CIA: Syria strike aided by foreign intelligence

"We were able last year to spoil a big secret," says agency chief, without saying if partner was Israel.

By JPOST STAFF, AP
Syrian reactor 224 (photo credit: Courtesy ISIS)
Syrian reactor 224
(photo credit: Courtesy ISIS)
The air strike on a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor last year was the result of intelligence cooperation that included a "foreign partner" that first identified the facility's purpose, CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden said on Tuesday. "Our foreign partnerships ... were critical to the final outcome," Hayden said in a speech for delivery to the World Affairs Council of Los Angeles, Reuters reported, adding that a US intelligence official declined to specify the partner Hayden referred to or to say whether it was Israel. "We were able last year to spoil a big secret, a project that could have provided Syria with plutonium for nuclear weapons," Hayden said. The CIA chief added that the information from the foreign partner first identified the facility as a reactor similar to one in North Korea, although US intelligence had identified it as suspicious. "When pipes for a massive cooling system were laid out to the Euphrates River in the spring of 2007, there would have been little doubt this was a nuclear reactor," Hayden said. "We would have known it was North Korean, too, given the quantity and variety of intelligence reports on nuclear ties between Pyongyang and Damascus." Concerning the Iranian nuclear standoff, Hayden said Teheran's conduct was suspicious, despite last year's National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which claimed that the Islamic Republic had frozen its nuclear weapons program. "Iran's behavior, coming as it does after years of nuclear activity they concealed and continue to deny, invites nothing but suspicion," he said, adding, "Iran's leaders saw what happened to Saddam and still they reject every opportunity to come clean with the world." He also said that best way for the next president to help the CIA would be to "do nothing." "We've been pulled up by the roots to check how we're growing on about an 18-month cycle for about the last six years," Hayden said in answer to a question from the audience after his speech. "If asked, I would offer my thoughts to the president-elect's team to pick people you trust who are competent to run these agencies, put them in those positions and the current structure will work well enough with good people...," he said. "We're suffering reformation and transformation fatigue." Hayden outlined some of the key issues the CIA faces. Iran and North Korea both have the capability to produce nuclear weapons but al-Qaida is the CIA's top nuclear concern because, given the chance, it is most likely to use such weapons, Hayden said. "There is no greater national security threat facing the United States than al-Qaida and its associates," he said. With regard to North Korea and Iran, Hayden said, "The question is not of capability, but intent." In 2006, North Korea conducted an underground nuclear test, removing any doubt it had the means to produce a nuclear warhead. Iran has not yet demonstrated a nuclear explosion, but Hayden said it had the scientific and industrial capacity to produce nuclear weapons "eventually" and fueled suspicion by refusing to allow international inspectors into its nuclear facilities. "Teheran at a minimum is keeping open its option to develop nuclear weapons," Hayden said. A US intelligence assessment issued last year said Iran halted weapons design work in 2003, and that the nuclear weapons program had not resumed as of mid-2007. Hayden said intelligence still supported that conclusion. When asked why the US had yet to capture Osama bin Laden, Hayden said he occasionally asks the CIA's head of counterterrorism the same question. The answer, he said, was that bin Laden was hiding. "Please don't think I'm being flip with the answer," Hayden said. "This man, who we really do want to kill or capture, is spending a great deal of his energy merely surviving and that's the next best state of nature as far as we're concerned. I'm serious." The Los Angeles World Affairs Council is a nonprofit organization that provides a forum for world figures to address its membership.