How Badly Did Clinton Bomb?

One item floating around the blogosphere was on Levin's radio show last night.

Last night, radio talk show host and former US Justice Department official Mark Levin shocked many listeners when he reported that President Bill Clinton gave nuclear technology to the Iranians in a harebrained scheme.

What's being reported is that Operation Merlin gave Iran critical info for a nuclear trigger, the information was allegedly flawed. With a Russian scientitst's help in exchange for money, Iran was able to correct the information.

There's more to this story, apparently. And such stories will likely never be fully disclosed to a degree of certainty. I'd be more upset with the CIA, than Clinton. But I also found this below at MSNBC, which may have something to do with the story not being pushed by the MSM - who knows:

The Bush administration asked the Times more than two years ago not to write about the operation, say two administration officials who asked not to be identified discussing intel issues. A Times spokeswoman says, "We generally don't discuss stories we don't publish." Risen tells NEWSWEEK Merlin was "obsolete at the time I wrote about it." He didn't want to discuss the Times's internal deliberations.

Stop the ACLU has more.

And be sure to see this, too:

MR. RUSSERT: Another story that was not published by The Times that has created an uproar in the intelligence community was Operation MERLIN, which you talk about it in your book. And let me show it on the screen. “Operation MERLIN has been one of the most closely guarded secrets in the Clinton and Bush administrations. And it may not be over. Some officials have suggested it might be repeated against other countries. ... It’s not clear who originally came up with the idea, but the plan was first approved by President Bill Clinton. After the Russian scientist’s fateful trip to Vienna, however, the MERLIN operation was endorsed by the Bush administration, possibly with an eye toward repeating it against North Korea or other dangerous states.”

An operation where an agent would present fake blueprints to “help” Iran or another country build a nuclear bomb, but because it was fake, it would, in effect, delay their operation. The CIA has issued a very sharp comment about you, and let me read it. “It is most alarming that” the author “discloses information that he believes to be ongoing intelligence operations, including actions as critical as stopping dangerous nations from acquiring nuclear weapons. Setting aside whether what he wrote is accurate or inaccurate, it demonstrates an unfathomable and sad disregard for U.S. national security and those who take life-threatening risks to ensure it.”

By revealing this operation, which you acknowledge may be ongoing, aren’t you violating national security?

MR. RISEN: No, I don’t believe so. First of all, this operation in particular took place six years ago, well before—you know, long before 9/11. And the reason that I think it’s important to talk about this is because there are people who believed that it was mishandled, and it’s possible we actually aided the Iranian nuclear program rather than try to stop it; that this operation was conducted so poorly, it reflects the larger issue of one of the issues that I deal with in my book, which is the failure of the CIA to adequately deal with weapons of mass destruction and intelligence related to weapons of mass destruction. They now have a long history of repeated failures and repeated mistakes when you deal with—on WMD issues, as we saw in Iraq. And I think that the agency’s credibility on the issue of weapons of mass destruction has to be in question.

MR. RUSSERT: Aren’t you tipping the Iranians and the North Koreans as to what might be an ongoing operation?

MR. RISEN: I don’t believe so. I think that this—as I said, this operation took place six years ago, and I think Homer first revealed the sources and methods of the Trojan horse a long time ago.

MR. RUSSERT: But you do say it may be used against North Korea.

MR. RISEN: Well, you could use similar kinds of things, not this specific operation.

MR. RUSSERT: You also write about another situation where a CIA agent at Langley sent out an e- mail, which got in the wrong hands, and it created the roll-up, in your words, of CIA agents in Iran and that we went blind there. People in the intelligence community say that is just dead wrong, that there are not any CIA agents in prison, there was no roll-up. How do you respond?