Security Failure: We Need an Investigation

There has been a security / intelligence failure, and we need to hold Congressional hearings.

Were we not told several times, at the very least, that Congress should hold hearings on intelligence failures during the Bush administration?

The answer is yes.

Why were they failures? Because the Democrats said they were, but to be fair - they would argue that if an event occured and our intelligence was unaware or had false data that it told the president, and as a result he was unable to act on good data to resolve the security dilema, then our intelligence units had failed him.

Make sense?

Two stories, the first, not a help in arguing for congressional hearings, but then, it left out details, for any number of reasons.

If Obama was pushing negotiations with Iran last month, yet he knew they had a second facilty and had weaponized their process ... why was he publicly pretending to argue for something that could never happen - talks between Iran and anyone - Iran has no reason to talk if they have two facilities and nuclear weapons. Therefore, Obama had to be in the dark - ergo, and intelligence failure. They failed to report to Obama and or did not know.

Because if he had been informed and was not acting on it, but rather lying to the world community and pursuing diplomatic talks on an issue he knew was beyond discussion ... he would be placing American lives in danger ... and would have failed this serious task.

We all remember the 3 am phone call. He didn't need a call, he simply failed.

It is not ok that Iran has a nuclear weapon.

It is not ok that the Obama administation did NOTHING to prevent this and through its feckless foreign policy actually encouraged it.

The world is more dangerous at this moment than it has been in the last 60 years.



Ahmadinejad has enough uranium to go whole way


Senior US official says secret facility is right size to make 'bomb or two a year'

By David Usborne and Andrew Grice in Pittsburgh
Saturday, 26 September 2009


The crisis in relations with Iran escalated ominously yesterday after the leaders of the US, Britain and France accused the regime in Tehran of operating a secret uranium enrichment facility buried deep in a mountain bunker near the ancient religious city of Qom. Barack Obama called Iran's activity "a direct challenge" to the international community.

The accusations were made public in an extraordinary joint statement by the US President, flanked by Gordon Brown and the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy before the start of the G20 economic summit in Pittsburgh.

Iran had previously insisted that its plant at Natanz, which is open to international inspection, was the only one involved in enrichment. The new revelation sharply raises the stakes at a time when Israel has been signalling that military strikes against Iran are on the table.


Iran's first response was one of familiar defiance. "If I were Obama's adviser, I would definitely advise him to refrain from making this statement because it is definitely a mistake," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in an interview with Time magazine in New York.

Western sources said the plant at Qom, 120 miles south-west of Tehran, is not yet operational. But it is designed to hold about 3,000 centrifuge machines, which would provide the uranium needed to produce one atomic bomb a year. "Iran has enough uranium to go the whole way," one Western diplomat said. A senior US official said that number of centrifuges could not produce enough uranium to make sense commercially for power generation. "But if you want to use the facility to produce a small amount of weapons-grade uranium, enough for a bomb or two a year, it's the right size."

He stressed that making a bomb was "still some way off" but that the plant gives Iran "more options." French officials said the secret plant was in a "heavily protected" area under the control of the Revolutionary Guards loyal to Ayatollah Khamenei and President Ahmadinejad.

If nonplussed that the plant's cover has been so dramatically blown, Iran's President insisted his government was in compliance with the rules of the International Atomic Energy Agency. "This does not mean we must inform Mr Obama's administration of every facility that we have," he said. Mr Obama's claim "simply adds to the list of issues to which the United States owes the Iranian nation an apology over". [And how does he figure this?]


Later, Mr Ahmadinejad softened his tone telling reporters that Iran was in fact ready to give international inspectors access to the Qom facility. "We have no fears," he said.


Yet for Mr Obama, the revelation will bolster the case for tougher sanctions on Iran, if its regime does not bend now to calls for enrichment to stop. It also ratchets up tensions significantly on the eve of talks scheduled next Thursday in Geneva between the regime and six world powers, including Britain, the US and Russia.

"The Iranian government must now demonstrate through deeds its peaceful intentions or be held accountable to international standards and international law," Mr Obama said. His French and British peers portrayed even deeper indignation. "The level of deception by the Iranian government and the scale of what we believe is a breach of international commitments, will shock and anger the whole international community and it will harden our resolve," Mr Brown said, adding that it was time to "draw a line in the sand". He went on: "This is the third time they have been caught red-handed, not telling the truth."

Mr Sarkozy set a deadline of December for Iran to put everything on the table and provide proof that it is not attempting to weaponise nuclear technology. New sanctions could include a ban of the sale of refined petrol to Iran, which could seriously harm the regime but also hurt much of the population.

British intelligence agencies played a "big part" in uncovering the plant, working closely with their American and French counterparts, diplomats said. The intelligence has been shared with Israel, but British sources are playing down the prospect of military action. One said: "We are a long way from that. We have no interest in a military operation against Iran or anybody undertaking such an operation."

Even as Mr Ahmadinejad was speaking to Time, his officials in Tehran were acknowledging the plant's existence. "In order to preserve its definite rights [in] the peaceful use of nuclear energy, Iran has taken a successful step and created a semi-industrial plant to enrich nuclear fuel," Ali Akbar Salehi, its nuclear energy agency chief, said in a statement.

Iran insists its enrichment programme is for civilian purposes and other countries have no right to interfere. But Western governments have long doubted this. British sources said the intelligence on Qom specifically suggests it is not consistent with plans for electricity generation.

US officials said that Western intelligence had found out about the Qom plant several months ago and that Mr Obama had been briefed on it even before he took office. Exactly how they cracked the wall of secrecy erected by Iran around it has not been divulged.

Iran itself then became aware that the West had got wind of the concealed plant. On Monday, it sent a cryptic letter to the IAEA in Vienna in which it spoke for the first time of a "pilot uranium enrichment plant" in addition to the one at Natanz. It added that additional information would be furnished to the agency in due course.

All this off-stage drama was unfolding just as world leaders were gathering first for the UN General Assembly in New York and then in Pittsburgh for the G20 summit. Mr Ahmadinejad, last night cancelled a press conference he had been scheduled to give at the UN before leaving New York.

The game had already moved on after the Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, signalled that Moscow was dropping its opposition to new sanctions against Iran. The switch was attributed to Mr Obama's decision a week ago to drop the US anti-missile shield in eastern Europe. But a senior US administration official revealed that the information about Qom was shared by Mr Obama with President Medvedev during a bilateral meeting in New York on Wednesday. That may have helped modify Mr Medvedev's thinking.

Iran fights back: President tells US it's making 'a big mistake'

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fought back against claims of illegal concealment last night, saying that it was the United States that should be apologising to Iran and that Barack Obama was making a big mistake which would ultimately play into the Islamic Republic's favour.

In an interview with Time magazine, which took place as the US President was ratcheting up pressure on him from Pittsburgh, Mr Ahmadinejad shrugged off accusations of a secret underground second nuclear facility. "If I were Obama's adviser, I would definitely advise him to refrain from making this statement because it is definitely a mistake. It would definitively be a mistake," he told Time editors in New York, where he had been attending the UN General Assembly.

"We have no secrecy, we work within the framework of the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency]," he added. "This does not mean we must inform Mr Obama's administration of every facility that we have."


[So if the IAEA has informed the UN that iran is not in compliance and has not shown the world the nuclear programs ... then the UN must be lying, because Iran would never lie.]


Far from seeming contrite, Mr Ahmadinejad went on the offensive saying that by bringing up the uranium facility, the US President, "simply adds to the list of issues to which the United States owes the Iranian nation an apology over. Rest assured that this will be the case. We do everything transparently".


Mr Ahmadinejad also hinted that the attack by the US, France and Britain might be just the thing around which his deeply fractured nation might rally.




*******************************************



September 26, 2009


Cryptic Iranian Note Ignited an Urgent Nuclear Strategy Debate




The New York Times
By HELENE COOPER and MARK MAZZETTI

PITTSBURGH — On Tuesday evening in New York, top officials of the world nuclear watchdog agency approached two of President Obama’s senior advisers to deliver the news: Iran had just sent a cryptic letter describing a small “pilot” nuclear facility that the country had never before declared.

The Americans were surprised by the letter, but they were angry about what it did not say. American intelligence had come across the hidden tunnel complex years earlier, and the advisers believed the situation was far more ominous than the Iranians were letting on.

That night, huddled in a hotel room in the Waldorf-Astoria until well into the early hours, five of Mr. Obama’s closest national security advisers, in New York for the administration’s first United Nations General Assembly, went back and forth on what they would advise their boss when they took him the news in the morning. A few hours later, in a different hotel room, they met with Mr. Obama and his senior national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, to talk strategy.

The White House essentially decided to outflank the Iranians, to present to their allies and the public what they believed was powerful evidence that there was more to the Iranian site than just some pilot program. They saw it as a chance to use this evidence to persuade other countries to support the case for stronger sanctions by showing that the Iranians were still working on a secret nuclear plan.

It was three dramatic days of highly sensitive diplomacy and political maneuvering, from an ornate room at the Waldorf, where Mr. Obama pressed President Dimitri A. Medvedev of Russia for support, to the United Nations Security Council chamber, where General Jones at one point hustled his Russian counterpart from the room in the middle of a rare meeting of Council leaders.

General Jones told his counterpart, Sergei Prikhodko, that the United States was going to go public with the intelligence. Meanwhile, in the hallways of the United Nations and over the phone, American and European officials debated when, and how, to present their case against Iran to the world.

European officials urged speed, saying that Mr. Obama should accuse Iran of developing the secret facility first thing Thursday morning, when he presided over the Security Council for the very first time. It would have been a stirring and confrontational moment. But White House officials countered that it was too soon; they would not have time to brief allies and the nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Mr. Obama did not want to dilute the nuclear nonproliferation resolution he was pushing through the Security Council by diverting to Iran.

In the end, Mr. Obama stood on the floor of the Pittsburgh Convention Center on Friday morning, flanked by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain, and called the Iranian facility “a direct challenge to the basic foundation of the nonproliferation regime.”

Added Mr. Brown, “The international community has no choice today but to draw a line in the sand.”

This account of the days leading up to the announcement on Friday is based on interviews with administration officials and American allies, all of whom want the story known to help support their case against Iran.

The Iranians have continued to assert that their nuclear program has peaceful intentions. And while American officials say the secretive nature of the program lends support to the view that it is truly an expanding weapons program, even United States intelligence officials acknowledge that there is no evidence that Iran has taken the final steps toward creating a bomb.

There was “a fair amount at anger” within the administration over Iran’s disclosure, a senior administration official said. But there was also some satisfaction. A second senior official said: “Everybody’s been asking, ‘Where’s our leverage?’ Well, now we just got that leverage.”

Administration officials said that Mr. Obama had two goals in going public: to directly confront Iran with the evidence, and to persuade wavering nations to take a hard line on Iran.

In fact, the makings of the administration’s strategy was hatched months before, when the White House first came to believe that the complex, built into a mountain on property near Qum controlled by Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards, might be a part of the nuclear program.


Over time, the file that intelligence officials accumulated on the facility developed as a cudgel, a way to win over wary allies and test if the Iranians were being truthful in their disclosures.
Senior intelligence officials said Friday that several years ago American intelligence agencies under the administration of George W. Bush discovered the suspicious site. The site was one of Iran’s most closely guarded secrets, the officials said, known only by senior members of Iran’s nuclear establishment. The officials said that housing the complex on the base gave it an extra layer of security.

Mr. Obama was first told about the existence of the covert site during his transition period in late 2008, White House officials said, after he had been elected but before he was inaugurated.


But it was not until earlier this year that American spy agencies detected the movement of sensitive equipment into the facility — a sign, they believed, that whatever work was involved was nearing its final stages.


American officials said Friday that the facility could have been fully operational by next year, with up to 3,000 centrifuges capable of producing one weapon’s worth of highly enriched nuclear material per year.


“Over the course of early this year, the intelligence community and our liaison partners became increasingly confident that the site was indeed a uranium enrichment facility,” a senior administration official said. He said that Mr. Obama received regular intelligence updates on the progress of the site.


The officials said that they developed a detailed picture about work on the facility from multiple human intelligence sources, as well as satellite imagery. A senior official said that intelligence was regularly shared among American, British and French spy agencies, and that Israeli officials were told about the complex years ago. They were not more specific about when they first learned about it.


At some point in late spring, American officials became aware that Iranian operatives had learned that the site was being monitored, the officials said.


As the administration reviewed its Iran policy in April, Mr. Obama told aides at one point that if the United States entered into talks with Iran, he wanted to make sure “all the facts were on the table early, including information on this site — so that negotiations would be meaningful and transparent,” a senior administration official said.


As the summer progressed, British, French and American officials grew more worried about what Iran might do now that it was aware that security at the complex had been breached.


In late July, after the mass protests over Iran’s disputed election had died down, Mr. Obama told his national security team to have American intelligence officials work with their British and French counterparts to secretly put together a detailed presentation on the complex.


“That brief would be deployed in the case of a number of contingencies,” the administration official said. “If Iran refused to negotiate, in the case of a leak of the information, and even an Iranian disclosure.” Mr. Obama asked his aides to have the presentation ready by the General Assembly meeting.


“We could not have negotiations of any meaning if we were only going to talk about overt sites and not covert sites,” a senior administration official said.


As late as last weekend, American officials were still uncertain about when to publicly present the intelligence about the secret enrichment facility. The game plan changed Tuesday, when officials from the nuclear watchdog agency informed the Americans that Iran had sent the letter describing the “pilot” facility.


At his meeting at the Waldorf the next morning, Mr. Obama decided that he would personally tell Mr. Medvedev, the Russian president, when they met Wednesday afternoon for a previously scheduled meeting. Mr. Obama also spoke with Mr. Sarkozy and Mr. Brown. Meanwhile, Jeff Bader, a senior White House adviser for China, informed his Chinese counterparts.


On Thursday, while Mr. Obama was leading the Security Council meeting, General Jones left his seat behind Mr. Obama, walked over to Mr. Prikhodko, the Russian national security adviser, and whispered in his ear. Mr. Prikhodko got up and followed General Jones out of the room. Minutes later, General Jones sent an aide back to get his Chinese counterpart as well.


Administration officials said they were gratified with Russia’s reaction — Mr. Medvedev signaled he would be amenable to tougher sanctions on Iran. The Chinese, one administration official said, were more skeptical, and said they wanted to look at the intelligence, and to see what international inspectors said when they investigated.
The lessons of the Iraq war still lingered.

“They don’t want to buy a pig in a poke,” the senior administration official said.











Iran