Israeli intelligence was involved in editing and creating the sanitized version of information about Iran’s recently revealed secret uranium enrichment facility near Qom. The revelation comes in an interview given by the director of the Central Intelligence Agency Leon Panetta to TIME magazine.
Panetta said that the CIA had known about the facility for at least three years. The CIA chief said said he was preparing a dossier which was formulated in concert with British, Israeli, and French intelligence agencies.
If necessary, the document would be presented to the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy, and to be used in briefings for the international community.
Fearing that some of the information would be leaked, and in order to protect sources, the dossier was edited and sanitized by the CIA, which received help from Israeli intelligence officials.
Panetta also revealed that the U.S. intelligence community shared its knowledge about the Qom facility with British and French intelligence agencies months ago, adding that those agencies had also been on the lookout for the secret plant.
{Yair Alpert-Matzav.com Israel/Haaretz}
