched uranium for the first time.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called Israel a “permanent threat” to the Middle East that will “soon” be liberated. He also appeared to again question whether the Holocaust really happened.

“Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation,” Ahmadinejad said at the opening of a conference in support of the Palestinians. “The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm.”

Ahmadinejad provoked a world outcry in October when he said Israel should be “wiped off the map.”

On Friday, he repeated his previous line on the Holocaust, saying: “If such a disaster is true, why should the people of this region pay the price? Why does the Palestinian nation have to be suppressed and have its land occupied?”

The land of Palestine, he said, referring to the British mandated territory that includes all of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, “will be freed soon.”

He did not say how this would be achieved, but insisted to the audience of at least 900 people: “Believe that Palestine will be freed soon.”

“The existence of this (Israeli) regime is a permanent threat” to the Middle East, he added. “Its existence has harmed the dignity of Islamic nations.”

The Adventures of Chester have a huge Iran roundup.
Also see: Atlass Shrugs
California Conservative
Riehlworld coins a phrase I like…Iranomaniac.
In The Bullpen

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