secret reports

i love "secret reports" leaked from intelligence agency. because they're "secret" they must be credible even though they're effectively unsourced. plus, they're not really secret if they're leaked. and few articles about "secret reports" both to note that leaks are sometimes done on purpose and when they are often are done for political reasons, which would further undermine the credibility of the secret report.

take this one for example. the israeli government leaks a report that claims that two south american countries are supplying iran with uranium. by complete coincidence, the two countries in question, venezuela and bolivia, happen to be countries with particular bad relations with israel right now. isn't it crazy how stories about countries an intelligence source doesn't like seems to leak a lot easier than stories about countries that the source does like? crazy!

okay, maybe it isn't really a coincidence. maybe venezuela and bolivia's hostility to israel and relative good relations with iran would explain why they would give iran uranium notwithstanding the threat that would pose to israel's safety.

fair enough, but that still doesn't explain how the hell venezuela and bolivia would get the uranium. shockingly, the report about the leak didn't bother to explain that part even though that seems pretty important to me. either the uranium is really coming from somewhere else (i.e. somewhere that actually has uranium) or the report is full of shit. i really don't see another alternative.

UPDATE (3/26/09): the NYT report about the leaked report says that "Bolivia has uranium deposits. Venezuela is not currently mining its own estimated 50,000 tons of untapped uranium reserves, according to an analysis published in December by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace." i was going by the fact that neither country has a uranium mining industry when i wrote that they didn't have uranium. i guess i didn't think about the possibility of untapped reserves. the report still has all of the doubts about it that any leaked intelligence document about a country that the leakee doesn't like should have. but if they actually have uranium, it could be true.

UPDATE 2 (3/26/09): bolivia denies that it supplied uranium to iran, specifically noting that it couldn't have supplied the uranium:

Mining Minister Luis Alberto Echazu dismissed allegations in a secret Israeli government report, saying "there isn't even a geological study (of uranium deposits), much less export" of uranium to another country.

via steve hynd from the comments. hynd's post about the matter is here.