August 11, 2010 -- CIA "anticipated" collapse of IAEA in 1981

A CIA memorandum from the CIA's Special Assistant for Nuclear Proliferation Intelligence, dated December 8, 1981, states that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the bane of neo-conservatives during the George W. Bush administration, maintained a record of "sustained and proven failure of its safeguard and control functions in contrast its promotional activities." The CIA memo to the Chairman of President Reagan's National Intelligence Council came at the same time the CIA was undermining efforts to control nuclear proliferation by its Afghanistan mujaheddin war partner Pakistan, as well as Israel.

The CIA memo states that an "anticipatory paper" should be prepared on the "disintegration of the IAEA." One paragraph in the formerly Secret memo has been redacted by the CIA.

The CIA memo was written some six months after the Israelis destroyed the Iraqi nuclear Tammuz 1 reactor at Osirak on June 7, 1981 and as the Abdul Qadeer Khan network centered in Pakistan was beginning to engage in large-scale clandestine procurement of nuclear materials for Pakistan's, and later, North Korea's, Iran's, Libya's, and Saudi Arabia's, nuclear weapons programs.

The CIA memo states that the "Paks have encountered [problems] in the construction of the Kahuta plant," the chief nuclear weapons development facility in Pakistan.

The CIA's "anticipation," almost wishful thinking, that the IAEA would collapse lends credence to the belief of former Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers that the CIA was actively engaged in countenancing nuclear proliferation. In 2005, Lubbers told the Dutch National Radio program Argos that the CIA prevented the Dutch intelligence service (then BVD, now AIVD) from arresting Khan so that Khan's network could be followed. Lubbers said, "Under the influence of the so-called Cold War, all 'western' intelligence services were ordered around by the CIA, and were told to back off so the CIA could follow Khan's spy activities." Lubbers added that the CIA told their Dutch counterparts,"Just let him go, we'll follow him and that way get more information." As Prime Minister, Lubbers tried to get the United States to shut down Khan's operations in 1986 but was told the U.S. "did not want to interfere." Lubbers, who is also a member of the Bilderberg Group, served as Dutch Prime Minister from 1982 to 1994. In 1981, Lubbers was a parliamentary leader of the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) party,

The CIA memo was written after CIA director William Casey brought his friend and GOP fundraiser Max C. Hugel into the agency in January 1981. Casey shocked agency rank-and-file officers when he eventually named Hugel as Deputy Director for Operations. Hugel resigned in mid-1981 after allegations of improprieties with his stock portfolio. However, there was much more to the Hugel story. On January 26, 2006, WMR reported: "CIA director William Casey's deputy director for operations Max Hugel, a confidant of Casey who was forced to resign from the CIA over suspicions that his close ties to Israel made him a security risk, an agency move that infuriated Wolf Blitzer, then a reporter for the Jerusalem Post and an employee of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Hugel was associated with two Sun Myung Moon-linked organizations - Potomac and Andromeda.

The CIA's interest in seeing the demise of the IAEA would have played into the hands of the Israelis. As far back as the Nixon administration, the United States had tried to pressure Israel into signing the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) but it was to no avail. Israel consistently stated that since it was not a nuclear power, there was no need to sign the NPT. In a New York Timesarticle of July 18, 1970, Hedrick Smith reported that the Richard Nixon wanted the Israelis to sign the NPT but the Israelis were concerned about verification procedures and feared that its "scientific and conventional military installations will be subjected to international inspections."

When IAEA Secretary General Mohammed ElBaradei was subjected to an onslaught of criticism from the neocons, the CIA memo provides evidence that the IAEA was a target of the pro-Israeli elements in the CIA and the embryonic future neocons peppered throughout the Reagan administration as early as 1981.

Today, Israel and its crushing lobby that exercises extreme influence over the Obama administration, has sought to undermine the authority of the IAEA by seeing to it that the United States and European Union applied crippling unilateral sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program.

And "The Lobby" continues to pour scorn on the IAEA, echoing the CIA's and its internal Israel cheerleaders in 1981. In an article in the Winter 2009 issue of InFocus Quarterly, a publication of the Jewish Policy Center, Barak M. Seener the Greater Middle East Section Director for the Henry Jackson Society of the U.K. wrote, "The IAEA has, over time, lost sight of its original mission. Rather than performing technical studies to assess the nuclear capacity of states and leaving the political considerations to the United Nations Security Council, the IAEA has strayed into the business of international politics."

As can be seen from the CIA memo on 1981, the IAEA has been a convenient scapegoat for the CIA, Mossad, and others to conduct clandestine nuclear proliferation with a crippled IAEA available to blame.