Roger L. Simon: Seymour, a (second) Introduction

That master of the anonymous source Seymour Hersh (He loves phrases like "someone familiar with the discussion" and a
"government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon civilian leadership" Does no one talk on the record to this man on the record?) is carrying water for the CIA again. Apparently, according to Seymour, the CIA spooks are skeptical of Israeli intelligence reports of Iranian nuclear advances. Never mind that Israeli intell has a rather impressive track record compared to the Langley bureaucracy. (It was the Israelis who informed the Americans of Kruschev's famous speech denouncing Stalin, which constituted a huge change for the Soviet Union. Of course, that was years ago). And never mind that the CIA is notoriously short on HUMINT (human sources), something the Israelis are rather better at. And also never mind that we are talking about a sixty year old (nuclear) technology, the Langley crew still thinks the Iranians are far from nuclear weapons. (Racist? Nah.)

Still, Hersh, for all his water-carrying, gives a decent tour d'horizon of the various views of "What to do about Iran" in his article. Worth a read in this instance.

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Never mind that Israeli intell has a rather impressive track record compared to the Langley bureaucracy.

"Never mind"? Hell, I think that's central; CIA's first dedication, in all cases, is the CIA. If they admitted Mossad was getting better intelligence on 1/10th the budget, they might have to explain why.

Do I really need to read it Roger. Do not some lose there credibility after a while. This man evidently does not like the country he lives in, and has done much to cripple it. He prefers a country he has concocted in his mind. My suggestion for him is to move to a country more to his liking.

I see nothing positive he has contributed for the continuation of this one. And, I, personally, do not trust anything the CIA might proffer. Their credibility is zero for me. Apologies for the negativity, but I sometimes think we spend too much time giving credence to the unnecessary, just for the sake of balance.

In this case, I think the article is worth reading, even given the despicable character of the author.

One subject that never gets mentioned in all of this "Iranian Nuclear Program" controversy is the probability that the fissile materials program is actually in North Korea, just as Saddam's post 1991 program was in Libya.

North Korea is producing weapons-grade plutonium. A few shoe boxes of that, shipped to Iran, would be enough to give Iran the raw material - the weapon "pits."

The whole enrichment program may be maskirovka or a parallel track. Note also that Iran just made announcements about firing up a heavy water "research reactor." Removing the double-talk, this means starting up their own production of plutonium, a natural thing to do if they expect to be able to build Pu-based nukes but are currently dependent on an unstable North Korea.

The report on the kinetic testing supports the plutornium idea. It is very easy to make a U-235 nuke without any testing or even much design. It is literally within the capability of a decent engineer with access to the material and a machine shop.

It is so simple that in 1945, we dropped one of these on Japan without ever testing the design at all, long before sophisticated computer models and all the advances since. Admittedly, it is hard to put one of these in a warhead, but a gun design was put into an artillery shell 50 years ago, and it could make a really big bang.

On the other hand, a Pu nuke requires a very sophisticated trigger - it requires high explosives to be triggered very precisely with hard-to-build electronics and with high geometric precision of the entire device, in order to avoid a fizzle. I would not be at all surprised if the recent Korean test was in fact a Pu nuke where the trigger was slightly deficient - and it was probably observed by (or built by) Iranian engineers.

Also, it would be a mistake to underestimate the sophistication of Iranian technologists. They have many brilliant PhD level scientists and engineers, trained at the best universities in the US, among other places. They will solve the physics and engineering problems a lot faster than people expect.

In other words, Iran may need only to get the explosives technology of an implosion nuke to work, and then suddenly announce to the world that they have a number of immediately deliverable nuclear warheads (in the 20-40kt range).

Or the announcement may be one or two mushroom clouds over Israel, or perhaps Long Beach.

If the CIA's view was true, other countries in and around Iran's region would not be getting nuclear weapons. If it's false (or nations in and around Iran's neighborhood believed it false, they WOULD be embarking on crash nuke programs).

The NYT reports the FOLLOWING nations have publicly announced nuke programs: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Algeria. The FOLLOWING have not publicly announced but consensus of intelligence analysts is that they are starting them anyway: YEMEN, UAE, Tunisia, Turkey.

That makes a total of EIGHT ... 8 ... nations in and around Iran starting nuke programs. Note Iran ALREADY has ballistic missiles that can reach to Italy and plans soon missiles that can reach the Continental US and thus ALL of Europe and North Africa also.

Therefore, Hersh's article and the views of CIA officers presented therein fail the sanity test. The views don't jibe with real world actions taken by those with the most to lose and inside already the US defense umbrella (Saudi, Egypt, Morocco, UAE, Tunisia). When MOROCCO plans nukes you know consensus ARAB intelligence views are that Iran ALREADY has nukes.

Hersh will look like an idiot as well as the CIA when Iran explodes it's first nuke. Well he IS an idiot not to run this sanity test himself. Belief deluding rationality. Hersh a perfect example. As if it were 1968 forever.

Like making a movie about Bobby Kennedy's assasination and forgetting somehow to mention that the assassin was Muslim Sirhan Sirhan, acting over Kennedy's speech in support of Israel.

Hersh invents stuff to the point where even the Kennedys call him a liar. He's in Debka's league.

Wasn't this the man who said that our soldiers in Iraq were the most murderous American military ever?

You know what? I think that if we could make a bomb in the desert of the American southwest more than 60 years ago, it is quiet possible that all kinds of backward countries coud make one today. If they chose to.

I do not trust the author or leaks from the CIA. Leakers laways have an agenda and the CIA has made too many mistakes to be a credbile source.

Given that Iran either will be nuclear delivery capable in the very near future, or already has that capability; and given that Iran's leader has made it abundantly clear that the annhialation of Israel is priority number 1; what is keeping Israel from launching a preemptive first strike?

The taboo against doing that is greater than the survival instinct? Israel will be hated even more by the Arabs and the International Community than they are today? It's better to be dead Nice Jewish Boys than live "Nazis?"

Hate to tell you this, Roger, since I agree with your views of the CIA's ineffectiveness, but it was not the Mossad that let the US know of the Kruschev speech. It turns out that from the late 30's or early 40's on thru I believe the 1970's, the US had a mole inside the highest levels of the US Communist Party and who was present at the speech. His name was Morris Childs. John Barron wrote a book about him titled Operation Solo. It may interest you to know that Childs worked for the FBI, not the CIA, and this was kept secret for many, many years. If I recall correctly, Childs received the Medal of Freedom (or some such honor) from President Reagan.

Iran already HAS exploded its first nuke. It was a joint test with North Korea.

Tom, have you got some actual evidence or intelligence to point out? I agree with you that this seems possible, even probable --- or, perhaps, the recent test was a demo at a sales meeting --- but you assert it as fact.

It was a joint test by North Korea and Iran. Further I said on Winds of Change last April that the high probability period for their first test would start in October, though I admitted it might come as early as the middle of September. I was uncertain, though, as to whether the location of the test would be in Iran or North Korea. I got the place wrong, but the date right.

Seymour Hersh recently said the following at McGill University in Montreal "There has never been an American army as violent and murderous as the one in Iraq."

He has made his career bashing the American soldier. I am not interested in his unsourced inside crapola.

Re: Debka. Middle East analysts reportedly consider them 85% successful in early reporting of significant events, although the details are often quite distorted.

As an engineer, I am always amazed at people smugly predicting that X or Y cannot do Z until time T (well into the future). This simply ignores the uncertainty of intelligence knowledge, the intelligence and education available to anyone in the world (except perhaps North Koreans), the dramatic improvements in computing power every year, and the acceleration of all sorts of work due to modern telecommunications. Add to this the incentives for collaboration (as demonstrated by the A.Q. Khan network), and I think anyone who puts a date longer than a year on anyone's nuke program is blowing smoke.

Iran's leader is Khameni, quietly in the background pulling the strings along with Rafsanjani. Ahmadine-jahadi is most likely their wacko puppet.

The interesting question is why they choose to act with such belligerence. They appear to be asking for a military strike from us or Israel. This could be apocalyptic Shia thinking; it could be a cynical attempt to increases internal control (which I think is a lot stronger already than appreciated) as a natural response to an attack; it could be an attempt to dissipate what little will the west has, when the inevitable huffing and puffing about the attack paralyzes the west and prevents another; or, it could be bragging for internal and external consumption - taken in the belief that we are already too paralyzed to stop them.

November 20, 2006: Seymour, a (second) Introduction

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