Here's an interesting article book about Dubai (which I have not read) that reportedly states the CIA is using their Dubai consulate to obtain intelligence about Iran from Iranian visa applicants -- most of whom are ultimately turned away without a visa:
The CIA stepped in to prevent the United States from closing a consulate in the Persian Gulf city-state of Dubai, arguing that it was a gold mine of human intelligence from Iran....Iranians applying for U.S. visas in the United Arab Emirates city of Dubai are “monitored, interrogated and, sometimes, recruited into spying on their own government” by Iran specialists and Farsi speakers working for the CIA or other American agencies, the book says.
Nothing is surprising about this -- not only is this is standard procedure in the intelligence business ("Walk-ins" like visa applicants are a source of low-level, questionable intelligence all over the world, as are "journalists") but the Iranians are well-aware of US intelligence operations out of Dubai:
[T]he CIA enlisted scientists, physicians, university professors, clergymen, artists, athletes, and dress designers for its plot....these people were invited to the United States in groups of 10-15 people, with visas issued for them in Dubai in the shortest possible time, and according to their professions, they participated in scientific seminars and toured various states, and when they returned home they were asked to write "analyses" of the situation inside Iran.
I'm only mentioning this because it reminded me of Reuel Marc Gerecht's laughable book, Know Thine Enemy, in which he claimed that as a low-level CIA officer in the American Embassy in Turkey, part of his job was to squeeze Iranian visa applicants for intelligence before showing them the door without a visa. Gerecht was quoted (along with yours-truly) in another article about US intelligence operations in Dubai as saying :
"I'd let hundreds of desperate Iranians languish in Turkey. People who'd given me insights never found in books. I'd watched mothers with children drop to their knees and beg for my help," he wrote. "They didn't want money, just a little kindness, a visa out of their personal hell ... [they met] a sympathetic man waiting in a warm room full of food, coffee, tea, alcohol and cigarettes. A US official who'd politely strip them of all their memories and every corpuscle of information and then reopen the street-side door."
Of course, as you know Gerecht (whose book, frankly, proves him to be a sex-obsessed lunatic, which is probably why he remained a low-level operative) went from the CIA to join the NeoCon pro-Israeli, Iran-bashing cabal at the AEI with the likes of Daniel Pipes and Ledeen.
How much of a "goldmine" was this intelligence, really? Personally I doubt it had much value per se, not only because the IRanians were aware of it but because I suspect the interest by the CIA in keeping the consulate open is probably more due to the fact that the "intelligence" they get is just convenient, cheap and easy to obtain since the CIA officer only has to sit on his ass rather than actually do anything risky or expensive, and the visa applicants would presumably be cooperative and easily manipulated. Et voila! Something for nothing, the pretense of achievement without actual effort -- the dream of every self-promoting bureaucrat.
But more interestingly, the fact that the CIA portrays walk-ins as a "goldmine" source of intelligence on Iran is really telling about their actual lack of any decent intelligence on Iran, something which has been widely and repeatedly conceeded. And if you remember, Rafsanjani claimed in 1989 that the Iranians wiped out a CIA intelligence network in Iran -- and the US later admitted to that too. Why risk that again?
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