Friday, July 16, 2010

A trail of clues .... but few answers


By Gareth Porter
Asia Times

"First, Iranian scientist Shahram Amiri claimed he had been kidnapped and taken to the United States, then he said he was living there of his own accord. Now he has returned to Iran the theories are really flying, with one of several confusing signals from US intelligence indicating that it had come to realize that Amiri may have been acting on Iranian government orders to defect temporarily....

Even before Amiri posted yet another video portraying himself as a kidnap victim on June 30, US intelligence officials apparently suspected they had been duped by him and retaliated by leaking the story that Amiri had been a long-term CIA intelligence asset in Iran.

The CIA's eagerness to claim an intelligence coup on Iran's nuclear program appears to have set the agency up for the Amiri defection scheme. They viewed his affiliation with Malek-e-Ashtar Industrial University, which has connections to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, as evidence that he must be linked to the assumed Iranian plans for a "nuclear weapons capability". "

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