The only action that can stop Iran from building nuclear weapons is an Israeli strike on Tehran’s nuclear facilities, argued John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the UN under the Bush administration.
Speaking in a WABC radio interview with this reporter, Bolton warned time is running out for an Israeli attack.
“Right now we know about the facilities…. We know where they are,” he said. “We know exactly what their dimensions are, and I think they are susceptible to an Israeli attack.”
Bolton said an Israeli military option “isn’t there forever…. If Israel is going to use military force, it needs to use it sooner rather than later.”
Bolton said he believes there is no doubt Israel possesses the military capability to hit Iran’s nuclear sites, but he said the Jewish state would need to act soon.
“I think the problem is that the military option is declining day by day,” he said. “Every day that goes by is another day where the Iranians can build alternative facilities for uranium conversion, uranium enrichment weaponization, that are in unknown locations that are deeply buried or hardened and that Israel’s capabilities just can’t reach.”
Bolton said he sees “almost no chance” for the UN to pass the crippling sanctions that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has demanded.
“At this point there is very little that will stop Iran,” Bolton added. “The most likely outcome, unfortunately, is that Iran is going to get nuclear weapons, and I think sooner rather than later.”
Obama Official’s Soviet Connection
John Holdren, President Obama’s science czar, visited the Soviet Union during the Cold War as vice chairman of a group whose founder was accused of providing vital nuclear information that helped the Soviets build an atom bomb, this column has learned.
The original leaders of the group, the Federation of American Scientists, also served on the board of a magazine whose personnel were accused of passing crucial nuclear information to the Soviets. Holdren served on the board of directors of that magazine, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
Just after President Reagan’s March 1983 “Star Wars” speech in which he proposed a missile-defense shield to protect the U.S. home front, a group of Soviet academicians sent a letter to the U.S. scientific community asking about the feasibility of such a shield.
The only group that responded directly to the Soviet scientists was Holdren’s Federation of American Scientists, or FAS, leading to an invitation to visit from Evgeny Velikov, director of the Soviet Kurchatov Institute of Science. Holdren indeed visited the USSR in 1984.
Scientist Leo Szilard, a member of the Manhattan Project, was a principal founder of the FAS. Szilard was accused of providing vital information to the Soviets that helped them build an atomic bomb.
In 1994, Pavel Sudoplatov, a former major-general in Soviet intelligence, named Szilard as a key source of crucial atomic information to the Soviet Union.
Founders of the FAS also were board members of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, a journal that argued for the U.S. to hand its nuclear weapons to an international organization. Holdren served on the Bulletin’s board and wrote numerous articles for the publication.
Szilard founded the Bulletin along with Robert Oppenheimer, who was long accused of spying for the Soviets and passing along vital nuclear secrets.
Oppenheimer admitted he knew by August 1943 that two of the scientists working under him were Communist Party members. Three of five scientists under Oppenheimer’s direct supervision were accused of leaking secret information about the atomic bomb to the Soviets.
Sudoplatov, the former major-general in Soviet intelligence, said his spymasters knew the lobby efforts of the Bulletin editors would be a “crucial factor in establishing the new world order after the war, and we took advantage of this.”
TSA Nominee Pushed For ‘Ethnic Diversity’
President Obama’s pick to head the Transportation Security Administration, retired Gen. Robert Harding, has long pushed for “ethnic diversity” as a determining factor in hiring new teams for U.S. military and intelligence agencies, this column has learned.
Harding served in the army for 33 years until he retired in 2001 and went into business as a private security contractor. He previously served as the Defense Department’s top human intelligence officer and managed a $1 billion intelligence collection program. Between 2003 and 2009, Harding was a government consultant on human intelligence and counterintelligence issues.
In 2003, Harding submitted written testimony to a Senate subcommittee hearing on intelligence issues pushing for more diversity at security agencies, going so far as to call diversity a “requirement.”
He urged the Defense Department to “build systems and incentives to attract, maintain and sustain a diverse group of gifted (human intelligence) operatives.”
Harding maintained the military community “still needs senior folks with language and diversity at the top – folks who feel a responsibility in a particularly focused way.”
He cited as models situations in which women and minority senior Defense officers increased the number of minorities in their departments.
Separately, this column has learned Harding serves on the board of a corporation, FedCap Partners, that raised millions to do business with companies positioned in growing areas of the federal budget. The issue could become a hot button of controversy as the Senate considers confirming Harding.
Aaron Klein is Jerusalem bureau chief and senior reporter for Internet giant WorldNetDaily.com. He is host of an investigative radio program on New York’s 77-WABC Radio, the largest talk radio station in the U.S.
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