How U.S. Removed Half a Ton of Uranium From Kazakhstan

washingtonpost.com

22 points·chuck_taylor··4 comments

Was this supposed to be a secret? I had heard something that we're losing intelligence cred because we can't keep secrets (wrt the CIA torture)

How do you mean "losing intelligence cred"? Do you mean that when CIA agents go to a spy conference, the Russians and Chinese look down at them?

The story is interesting history. I don't see any reason why having this information available at this point reveals anything useful to our the U.S.'s enemies. The U.S. made it perfectly clear it was on a mission to secure nuclear weapons and materials after the Soviet Union fell. The fact that it actually did secure some weapons and nuclear material simply shows they were at least partially effective. To me that increases credibility.

I would guess (like in everything else) Intelligence agencies have a ranking order and people in the business know who is good , who is very good and who is terrible. I guess it could be considered "cred" of a kind.

Like programmers might say "Google used to be very cool 5 years ago but these days is just a cube farm", I can imagine people in the spy business saying "The Americans were really good, but after they got into Iraq and Afghanistan, they've been slipping" or something like that.

How people like us ever get to hear an opinion like that is a different question entirely.

As the story points out, the fact we removed this material was announced shortly after it occurred, but the details of how it was done are new.

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