NY Times report says Iranian scientist was CIA asset

WASHINGTON – Agence France-Presse

The Iranian scientist who spent 14 months in the United States in mysterious circumstances had been a CIA informant inside Iran for years, The New York Times reported Friday.

"Shahram Amiri described to American intelligence officers details of how a university in Tehran became the covert headquarters for the country's nuclear efforts," the report said citing unnamed U.S. officials.

"While still in Iran, he was also one of the sources for a much-disputed National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's suspected weapons program, published in 2007," it further cited the officials as saying.

Indeed it was "for several years" that "Amiri provided what one official described as 'significant, original' information about secret aspects of his country's nuclear program," the U.S. officials were quoted as saying.

Amiri, repeating his claims he had been abducted by U.S. spies, told reporters at Tehran airport that not only did he have nothing to do with Iran's controversial nuclear programme, he had also resisted U.S. pressure to tell the media that he was a well-informed atomic scientist.

He said his captors wanted him to tell the U.S. media that he had "defected on his own and was carrying important documents and a laptop which contained classified secrets of Iran's military nuclear program." "But with God's will, I resisted," Amiri said, soon after being welcomed at Tehran airport by his tearful son and overjoyed wife.