Re-Spinning the Laptop Of Death

By Steve Hynd

Laura Rozen, in writing about a report by the Institute for Science and International Security on the so-called "secret annex" the IAEA keeps on allegations about Iran's nuclear plans, brought my attention to some serious re-spinning of the source of those allegations.

Among the interesting details in the ISIS report, some attention to the purported origins of the intel information that fuels the IAEA so-called "secret annex," (including a long-held miconception about a laptop previously reported to have been acquired by western intelligence in 2004 with electronic information on pre-2004 alleged Iranian nuclear weapons research, that turns out instead to have been how U.S. intelligence presented the electronic information it acquired to other nations) and on the alleged fate of its supplier.

The information below is taken from one version of this IAEA assessment cited by the AP; it is a 67-page long report titled �Possible Military Dimensions of Iran's Nuclear Program.� ISIS is not certain of the date of this document but understands it was authored in the past 6 to 12 months.

Much of the IAEA's information, including test data, reports, diagrams, and videos, was reportedly contained on a laptop. This laptop has received considerable attention since its public revelation in 2005. ISIS now understands that the term �laptop� might refer to the method by which the United States shares sensitive data and not the form in which the data were removed from Iran.

Say what? That "long-held misconception" has been regularly reported on since 2005, as Laura notes. But both she and David Albright's ISIS are swallowing the new spin far too easily. One nuclear scientist I asked about this replied "The US shares sensitive data by putting it on laptops? I certainly hope not." Indeed, the new story is just as ridiculous as the idea that Iran would put all that sensitive data on a single laptop that could be "half-inched". Indeed, I'm told that the changing US story is one of the primary reasons the IAEA are so dubious about the authenticity of the documantation held on the laptop and that Albright knows this.

There's an evolving story about the data's provenance too. The source has been variously described in the past as a "laptop computer stolen by an Iranian citizen in 2004" then handed to US intelligence by a "walk in" source, as coming from "an Iranian whom German intelligence tried, unsuccessfully, to recruit as an informant" but "whisked out of the country by another Iranian who offered it up to foreign intelligence officials in Turkey as evidence of a nuclear weapons program" and now, finally, as coming from a dead Iranian source's wife. 

ISIS has learned from intelligence officials with direct knowledge of the case that electronic media was smuggled out of Iran by the wife of an Iranian who was recruited by German intelligence. Iranian authorities had discovered his activities, and one of his last acts before arrest was the passing of the records to his wife. Intelligence officials told ISIS that they assume he is dead. His wife fled to Turkey and turned the electronic media over to U.S. authorities.

Interestingly, no-one has ever claimed that the original source actually worked in the Iranian nuclear program, and none of the documentation contains the word "nuclear" at all. As I wrote in 2006, the whole thing stinks like Hagrid being handed a dragon's egg by a stranger down the pub. It feels to me like we're being expected to swallow another helping of yellowcake.

Update: Gregg Carlstrom has similiar thoughts:

The U.S. presumably hopes this will make the intelligence more believable. But for me it raises additional questions. First, why does the story keep changing? And why now? It almost seems like the intelligence community is trying to use these leaked excerpts to bolster the credibility of their intelligence -- trying to replace the much-maligned "Laptop of Death" narrative with something more believable. This does not exactly inspire confidence in the quality of said intelligence.

Update: Gareth Porter systematically dismantles the claims being made in the secret annex as well as the provenance of the data they are based upon.