Karl's Weird News

Iranian scientist who vanished ‘gave nuclear secrets’ to UN inspectors sent to Qom site

An Iranian scientist who vanished six months ago has revealed secrets of his country’s nuclear programme with international weapons inspectors, The Sunday Telegraph has learned.

Shahram Amiri briefed United Nations nuclear monitors in a clandestine meeting at Frankfurt airport just hours before they flew to Iran to inspect a hidden uranium enrichment plant, according to French intelligence sources.

An award-winning atomic physicist, Mr Amiri had worked at the heavily-guarded underground site at Qom. He was attached to a Tehran university named by the EU last year as part of the regime’s nuclear-proliferation operations.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was told of the existence of the Qom facility by the US and its European allies in September. But the meeting with Mr Amiri in October would have provided inspectors with key insider knowledge before they made the sensitive trip.

The scientist is the focus of an extraordinary international row stretching from the Gulf to Washington after Iran last week accused Saudi Arabia and the US of “terrorist behaviour” for allegedly colluding in his abduction.

The nuclear scientist, who is in his 30s, disappeared after arriving in in Saudi Arabia for a pilgrimage in late May, leaving behind his wife and extended family. The Saudi authorities say they do not know where he is.

But contrary to Iranian claims, Mr Amiri actually defected after an elaborate international cloak-and-dagger co-ordinated by the CIA, according to a well-connected French intelligence analysis website.

Officials Say U.S. Wiretaps Exceeded Law

The National Security Agency intercepted private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans in recent months on a scale that went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress last year, government officials said in recent interviews.

Several intelligence officials, as well as lawyers briefed about the matter, said the N.S.A. had been engaged in “overcollection” of domestic communications of Americans. They described the practice as significant and systemic, although one official said it was believed to have been unintentional.
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And in one previously undisclosed episode, the N.S.A. tried to wiretap a member of Congress without a warrant, an intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said.

The agency believed that the congressman, whose identity could not be determined, was in contact — as part of a Congressional delegation to the Middle East in 2005 or 2006 — with an extremist who had possible terrorist ties and was already under surveillance, the official said. The agency then sought to eavesdrop on the congressman’s conversations, the official said.

The official said the plan was ultimately blocked because of concerns from some intelligence officials about using the N.S.A., without court oversight, to spy on a member of Congress.

Infamous spy’s son released pending trial:

The son of an infamous CIA double agent who is himself accused of spying was released from jail Friday in Portland, Oregon, pending trial after a federal judge ruled he did not pose a flight risk.

Judge Anna J. Brown ordered that Nathaniel Nicholson, 24, can be freed provided he stay with family, not leave Oregon without permission from authorities and wear a GPS monitoring device. Brown also ordered that he not have any contact with his father, the admitted spy Harold James “Jim” Nicholson.

The elder Nicholson pleaded guilty in 1997 to spying for Russia and is the highest ranking CIA officer ever to be sentenced for espionage. While serving a 23-year prison sentence, prosecutors allege, Jim Nicholson, 58, restarted his career as a double agent and enlisted his son Nathaniel in his efforts to collect money owed to him by the Russian spy services and to sell more secrets.

Both father and son were charged in January with acting as agents of a foreign government, money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering. They have pleaded not guilty. Court appointed lawyers representing the men did not return CNN’s calls for comment

Russian Spies Targeted and Used Clinton Official

How should the media handle sensational allegations that one of the most esteemed members of their profession, former Time magazine journalist and top Clinton State Department official Strobe Talbott, was a dupe of the Russian intelligence service? How should they deal with hard evidence that one of their sacred cows, the United Nations, is penetrated by Russian spies?

The answer is that most of them will ignore it.

This is the fate they’re giving to Comrade J, a blockbuster book about Russian espionage written by former Washington Post reporter and author Pete Earley.

Comrade J is about a Russian master spy, Sergei Tretyakov, who defected to the United States because he was disgusted with the Russian/Soviet system and wanted to start a new and better life with his family in America. He identifies former Clinton State Department official Strobe Talbott, a current adviser to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, as having been a trusted contact of the Russian intelligence service.