Comments from sender:
Google Honoured or Exonerated !
This is what to ponder over upon !!
This article raises my eyebrows for sure.
BEST OF FUTURE !!!
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CIA rejects intel request so State Dept. uses Google
Full story: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003471727_intel11.html
By Dafna Linzer The Washington Post
WASHINGTON -- When the State Department recently asked the CIA for names of Iranians who could be sanctioned for their role in a clandestine nuclear-weapons program, the agency refused, citing a large workload and a desire to protect its sources and tradecraft.
Frustrated, the State Department assigned a junior foreign-service officer to find the names another way -- by using Google.
Those with the most hits under search terms such as "Iran and nuclear," three officials said, became targets for international rebuke Friday when a sanctions resolution circulated at the United Nations.
Policymakers and intelligence officials have long struggled over how and when to disclose secret information, such as names of Iranians with suspected nuclear-weapons ties.
In some internal debates, policymakers win out, and intelligence is made public to aid political or diplomatic goals. In other cases, such as this one, the intelligence community successfully argues that protecting information outweighs the desires of some to share it with the world.
But that argument can put the U.S. government in the awkward position of relying, in part, on an Internet search to select targets for international sanctions.
None of the 12 Iranians the State Department eventually singled out for potential bans on international travel and business dealings is believed by the CIA to be directly connected to Iran's most suspicious nuclear activities.
"There is nothing that proves involvement in a clandestine weapons program, and there is very little out there at all that even connects people to a clandestine weapons program," said one official familiar with the intelligence on Iran. Like others interviewed for this story, the official insisted on anonymity.
What little information there is has been guarded at CIA headquarters. The agency declined to give details, but a senior intelligence official said: "There were several factors that made it a complicated and time-consuming request, not the least of which were well-founded concerns" about revealing the way the CIA gathers intelligence on Iran.
That might be why the junior State Department officer, who has been with the nonproliferation bureau for only a few months, was put in front of a computer.
An initial Internet search yielded more than 100 names, including dozens of Iranian diplomats who have publicly defended their country's efforts as intended to produce energy, not bombs, the sources said.
It was submitted to the CIA for approval, but the agency refused to look up such a large number of people, according to three government sources.
So the State Department cut the list in half and resubmitted the names.
In the end, the CIA approved a handful of individuals -- though none is believed connected to Project 1-11, Iran's secret military effort to design a weapons system capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.
The names of Project 1-11 staff members have never been released by any government, and doing so might have raised questions the CIA was not willing or fully able to answer.
But the agency had no qualms about approving names already available on the Internet.
U.S., French and British officials agreed it was better to stay away from names that would have to be justified with sensitive information from intelligence programs, and instead put forward names of Iranians whose jobs were publicly connected to the country's nuclear energy and missile programs.
The U.S.-backed draft resolution, offered by Britain and France, would ban travel and freeze assets of 11 institutions and 12 people, including the commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, the directors of Iran's chief nuclear-energy facilities, and several people in the missile program.
It would prohibit the sale of nuclear technologies to Iran and urges states to "prevent specialized teaching or training" of Iranian nationals in disciplines that could further Iran's understanding of banned nuclear activities.
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