CIA Director Leon Panetta just gave a remarkably candid interview on ABC’s This Week. Some of the highlights:
Do you think the latest sanctions will dissuade the Iranians from trying to enrich uranium? “I think the sanctions will have some impact… Will it deter them from their ambitions with regards to nuclear capability? Probably not.”
“We think [the Iranians] have enough low-enriched uranium right now for two weapons. They do have to enrich it, fully, in order to get there. And we would estimate that if they made that decision, it would probably take a year to get there, probably another year to develop the kind of weapon delivery system in order to make that viable.”
A peace deal in Afghanistan? “The bottom line is that we really have not seen any firm intelligence that there’s a real interest among the Taliban, the militant allies of Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda itself, the Haqqanis, TTP, other militant groups. We have seen no evidence that they are truly interested in reconciliation.”
“I think the estimate on the number of Al Qaeda [in Afghanistan] is actually relatively small. I think at most, we’re looking at maybe 60 to 100, maybe less.”
When was the last time we had good intelligence on bin Laden’s location? “It’s been a while. I think it almost goes back, you know, to the early 2000s.”
The drone attacks in Pakistan? “There is no question that we are abiding by international law and the law of war.”
What about this new $100 million contract with Blackwater? “They provided a bid that was underbid everyone else by about $26 million. And a panel that we had said that they can do the job, that they have shaped up their act. So their really was not much choice but to accept that contract… n the war zone, we continue to have needs for security. You’ve got a lot of forward bases. We’ve got a lot of attacks on some of these bases. We’ve got to have security. Unfortunately, there are a few companies that provide that kind of security.”
What threat are we not paying enough attention to? “The whole area of cyber security. We are now in a world in which cyber warfare is very real. [Ugh — ed.] It could threaten our grid system. It could threaten our financial system. It could paralyze this country, and I think that’s an area we have to pay a lot more attention to.”
Photo: Wikimedia
