OK, so I have to be a little
careful what I say here. We received these documents. We didn't
know who they were from, we still don't know who they're from. All of these documents are in Farsi. How did
you even start dealing with this? How did you know what we had when documents started coming in? We didn't. The decision was made to translate
them. We had to authenticate them. We sent a number of reporters overseas reporting out things in the documents to see if they
had actually happened. Has there ever been a major leak out of Iran or the Iranian government ever?
Certainly not anything of this magnitude. I think it's one of the most important leaks ever. I think it is on the scale of
the Pentagon Papers or the Snowden documents because it is something that we've never
seen before. We've never had a major leak of documents from Iran, which is one of the
most closed societies in the world. So these are more than 700 pages of documents generated by the Ministry of Intelligence
and Security, the MOIS, the more professional, bureaucratic intelligence service in Iran. And they document a period in 2014 and 2015, when Iran and the United States and Iraq were all fighting
the Islamic State in Iraq. That was sort of the height of the Islamic State. And they consist of everything from cables from intelligence operatives sent back
to Tehran about what they're seeing, to raw source reports from Iraqis who are working
for the Iranians. I think the main takeaway — beyond the fact of the leak, which in some ways is the
biggest news here — it really shows in very concrete and specific terms how Iran
has woven itself into every part of Iraq's life, especially since the 2003 U.S. invasion.
So when the U.S. went in and toppled Saddam Hussein, it just opened the door for Iran
to do something in Iraq that it had always wanted to do, which was essentially to get
in there and control everything. The CIA's Baghdad station after the invasion became the largest CIA station in the world. It was a very violent time. It was basically a combat zone. And the problem for the CIA
and for the U.S. generally in Iraq during that time was it was very difficult for them
to get out of the Green Zone or other protected areas. And they had to rely, to some degree,
on the new Iraqi intelligence service that they built up. They kind of purged the old
Iraqi intelligence, Saddam-era intelligence service, and they built a new one. The U.S.
paid for it. And that was their primary way in which they began to gather intelligence
on the ground. The U.S. government is very short-term in terms of how it views these kinds of conflicts and
indeed, these places. So the U.S. went in and the CIA cultivated this whole mass of
spies, assets, sources, and then they leave. You see in the documents several people who were Iraqis who had worked with the CIA, who are now unemployed. So they go to the Iranians and say, I'd be happy to
work with you if you pay me. And the Iranians in these documents are interested in talking
with them. But the first requirement they have is that they tell them everything
they ever did with the CIA. Iraqis who had worked for the CIA then become Iranian assets? I mean, that's going to
make some people shit their pants at Langley, I would imagine. I mean, you've covered the CIA for a long
time, Jim, how are they going to — As you said, they're going to shit their pants. [laughs] You don't think they have any clue that this has happened? They may have some clue, but, I mean, to see it in writing like that? To me, the beauty of these documents, or the power
of these documents, is — like people will say, Well we knew that Iran had influence in Iraq,
but to see everything in black and white and in detail. It would probably be going too far to say
Iran controls everything there, but what these documents show is that Iran has eyes everywhere. I went through the draft as it exists now
and I mean, first question I have about it is how do you deal with the fact that this
administration is going to look to weaponize anything that they can information-wise to
justify going at Iran? That's something that we've been struggling with all along since we got these documents. To me, the message of these documents — and I hope this is the way we present it — is the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a historic
mistake, a strategic blunder of massive proportions. We invaded and Iran won the war. That is a
lesson to be learned today in how we operate in the Middle East, what we do in the Middle East. It's a warning against
further aggression in the region. I think it's really a good check on the idea that Iran is this wild and terrifying force in the world.
One of the interesting things about this time period in 2014 and 2015, Iran and the
U.S. were on the same side. They were both fighting the Islamic State. There was almost like an unspoken understanding that the U.S. would focus on airpower, and
the Iranians would focus on having these ground troops, their Shia militias. Iran is — because we know so little about
it, because we have so little firsthand knowledge and access to it, it's portrayed as, they
see us as the great Satan, we see them as the great Satan. They're this bloodthirsty,
terrifying regime, and what the documents show is that they're a lot like the U.S.
government. At least the MOIS is. What the Iranians are doing in Iraq,
according to these documents, is very much what the U.S. tried to do after 2003, which
is they're grappling with an unruly country with deep sectarian divisions and trying to
kind of maintain stability for economic reasons because they want to have a good, safe way
for Iranians to go on pilgrimages to religious shrines, because they want to sell their goods
there. So it's very similar to what the United States has done all over the world. Iran had two adversaries on its borders. One was the Taliban Afghan government and the other was the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein. Both were enemies of Iran. We deposed
both of them. It's such a huge thing to admit to yourself as a country that everything we've done
in Iraq for the last 15 years was a mistake. All these lives lost were in vain, all the
money poured into there has gone for a misbegotten, tragic mistake. That we have benefitted what
we now consider one of our biggest enemies. It's almost like, it's such a huge thing
to admit, that nobody wants to admit it. And I think that's the real power of these
documents.
