Seymour Hersh: No signals, human or satellite intelligence proof of Syrian reactor

Source: alalam.ir, 09-02-2008
WASHINGTON-Veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has examined "Israel's" bombing of a nuclear facility under construction in Syria last September and found none of the evidence stood up to scrutiny.
According to Hersh, "A former senior US intelligence official, who has access to current intelligence, said, 'We don't have any proof of a reactor - no signals intelligence, no human intelligence, no satellite intelligence.'"
However, Hersh found that the "Israelis" were continuing to stand adamantly by their claims on the Syrian site.
"When I went to 'Israel' in late December, the government was still maintaining secrecy about the raid, but some current and former officials and military officers were willing to speak without attribution.
"Most were adamant that 'Israel's' intelligence had been accurate. 'Don't you write that there was nothing there!' a senior 'Israeli' official, who is in a position to know the details of the raid on Syria, said, shaking a finger at me. 'The thing in Syria was real.'"
Hersh also said just one "Israeli" official expressed doubts, but also brushed them away.
Retired Brigadier General Shlomo Brom, who served as deputy national-security adviser under Prime Minister Ehud Barak, said "Israel" wouldn't have acted if it hadn't been convinced that there was a threat.
"It may have been a perception of a conviction, but there was something there," Brom said and added, "It was the beginning of a nuclear project."
However, Brom later said, "the question of whether it was there or not is not that relevant anymore.'"
One Syrian official suggested to Hersh that the "Israeli" occupying regime might have picked up the presence of North Korean laborers at the site and drawn their own conclusions.
"The "Israelis" may have their own spies and watched the laborers being driven to the area," the senior officer said.
"The Koreans were not there at night, but slept in their quarters and were driven to the site in the morning."
The building was in an isolated area, and the "Israelis" might have concluded that even if there was "a slight chance of it being a nuclear facility, we'll take that risk," the Syrian official said.
Current and former intelligence have privately agreed the Syrian facility was not nuclear in nature. Hersh's article is the first major mainstream confirmation of that conviction.