Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
United States Government

America's CIA Recruited Iran's Nuclear Scientists - By Threatening To Kill Them (newyorker.com) 126

A former U.S. spy spoke to The New Yorker about "years of clandestine work for the C.I.A. — which, he said, had 'prevented Iran from getting a nuke'." [Kevin] Chalker told me that, as he understood it, the Pentagon had suggested running commando operations to kill key Iranian scientists, as Israel subsequently did. But the C.I.A. proposed recruiting those scientists to defect, as U.S. spies had once courted Soviet physicists. Chalker paraphrased the agency's pitch: "We can debrief them and learn so much more — and, if they say no, then you can kill them." (A more senior agency official confirmed the broad strokes of his account.) The White House liked the agency's idea, and [president George W.] Bush authorized the C.I.A. to conduct clandestine operations to stop Iran from building a bomb. The C.I.A. program that Chalker described to me became publicly known in 2007, when the Los Angeles Times reported on the existence of an agency project called Brain Drain. But the details of the "invitations" to Iranian scientists have not previously been reported...

Chalker typically had about ten minutes to explain, as gently as possible, that he was from the C.I.A., that he had the power to secure the scientist and his family a comfortable new life in the U.S. — and that, if the offer was rejected, the scientist, regrettably, would be assassinated. (Chalker tried to emphasize the happier potential outcome.) Killing a civilian scientist would violate international law. The American government has denied ever doing it, and I found no evidence that the U.S. has carried out any such murders. A former senior agency official familiar with the Brain Drain project told me all that mattered was that Iranian scientists had believed they would be killed, regardless of whether the U.S. actually made good on the threat. And Israel had been conducting a campaign to assassinate Iranian scientists, which made the prospect of lethal reprisal highly plausible. Other former officials with knowledge of the project told me that the C.I.A. sometimes shared intelligence with Mossad which enabled its operatives to locate and kill a scientist. Such information exchanges were kept vague enough to preserve deniability if a more legalistic U.S. Administration later took office...

[Chalker] is confident that those who rebuffed him were, in fact, killed — one way or another... One of Chalker's colleagues told me that, against the backdrop of so many Israeli assassinations, Chalker's interactions with Iranian scientists could almost be considered humanitarian — he had been "throwing them a lifeline." Of the many scientists he approached, three-quarters ultimately agreed to coöperate.

Their 10,000-word article suggests Chalker may now be resentful the CIA didn't help him in a later unrelated lawsuit, noting it's "nearly unheard of for ex-spies to divulge their past activities."

But Chalker also says he "helped obtain pivotal information that laid the groundwork for more than a decade of American efforts to disrupt the Iranian nuclear-weapons program, from the Stuxnet cyberattacks, which occurred around 2010 [destroying 1,000 uranium-enriching centrifuges], to the Obama Administration's nuclear deal, in 2015, to the U.S. air strikes on Iranian atomic-energy facilities in the summer of 2025."

America's CIA Recruited Iran's Nuclear Scientists - By Threatening To Kill Them

Comments Filter:
  • Are we the baddied? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Saturday April 04, 2026 @06:48PM (#66077654) Homepage Journal

    SS Officer #2: Er, Hans?
            SS Officer #1: Have courage, my friend.
            SS Officer #2: Yeah. Er, Hans, I've just noticed something...
            SS Officer #1: [Looking through binoculars] These communists are all cowards.
            SS Officer #2: Have you looked at our caps recently?
            SS Officer #1: Our caps?
            SS Officer #2: The badges on our caps, have you looked at them?
            SS Officer #1: What? No. A bit.
            SS Officer #2: They've got skulls on them. Have you noticed that our caps have actually got little pictures of skulls on them?
            SS Officer #1: Uh, I don't...
            SS Officer #2: Hans... are we the baddies?

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      To be fair, this is an example of the CIA on good behaviour. No ACTUAL assassinations, probably, not a whiff of torture, not a single government overthrown.

  • But aren't spies supposed to, you know... keep secrets? What is he pitching a period drama to Hulu or something?

    • Our intelligence agencies are going to be leaking like a sieve. The last time Trump was President the number of captured and killed intelligence assets skyrocketed. I haven't been monitoring at this time but I'm sure it's shot up again. Never mind the fact that we found out Trump was taking classified documents related to his businesses.

      What pisses me off is the Democrats kept putting Republicans in charge of prosecuting Trump because they were so desperate to appear unbiased. Fuck that shit look where
    • Just creepy crawlies looking for their 5 minutes in the spotlight while the audience is ooh-ing and aah-ing the destruction and opening their wallets to buy trinkets.
  • by oumuamua ( 6173784 ) on Saturday April 04, 2026 @07:39PM (#66077696)
    Saw this on Yahoo finance but a very good idea. What does War department do? Advances the imperial interests of America's oligarchs though wars of choice. So who should pay for that? Yes the oligarchs should. So the war department gets completely funded by a tax on your net worth whether realized or unrealized (held in stocks), now that's what I'd call a fair tax.
  • America probably didn't do the targeted assassination, but Israel has done and is still doing plenty! See the bombings on the Supreme Leader and friends in Iran at the start of the war. It's fascinating seeing the war in Iran going on right now, the US is genuinely kicking the crap out of Iran but at the same time is not able to stop Iran throwing a few drones and missiles each day to keep the Strait closed, or halted attacks on the gulf states. I checked out an open source map that's great, epicfurymap.co
    • Israel has way more at stake. They're close enough for a missile to reach and small enough to be taken out by a single warhead.

    • by Mr. Dollar Ton ( 5495648 ) on Sunday April 05, 2026 @04:02AM (#66078004)

      Israel could do all these strikes in the beginning of the war for two reasons:

      - it used the US ruse of "negotiations", which exposed the negotiating side
      - the aircraft used in the strikes were protected by the US military

      Both of these are single-use tricks, which not only won't work again, but also limit the future options of the US to conduct negotiation, because everyone will assume the US always negotiate in bad faith.

      The assassinations may have been an objective victory for the corrupt apartheid government of netanyahu, which is desperate to keep power - otherwise the PM goes to jail - but other than that is a net loss, as they will make future conflicts more likely and successful negotiations to avoid military conflict less so.

      As to the story of TFA, it is most likely a fake that is disseminated in an attempt to validate the long-standing and long proven absurd accusations of the lone rogue nuclear "power" in the Middle East about "imminent threat of nuclear bomb in 2 weeks", and of course the actions of the trump government, which started a war of aggression for no good reason except for "taking their oil".

      The real story of assassinations and deliberate sabotage with large spillover effects to everyone come from the same rogue apartheid state, which has had no regard for law or justice for a long time now.

      • Israel could do all these strikes in the beginning of the war for two reasons:

        - it used the US ruse of "negotiations", which exposed the negotiating side .... Both of these are single-use tricks ....

        Actually, it has already worked twice: once last July and again in February.

        If I recall correctly, Japan made a sneak attack on the US Navy base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (a valid military target), on December 7, 1941, without a declaration of war. The US governmant and population seemed to consider this reprehensible and totally evil.

        Yet when Trump does the same thing, suddenly it's okay.

        which not only won't work again, but also limit the future options of the US to conduct negotiation, because everyone will assume the US always negotiate in bad faith.

        One would think other countries would have learned that ere now. There are plenty of examples.

    • America probably didn't do the targeted assassination, but Israel has done and is still doing plenty! See the bombings on the Supreme Leader and friends in Iran at the start of the war.

      Over the last few weeks I've seen a number of RFJ wanted fliers with millions of dollars in reward money produced by the US state department. They have a phone number and a tor address and explicitly target Mojtaba and the IRGC org chart.

  • "Legalistic"? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ratbag ( 65209 ) on Saturday April 04, 2026 @07:54PM (#66077714)

    No, "law-abiding". Don't use a pejorative term for what should be regarded as the norm. All administrations should strive to be law-abiding. Not saying that they will always achieve it, but it should be the default.

    You've got into the habit of not making any effort to obey any rules, whether your own or international (Guantanamo for example). If you regard following such rules as "legalistic" (ie excessive), then you really are doomed.

  • CIA? (Score:5, Funny)

    by drainbramage ( 588291 ) on Saturday April 04, 2026 @08:45PM (#66077768) Homepage

    Who do they think they are, microsoft?

  • America and Israel are such shitty countries.

    • Go join ISIS, you know you want to.

      • Why? They have the same agenda as the radical "Christians" running this country.

        • Nah, they're the good guys.

        • If you think ISIS have the same agenda as radical Christians in the USA then you are a idiot. For starters they are not into slavery, which ISIS very much were/are.

      • You can dislike one without being explicitly for another. If I don't like chocolate ice cream, it doesn't automatically mean I like any other flavor. I can dislike all ice cream flavors. (In reality, I like a lot of flavors, but that's not the point.)
        • You can't say chocolate is a shitty flavor without being explicitly for another flavor. Care to try again?

          • You're still not getting it: I don't even have to say, "Chocolate is a shitty flavor"; I don't have say chocolate is anything. It's not binary in the extremes, with an automatic predisposition for the opposite of what you don't like: it's a scale centered around 0, where 0 is "meh," and all aspects are considered separately.
      • by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

        ISIS are pussies.

  • Of the many scientists he approached, three-quarters ultimately agreed to cooperate.

    A lot of them are dead now anyway, aren't they? Got a bomb on their head as a thank you.

  • by PoopMelon ( 10494390 ) on Sunday April 05, 2026 @11:10AM (#66078340)
    Usa is almost as evil as russia at tgis point. China and north korea has obliterared human rights and free lives to the point it's a norm and nobody even winks an eye anymore. Uk has taken orwell's literature as an instruction manual. Israel is an actual new demon spawn. Extremist islamist countries have had no problem killing their own citizens and destroying own countries for tens of years now. There is no place with safe goos government. Eu seems most normal but recently they have also been stirrng towards a surveillance state and is in constant threat of extremist parties in member countries. Being a monk in some tibet or something seems like the only normal option these days

I just asked myself... what would John DeLorean do? -- Raoul Duke

Working...