Adviser: U.S. botched intelligence on Iran

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A senior adviser to the Bush administration has sharply criticized intelligence-sharing policies employed by the Clinton administration intended to stop Russian aid for Iran's development of weapons of mass destruction.

U.S. anxiety about Moscow's role in the construction of the Bushehr nuclear reactor for the regime of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been a constant theme in U.S.-Russian diplomacy.

Richard Perle, a senior adviser to the U.S. Defense Department, told a policy seminar last month that the United States had in recent years sent intelligence data to Russia to demonstrate the involvement of its companies and government bodies in the proliferation of missiles and weapons of mass destruction to Iran.

Russian authorities received the U.S. intelligence information and detained suspected leakers in the government and industry, he said. The result was that vital intelligence sources required by Washington were eliminated.

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Perle called the U.S. transfers of intelligence information to Russia "absurd," noting that the practice ended after Moscow cracked down on intelligence leaks.

"The problem has been unfortunately that various Russians with whom we have discussed this deny that the activity is taking place in the first place," Perle said. "And in the absurd way governments tend to behave, our response to that was to turn over intelligence reports, whereupon the sources on which those intelligence reports were based ceased to provide further intelligence. So, I think we've decided to stop doing that. We should have decided a long time ago to stop doing that."

Perle did not say when the transfers ended, but a congressional source who focuses on Iran said the practice of providing U.S. intelligence data to Moscow on Iran ended with the Clinton administration.

The source said the intelligence sharing practices led to a Russian campaign that virtually stopped intelligence collection on Iran's missile and WMD programs in 1998 and part of 1999. Those years were marked by an acceleration of Iran's strategic weapons programs.
Perle was discussing the issue during a seminar by the Council of Foreign Relations. The council met on May 14 to discuss the summit by U.S. President George Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

[Iran has confirmed that it will allow frequent inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency of the Bushehr nuclear power reactor. Bushehr is expected to be operational by 2005.]

Perle said much of the problem with the U.S.-Russian dialogue on Iranian strategic weapons programs is the involvement of State Department. He said the dialogue should be operated in what he termed a "business-like manner." "If you want to get this solved, don't send a diplomat," Perle said. "Send a banker to discuss it."

Russian officials have complained that Washington has stopped providing any hard evidence to support allegations that Moscow continues to tolerate the flow of missile and WMD technology to Iran. They said measures drafted by a U.S.-Russian panel on nonproliferation have been implemented by Moscow.

"We have adopted comprehensive measures to exclude the merest possibility of missile-technology transfers," Russian Space Agency official Nikolai Shumkov said. "They [Americans] were satisfied with these measures. Then suddenly we get a new flurry of complaints from them, and we don't know why."

"We ask, 'Do you have any evidence [of illegal nuclear exports]?"' he said. "They say, 'Yes, but we're not going to tell you.'

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