The Hindu : International : U-turn “may be due to a defector”

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International

U-turn “may be due to a defector”

Ewen MacAskill

PHOTO: AP

STAND VINDICATED: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad greets his supporters in Ilam province, western Iran, on Wednesday. Mr. Ahmadinejad said a new U.S. intelligence report that Iran halted its atomic weapons programme in 2003 was a "declaration of victory" against Washington, which had been accusing Tehran of actively pursuing nuclear weapons.

Washington: The U-turn on Iran by U.S. spy agencies, the biggest since the Iraq debacle five years ago, is the result of “physical” intelligence, probably a defector, according to various diplomatic and security sources in Washington.

One of the main figures in the frame is General Ali-Reza Asgari, a former Deputy Defence Minister and Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander.

General Asgari apparently disappeared in Turkey over the past 12 months, having either defected or been kidnapped, and may be in U.S. hands.

Other senior intelligence officials, quoted in the New York Times, argue that the turnaround may not have been the result of a single defector but pointed to an analysis of video footage of a tour by foreign journalists of Iran’s nuclear facility at Natanz in 2005. During his press conference on Tuesday, U.S. President George W. Bush said he first heard about the national intelligence estimate report in August, when Mike McConnell, Director of National Intelligence since February, approached him. But he added that he had only had confirmation by Mr. McConnell last week.

The President admitted that the U.S. intelligence-gathering in Iran had been difficult since its 1979 revolution.

Work on the latest NIE report on Iran has been under way for more than a year. The NIE is the consensus view of the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies.

Most of the 16 agencies are components of Cabinet departments with other roles, with the exception of the CIA. The rest include three major intelligence agencies in the Department of Defence — the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.

There is also the Defence Intelligence Agency, the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the FBI, the intelligence organisations of the four military services — Air Force, Army, Navy, and marines — the Department of Homeland Security, the Coast Guard, the Energy Department, the Department of the Treasury and the Drug Enforcement Agency.

The NIE is supposedly independent but the White House retains control of whether the estimate will be published. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2007