Is the Box-on-the-Euphrates in a remote place? Details like that might seem insignificant, but they are not. Often, it seems to me, intelligence judgments are supported by informal bits of “color” or what you might call the gouge — circumstantial details that aren’t part of any official briefing, but appear in loose talk to bolster …
Curve Ball
by | 2007-11-05 | 7 Comments
This is Rafid Ahmed Alwan, better known as Curveball, getting down at an Iraqi wedding in 1993. The 60 Minutes segment tonight, if you saw it after the Patriots-Colts game, was a fine introduction to Curveball and that damned wall. But for the gory detail, I highly recommend Bob Drogin’s new book, Curveball: Spies, Lies …
Hair Trigger Alert
by | 2007-11-03 | 8 Comments
Ambassador Rocca is getting lambasted for stating that US nuclear forces are not on hair trigger alert: It is popular to call for removing nuclear weapons from “hair-trigger alert.” Frankly, in order to take action to comply with this request, we would first have to put our weapons on “hair-trigger alert,” so we could then …
Syria and Nuclear Weapons, Again
by | 2007-10-29 | 43 Comments
Well, well, well. It appears that Syria’s box-on-the-Euphrates is at least four years old and was spotted by US intelligence, which drew less dire conclusions: A senior American intelligence official said yesterday that American analysts had looked carefully at the site from its early days, but were unsure then whether it posed a nuclear threat. …
