| Submit your comments on this article |
| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| U.S. Conducting Secret Missions Inside Iran |
| 2005-01-16 |
| The United States has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran to help identify potential nuclear, chemical and missile targets, The New Yorker magazine reported Sunday. The article, by award-winning reporter Seymour Hersh, said the secret missions have been going on at least since last summer with the goal of identifying target information for three dozen or more suspected sites. Hersh quotes one government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon as saying, "The civilians in the Pentagon want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible." One former high-level intelligence official told The New Yorker, "This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush administration is looking at this as a huge war zone. Next, we're going to have the Iranian campaign..." The former intelligence official told Hersh that an American commando task force in South Asia is working closely with a group of Pakistani scientists who had dealt with their Iranian counterparts. The New Yorker reports that this task force, aided by information from Pakistan, has been penetrating into eastern Iran in a hunt for underground nuclear-weapons installations. In exchange for this cooperation, the official told Hersh, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has received assurances that his government will not have to turn over Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, to face questioning about his role in selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea. Hersh reported that Bush has already "signed a series of top-secret findings and executive orders authorizing secret commando groups and other Special Forces units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as 10 nations in the Middle East and South Asia." Defining these as military rather than intelligence operations, Hersh reported, will enable the Bush administration to evade legal restrictions imposed on the CIA's covert activities overseas. |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #16 This is a rather convenient way to get the IRG tearing everyone new assholes in Iran in a frenzy to find those US operatives. This will result in Stalin-like purges of the officer corps of the regular army, and perhaps get some of their scientists fired as well. On top of that, the tighter they crack down, the harder it gets for them to really control the country - they are just adding more pressure for the nation to blow its gaskets. Add to that, as they go nutso trying to find the "spies", we get to observe and see where they think their weknesses are, and how they go about hunting them down (thus revealing their true weak spots). A little bit of clandestine work in the right spots with this kind of thing making them look all over the place will be highly effective. Now all we need is Dan Rather saying he has found secret documents revealing the "Extensive clandestine operations network the US has in Iran"... |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2005-01-16 10:16:55 PM |
| #15 This is a rather convenient way to get the IRG tearing everyone new assholes in Iran in a frenzy to find those US operatives. This will result in Stalin-like purges of the officer corps of the regular army, and perhaps get some of their scientists fired as well. On top of that, the tighter they crack down, the harder it gets for them to really control the country - they are just adding more pressure for the nation to blow its gaskets. Add to that, as they go nutso trying to find the "spies", we get to observe and see where they think their weknesses are, and how they go about hunting them down (thus revealing their true weak spots). A little bit of clandestine work in the right spots with this kind of thing making them look all over the place will be highly effective. Now all we need is Dan Rather saying he has found secret documents revealing the "Extensive clandestine operations network the US has in Iran"... |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2005-01-16 10:16:55 PM |
| #14 This is a rather convenient way to get the IRG tearing everyone new assholes in Iran in a frenzy to find those US operatives. This will result in Stalin-like purges of the officer corps of the regular army, and perhaps get some of their scientists fired as well. On top of that, the tighter they crack down, the harder it gets for them to really control the country - they are just adding more pressure for the nation to blow its gaskets. Add to that, as they go nutso trying to find the "spies", we get to observe and see where they think their weknesses are, and how they go about hunting them down (thus revealing their true weak spots). A little bit of clandestine work in the right spots with this kind of thing making them look all over the place will be highly effective. Now all we need is Dan Rather saying he has found secret documents revealing the "Extensive clandestine operations network the US has in Iran"... |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2005-01-16 10:16:55 PM |
| #13 Dear Seymour- Life's a bitch. Deal with it. Love, Mike |
| Posted by: Mike Kozlowski 2005-01-16 9:53:08 PM |
| #12 Well, not legally. Remember, you cannot advocate such a thing in a public forum. That he is a seditionist and traitor does not empower anyone to act outside of the law. Were we in a declared State of War, he would get his without us having to lift a finger - he'd have already gotten the attention he deserves. We're not. And you must not call for violence outside of the law or you are breaking the law. We're cool. He'll run afoul someday - his ego will see to that. Meanwhile, I hope our Gov't, in the name of National Security, is playing his ass like a violin. |
| Posted by: .com 2005-01-16 8:18:33 PM |
| #11 .com, You say we can't shoot Hersh? Why not? |
| Posted by: leaddog2 2005-01-16 8:13:21 PM |
| #10 Put out a little bait and watch how your prey reacts... |
| Posted by: TomAnon 2005-01-16 8:02:15 PM |
| #9 I've said it before and I'll say it again: Sy Hersh hasn't been correct since 1972. |
| Posted by: Parabellum 2005-01-16 7:50:12 PM |
| #8 I'll bet there's more than a few Israelis there too, striking out from their bases in Kurdish Iraq. |
| Posted by: Elmoling Grenter5118 2005-01-16 6:27:24 PM |
| #7 Doubt that Hersh knows what's going on. |
| Posted by: John Q. Citizen 2005-01-16 5:51:53 PM |
| #6 Hersch is a self-serving idiot, so my money is on some carrots for Hersch to follow and report on. The US needs to put some paranoia into the Mad Mullahs™, since we do not have the Big Bunch of Troops Invasion Option™. President Bush has said that Iran must not acquire nuclear weapons. The US damn well better be doing clando ops, or we are being negligent in our obligations to the safety of our citizens. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2005-01-16 5:22:20 PM |
| #5 You beat me to it, Frank. Of course we are doing what we can, and I don't doubt that there are some agents in Iran, primarily Iranians, but Hersh is waay over the line, unless he's being led there intentionally. I wish this was a bona-fide State of War, sadly HR-388 doesn't go that far... then Hersh and his "sources" could be summarily shot in the fucking head for treason. The ultimate press whore today. There are (at least) two possibilities here: 1) He is not being misled in some devious Rovian Plot™. I do not know, of course, how much he fabricates out of whole cloth, but I'd filter this with a fine mesh to see if he does have a source - and then introduce that fine American to every legal punishment available. 2) This is a Rovian Plot™ - a disinformation campaign designed to screw with the Mad Mullahs and put Hersh and his ilk off the scent of what we're really doing. That is possibly the case with the heavy references to Pakiwakis. Hersh really is a seditious piece of shit, regardless. Since we can't shoot him, we might as well use him to further US interests, which would chap his ass, of course, since he's on the other side. |
| Posted by: .com 2005-01-16 5:08:02 PM |
| #4 Hersh is so full of shit his blue eyes are now brown. If there is (and I presume ther is) activiy inside Iran, Hersh and his never identifiable sources would be the last to know. |
| Posted by: Captain America 2005-01-16 5:05:07 PM |
| #3 I doubt this particular report is going to endanger any operatives; but if Hersh crosses that line, lock him up and lose the key. This is encouraging news, confirmation of what I've suspected for a while. |
| Posted by: Dave D. 2005-01-16 4:56:55 PM |
| #2 good - but Hersh's motives in publishing this are no doubt geared to stopping the ops and thereby endangering Americans. F*&ker |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-01-16 4:53:05 PM |
| #1 Hat tip Drudge. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-01-16 4:46:01 PM |