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Here's an intelligence fiasco worthy of erudite Johnny English [He knows no fear. He knows no danger. He knows nothing.].

There's a dust-up in the blogosphere about the news that, in 2000, the Clinton Administration gave slightly flawed plans for nuclear weapons to IRAN in an ill-advised scheme called Operation Merlin. On paper, I'm sure someone who's watched too many cheesy spy flicks might think it looked like a freakin' cool idea, man. But the reality is that it's come back to kick us in the pants. Thus, a nuclear Iran will be Bubba Clinton's [He knows nothing.] legacy to the world.

The operation, which took place during the Clinton administration in early 2000, was code named Operation Merlin and "may have been one of the most reckless operations in the modern history of the CIA," according to Risen.

It called for the unnamed scientist, a defector from the Soviet Union, to offer Iran the blueprint for a "firing set" -- the intricate mechanism which triggers the chain reaction needed for a nuclear explosion.

The Russian was told by CIA officers that the Iranians already had the technology detailed in the plans and that the ruse was simply an attempt by the agency to find out the full scope of Tehran's nuclear knowledge.

But, contrary to orders not to open the packet, he added a note which made it clear he could help fix the flaws for money.

This is just another chapter in the Bill Clinton saga of giving weapons technology to enemies of the United States. He's provided missile technology to the Chinese, which increased the accuracy of their ballistic missiles, and he provided nuclear technology to the North Koreans that eventually enabled them to develop nuclear weapons.

Risen said the Clinton-approved plan ended up handing Tehran "one of the greatest engineering secrets in the world, providing the solution to one of a handful of problems that separated nuclear powers such as the United States and Russia from rogue countries such as Iran that were desperate to join the nuclear club but had so far fallen short."

Mark Levin, director of the Landmark Legal Foundation, said that thanks to Clinton Iran was able to "leapfrog one of the last remaining engineering hurdles blocking its path to a nuclear weapon."

Ironically, Risen's New York Times has declined to cover Mr. Clinton's Iranian nuclear debacle -- concentrating instead on his book's dubious claims that the National Security Agency was first authorized to commence domestic wiretapping by President Bush...

NewsMax stated that Risen's report could also have serious implications for Sen. Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. Mrs. Clinton has been sharply critical of President Bush's handling of the Iranian nuclear crisis, complaining that a nuclear-armed Tehran would be a much more serious threat to the US than Iraq. However, NewsMax may be proven wrong about Sen. Clinton if the news media continue to ignore this story.

"Don't hold your breath waiting for the elite media to create a frenzy over this story. They will never hurt either Clintons with such a damning report," says former intelligence officer Sid Francis.

Iran claims that its nuclear power is for peaceful purposes and that it will help free up oil and gas resources for export, thus generating additional hard-currency revenues.
[...]
President Mohammad Khatami said on 23 December 2002 that Iran was committed to its obligations and had no intention to develop nuclear weapons. He said that Iran's willingness to send spent fuel back to Russia showed that it did not want to use it for weapons, since the nuclear waste from Bushere plant would be taken to Russia for safekeeping.

Clearly it was a reckless move. What, pray tell, was the upside? Why take a risk like this unless there was a HUGE payoff? Please note the timeframe for this - 2000 - the election year. That means Tenet was head of the CIA. The turf wars between CIA, State and DoD were raging under Clinton as well as Bush. But this mistake demonstrates the CIA had a lot of serious problems right before 9-11.

"The last 30 years have seen such a deterioration in our intelligence capabilities—and, correspondingly, the public’s faith in them—that one can only hope that all the leaking we’ve seen coming from the CIA is but a last ditch (and, let’s pray, ultimately unsuccessful) effort on the part of many entrenched intelligence lifers to discredit those like Porter Goss who are working on fixing the problems, starting with a rigorous attempt to rid us of those in the intelligence bureaucracy, and breaking down the artificial barriers we have constructed to protect us from ourselves.

Because right now, we need protecting from outside evils—and the luxury we had in the heady pomo days of self-recrimination and hyperpower guilt to punish ourselves for our own international power is behind us."

That next development – metalizing the enriched uranium to fit it into a warhead – could come as soon as four months from now, says author Jerry Corsi, who has watched the predictions in his book Atomic Iran unfold since it was published one year ago.

"They have only one more problem to solve," Corsi said. "The world has got to stop thinking about these Iranians as backward, just because Ahmadinejad has a radical religious agenda. They have all the technical knowledge and all the money they need to solve these problems."

Iran now has ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, according to military experts.

While Tehran denies it is trying to develop a nuclear arsenal, ballistic missile experts advising the United States say it has succeeded in reconfiguring the Shahab-3 ballistic missile to carry nuclear weapons, the London Telegraph reports.

"This is a major breakthrough for the Iranians," said a senior U.S. official, according to the London paper. "They have been trying to do this for years and now they have succeeded. It is a very disturbing development."

Recent test firings of the Shahab-3 by military experts show Iran has been able to modify the nose cone to carry a basic nuclear bomb, the experts conclude.