A puzzle:

Why, if you thought there was a chance your communications were being read by U.S. intelligence, would you send a message saying that the U.S. was believed to have that capability?

You should never, within a secure channel, report about that secure channel's weaknesses.

The New York Times tries to explain it away thusly: (emphasis added)

Chalabi Reportedly Told Iran That U.S. Had Code

American officials said that about six weeks ago, Mr. Chalabi told the Baghdad station chief of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security that the United States was reading the communications traffic of the Iranian spy service, one of the most sophisticated in the Middle East.

According to American officials, the Iranian official in Baghdad, possibly not believing Mr. Chalabi's account, sent a cable to Tehran detailing his conversation with Mr. Chalabi, using the broken code. That encrypted cable, intercepted and read by the United States, tipped off American officials to the fact that Mr. Chalabi had betrayed the code-breaking operation, the American officials said.

That's not very convincing.


posted by Quiddity at 6/02/2004 12:35:00 PM