Will this give Malkin, Hinderaker, Glenn Reynolds, Chris Matthews et al. a different perspective on the outing of Valerie Plame?
Via CNN
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Several U.S. agents in Iran were rounded up after the CIA mistakenly revealed clues to their identities to a covert source who turned out to be a double agent, according to a book that hit shelves Tuesday.
UPDATE: This is becoming a diary about Risen's book, which I didn't intend, but this fact must be added: The CIA may have also inadvertantly helped Iran's nuclear weapons program. See the end of the diary.
More below.
In "State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration," author James Risen of The New York Times called the mistake an "espionage disaster."
[Snip}
The message to the double agent in Iran was sent in a high-speed encrypted transmission from the CIA's headquarters in Langley, Virginia, former officials said. It did not include names or identities of the other agents, but it did contain information that could help Iranian counterintelligence agents identify them.
The article goes on to state that no "agents were lost" because of the error. Hmm. They were simply "rounded up" by Iranian military and/or espionage units and sent to a nice hotel to chat? And then the Iranians had their own memories cleansed so the agents could go on being secret agents? That sounds plausible, considering how good of a reputation the Iranians have for that sort of thing.
And think about it in terms of Plame: no names were given--just "clues" to the agents' identities. Clues like...who they talked to? Who they worked with? What companies they worked for? Who they were married to?
I realize there's much more to come out of this story, but it really jumped out at me how it relates to the outing of Valerie Plame and how it was so pooh-poohed by the Malkins of the world.
UPDATE: Via New York Daily News
(KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) NEW YORK _ The CIA may have handed Iran the formula for building a nuclear bomb in a clumsy covert operation involving a double-crossing Russian agent, a new book charges.
The blueprint that was funneled to Tehran contained an error that was meant to derail the Islamic state's efforts at building a nuclear arsenal.
But the built-in flaw was so transparent the Russian engineer doing the CIA's dirty work spotted it immediately _ and even offered to help Iran fix it.
This aticle says that the blunder "revealed the identities of virtually every spy inside the country" and that the double agent "turned over the information to security officials in Tehran, and
many of the CIA operatives were arrested and jailed."