Back To That Iran Thing

There's still all sorts of scary stuff pointing in the direction of a likely attack on Iran. But I leave it to those who parse the evidence with knowledge, background and, most important, reliable sources, to help me decide if I should be worried. Seymour Hersch is one of the best, and he's got a new story out in the New Yorker about Bush's $400 million black ops adventure inside the country. It doesn't help to learn that the CIA is involved. I thought the administration hated the CIA. And besides, they don't seem to ever get anything right, according to Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes, the best book I read last year. Anyway, I've decided to be worried again. Here's a tidbit from Hersch's story, which is quite long but always worth it.

Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program. Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of “high-value targets” in the President’s war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials. Many of these activities are not specified in the new Finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature. Under federal law, a Presidential Finding, which is highly classified, must be issued when a covert intelligence operation gets under way and, at a minimum, must be made known to Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and the Senate and to the ranking members of their respective intelligence committees—the so-called Gang of Eight. Money for the operation can then be reprogrammed from previous appropriations, as needed, by the relevant congressional committees, which also can be briefed.