CIA paid Iranian scientist $5 million: Report

[Lankan Ranger]

CIA paid Iranian scientist $5 million: Report

A newspaper is reporting that the CIA paid an Iranian nuclear scientist $5 million to provide intelligence on Iran's nuclear program.

The scientist, Shahram Amiri, returned to Iran on Wednesday to a hero's welcome after claiming he was abducted by US agents and then offered $50 million to stay in the US. The US says Amiri was a willing defector who changed his mind and asked to go back to Iran.

The Washington Post said in its online edition late Wednesday that Amiri had been working for the CIA for more than a year. It said he was paid $5 million out of a secret program aimed at inducing scientists and others with information on Iran's nuclear program to defect.

Amiri says he had no classified information.

CIA paid Iranian scientist $5 million: Report - Middle East - World - The Times of India

 

[Spring Onion]

But iran had welcomed him. Seems there will be some serious investigation.

It will be interesting to know if he really gave the Americans any information or wrong information and pocketed the money or if he was really working for CIA

 

[Ahmad]

couple of hours earlier in bbcpersian website it was reported that he is not nuclear sceintist, and he is a researcher in a University with no any access to classified information, but god knows what the truth is.

 

[somebozo]

He managed to fool the americans all this long and pocketed the money..CIA has a history of making wanna-be spies rich over night. A teenager was able to scourge internet for popular information, sell it to CIA informant and make thousands of dollars before being busted.

 

[Jigs]

Something fishy is going on. This guy all of a sudden didn't come into the U.S. and start making up stories about how he was captured and they tried to get information out of him and that he had to escape back to Iran but didn't tell the Americans anything etc etc. Keep your eyes on this guy Iran could make him "disappear".

 

[Nahraf]

May be he was planted by Iranian intelligence to see how US will capture Iranian nuclear scientists. Shahram Amiri may have been low level nuclear scientist with no credible intelligence. Iranian intelligence may have created his important persona and let him be a bait for CIA.

 

[Ahmad]

Something fishy is going on. This guy all of a sudden didn't come into the U.S. and start making up stories about how he was captured and they tried to get information out of him and that he had to escape back to Iran but didn't tell the Americans anything etc etc. Keep your eyes on this guy Iran could make him "disappear".

if he passed a classified information to another country he will be considered as traitor.

 

[H2O3C4Nitrogen]

ye sab noorakushti he . the whole Iranian issue is a topi drama .. !
A stronger Shia state is in coherence with the interests of Washington...!

 

[somebozo]

ye sab noorakushti he . the whole Iranian issue is a topi drama .. !
A stronger Shia state is in coherence with the interests of Washington...!

If such was the case Saudi Arabia would not pull itself in. To me it looks like the biggest sucessfull Iranian anti-usa PR attempt after the hostage crisis. He must have been told to establish secret links with US based and feed them misinformation proving himself to be valuable target, then secretly arrange to travel from Saudi Arabia to USA and stage the whole drama. I was listening to his story on PressTV and it sounds really ridiculous..

They injected me with drugs and then took me to USA on millitary plane?? WTF how did he know if he was drugged and subsequently unconcious??

And how he managed to escape from CIA custody they wouldnt keep him locked in a baby cot but must have been a high tech detention facility. And more over his refuge in Pakistan embassy and departure. ? sounds weak to me

 

[H2O3C4Nitrogen]

NYT is claiming that he was a CIA asset... !

 

[Ahmad]

NYT is claiming that he was a CIA asset... !

Well, if he was a CIA asset, they wouldnt have announced it to the public to endanger their asset's life. he might well be an ordinary researcher with no significant information. but still we dont know the full truth.

 

[Pasban]

ye sab noorakushti he . the whole Iranian issue is a topi drama .. !
A stronger Shia state is in coherence with the interests of Washington...!

"Topi drama" Iran kii tar.af say na.hin haii aur ja.han tak "noorakushti" kii baath haii woh aur kafii ja.gah bhii haii per sha.yad ap.koh nazar nahi atii.

As for the second-bit, a stronger Iran (or Shia state as you like to term it) is incoherent with US interests in the region at large, especially with the current government.

 

[mjnaushad]

"Topi drama" Iran kii tar.af say na.hin haii aur ja.han tak "noorakushti" kii baath haii woh aur kafii ja.gah bhii haii per sha.yad ap.koh nazar nahi atii.

As for the second-bit, a stronger Iran (or Shia state as you like to term it) is incoherent with US interests in the region at large, especially with the current government.

damn....you can speak Urdu.

 

[Pasban]

I don’t think that a "Nuclear scientist" would defect leaving his family in Iran. He would have taken his family with him or send them out ahead of himself.

This leaves Two possibilities:

1) The US (with the help of its closely all, the Saudi monarchy, did kidnap him and whether he escaped or was let go doesn't matter (as it is a secondary matter)

2) Or, it was a plan to embarrass the US by having him to defect and then change mind and leave.

However the second option is not very likely because to expect a "nuclear scientist" to act like a field agent is not very likely or practical. This leaves me to the conclusion that Iran's own reports were truthful in that he was not a Nuclear scientist for that would indeed make him a strategic asset and he would not have been let go off as easily then.

Here are some tidbits from the international media.

Can the CIA Keep Defectors from Redefecting?
No.
BY JOSHUA E. KEATING | JULY 13, 2010

Iranian nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri, who has been missing for over a year, has reportedly taken refuge at the Pakistani Embassy in Washington and wants to return to Iran. Amiri claims to have been kidnapped by the Central Intelligence Agency, though it had been reported earlier that Amiri had defected of his own free will and had been resettled in the United States by the CIA. Assuming Amiri did defect, would the CIA have any way to keep him for going back to Iran?

Not really. Public Law 110, part of the 1949 act that established the agency, gives the CIA director the authority to bring up to 100 aliens per year into the United States for national security reasons. But once the "110s," as they are known (defectors of lesser importance are called "55s"), are brought into the country and given citizenship, they aren't prisoners and the CIA can't legally keep them locked up. Presumably, not many people would be anxious to defect if this wasn't the case.

The agency has been less than scrupulous about following this law in the past. Yuri Nosenko, a KGB lieutenant colonel who defected to the United States in 1964, was held in a small concrete cell in Virginia for over three years and allegedly tortured after the agency's counterintelligence chief, James Jesus Angleton, became convinced that his defection wasn't genuine. Nosenko was eventually released and settled in an undisclosed location in the American south, where he lived until his death in 2008.

Nosenko's treatment was controversial even at the time, and the agency became much friendlier toward KGB defectors in the latter years of the Cold War. When KGB colonel Vitaly Yurchenko (above) defected in 1985, the agency went out of its way to keep him happy, including taking him on a tour of the American west and arranging a meeting with his mistress in Montreal -- though she told him she had been in love with a KGB officer, not a traitor. Partially as a result of this disappointment, he walked away from his CIA handler in a Georgetown restaurant several months later and returned to the Soviet Embassy. (Like Amiri, Yurchenko told the press that he had been kidnapped and tortured.)

After the embarrassment of the Yurchenko affair and subsequent congressional hearings, the agency created new procedures to handle defectors, including designating a case officer for each individual. After all, high-profile defectors are generally not in the best mental state when they come over, and keeping them happy can be a full-time job. As a fast-rising CIA official named Robert M. Gates told Congress in 1985, that officer should be ''somebody ... that understands him and understands his concerns and can identify when he is going through a particular psychological crisis.''

Nonetheless, the agency continued to have trouble keeping a handle on its high-value KGB defectors. In 1989, former KGB colonel Victor Gundarev went public with his complaints that his CIA handlers had put him in mind to redefect or move to "any other country to live in."

The sequence of events that led Amiri to try to return to Iran are still unclear, but if it turns out that he had second thoughts about his new life in America, he would hardly be the first.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/07/13/can_the_cia_keep_defectors_from_redefecting

The hidden message in the above article is that that Shahram Amiri was a indeed a "defector". This message intends to extortionate the US from kidnapping charges that might be levied against it by Iran and not to mention the bad International publicity.

Amiri not a nuclear scientist, Iran says


An Iranian Foreign Ministry official has dismissed reports that Iranian academic Shahram Amiri who was abducted by the US last year and was recently released is a nuclear scientist.

“Shahram Amiri is not a nuclear scientist and we reject it,” Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Hassan Qashqavi told reporters at Imam Khomeini Airport, adding that he is a researcher in one of the universities in Iran.

In collaboration with Saudi forces, US security forces kidnapped Amiri while he was on a pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia in June 2009. He was then taken to the United States.

The Iranian academic took refuge in Iran's interest section at the Pakistani embassy in Washington on Tuesday, demanding an “immediate return” to the country.

He left the United States for the Iranian capital, Tehran, on Wednesday and arrived home early Thursday.

Analysts maintain that US intelligence officials decided to free Amiri after they failed to advance their propaganda campaign against Iran's nuclear program through fabricating interviews with the Iranian national.

Qashqavi added that both Amiri and the Iranian government reserved the right to seek compensation through international channels.

Meanwhile, the Iranian deputy minister went on to reject reports that Amiri's release was linked to a possible swap deal for three US hikers who have been detained in Iran since 2009.

He said such speculations were not factual and called it a “scenario” created by foreign media.

Joshua Fattal, Shane Bauer and Sarah Shourd were arrested in the western Iranian city of Marivan for illegal entry into the country in July 2009.

Iran had earlier dismissed Amiri's swap with the three US detainees.

"The three US citizens had trespassed Iran's border illegally. It is not right to make discussions about a swap between Iranian scholar Shahram Amiri, who went missing last year while on a pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, and the three US hikers," Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said on June 8.

The US nationals were later charged with espionage after Tehran Prosecutor General Abbas Jafari-Dolatabadi said "compelling evidence" was found that the three Americans had actually been cooperating with US intelligence services.

AR/CS/HRF
Amiri not a nuclear scientist, Iran says

more...

Amiri 'rejected bribe offer of USD 50mn'

Iranian scholar Shahram Amiri, who was freed 14 months after being kidnapped by US and Saudi agents, says he turned down a 50 million dollar bribe offer by the US for cooperation.

Speaking in a press conference upon his arrival in Tehran on Thursday, Amiri said the US was pursuing a "psychological propaganda" campaign against the Islamic Republic through his abduction.

He went on to explain that US officials were making concerted efforts to bribe him to advance their political agenda against the Iranian government from the very first days of his kidnapping.

"They [US security agents] told me they would give me 50 million dollars and provide me and my family with proper living conditions in a European country if I reversed my decision to return to Iran," Amiri said in the press conference.

He also pointed to a US offer for an interview with CNN and said that, "Since the early days of my abduction, the Americans were willing to pay me 10 million dollars in exchange for my participation in a 10-minute interview with CNN."

The Iranian academic went on to criticize US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for claiming that he had come to the US willingly and was free to leave.

"I am surprised that a top diplomat of a country which is an advocate of human rights made claims about my freedom while I was kidnapped," Amiri said.

Clinton said on Tuesday that Amiri "lived freely" in the US, adding that he was "free to go" back to his home country.

The Iranian academic also dismissed reports that he made his decision to return to Iran after his family came under pressure by the Islamic Republic.

"It is not true at all. After my abduction, Iranian officials supported my family," he explained.

In collaboration with Saudi forces, US security forces kidnapped Amiri while he was on a pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia in June 2009. He was later taken to the United States.

On July 13, the Iranian scientist took refuge in Iran's interest section at the Pakistani embassy in Washington and later on Wednesday left the United States for the Iranian capital, Tehran.

Amiri 'rejected bribe offer of USD 50mn'

Given the little information I have about him by reading different reports both by Americans and by our government and his family situation I doubt that he was going to defect. Due to our culture we do have a very tight family relationship. Our culture is not an individualistic culture as it is in west. We practice collectivism. Of course I am not saying that everyone in our country is the same but very high percentage of our population do practice collectivism and care at least about their immediate family. But who knows, I may be wrong for Iranians in the past have been willing to sell themselves for much less. PressTV quotes the figure at $50 million and that would be a difficult amount to turn down perhaps.

It seems over the past decade, the IRI strategists have taken a highly effective "game theoretic approach" to foreign policy especially with respect to the nuclear program. Much more so, it seems, than some of their adversaries. I mention this because Hassan Abbasi, who is considered a key IRI strategist, has brought up this concept many times and has given some brief notes about it. Hence the IRI employs many purposeful maneuvers and counter-maneuvers. It seems a bit apparent to me that the IRI has thought this through several iterations ahead and already has packaged responses ready. Just my thoughts...

 

[CardSharp]

CIA paid Iranian scientist $5 million: Report

A newspaper is reporting that the CIA paid an Iranian nuclear scientist $5 million to provide intelligence on Iran's nuclear program.

The scientist, Shahram Amiri, returned to Iran on Wednesday to a hero's welcome after claiming he was abducted by US agents and then offered $50 million to stay in the US. The US says Amiri was a willing defector who changed his mind and asked to go back to Iran.

The Washington Post said in its online edition late Wednesday that Amiri had been working for the CIA for more than a year. It said he was paid $5 million out of a secret program aimed at inducing scientists and others with information on Iran's nuclear program to defect.

Amiri says he had no classified information.

CIA paid Iranian scientist $5 million: Report - Middle East - World - The Times of India

one or more of the parties here are lying.