CIA on Trial in Virginia for Planting Nuke Evidence in Iran

[JEB]

8. "Justice" Hidden Behind a Screen

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Justice-Hidden-Behind-a-by-Ray-McGovern-CIA_Iaea_Iran_Israel-150115-456.html

By Ray McGovern

The federal government claims it is prosecuting former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling for leaking information to a journalist about a risky covert operation in which the spy agency funneled flawed nuclear-bomb schematics to Iran. But the opening days of the trial suggest that the government may be using the case more to overcome its reputation for shoddy intelligence work.

In opening statements and testimony on Wednesday, prosecutors seemed more concerned about refuting journalist/author James Risen's assessment of the CIA's scheme as botched and dangerous than in connecting Risen to Sterling. Eliciting testimony from a nuclear engineer testifying behind a screen, prosecutors sought to portray the phony-blueprint gambit as meticulous and careful.
The dispute seems to center on whether the Russian operative code-named "Merlin," who was assigned to deliver the documents to Iranian representatives, easily detected the flaws, as Risen wrote in his 2006 book, State of War, or simply noticed that some pages were missing. An internal team of CIA experts -- when asked to examine the schematics -- spotted about 25 percent of the errors, but there is a clash of opinions over whether that showed how easy it was to unmask the fraud or how difficult it was to spot the flaws.

None of that, however, relates to whether Sterling was or was not a source for Risen regarding the "Merlin" operation, proof that may prove difficult for U.S. prosecutors to establish because Risen, a New York Times' national security reporter, has an array of sources within the intelligence community from whom to draw. Since the Justice Department has dropped attempts to force Risen to identify his sources, prosecutors may find it hard to substantiate that Sterling was one of the sources for the "Merlin" disclosures.

But the real subtext of the Sterling case is how the politicization of the CIA's analytical division over the past several decades has contributed to multiple intelligence failures, especially efforts to "prove" that targeted regimes in the Middle East were amassing weapons of mass destruction.

The false Iraq-WMD case provided the key rationale for a war that has spread devastation not only across Iraq but has prompted terrorism and other violence throughout the Middle East and into Europe. "Operation Merlin" -- hatched during the Clinton administration -- was part of a similar effort to show that Iran was engaged in an active program for building a nuclear bomb and thus would have interest in the flawed schematics that the CIA was peddling.
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Lots more at the link:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Justice-Hidden-Behind-a-by-Ray-McGovern-CIA_Iaea_Iran_Israel-150115-456.html