James Risen Spared,Jeff Sterling Convicted

++You will remember that Eric Holder backed down on making James Risen of the New York Times name his source in the trial of former CIA agent Jeff Sterling.

++Yesterday, Jeff Sterling was convicted here in Alexandria for revealing the identity of a foreign asset working for the CIA. Apparently the man was a Russian, who was tasked in "Operation Merlin" to drop plans for nuclear weapons to Iran in 2000. You can read about this obliquely in James Risen's book.

++What the redacted cable entered into evidence shows that this Operation Merlin was aimed at other countries ,too. And here the plot thickens.

++From the cable one infers the next stop is either Iraq or Oman. Since Oman is very implausible since it is an ally of the United States,journalists have concluded that it was Iraq. In other words,Iraq which had maintained it had destroyed all weapons programs in 1995,soon is accused of having "restarted its nuclear program". 

++I always thought the Iran piece of the puzzle was the most damaging fact but it appears so-called Operation Merlin was like a big "disinformation" machine to gin up accusations about Middle Eastern countries having nuclear weapons.

++The idea was to present nuclear weapons plans that were slightly altered and would foil Iranian nuclear engineers and then move on to other countries.

++This part of the plan backfired on the United States as it was one of the reasons that the International Atomic Energy Agency has had a difficult time evaluating Iran's so-called "military" plans in the early 2000s. The IAEA has had to take into account the CIA operation in their findings.

++None of this was mentioned in the Washington Post account of Jeff Sterling, who was sentenced to 31/2 years in prison for "revealing an agent's name". 

++The judge said that his case was different from General Petraeus and John Kiriakou was that the other two had pleaded guilty. 

++The case will be hushed up in terms of its foreign policy implications. When I first read Risen's account, I thought this was preposterous but then when you see the "deeper" operation and the calamity it produced, it makes sense that the government would go after Sterling with hammers and tongs.