Progressive Minds

Newsweek magazine has a very interesting read on a U.S. official who, during a briefing in Bagdad, overstated the involvement of Iran in Iraq.

From Newsweek:

An anonymous U.S. official, assigned to provide a recent “background” briefing to the news media in Baghdad, strayed from his script and overstated evidence linking Iranian leaders to weapons found in Iraq, according to four U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the matter.

The White House is still trying to recover from the stumble, which happened during a much- anticipated Feb. 11 briefing. U.S. officials had hoped to use the event to ratchet up pressure on the Tehran regime. But instead of focusing public and congressional attention on the role of Iranian government agents in stoking violence in Iraq, the briefing wound up raising new questions about whether the Bush administration is hyping intelligence about Iran in much the same way it did about Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq four years ago.

The briefing has also inadvertently called attention to what may be an even more serious problem: the limits of U.S. intelligence in deciphering Iranian government actions. Unable to recruit enough reliable spies or collect sufficient hard technical intelligence about the country’s military and nuclear programs, U.S. intelligence agencies are being forced once again to fall back on “deductions” and “inferences.” In many ways, this is the same “guesswork” process that a White House review panel later concluded was governed by “groupthink” conclusions—which ultimately led to wrong calls about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

The entire article can be read at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17265231/site/newsweek

Of course, the Newsweek article mentions the "limits" of U.S. intelligence in trying to find out what is going on in Iran. 

However, it doesn't really tell you WHY the U.S. really has no valuable intelligence inside Iran.  But I will.  And it all goes back to former CIA covert operative Valerie Plame, whose identity was outed by the Bush Administration.

Before her cover was blown by the Bushies, Valerie Plame was working on issues of weapons of mass destruction and Iran.  Specifically, she was "part of an operation tracking distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran."  

But of course, that work had to stop when Valerie Plame and the CIA "front" company Brewster Jennings, were outed.

The reason why the United States doesn't have any valuable intelligence inside Iran, is because the Bush Administration outed a covert CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Outed CIA officer was working on Iran, intelligence sources say