People (And The Media) Talk Too Much

Politicians like to put their mouths in gear without engaging their brains. (This political practice must be considered separately from the custom of "government by leak" in which the loose lipped politico or bureaucrat hopes to sink a policy proposal with which they disagree by a carefully calculated leak.)

A recent example of the blubber-tongued politician is Senator Dianne Feinstein who cheerfully and thoughtlessly blabbed during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. She commented to the Director of National Intelligence, DNI, that she understood the highly lethal and (in Pakistan at least) equally controversial Predator operations against al-Qaeda and Taliban heavies in the FATA were operated from bases near Islamabad.

The DNI did not respond.

While anyone with even the slightest knowledge of Predator capabilities would have long assumed the crossover point between reaction time and loiter time would be optimised from a base in Pakistan rather than one, say, in Afghanistan, there is no need to comment upon this. The strong probability that Predators were flown from one of the complex of bases near Islamabad is enhanced by the decades of cooperation between CIA and its Pakistani counterpart the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI.)

Given the negative reactions to the Predator/Hellfire strikes within certain segments of the Pakistani population (read "Islamists") it is necessary for the government of Pakistan to loudly and repeatedly decry the operations. Mollifying internal opinion by such outcries is a long hallowed tradition. And, not just in Pakistan.

Senator Feinstein's comment was both unnecessary and destabilizing of an already very shaky regime in Islamabad. The lame explanation by a press spokesperson later that day in no way lessened the potential damage nor made the Senator look any more perceptive and guarded in her mouth-flapping gust.

The Geek has wondered at the discretion and judiciousness of the press ever since Jack Anderson in one of his recurrent searches for sensation blew the cover on an exceptionally successful program of electronic eavesdropping directed at the Kremlin leadership a quarter century ago. Such exposure of sensitive and lucrative intelligence operations is no credit to the teller of secrets and can be quite harmful to his country's intelligence efforts.

Now the media have done it again. This time the cover-blower was not American but rather British. And, the target of the media exposure was not an action of the British services but those of Israel and the United States.

In a coordinated program CIA and Mossad have been seeking to delay the Iranian government in its quest for the Mahdi Bomb. There is no thought by either agency or the two governments which approved the program that the effort will prevent the Tehran regime from acquiring a nuclear capacity.

The goal has been to delay progress in that direction. To buy time in order that the so far bootless diplomatic efforts to assure Iran does not join the nuclear club might, just might, show success.

To this end the agencies have pursued sabotage and assassination. Iranian nuclear scientists and other personnel key to the program have died "under mysterious circumstances." Computers and other critical, vulnerable equipment have failed to operate effectively. Glitches and gremlins have been introduced throughout the program both in Iran and elsewhere.

How much delay has been introduced is an open question. But any sand in the gears is to the good.

Undoubtedly the Iranians suspect that they have been the target of impairing actions as they have been of espionage. Still, there is no need to let them know their suspicions are dead on.

Sure, assassinations and sabotage are icky-poo. The Mahdi Bomb is far more so.