It was with disappointment, but not surprise, that I recently found out that the Monterey Institute’s Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) is on board with the Neocons in hyping up the Syria/Iran nuclear claims of the Bush Administration. In the L.A. Times, Leonard Spector of the CNS, in conjunction with Avner Cohen, wrote on May 4: ‘In the Syrian case (as with the release last year of part of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear program) the intelligence community was unnecessarily cautious, and thereby underestimated the threats posed by Syria and Iran.’
What?! A leading researcher from the Monterey Institute (from which I graduated) is repeating Neocon talking points? How could this be?
I went on a Google search to try and find other articles by Spector. I did not have to go very far to discover Mr. Spector’s own words betray him as a purveyor of black propaganda for at least five years. Read this article from 2003, entitled ‘Iran’s Secret Quest for the Bomb.’
With so a bold title, one would assume that Mr. Spector presented actual evidence that Iran was seeking a nuclear weapon in 2003. But the ’proof’ given by Spector in his piece is the usual jumble of conjecture about hypothetical facilities into which uranium was hypothetically introduced (but somehow, no one in the intelligence services can find), combined with mindreading Iranian intent to withdraw from the NPT once it has full uranium enrichment capabilities. Oh, yes, and there is a hat tip to the usual speculation that ‘Iran has natural gas, why do they need nuclear power?’
It’s a shame that such a fine institution as the CNS at Monterey Institute, through Mr. Spector and others has become just another mouthpiece for the Cheney cabal.
