Even though briefing Congress and the press kept Central Intelligence Agency Director, General Michael Hayden, busy last week, he still found time last Thursday to meet with senior officers in the agency and to praise them.
He told them that they could be proud of the team effort and cooperation that exposed Syria's secret construction of a nuclear reactor, and complimented them for their skillful intelligence gathering and its careful analysis. Even though it is obvious the CIA only revealed a smidgen of all it knows, its seems that the director got a little carried away with his praise.
The CIA had intelligence about the construction of the suspicious structure in Syria from the onset, most likely since 2001. It seems that most of the information was based on spy satellite photos. This intelligence was bolstered by information received following the investigation into the activities of Dr. A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, who was exposed as a major proliferator of nuclear technology.
Khan confirmed he had visited Syria in the past and offered his knowledge and wares.
All this should have raised an alarm with the CIA that something nuclear was taking place in Syria. But according to U.S. media reports late last week, the Americans caught on only in Spring 2007, after receiving photographs of the reactor and its environs, which were taken by Israeli agents.
The photographs, according to the reports, confirmed without a doubt that the site was a nuclear reactor.
However, even then Bush administration officials - first and foremost Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice - sought to dissuade Israel from attacking the reactor. According to reports, the administration tried to convince Israel that it could use the information to pressure Syria into concessions in Lebanon, to stop its support for Hamas and to stem its involvement in rebel activities in Iraq.
However, Israel - according to reports that are based on senior administration sources - refused.
The reports state that for Israel the construction of the reactor constituted an "existential threat"; therefore, Israel demanded that it be allowed to take the only action possible: to destroy the reactor in a military operation, prior to the introduction of nuclear fuel that would enable the Syrians to produce plutonium.
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