Initially, Kiriakou thought he was assisting in an FBI investigation, and only too happy to offer his services. About an hour into the interview he discovered that he was the subject of the investigation.

Previously, Mr. Kiriakou had worked for the CIA for nearly 15 years; first as an analyst and then as an operative. He was stationed undercover in pursuit of Al Qaeda operatives and other terrorist groups. Although he led the team that was responsible for the capture of Abu Zubaydah, an Al Qaeda logistic specialist, along with other militants that were captured in Pakistan, he is best known as the first former CIA operative who in 2007 appeared on numerous cable and network news shows ambivalently discussing waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques as torture and not very effective as an intelligence tool.

Although a varied collection of people including former spies, left-leaning critics of torture, a number of Liberty University (a Christian Right Institution) professors, as well as the famed director Oliver Stone all showed support for Mr. Kiriakou; nevertheless he became the first CIA agent to be convicted of leaking classified material to the media. His supporters found it an outrageous outcome for a man who had risked his life for his country.

It all started when references to Kiriakou’s emails to reporters and human rights’ inquirers containing contact information for other CIA personnel appeared in testimony submitted by defense attorneys for Guantanamo Bay detainees. One of the journalists known as Journalist B, aka Scott Shane, was looking for information about the interrogation of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged architect of the September 11th World Trade Center bombings. Scott Shane already had the name of Deuce Martinez. Mr. Kiriakou confirmed the identity of the CIA contractor to the journalist as the best source for background information; while admitting that he had worked with Mr. Martinez on the Abu Zubaydah case. He emailed Mr. Shane his contact information. The confirmation of Mr. Martinez’ identity is one of the things that the government viewed as illegally disclosing classified information.

Mr. Kiriakou mistakenly believed another agent whose contact information he shared with Journalist A to have retired, and the journalist never used his name. However, the communication was done via email, and Mr. Kiriakou discovered, just as CIA boss General Petraeus was later to discover; that emails, not unlike diamonds, are forever.

Some think that the media attention he received for his opinions caused John Kiriakou to suffer a self-aggrandizement that led to his downfall. Kiriakou said that he was just being helpful.

Jose Rodriguez, Jr. is the former chief of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, and authored a book entitled “Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives.” Regarding waterboarding as an “aggressive action,” Rodriguez describes one example of it saving countless lives. After 9/11, the CIA received intelligence from multiple sources that al-Qaida was planning an imminent second attack using unconventional weapons on the West Coast. The CIA and FBI got confirmation of these plans after they captured Osama bin Laden’s chief of operations, Abu Zubaydah. Videotapes found in his compound celebrated the impending second attack. Information they received from Abu Zubaydah enabled analysts to develop valuable new leads yielding new intel information.

Fearing another attack, Rodriguez worked with the Justice Department and an outside consulting company specializing in waterboarding to develop a waterboard protocol that would be acceptable and legal. The White House, the Justice Department and involved members of Congress all approved the protocol. What’s acceptable: water should not be dripped on prisoners for more than 40 seconds, and no session should last more than 20 minutes. What occurred: no detainee in the example cited was subjected to water for more than 10 seconds. No session lasted more than 4.5 minutes.

Paradoxically, according to Rodriguez, tens of thousands of our own U.S. military have been subjected to waterboarding as part of their training to steel them in case they were captured and had to bear waterboarding from the enemy.

Omid Kokabee, an Iranian Ph.D. candidate in physics at the University of Texas in Austin, is standing trial on espionage charges in his homeland, after being held in custody since the end of January or February. It is believed he was picked up at the Tehran airport en route to continuing his graduate studies in the United States. Physics World reports that Kokabee allegedly divulged Iranian scientific data and was a CIA operative. The specific charges against him encompass unlawful earnings and contact with a hostile nation, a veiled reference to the CIA. The adviser for graduate studies in Kokabee’s department, John Keto, scoffed at Internet accounts that depicted the accused as a renowned nuclear physicist and maintained he was instead a beginning doctoral student in optics and photonics. His friends and colleagues suggest a likely motive for the arrest is to deter student involvement in the pro-democracy Green movement disputing the 2009 election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Sources close to Kokabee gave his whereabouts while awaiting trial as Tehran’s Evin Prison, which has gained an infamous reputation for the many academic and political prisoners there as a result of Iran’s backlash against suspected spies for Western countries. The presiding judge at the trial is Abolghasem Salavati who, according to Eugene Chudnovsky of the Committee of Concerned Scientists, an international human rights organization, is noted for the severe penalties he imposes. Chudnovsky theorizes that a death sentence is within the realm of possibility, as a means to frighten Iranian students overseas. His organization has petitioned Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, to grant clemency to Kokabee, while the accused’s attorneys feel that international pressure and the media spotlight might aid their client.

The men, Friedrich Tinner and his sons Urs and Marco, were part of a smuggling ring under the direction of A. Q. Khan, one of the creators of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb program. They are accused of supplying the ring with technology needed to make centrifuges, which were then sold in various countries, including Libya, Iran, and North Korea. Secretly, they were also working for the CIA. The men provided information about Khan’s network’s manufacturing and sales and also helped create flaws in equipment sent to Khan’s customers.
The relationship between the family and the CIA is detailed in a new book, “Fallout,” by Catherine Collins and Douglas Frantz, which is scheduled for publication in January 2011. In the book, the authors detail several events. In 2003, the CIA broke into one of the Tinners’ homes and found blueprints for several nuclear bombs. The authors also say that in 2006, then Secretary of the State Condoleezza Rice tried to persuade Swiss officials to drop their investigation. She succeeded, for in 2007 the Swiss government dropped legal proceedings on espionage charges against the Tinners and several other CIA operatives.

They did not completely back off, though, because in 2008 the trafficking charges began surfacing. These charges are not without difficulty: because of their sensitive work for the US, the CIA managed to convince Swiss authorities to destroy equipment and information related to the family. The evidence is incomplete, even though 39 files scheduled for destruction were recovered. The Swiss government says that despite the help they provided the CIA, this evidence shows that the men should still be charged with “supporting the development of atomic weapons”, which is a violation of Swiss law.

If the Tinners go to trial, they face up to 10 years in prison for breaking laws concerning the export of atomic goods. All three have already spent time in jail, termed ‘investigative detention’, which will be counted towards any sentence handed down.

Court papers show that Shriver was in a study abroad program in Shanghai for two years, in which he studied and became fluent in Mandarin. After graduating from college, he returned to Shanghai to seek work. His answer to an advertisement looking for people to write a paper on U.S.-Chinese relationships caught the eye of Chinese intelligence officers, who recruited Shriver as a spy. Shriver was encouraged to seek U.S. government jobs that would give him access to classified documents.

Shriver attempted to join the Foreign Service but failed the test twice. He received money $30,000 from Beijing for the two attempts. He then tried for a job with the CIA’s clandestine service and was paid $40,000 in cash by the Chinese government for doing so. Shriver spend two years going through the CIA hiring process but his nefarious plans were discovered.

His attorney, G. Allen Dale, says that Shriver was just a naïve young man who had been taken advantage of and that he had never actually been hired into a position that exposed him to any sensitive information. The prosecution says that Shriver threw away his education and his future, and betrayed his country, when he chose to deal with the Chinese government. Shriver’s guilty plea requires the judge to impose the prosecution’s recommended four year prison term.

During the opening session on Tuesday, the Italian appeals court was asked to reintroduce incriminating statements made by the Italian agents. These statements had been tossed because they were protected under Italian state secrecy. The court will reveal its decision about the statements on Monday, October 18.

The defendants are also rolling up their sleeves, filing appeals of their own. The lawyer for U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Joseph Romano has renewed his request for the trial to take place in an American court. He claims that because of SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement), which the U.S and Italy signed, Italian authorities have no jurisdiction over the Aviano Air Force base. The base in Aviano is where the terrorism suspect was held before being removed to Egypt. The defense for one of the convicted Italians, Nicolo Pollari, has also requested that two Italian government officials be called to testify. Pollari, the former head of Military Intelligence, claims that Premier Silvio Berlusconi and former Premier Romano Prodi can prove his innocence.

While the courts mull over the appeals, Judge Oscar Magi stands by his original verdict. He says that using state secrecy as a defense creates an unnecessary tangle in the judicial system, especially when trying to identify the Italians’ roles in the kidnapping. He claims that Italian knowledge of the CIA operation is presumable, and that the Italian secret services were at least aware of, and maybe even acting in, the operation.

I don’t purport to suggest that Shahram Amiri or the Iranian intelligence services read my July 13 Op Ed (in which I posed ten questions following Amiri’s public surfacing in the U.S.) and then rushed to respond. That said, Amiri’s July 15 appearance on the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting’s public television offered some answers, while simultaneously giving rise to daunting new questions.

First, a recap: On July 13 I wrote, “Shahram Amiri, an Iranian nuclear scientist, went missing in May 2009 during a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia. Other than the fact that Amiri subsequently resurfaced in the U.S., almost everything else in the espionage-thriller style case is disputed publicly. The barrage of information offered during the past 5 weeks makes it difficult to distinguish between genuine information, disinformation and spins.

“On June 8, 2010, in a video clip broadcast on Iranian state media, a man claiming to be Amiri said he had been kidnapped by CIA agents during a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia in 2009. ‘They took me to a house located somewhere that I didn’t know. They gave me an anesthetic injection,’ he said in the video. He then said that he was living in Tucson, Arizona, and had been subjected to eight months of ‘the most severe tortures and psychological pressures.’

“On the same day, a different video clip was posted on YouTube, appearing to have been recorded by the same person, completely contradicting the version offered in the previous video. In the second video, the person claimed to be in the United States voluntarily to continue his education, ‘I am free here and I assure everyone that I am safe.’

“In a third video broadcast on Iran state TV on June 29, 2010, a man appearing to be Dr. Amiri said, ‘I, Shahram Amiri, am a national of the Islamic Republic of Iran and a few minutes ago I succeeded in escaping U.S. security agents in Virginia. Presently, I am producing this video in a safe place. I could be re-arrested at any time.'”

Then on July 13 at 6:30pm, Amiri walked into the Pakistani Embassy in Washington, which hosts the Iran interests section, since Iran has no diplomatic ties with the U.S., and asked to return to Iran. Shortly thereafter, he flew back to Tehran unhindered.

Below are some of my original questions along with relevant statements from Amiri, as quoted by the NY Times and by Iranian Press TV, followed by new intriguing questions that Amiri’s statements raise.

2. If the person is indeed Dr. Amiri, how did he manage to escape? Wasn’t he being held in a safe, escape-proof environment guarded by U.S. intelligence community agents? Did he have outside or inside help?

Amiri said in his most recent interview that CIA and FBI agents had stormed his house in Tucson, Arizona, after he posted his first video message on the Internet. He also said that he was moved to that house, which had more comfortable residential surroundings than his military place of custody.

Amiri’s statement is a strong admission that recently, he lived freely in the U.S. This supports the U.S. position and undermines Amiri’s claim that he was in custody when he allegedly managed to escape. His new account on Iranian TV sounds more like a tale taken directly from A Thousand and One Nights, the roots of which are in ancient Arabic and Persian folklore. Why did he offer such an implausible explanation? Did he invent it or was the script written for him by the Iranian security services?

The statement is also incredible. In the first June 8 video, Amiri said he had managed to escape, and yet now he claims that he was in a house stormed by the CIA and FBI. Was it the house they provided him with? If so, why did he claim to have escaped if he was still in the house? Was it a new house traced by the CIA and FBI? If so, it’s hard to believe that, aside from forcing him to record another video in which he assures that he came to the U.S. voluntarily, the CIA and FBI just walked away. After all, they knew of Amiri’s intention to return to Iran and propagate the ‘captive’ story, per his video.

3. How did Dr. Amiri know to contact and identify his supporters? How did they know to contact and identify him? Was there a pre-arranged procedure of contact, which may support the sham defection theory?

This question remains mostly unanswered. However, in his Iranian TV interview, Amiri said, “In reality, our country’s intelligence services were able to contact me and they provided me with the necessary facilities to make my first film.”

6. In the third video he said that he had escaped a few minutes earlier. If his claim is true, then it means that Dr. Amiri was moved to an Iranian “safe house” in Virginia not far from the location where he was being held by U.S. agents. Who prepared and maintained that “safe house?”

According to the most recent version of the story, perhaps the Iranian agents he alleges helped him moved him to a safe house. Does Amiri think that the CIA and FBI agents involved would ever have let him return to Iran before they discovered and arrested any such Iranian agents? And since Amiri was allowed to board a plane back to Iran without interruption, perhaps his story about Iranian intelligence services helping him in the U.S. is yet another tale?

8. Who filmed/made the videos in which Dr. Amiri claimed to have been kidnapped?

Amiri said in the interview that after further contact with Iranian agents, he was able to hold a brief video conversation with his wife, which gave him “complete confidence” in the Iranian authorities and the well-being of his family.

Amiri did not disclose from what location he was able to hold the video conference call with his wife, however he seems to suggest that he was concerned about how the Iranian security service would treat him if he returned.

Why should he worry? He claimed that he was abducted and managed to escape. Wouldn’t that guarantee him a hero’s welcome? Or maybe Amiri correctly feared that his tale would be met with suspicion back home? When Amiri decided to return, he didn’t realize that trouble would come so soon. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said in a press conference in Tehran on Thursday that the “details of his abduction will be clarified after an investigation.” These words should put the fear of God in Amiri. Indeed, if the U.S. account is true, Amiri should start counting his days to a fateful meeting with an Iranian executioner.

Two final notes and one suggestion: When Amiri disappeared, Iranian media described him as a nuclear scientist. However when he returned to Iran, he was referred to by Iran as an “academic” or “researcher.” Is this a concerted effort to belittle Amiri’s status and his access to confidential information on Iran’s nuclear plans? Seems so: “Shahram Amiri is not a nuclear scientist and we reject it,” Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Hassan Qashqavi told reporters at Imam Khomeini Airport, adding that he is a researcher in one of the universities in Iran.

Amiri said that the U.S. had offered to swap him for the three Americans, Joshua Fattal, Shane Bauer and Sarah Shourd, who were arrested in the western Iranian city of Marivan for illegal entry into the country in July 2009. Iranian Press TV said that officials in Iran had dismissed the proposed swap. This sounds like another Iranian attempt to show that Amiri was a captive, not an asylum seeker.

Amiri said that the United States arranged for him to attend a university in Virginia and supplied him with a driver’s license and a Social Security number, even though, he said, he had not requested either document.

Perhaps the U.S. should release copies of Amiri’s various applications with his signature on them. If these are available, it would be interesting to hear Amiri’s explanation, if he’s available for comment.

This op-ed was originally published in The Huffington Post on 7/20/2010

Shahram Amiri, an Iranian nuclear scientist, went missing in May 2009 during a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia. Other than the fact that Amiri subsequently resurfaced in the U.S., almost everything else in the espionage-thriller style case is disputed publicly. The barrage of information offered during the past 5 weeks makes it difficult to distinguish between genuine information, disinformation and spins.

When Dr. Amiri went missing, there were reports that he had defected to the United States in a clandestine intelligence operation, while Iran claimed that he had been kidnapped. The case went almost completely off the media radar for more than a year.

Then on June 8, 2010, in a video clip broadcast on Iranian state media, a man claiming to be Dr. Amiri said he had been kidnapped by CIA agents during a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia in 2009. “They took me to a house located somewhere that I didn’t know. They gave me an anesthetic injection,” he said in the video. He then said that he was living in Tucson, Arizona, and had been subjected to eight months of “the most severe tortures and psychological pressures.”

On the same day, a different video clip was posted on YouTube, appearing to have been recorded by the same person, completely contradicting the version offered in the previous video. In the second video, the person claimed to be in the United States voluntarily to continue his education, “I am free here and I assure everyone that I am safe.”

In a third video broadcast on Iran state TV on June 29, 2010, a man appearing to be Dr. Amiri said, “I, Shahram Amiri, am a national of the Islamic Republic of Iran and a few minutes ago I succeeded in escaping U.S. security agents in Virginia. Presently, I am producing this video in a safe place. I could be re-arrested at any time.”

His last video statement coincided with the most recent development in this case: the announcement made by a Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman that confirmed Amiri’s arrival at its Washington embassy on July 13, at 6:30pm. The Pakistan Embassy in the United States hosts the Iran interests section, since Iran has no diplomatic ties with the U.S.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Mustafa Rahmani, head of the Iranian interests section, “is making arrangements for [Amiri’s] repatriation back to Iran.” According to the BBC, Iran state radio reported Thursday, “A few hours ago Shahram Amiri took refuge at Iran’s interest section at the Pakistan Embassy in Washington, wanting to return to Iran immediately.”

The inescapable comparison of these events with the defection and re-defection case of Vitaly Yurchenko makes Amiri’s case seem even more bizarre.

Yurchenko, a 25-year veteran KGB officer in the Soviet Union, made a fake defection while working in Rome in 1985, ending up in the U.S. During his interrogations by U.S. intelligence community agents, he identified two Americans as KGB assets: Ronald Pelton, a National Security Agency employee, and Edward Lee Howard, a CIA case officer. The case took a strange turn when in November 1985, just before getting a meal at Au Pied de Cochon, a restaurant in Georgetown, Washington D.C., Yurchenko told the CIA agent accompanying him that he was taking a walk. However, he never returned. Shortly thereafter, Yurchenko appeared in a press conference, and announced that he had been kidnapped and drugged by the CIA. Back in Moscow, he was decorated by the Soviet government for the successful “infiltration operation.”

Questions:

1. Is the person taking refuge at the Pakistani Embassy in Washington D.C. in fact Dr. Amiri, the missing Iranian scientist?
2. If the person is indeed Dr. Amiri, how did he manage to escape? Wasn’t he being held in a safe, escape-proof environment guarded by U.S. intelligence community agents? Did he have outside or inside help?
3. If so, how did Dr. Amiri know to contact and identify his supporters? How did they know to contact and identify him? Was there a pre-arranged procedure of contact, which may support the sham defection theory?
4. Where was Dr. Amiri living? In Arizona, as he claimed in one video, or in Virginia, as he claimed in another video?
5. Whether living in Arizona or Virginia, how did he manage to get to Washington D.C.? Did he have money to pay for the trip? Was there a car waiting for him?
6. In the third video he said that he had escaped a few minutes earlier. If his claim is true, then it means that Dr. Amiri was moved to an Iranian “safe house” in Virginia not far from the location where he was being held by U.S. agents. Who prepared and maintained that “safe house?”
7. How did Dr. Amiri know to go to the Pakistani Embassy? Did anyone who was helping him know that the embassy serves as interest office for Iran?
8. Who filmed/made the videos in which Dr. Amiri claimed to have been kidnapped? You must have an account with YouTube to post. Has the CIA tracked the account holder?
9. Is Amiri trying to re-defect voluntarily, or is he yielding to Iran’s threats to harm his family members, whom he left behind in Iran?
10. Is the anonymous leak to the media that “Amiri operated as a CIA asset in Iran for several years before his defection, providing evidence that Iran continued a program to produce nuclear weapons,” a credible statement or a low blow by a spurned agency to make Amiri change his mind again and not attempt to return to Iran?

These and other nagging questions indicate that if the person inside the Pakistani Embassy is indeed Dr. Amiri, then there must be people within the United States who helped him. Could they be Iranian sleeper agents? How did Amiri know to contact them, or maybe they traced him? How? Was the defection and re-defection an elaborate Iranian ploy to smear the U.S. and deter other Iranian scientists who would seriously consider the U.S. an option if they wanted to defect?

Is it possible that Amiri did not escape from his captors as he alleged, but rather was dumped by the CIA after he gave all the information he had, and made unreasonable demands, making him a liability? If true, then he may have been driven by the CIA to the curb next to the Pakistani Embassy. Once inside the Iranian interests section, did he simply make up the kidnapping and escape stories to protect himself from the wrath of the unforgiving Iranian security services when he returns to Tehran, where he will have to provide plausible explanations or face hanging from a crane?

Answers anyone?

This op-ed was originally published in The Huffington Post on 7/13/2010

Number 1 on the agenda is upping foreign language fluency among intelligence operatives and analysts. A year ago, fewer than a third of these folks were fluent in a foreign language – and not necessarily the high priority languages like Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Pushto, Urdu and Persian. This percentage remains much the same today – a clear problem given the countries and populations that need monitoring. English may be the universal language, but not in the world of terrorism and cyber espionage…

CIA Director Leon Panetta’s new plan intends to double the number of undercover operatives and triple the number of analysts in foreign language training – and the comparatively easy-to-learn romance languages likely won’t be part of the curriculum.

Panetta also envisions a future in which on-the-ground intelligence operatives (i.e. spies) and analysts work in the same location. Traditionally, the two groups have been separated, but bringing them together in war zones and at headquarters has proven effective. Doing so more consistently should streamline the exchange of information and subsequent guidance, minimizing slip-ups like the almost-bombing of flight 253 to Detroit and increasing wins like the discovery of a previously undisclosed uranium enrichment plant in Iran.

In addition to closer collaboration and better language skills, the CIA plans to upgrade computer technologies and software designed to sift through and sort the massive amounts of incoming data. While ‘gathering’ is the first challenge, the intelligence isn’t of much use without incisive tracking and analytics – both human and electronic.

On the subject of the three American hikers, whom Ahmadinejad has in past promised to help release, the Iranian President was rather curt, bordering on aggressive.

Sawyer wanted to know – given last week’s news that the three will likely be tried for espionage shortly – whether Ahmadinejad still intends to help secure the hikers’ freedom. According to Ahmadinejad, they are still alleged spies, not just ‘hikers.’ He answered Sawyers questions with a few of his own:

“How do you know they have accidentally crossed into Iran? How do you know they were looking for waterfalls and forests? Who has told you this? Are you a judge?”

Sawyer tried to respond, but Ahmadinejad, whose questions were aimed at making a point not eliciting an answer, cut her off:

“Just let me finish. Have the intelligence agents told you this?”

His point is this: they may well be hikers, but on the other hand, they may well be spies. The CIA isn’t exactly going to come out and expose the hikers’ cover to the world while Clinton is saying there’s absolutely no evidence that their crossing into Iran was espionage-related.

Ahmadinejad believes that only a court of law will be able to review the evidence and rule one way or the other. Of course the transparency into the legal process in Iran, especially on a case like this, will be nil. There isn’t much faith amongst the international community that Iran can offer a ‘fair trial’ to these three Americans.

On the subject of the leaked document that confirms the military intentions behind Iran’s nuclear development, Ahmadinejad refused to even look at the document (a copy of which Sawyer held out to him).

He says the document is a U.S. fabrication. “I think that some of the claims about our nuclear issue have turned into a repetitive and tasteless joke,” says Ahmadinejad.

If only it were just a joke…but when it comes to Iran, all indication seems to be to the contrary.

Image from ABC

An official investigation into the secret CIA prison is still ongoing, and Arvydas Anusauskas, the head of the parliamentary committee that is monitoring the investigation, announced that the resignation of Povilas Malakauskas is “partially connected” to the inquiry.

Apparently, when the parliamentary committee started nosing about and asking questions last summer, Director of State Security Malakauskas was not at the ready with straightforward answers. His “ambiguous” and delayed responses, according to Anusauskas, are one of the reasons the investigation still continues.

Malakauskas left his spy chief position – which he has only held for two years – three days after Lithuania’s ex-President Rolandas Paksas testified that his country’s secret service had sought his approval in 2003 to bring alleged terrorists into Lithuania from abroad.

According to Paksas, he refused to give his permission, but the spy agency often acted independently. In fact, Paksas holds the agency liable for the souring of his own political career, which makes us wonder how trustworthy his testimony is.

Although Paksas would not confirm that the clandestine CIA prison existed, he did say, “I know that the desire existed to get people suspected of terrorism brought to Lithuania.”