BUZZURRO

This is ridiculous:

When the State Department recently asked the CIA for names of Iranians who could be sanctioned for their involvement 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.

(…)
An initial Internet search yielded over 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. The list also included names of Iranians who have spoken with U.N. inspectors or have traveled to Vienna to attend International Atomic Energy Agency meetings about Iran.

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. Too time-consuming, the intelligence community said, for the CIA’s Iran desk staff of 140 people. The list would need to be pared down. 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.

Still we have not learned how important collaboration among federal agencies is for U.S. national security, as it was recommended by 9/11 Commission.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 11th, 2006 at 10:33 pm and is filed under US News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.