Whatever its artistic merits, the movie “Zero Dark Thirty” is giving Americans a shocking first-hand look at the “enhanced interrogation techniques” used by the CIA on suspected terrorists and rekindling that most polarizing of national security debates: Did waterboarding and other practices amount to torture and were they even effective?

The movie, which opens in wide release on Friday, is unlikely to resolve those issues, particularly given that critics – including acting CIA Director Michael Morell -- say it misrepresents the role the interrogations played in the eventual tracking and killing of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

But more than a decade after the harsh techniques were authorized, the movie does offer an opportunity to examine the methodical, legalistic, bureaucratic process that led to the use of waterboarding and other physically and mentally stressful interrogation techniques.

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Their development illustrates what former CIA Director George Tenet wrote in his memoir, “At the Center of the Storm”: “Despite what Hollywood would have you believe, in situations like this, you don’t call in the tough guys; you call in the lawyers.”

Interviews over three years with former high-ranking U.S. officials, and a review of documents and memoirs of participants by NBC News, provide a detailed picture of the how the intelligence community and Justice Department crafted the “enhanced interrogation techniques” – known as EITs in CIA jargon -- that were used on some of America’s most wanted terrorists.

The approval process for the techniques – many of which are prohibited for use on battlefield adversaries by the Geneva Conventions – created not just a list of those that were permitted, but included detailed instructions covering everything from the dimensions of the waterboard to how long detainees were to be strapped down and their airflow restricted.  Specific legal procedures also were prescribed before each technique could be administered.

The process of developing a “menu” of interrogation techniques that could be used on suspected terrorists began in the spring of 2002, and moved quickly -- even feverishly – at first.

The CIA, which lacked interrogation expertise, needed to develop a plan for questioning alleged al-Qaida terrorist training camp operator Abu Zubaydah, the first major jihadi captured after the 9-11 attacks. 

Wounded in a shootout in Pakistan at the end of March 2002, Zubaydah was initially interrogated by FBI agents. But CIA agents soon joined the questioning and the bureau withdrew its agents by June out of a concern that the agency’s interrogators had crossed the line. (That suggests that Zubaydah’s harsh treatment began even before enhanced interrogation techniques were approved in August 2012, since the 9-11 Commission’s final report included references to at least five CIA interrogations between late May and early July.)  

“Interrogation wasn’t a big deal till we got a big deal guy,” said one former intelligence official who spoke with NBC News on condition of anonymity.  “We had reporting from prior to 9-11 as well as afterward that Abu Zubaydah might well know about future operations.  So … we get him in our clutches…we figure we might need to do something to find out what he knows.”

'Zero Dark Thirty' torture controversy: Filmmakers stand their ground

To come up with a “menu” of harsh interrogation tactics, the agency turned to the Pentagon’s SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) program, which trains U.S. servicemen to resist harsh treatment that might be inflicted on them by an enemy that doesn’t abide by the Geneva Conventions. In other words, torture.

Agency officials made first contact with the SERE trainers in April 2002, not long after Zubaydah was captured, according to staff investigators with the Senate Armed Services Committee. Richard Shiffrin, the Defense Department’s deputy general counsel for Intelligence, later confirmed in congressional testimony that the purpose was to “reverse engineer” the techniques that U.S. servicemen were being subjected to for use on al-Qaida detainees.

Some techniques were demonstrated to CIA officials in an initial two-day tutorial on July 1-2, 2002, with SERE instructors playing the roles of both prisoner and the interrogator. A CIA lawyer decided following the tutorial that "significantly harsh techniques” would have to be approved by the Justice Department.

In late July, Dr. John “Bruce” Jessen, then a senior psychologist at the Defense Department agency that administered SERE training, was sent to the CIA “for several days” to discuss the techniques, according to congressional investigators.  

Immediately after the assignment ended, Jessen resigned from the Air Force and, along with another recently retired colleague, Dr. James Mitchell, founded Mitchell Jessen & Associates.

The business -- co-owned by seven individuals, six of whom either worked in the SERE program as employees or contractors – quickly signed a  contract with the CIA, a deal that provided the two men with $1,000-a-day tax-free retainers, according to ABC News. 

At roughly the same time, starting July 13, 2002, White House and Justice Department lawyers began drafting the memos approving the techniques. By July 22, John Yoo, then deputy assistant attorney general in the DoJ’s Office of Legal Counsel, had prepared his eventually famous secret memo to Alberto Gonzalez, then counsel to President George W. Bush. In it, Yoo suggested that the Geneva Conventions don't apply to terrorism cases.  Furthermore, he wrote, international law “lacks domestic legal effect, and in any event can be overridden by the president.” 

Meanwhile, within days of hiring Mitchell Jessen & Associates, the CIA asked the Defense Department for a rush “list of exploitation and interrogation techniques that had been effective against Americans” in the SERE training.

The Pentagon quickly replied with a memo, “Physical Pressures used in Resistance Training and Against American Prisoners and Detainees,” according to the Senate investigators. 

Working with Mitchell Jessen & Associates, the CIA soon developed a menu of 20 enhanced techniques – a list that was ultimately whittled down to 10, mainly because some of proposed techniques were considered too harsh even for terrorists. 

“Not everything they proposed was part of the final menu,” said a former senior intelligence official, also speaking on condition of anonymity. “They came up with some stuff people didn’t like and were not approved. … There were legal tests. … Does it shock the conscience?  Does it lead to deep long-lasting injuries?” 

The official said he was unaware specifically which techniques had been rejected or why.  Two other Bush administration officials familiar with the approval process for enhanced interrogation techniques, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said they were unaware that any techniques had been rejected prior to approval of the final “menu.”

Approval of the 'menu'
By Aug. 1, 2002, only five days after the Pentagon’s memo had been delivered to the CIA, use of the 10 techniques was approved in a memo signed by Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee, now a federal appeals court judge.  The approved techniques were: “attention grasp,” “walling,” “facial hold,” “facial slap (insult slap),” “cramped confinement,” “wall standing,” “stress positions,” “sleep deprivation,” “insects placed in a confinement box” and “waterboarding.”  

Waterboarding, probably the most controversial of the techniques, was at the time only used by the U.S. Navy SERE school and  prohibited by the Army and Air Force, according to the committee. The Navy has since abandoned waterboarding.

While the techniques were undeniably harsh, senior CIA officials were comforted by the fact that they had been used by the U.S. against its own servicemen, said the former intelligence official.

“A big factor in people’s thinking was that these techniques were used in the training of U.S. Special Operations Forces,” the ex-official said. “If it was something that had been done to U.S. forces … although admittedly very tough … then it couldn’t be considered torture.”

Indeed, Jose Rodriguez, who as director of the CIA’s clandestine service ultimately controlled the EIT program, has written in his memoir, “Hard Measures,” that “waterboarding had been used on 26,829 U.S. Air Force personnel between 1992 and 2001.” Eventually the Air Force stopped using it, he added, because “the airmen subjected to it found it impossible to resist.”

While waterboarding received most attention, “walling” also was controversial because of reports that detainees’ heads would be thrown against the wall. 

Rodriguez, however says that was not the case.  In his memoir, he wrote that “special ‘rooms within rooms’” were constructed with flexible plywood walls to prevent injury.

Among the proposed interrogation techniques that didn’t make the cut were “smoke,” “immersion” and “grounding,” according to Senate investigators. 

In “smoke,” detainees were to have been blasted for up to five minutes with “an extraordinary amount of thick, sickening smoke” created by a mechanism that used dry tobacco as fuel. “Immersion” called for detainees to be placed in a makeshift cold water bath where “depending on wind and temperature, the subject may be either fully clothed or stripped.” In “grounding,” detainees were to be “forcefully guided…to the ground, (with the interrogator) never letting go.”

While no evidence exists to suggest that “smoke” or “grounding” were ever used against the al-Qaida detainees, the International Red Cross Committee has reported that at least three of the detainees claim they were subjected to “immersion” and their description of the technique precisely matches what was laid out in the original menu the Pentagon provided the CIA.

Rodriguez, who oversaw the use of EIT program, has offered some of the most detailed descriptions of how the techniques were applied.

Writing in “Hard Measures,” he said the 10 approved techniques were broken down into the three categories, “neutral probe,” “corrective” and “coercive.”

Under “neutral probe,” detainees were subjected to sleep deprivation, dietary manipulation and enforced nudity. 

If detainees refused to cooperate, Rodriguez said the “corrective” measures were introduced. “Attention grasp,” “facial hold” and finally “insult slap” met the definition of “corrective.”

In the final stage, “coercive,” detainees were placed in a confinement box, at least once with insects (only non-deadly varieties permitted), “wall standing” – where a detainee was directed to stand four or five feet away from a wall with his arms in front of him, fingertips resting on the wall,

Waterboarding was the final technique, only to be used “should all else fail,” Rodriguez wrote. It was to be carried out only with “specific headquarters approval,” and in keeping with a detailed description laid out in the memo drawn up by the Bush Administration DOJ Legal Counsel’s office, one that specified the dimensions of the board (“approximately 4 feet by 7 feet”), the time air flow should be restricted (“20 to 40 seconds”) and the desired effect (“perception of suffocation and incipient panic.”)

It appears from the Bybee memo that the CIA used “experts” in determining whether the techniques had long lasting health effects, something that even administration lawyers understood to be a violation of the Geneva Conventions.   In one reference, Bybee noted that an expert “who has 10 years of SERE training … stated that … insofar as he is aware, none of the individuals who completed the program suffered any adverse mental effects.” In another instance, Bybee wrote, an expert cited by the agency “expressed confidence that the training did not result in any long term psychological impact.” (One Bush administration official theorized that “smoke” had not been approved because tobacco smoke could have had long lasting health effects.)

Also embedded in the documentation of the use of the interrogation techniques is the CIA’s meticulous record-keeping of things like waterboarding.

CIA interrogators used common everyday bottled water in their waterboarding of high value detainees, according to several former and current U.S. officials, both inside the intelligence community and Bush administration. 

Rodriguez reported the same thing in a recent Washington Post review of “Zero Dark Thirty.” He wrote, “Instead of a large bucket, small plastic water bottles were used on the three men,” who were subjected to waterboarding.

“The public was only given (quite literally) a cartoon version of what others imagine the technique was like,” he wrote in his memoir. “Irresponsible animations showed detainees practically being dowsed by a fire hose.”

Officials added that each pour from a bottle constituted a single waterboarding procedure. 

A one-pint water bottle takes about seven seconds to empty, so four or five bottles would empty in 30 or 40 seconds, the time prescribed by the Justice Department memo approving the process. (Larger two-liter bottles might have been more efficient. Each takes a full 30 seconds to empty.)

Alleged 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, reportedly waterboarded 183 times, Zubaydah and Abdelrahim Hussein Abdul Nashiri, a Saudi who allegedly ran al-Qaida operations in the Arabian Peninsula and once planned to assassinate Vice President Al Gore, all told the Red Cross that bottled water was used in their waterboardings.

'It was hopeless'
Zubaydah described to the Red Cross an experience mostly faithful to the technique prescribed in the Bybee memo, albeit less clinical:

“I was then dragged from the small box, unable to walk properly and put on what looked like a hospital bed, and strapped down very tightly with belts. A black cloth was then placed over my face and the interrogators used a mineral water bottle to pour water on the cloth so that I could not breathe. After a few minutes the cloth was removed and the bed was rotated into an upright position. The pressure of the straps on my wounds was very painful. I vomited.”

He continued: “The bed was then again lowered to horizontal position and the same torture carried out again with the black cloth over my face and water poured on from a bottle. On this occasion my head was in a more backward, downwards position and the water was poured on for a longer time. I struggled against the straps, trying to breathe, but it was hopeless. I thought I was going to die.”

Nashiri said he had the same experience, except the water used was cold.

“Injuries to my ankles and wrists also occurred during the waterboarding as I struggled in the panic of not being able to breathe,” he told the Red Cross.

Not everything was approved by the CIA General Counsel’s office.  According to both former intelligence officers and Iraqi Survey Group officials, the Office of the Vice President Cheney wanted to use enhanced interrogation techniques on a recalcitrant Iraqi intelligence officer who they believed had information on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. 

The office angrily refused, according to another former agency official familiar with the request.

Charles Duelfer, the former chief of the Iraq Survey Group, and the man ultimately in charge of interrogations, said at the time that he considered the request reprehensible.

In his 2009 book, “Hide and Seek: The Search for Truth in Iraq,” Duelfer wrote that he heard from “some in Washington at very senior levels (not in the CIA),” who thought the intelligence officer’s interrogation had been “too gentle” and suggested another route, one that they believed has proven effective elsewhere.

“They asked if enhanced measures, such as waterboarding, should be used,” Duelfer writes. “The executive authorities addressing those measures made clear that such techniques could legally be applied only to terrorism cases, and our debriefings were not as yet terrorism-related. The debriefings were just debriefings, even for this creature.”

Duelfer did not disclose who in Washington had proposed the use of waterboarding. But in a recent interview, a former CIA officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that agency’s acting general counsel John Rizzo refused to permit the use of waterboarding because those same memos that authorized it for al-Qaida detainees said nothing about it being used in Iraq.

It is just the kind of detail that is missing from the movie. But the back-story of the bureaucratic process that changed the way the American government viewed the parameters of torture is in some ways even more dramatic than the hunt for bin Laden. 

“The torture displayed in ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ was the result of systematic legal and policy reasoning at the highest levels of government,” said Karen J. Greenberg, director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School and author of “The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo’s First 100 Days.” “Which techniques, how they would be applied, and with what specific legal authorities were all part of the detailed, cold, bureaucratic trail that methodically removed torture from the realm of illegal and forbidden and placed it in the realm of national policy.”

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HAVANA, Cuba — Three years after he was arrested in Havana, jailed American contractor Alan Gross is asking the U.S. government to sign a "non-belligerency pact" with Cuba as a first step toward negotiating his release, according to a Cuba policy analyst who just visited him.

Peter Kornbluh, a Cuba specialist at the National Security Archives, a nonprofit research center in Washington, met with Gross for four hours on Wednesday at the military hospital in Havana where the contractor is being held. He said Gross appeared "extremely thin" — he has lost over 100 pounds since his arrest —and dispirited.

"He’s angry, he’s frustrated, he’s dejected — and he wants his own government to step up" and negotiate, said Kornbluh. "His message is that the United States and Cuba have to sit down and have a dialogue without preconditions. … He told me that the first meeting should result in a non-belligerency pact being signed between the United States and Cuba."

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Gross' comments appear to represent a new tack in an aggressive public relations campaign to win his freedom. His supporters have planned a candlelight vigil outside the Cuban interests section in Washington D.C., on Sunday and the U.S. Senate is poised to take up a resolution Monday demanding his release, Gross’ wife, Judy, has also become increasingly critical of the U.S. government for not doing more to demand that her 63-year-old husband be allowed to return home.

"He feels like a soldier in the field left to die," she said at a press conference in Washington last week.

Gross, who worked for an Agency for International Development contractor, was arrested by the Cubans on Dec. 3, 2009, and accused of smuggling sophisticated satellite and other telecommunications equipment into  the country to give to the island’s tiny Jewish community. Gross has said he was only trying to increase Internet access  in Cuba. But he was convicted by a Cuban court in March of last year for crimes "against the independence and territorial integrity of the state" and sentenced to 15 years.

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Last month, Gross and his wife filed a $60 million lawsuit against the U.S. government and the contractor he was working for, Development Alternatives, charging he was used as a "pawn" in a U.S. government program to change the Castro regime and never advised about the dangers he faced bringing high tech satellite transmission equipment into Cuba. (The State Department, of which AID is a part and which has repeatedly called for Gross’ release, declined comment. Development Alternatives has released a statement saying it has "no higher priority" than bringing Gross home.) 

Kornbluh, who has advocated closer U.S.-Cuba dialogue, was in Havana last week to attend a conference marking the 50th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis. He was granted permission to visit Gross by Cuban officials. (The Cubans so far have denied all news media requests to meet with him.) He said Gross was most upset about being unable to return home to see members of his family who are ill, especially his 90-year-old mother in Texas who has cancer.

"He really wants to see his mother, who is quite old and infirm,” said Kornbluh. When Kornbluh had his photo taken with Gross, the contractor held up a photo that read: “Hi Mom.” When he asked Gross what he wanted to get out of the lawsuit, the contractor replied: “I want to see my wife and I want to see my mother."

To accomplish that, Gross is seeking to nudge the Obama administration, according to Kornbluh. Gross knows that his freedom "is going to depend on his government negotiating in good faith with the Cubans," said Kornbluh. "His message to Barack Obama is: I’m fired up and ready to go. Where are you at this moment?"

Michael Isikoff is NBC News' national investigative correspondent; NBC News producer Mary Murray also contributed to this report.

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Are economic sanctions successful if the Iranian economy crashes but the regime continues developing its nuclear program? That is the dichotomy now playing out inside the Islamic state, according to new data on the Iranian economy and its nuclear program.

The latest data on the quantitative success of the sanctions comes from an economics research firm, the Rhodium Group of New York. In a paper published last week, Rhodium said that customs data from around the world show both Iranian oil exports and revenues have dropped precipitously.

“As customs data for the month of July rolls in, we’re getting a clearer picture of Iranian exports the first month after new U.S. and EU sanctions formally took effect,” states the report. “And it’s not a pretty one for Tehran.”

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Specifically, the report states that the “best guess” on Iranian oil exports in July is no greater than 940,000 barrels per day, down from 1.7 million barrels per day  in June and 2.8 million barrels a day a year ago. Oil revenue dropped even more sharply, from $9.8 billion in July 2011 to $2.9 billion a year later. The disparity between the drop in oil sales and the decline in revenues was partly attributable to tumbling oil prices; even the value China’s oil imports dropped 28 percent from June to July. 

But Trevor Houser, the author of the report and a former senior adviser to the Obama State Department, says the success of the sanctions is surprising even to those who thought them up. “The July decline in Iranian oil exports and revenue is greater than anyone imagined would occur when U.S. sanctions were signed into law at the beginning of the year,” said Houser, a partner at Rhodium Group.  

Iran's currency hits fresh low against dollar as sanctions bite

U.S. and international sanctions -- mainly imposed by the European Union -- constrain a broad range commerce with Iran. They encompass the oil embargo, restrictions on the Iranian banking sector and its ability to carry out international transactions, the importation of industrial and construction equipment, and even luxury goods.

One of the most crippling has been a ban by SWIFT, the international financial clearinghouse, on Iranian funds transfers. Officials say the SWIFT sanctions have been particularly effective in limiting Iranian imports of all sorts of goods, even food supplies. The sanctions are so broad that the U.S. Treasury Department has exhaustive documentation on what is permitted, what is not, as well as licensing requirements.

At the same time, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s quarterly report on Iran’s nuclear program shows while Iranian oil revenue was declining, there was a simultaneous and dramatic increase in the number of centrifuges at Iran’s once-secret Fordow nuclear site. Iran in fact more than doubled the number of installed centrifuges -- from 1,064 to 2,140 -- in May, the IAEA reported.

Iran test-fires missile with new guidance system

The centrifuges, which are not the latest models that Iran possesses, have not been turned on, but U.S. officials call the speedup “troubling” if not a “game changer.” The Iranians also have increased their stockpile of highly enriched uranium, indicating that they have been getting better at the enrichment process.

Finally, at a military nuclear site named Parchin, which the IAEA wants to inspect, crucial buildings had been demolished and earth removed, the IAEA reported. Western diplomats see this as part of a cover-up by Iran of illicit nuclear-linked tests.

'Economic warfare'
So while the shipping data show the sanctions are a quantitative success – causing a rapid deterioration of Iran’s oil-driven economy – the IAEA data suggest no qualitative success. Iran continues to install new centrifuges and enrich more uranium, while refusing to permit IAEA inspections of Parchin.

“The challenge is it (the embargo) doesn’t seem to have much of an impact,” on Iran’s behavior, Houser admits.

CNBC: Iran oil revenue shrinks as sanctions sting

That doesn’t mean sanctions should be abandoned, says Mark Wallace, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who runs an activist group, United Against Nuclear Iran, that’s engaged in shaming Western companies into abandoning business in Iran.

"Sanctions are clearly having an impact, but we can do much more and must,” said Wallace, who advocates “economic warfare” against Iran. “Importantly, the most robust sanctions in history can only prevent Iran from going nuclear if they are part of a larger strategy that includes thoughtful military planning and rigorous diplomatic activity."

Iranians feel the pain of sanctions: 'Everything has doubled in price'

Wallace points to victories big and small. He notes that in the last few days, a Russian firm decided to stop verifying safety and environmental standards for one of Iran's biggest shipping groups, making it more difficult for it to operate internationally.

It’s not surprising that economic sanctions don’t produce an immediate effect, says David Albright, founder and president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), which monitors nuclear proliferation. They take time.

“It’s a sticky thing with sanctions,” said Albright. “Nothing happens and then suddenly something big happens. It’s hard to predict what's going to happen over next six months as the sanctions tighten.

“The other part of the story (that Iran continues to make progress on its nuclear program) is true, which is why it’s all immensely frustrating to countries. It argues that ways have to be found to delay Iran from making progress on its nuclear program, because in a sense you need more time for sanctions and that means more covert actions,” like the Stuxnet virus and attacks on Iranian scientists. The former is believed to have been a joint U.S.-Israeli sabotage operation, while the latter is said to be an Israeli secret service initiative.

Israel tells US time is running out for peaceful end to Iran nuclear dispute

Albright also says that the sanctions have to be accompanied by a threat of military action if Iran continues on what the U.S., Israel and other Western nations believe is a path to nuclear weapons.

“The part of it is that it has to be clear in Iran's mind is that the United States will strike militarily to stop them,” he said.  

Iran: 'We can manage this'
Iran’s response has been that it will never give up its “legitimate” right to develop nuclear energy, while steadfastly denying it is working on a nuclear weapons program.

Privately, Iranian officials dismiss the effect sanctions have on Iran’s nuclear policies. They say the effects of the Iran-Iraq War that ravaged the country for eight years in the 1980s -- a war in which the United States covertly supported Saddam Hussein’s regime – were far worse.

 “If we could manage that, we can manage this,” said one official, speaking with NBC News on condition of anonymity.

Asked to estimate the chances that sanctions will lead to Iran ending its uranium program, the official replied, “Zero.”

Other Iranian officials say the sanctions are part of a “secret war” led by the U.S. and Israel that also includes the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists, infections of Iranian computer networks, drone overflights and even U.S. Special Forces insertions within Iran’s borders.

Iran: We can destroy US bases 'minutes after an attack'

In the face of such provocations, one suggested, how long can Iran decline to respond?

Reprisals could already be under way. Israel has accused Iran of planning or carrying out recent attacks on its diplomatic personnel in Azerbaijan, India and Thailand, as well as orchestrating a bombing that killed four Israeli students on vacation in Bulgaria.

The Iranians strongly deny any role in those plots.

Robert Windrem is a senior investigative producer for NBC News.

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Senior al-Qaida leader Abu Yahya al-Libi, who was reportedly killed in a U.S. drone strike last week in Pakistan, appeared in a video published Tuesday by the terrorist group’s propaganda wing. 

NBC News terrorism analyst Evan Kohlmann, whose company Flashpoint Global Partners spotted the video titled  "The Tragedy of Syria: Between the Crimes of the Nusayris and the Scheming of the West," said the video made no reference to the reported drone strike early on June 4, and was very likely recorded prior to the attack.

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Though al-Qaida’s As-Sahab propaganda wing and jihadist Web forums hosting the video continue to describe al-Libi with honorific titles suggesting he is  alive, the video itself did not indicate whether he was living or dead.

According to a Reuters translation of the video, al-Libi called on Islamist fighters outside Syria to join rebels in their fight against President Bashar al-Assad.

"We call on our brothers in Iraq, Jordan and Turkey to go to help their brothers,'' he said. "If your revolution was to be peaceful, God would have chosen it that way, but now the illusion of peaceful means after these great sacrifices ... would show weakness."

White House spokesman Jay Carney said a week ago that al-Libi had been killed in North Waziristan, part of Pakistan’s northwest tribal area, but did not confirm that he died in a U.S. drone attack – a sensitive matter with Pakistani officials. 

 “I can’t get into details about how his death was brought about, but I can tell you that he served as al-Qaida’s general manger, responsible for overseeing the group’s day-to-day operations in the tribal areas of Pakistan and he managed the outreach to al-Qaida’s regional affiliates,” Carney said.

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 Previously, Pakistani security sources said al-Libi had died in  a pre-dawn attack on June 4, the last in a series of three U.S. drone attacks over the weekend. 

If al-Libi’s death is confirmed, he would be the fifth senior al-Qaida leader killed since U.S. Navy SEALs killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden on May1, 2011, in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Reuters contributed to this report.

 

In one of the most audacious money-laundering schemes of all time, a senior member of Mexico’s Zetas drug cartel used several associates and relatives to purchase a 300-acre ranch in Oklahoma and build a successful quarter horse racing and breeding operation, the New York Times reported Tuesday.

The newspaper, citing current and former federal law enforcement officials, said Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales, one of the most wanted drug traffickers in the world,, bankrolled the prominent horse breeding operation, Tremor Enterprises, and used it to launder millions of dollars in drug money.

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The group won three of quarter horse racing’s biggest races, including the 2010 All American Futurity at Riudoso Downs in New Mexico with longshot Mr. Piloto, it said.

Others involved in the plot were José Treviño Morales, 45, older brother of Miguel Treviño Morales, who is alleged to be No. 2 in the feared Zetas drug cartel, and Ramiro Villarreal, who helped select Tremor’s racing prospects, including Mr. Piloto, the Times reported.

The scheme unraveled early Tuesday, according to the Times:

The Justice Department moved against Tremor on Tuesday morning, dispatching several helicopters and hundreds of law enforcement agents to the company’s stables in Ruidoso and its ranch in Oklahoma. Jose Treviño and several associates were taken into custody and were expected to be charged later in the day, authorities said.

An affidavit prepared before the raids said the Zetas funneled about $1 million a month into buying quarter horses in the United States. The authorities were tipped off to Tremor’s activities in January 2010, when the Zetas paid more than $1 million in a single day for two broodmares, the affidavit said.

The New York Times became aware of Tremor’s activities in December 2011 while reporting on the Zetas. The Times learned of the government’s investigation last month and agreed to hold this story until Tuesday morning’s arrests.

Click here to read the full story.

A Predator attack over the weekend targeted Abu Yahya al-Libi, a leading al-Qaida operative who was viewed as one of five candidates to succeed Osama bin Laden as leader of the terrorist group when he was killed last year. U.S. officials confirm that he was the target of the Sunday attacks and say they are awaiting word on his status.

In one of three strikes over the weekend, a U.S. drone struck a militant compound early Monday morning in North Waziristan, part of  Pakistan’s northwestern tribal area. Pakistan security reports indicated the pre-dawn strike killed 15 insurgents, with a total of nearly 30 killed in total.

But. a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Wednesday that the reports on the number of dead were “exaggerated,” and described the death toll as “less than a handful."

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The Agence France Presse news agency reported that in the attack that targeted Abuy Yahya, two missiles were fired on the compound in Mir Ali, 15 miles east of Miramshah, the capital of North Waziristan, near the Afghan border, in an area considered a hive of Taliban and al-Qaida activity.

A Pakistani official,  who spoke with NBC News on condition of anonymity, said the victims were mostly foreigners and Urdu-speaking Punjabi Taliban who had gathered with the intention of crossing into Afghanistan to fight with Afghan Taliban fighters against NATO forces.

Reuters, citing reports from the region, said nearly 30 people were killed during the sequence of strikes, including four suspected militants on Saturday, 10 suspected militants on Sunday, and 15 people in the strike in which Abu Yahya was targeted. Those numbers were challenged by U.S. officials.

Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said Monday it "strongly condemns" the US drone strikes, which it described as "illegal attacks" on Pakistani sovereignty.

The most-recent attack of the weekend was the eighth drone strike in Pakistan since a NATO conference on Afghanistan in Chicago last month. Since taking office in 2009, the Obama administration has carried out nearly 300 drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, the majority of them in Pakistan’s tribal areas, according to the New America Foundation, which keeps an unofficial count.

If Abu Yahya was indeed killed, it would be another blow to al-Qaida in Pakistan, the so-called al-Qaida Central.  The Libyan, believed to be 39 years old, is one of the most influential propagandists in al-Qaida and one of its best known leaders.

Abu Yahya draws much of his credibility from having escaped a U.S. military prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan on the night of July 10, 2005. He subsequently appeared in more than 30 videos produced by al Shahab, the al-Qaida media wing, and other militant sites. In December 2009, Pakistani officials erroneously reported he had been killed in a Predator strike, further enhancing his image.

U.S. officials say unlike many al-Qaida propagandists, Abu Yahya also is a seasoned fighter.

In May 2011, shortly after bin Laden was killed, U.S. officials identified Abu Yahya as one of five potential successors to the slain al-Qaida leaders.  The leading candidate, Ayman al Zawahiri, ultimately did succeed bin Laden.  If Abu Yahya was killed, he would be the fourth of the five to have been killed in drone strikes.

Ilyas Kashmiri, al-Qaida’s director of external operations, was killed on June 3. Abdul Rahman Atiya, bin Laden’s chief of staff, was killed Aug. 22. Both of those attacks took place in northwestern Pakistan.  Anwar al Awlaki, a leader of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and an American citizen, was killed in Yemen, also in a drone strike, on Sept. 30. 

Robert Windrem is a senior investigative producer for NBC News; NBC News' Mushtaq Yusufzai contributed reporting from Pakistan.

 

As the United Nations and Iran warn that the newly discovered Flame computer virus may be the most potent weapon of its kind, U.S. computer security experts tell NBC News that the virus bears the hallmarks of a U.S. cyber espionage operation, specifically that of the super-secret National Security Agency.

The Flame virus, which is intended to gather intelligence -- not destroy equipment or data, as was the case with the notorious Stuxnet virus -- is too sophisticated to be the work of another country, said one U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It was U.S.,” said the official, who acknowledged having no first-hand knowledge of how the virus operates or was introduced into the Iranian computers.

The U.S. was also believed to have a hand in the creation and insertion of the Stuxnet virus, which targeted Iran’s uranium-enriching centrifuges.

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The newly discovered Flame virus essentially “colonizes” the targeted computers, giving hackers control over critical data stored on them, according to cybersecurity experts who spoke with NBC News.

 

U.S. intelligence officials declined to discuss the virus. “We have no comment,” said one.  Israeli officials, suspected in previous attacks, denied involvement.

The virus was first discovered and announced over the weekend by a Russian cybersecurity organization after reports of massive data losses in Iranian government computers.  Kaspersky Lab told Reuters it found the Flame infection after the International Telecommunications Union asked it to investigate. By some accounts, the virus has been operating in the wild for as long as five years.

"This is the most serious (cyber) warning we have ever put out," Marco Obiso, cybersecurity coordinator for the U.N.'s Geneva-based ITU, told Reuters on Tuesday, referring to a bulletin about the virus expected to be issued in the next few days.

The confidential warning will tell member nations that the Flame virus is a dangerous espionage tool that could potentially be used to attack critical infrastructure, Obiso said.

Other experts said the virus appears to be a different type of invader than Stuxnet.

"From reading press reports, this appears to be penetrating networks to surveil, as opposed to destroy, as was the case with Stuxnet,” said Michael Leiter, former director of the National Counter Terrorism Center and now an NBC News analyst. “Such computer network operations are core components of what our and other intelligence services do day in and day out.

“Our intelligence services know that any weakness in an information system can mean the entire system is vulnerable.  This makes defense very, very hard.  Network defenses must work reliably and in real time across the entire network to defend against persistent intruders."

Iran’s cybersecurity officials seem to agree.  The New York Times reported Iran’s Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center issued a warning Tuesday, saying, “This malware is a platform which is capable of receiving and installing various modules for different goals.”

If this is indeed a U.S. cyberwarfare operation, said computer security expert Roger Cressey, the target is likely to be Iran’s nuclear program and its decision-making apparatus. 

"Whoever has developed this is engaged in very sophisticated intelligence gathering on computer networks throughout the region.  Clearly, Iran is a top priority for this program," said Cressey, former chief of staff of  the President’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Board under George W. Bush and now an NBC News analyst.

Two years ago, the U.S. and Israel were suspected of inserting the Stuxnet virus into the Iranian centrifuge center at Natanz. When the control software was corrupted, the motors that control the uranium centrifuge operations didn’t operate correctly, wobbling instead of spinning the way they’re supposed to, U.S. officials say.

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said that the work of Kaspersky Labs helped Iran uncover the infection and remove it from the centrifuge control program.  Cybersecurity officials have told NBC News that the infection, while heavily publicized, was not as effective in disrupting Iran’s nuclear program as has been portrayed in some media accounts.

But Stuxnet is an example, said one U.S. official, of how those aiming to slow the Iranian nuclear program, which the U.S. says is aimed at producing nuclear weaponry, can have an effect similar to that of economic sanctions. The Iran program keeps making progress, he said, but never quite gets there.

Other U.S. officials said that the viruses not only affect the targeted program; they also make Iranian officials “paranoid.” Additionally, countering the attacks diverts valuable assets and resources from the core mission, they said. 

While the Flame virus appears to be aimed more at gathering intelligence on the Iranian program, it, too, aims to make the Iranians paranoid, the officials said. It does so by making them wonder about security and by raising questions about whether  the enemy knows the intricacies of Iranian decision making, not just on the nuclear program but on a host of other issues important to the U.S. and the West, they said.

Robert Windrem is a senior investigative producer for NBC News; Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel contributed to this report.

 

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PESHAWAR, Pakistan – The brother of the Pakistani doctor imprisoned for helping the CIA to track Osama bin Laden says the family needs protection, and the U.S. government should provide it. 

Jamil Afridi, elder brother to Dr. Shakil Afridi, spoke to NBC News on Monday in Peshawar, after he and his lawyers addressed a group of journalists about his brother's case. 

Pakistan jails doctor who helped CIA track down bin Laden

"My appeal to the U.S. government is that they give Dr. Shakil protection, and give us – his brothers and sisters – protection as well," said Afridi. "We have no protection here."

Dr. Shakil Afridi was arrested in the weeks after the May 2011 U.S. raid on the bin Laden compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The doctor ran a fake vaccination campaign for U.S. intelligence as part of an attempt to get inside the compound and confirm Bin Laden's location. Though those plans failed, U.S. officials have said Dr. Afridi's efforts did help lead them to bin Laden. 

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Dr. Afridi was tried under a legal system known as the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR), which applies only in Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal areas. Trials are conducted by a local government official in consultation with tribal elders, and the accused are not allowed legal representation. Dr. Afridi was convicted on treason charges and sentenced to 33 years in prison. 

His brother dismissed the charges against Dr. Afridi as "false," saying he did nothing against Pakistan's national interest, and that "anything" could happen to him or his family now. 

'Schizophrenic ally': US to ax $33 million in Pakistan aid?

"For one whole year, we had no idea where he was – whether he was alive or dead," said Afridi. "Now they say he's in Central Jail, Peshawar, but we're not allowed to see him."

Dr. Afridi's conviction further complicated already tense relations between the U.S. and Pakistan. U.S. officials demanded his release, claiming his efforts helped to capture an enemy to both Pakistan and the U.S. But Pakistani officials have called Dr. Afridi's decision to work for a foreign intelligence agency a "serious offense." 

U.S. officials say they expect to continue the conversation about Dr. Afridi with their Pakistani counterparts, but the list of unresolved issues between the two countries continues to grow.

Both sides are negotiating the re-opening of the overland NATO supply routes that run through Pakistan – shuttered since last November – and the Pakistan government also is calling  for a complete halt on all U.S. drone strikes within the country. In the last week alone, there have been four strikes carried out in the border region with Afghanistan. 

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A terror attack Monday on a Yemeni military parade rehearsal that killed scores occurred amid increasing cooperation between the Yemen and U.S. governments, with the latter stepping up assistance to the Yemeni military and regularly targeting purported terrorist cells with drone strikes.

The cooperation reflects a growing  belief in U.S. national security circles that al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the Yemeni al-Qaida affiliate, is now a bigger and more dangerous threat than the central al-Qaida group in Pakistan. (AQAP on Tuesday claimed responsibility for the attack on the military parade and a shooting that targeted U.S. military trainers in the country. There were apparently no injuries in the second incident.)

The cooperation is not limited to counter-terrorism. The U.S. is openly helping the new Yemeni government in counterinsurgency efforts against an AQAP-affiliated group, Ansar al-Sharia, in the south of the country.  The assistance includes “a small contingent” of military trainers and intelligence officers assisting the Yemeni forces.

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The presence of the American personnel in Yemen is raising concerns that Washington risks opening another front in the war against al-Qaida before it has fully extricated itself from long, bloody conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But a senior U.S. counterterrorism official, who spoke with NBC News on condition of anonymity, said the AQAP’s successes in recent months give Washington little choice but to increase support for the new Yemeni government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

“AQAP’s enhanced footprint in southern Yemen increases the chances that the group will establish a regional safe haven,” said the official. “This would be a dangerous development because AQAP’s anti-government fight and its terrorist plotting against the West are its two main goals. Unless its gains are reversed, AQAP will have more flexibility to conduct external attacks from a position of strength.”

The Yemeni government position is about survival. Like Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, Yemen is under new management, after former President Ali Abdullah al-Saleh’s replacement by Hadi, his former deputy, in February.

Hadi’s position is precarious. Ansar al-Sharia, an Islamist insurgent group, is trying to further destabilize the water-starved, tribal-riven state, with the ultimate goal of toppling his government.

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'Massacre" as suicide bomber targets military parade rehearsal in Yemen

But Hadi’s  increasing reliance on U.S. help has likewise caused him some difficulties, triggering protests among middle- and upper middle-class Yemeni youth who are resentful over the U.S. role in the country, particularly the drone strikes and surveillance.

Michael Leiter, former director of the National Counter Terrorism Center and now an NBC News analyst, said the deaths of nearly 100 Yemeni soldiers in Monday’s bombing are likely to bring two countries’ counter terrorism efforts closer.

“Hadi's rise has probably brought greater legitimacy to cooperation with the U.S.,” said Leiter. “… The president (Hadi) and elements of the security and defense establishment cooperate with the U.S. but want to keep that relatively quiet in order to avoid enflaming the domestic population.  .. . And, frankly, with horrific attacks like today, U.S. assistance often becomes more rather than less welcome.”

A Yemeni official, also speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak with the press on security operations, contended that  “broad cooperation” with the U.S. is necessary and marks a “new level” of friendly relations between the two countries. He said the U.S. role in Yemen is limited in terms of numbers, but significant in helping the government turn back Ansar al-Sharia, which he characterized as “militants, drug dealers and foreign groups.”

'Intelligence, satellite images and technical advice'
“The U.S. is providing intelligence information, satellite images and technical advice” valuable in both  counterterrorism and counterinsurgency efforts, said the official. Both the U.S. intelligence community and the Joint Special Operations Command, JSOC, are involved. He emphasized there are “no boots on the ground” fighting with Yemeni forces.

Neither the U.S. nor Yemeni official would put numbers on the U.S. involvement. Nor would the Yemeni  deny the presence of CIA officers on the ground.

The most high profile product of this cooperation has been the drone attacks on both counterterrorism and counterinsurgency targets. High profile attacks have killed three top AQAP officials in the past eight months, but there also have been an increasing number of attacks on lesser figures and even suspected gatherings of terrorists. The attacks, said the Yemeni official, have taken place “all over the country.”

In September, apparently helped by material uncovered in Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan, U.S. drones killed two American citizens in Kashef, about 85 miles east of the capital, Sanaa. The dead were Anwar al-Awlaki, an AQAP leader blamed for recruiting other Americans to the group’s violent cause, and Samir Khan, co-editor of “Inspire,” a magazine whose articles included “How to Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom.”

Then, earlier this month, the director of AQAP’s external operations, Fahd al Quso, was similarly killed by a drone attack in a remote mountain valley -- his whereabouts reportedly exposed by a British-Saudi-U.S. undercover intelligence operation. The penetration of AQAP by an informant  also resulted in the interception of a new, more sophisticated  version of the underwear bomb previously used unsuccessfully  to try to down U.S. airliners. (Yemeni intelligence, said the Yemeni official, had “no role” in that operation and was unaware of it.)

By some estimates, the tempo of the drone strikes against AQAP and Ansar al-Sharia is now even greater than in Pakistan, with the number of attacks in May surpassing even the most intense month of attacks against al-Qaida central in Pakistan. According to the “Long War Journal” website, which uses local reporting to track Predator strikes, 30 AQAP fighters (and seven civilians) have been killed in five drone strikes in the past 10 days alone. (Both U.S. and Yemeni officials say that such local reports are often inaccurate or exaggerated.)

The larger concern in terms of U.S. involvement may be the counterinsurgency effort. The Los Angeles Times reported  last week that at least 20 U.S. Special Operations troops are using satellite imagery, drone video, eavesdropping systems and other technical means to help pinpoint targets for the Yemeni military offensive that’s currently under way in the south. 

The Yemeni official would only say that targeting is “very selective” and that “No Americans are fighting on the side of the Yemenis,” a point on which U.S. officials agree.

While the Yemeni official said the offensive has made great strides recently, there have been setbacks, including the killing of 32 Yemeni soldiers on May 7 when AQAP overran a Yemeni position. That was the deadliest single encounter for government forces in the war with AQAP until Monday’s attack.

The Yemeni official said that the public is supportive of both operations, despite a social media protest by the country’s youth that has drawn some attention.

He claimed that no civilians have been killed in the drone strikes and stated that that care has been taken to strike at times and places where only AQAP and its allies are present.

There’s no doubt that U.S. cooperation -- and the drone strikes—will continue. The U.S. wants to kill Ibrihim Hassan Al-Asiri, the AQAP’s expert bomb-maker, before he trains others in his craft. 

But the mere presence of U.S. military personnel in the country carries risk of a confrontation that could quickly escalate. This weekend, for example, a local Yemeni newspaper reported unidentified gunmen opened fire on a car that belonged to U.S. military trainers as they left the tourist al-Hodeida Land Resort in the western part of the country. None of the Americans were believed to have been injured.

Robert Windrem is a senior investigative producer for NBC News.

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A stinging report by a British House of Commons committee concluding that Rupert Murdoch is “not fit” to run a major international company provides powerful new ammunition for shareholders suing  News Corp. in the United States and for big institutional investors demanding changes in the media giant’s management, analysts say.

It also comes at a perilous time for the U.S.-based company. Law enforcement sources have confirmed to NBC News that the U.S. Justice Department is conducting a wide-ranging investigation into Murdoch’s media empire, looking into allegations of bribes paid to officials in Russia and China as well as Scotland Yard police officers in the United Kingdom.  

“I think there will be a shareholder revolt over this,” said Julie Tanner, an assistant director of Christian Brothers Investment Service, an investment advisory firm for Catholic Church institutions, referring to the report by the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee. Christian Brothers has filed a shareholder resolution calling on News Corp. to shake up its management and appoint a new independent chairman. 

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Other big investors, including the California state retirement fund CalPERS and a consortium of British pension funds, have signaled their support for these efforts. 

“Our principal concern at News Corp. has been to ensure that it has robust governance policies and practices in place, and that effective action is taken to root out wrongdoing,”  Tom Powdrill, chief of communications for the Local Authority  Pension Fund Forum (LAPFF), the British pension fund consortium, said in an email to NBC News on Tuesday. “Clearly, today’s report reflects the fact that News Corp. has been deficient on both counts in the past.”

Murdoch not 'a fit person' to lead major firm, UK lawmakers say

As chairman and chief executive officer of News Corp, the 81-year-old Murdoch is among the highest-paid executives in the world, receiving total compensation of $33.3 million last year, including a $12.5 million bonus. He has successfully beaten back similar resolutions in past years, thanks in part to his and his family’s ownership of 40 percent of the voting stock of the media giant. (He also benefited from the solid support of Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, the Riyadh based media tycoon who owns an estimated 7 percent of News Corp. The prince did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday. )

But the blistering report by the House of Commons committee could change the equation and potentially spur the board’s directors -- including such prominent figures as Joel Klein, the former chancellor of the New York City Schools -- to demonstrate their independence by distancing themselves from Murdoch, some analysts say.

“The biggest impact of the report is going to be on the shareholder resolutions and it could threaten the Murdoch family control of the company,” said Andrew Schwartzman,  a Washington, D.C.,-based media lawyer and the longtime policy director for The Media Access Project, a public interest group that has sought to curb the power of big media firms. 

But Murdoch has shown no inclination to step down as head of News Corp. — a company whose diverse interests in the United States include the Wall Street Journal, the Fox cable network and the 20^th Century Fox movie studio.

In a memo to News Corp. employees Tuesday afternoon, Murdoch acknowledged what he described as “past mistakes” over the phone hacking allegations and promised “a more robust global compliance structure” around the world.

“To that end, News Corporation continues to cooperate with all inquiries relating to voice mail interception and improper payments to public officials,” Murdoch wrote in the memo, an apparent reference to the Justice Department investigations into potential violations of U.S. anti-bribery law.

At the same time, Murdoch insisted, “Our business has never been stronger.” And, in a separate statement, the company criticized the inclusion of passages in the report -- clearly the ones referring to Murdoch -- as “unjustified and highly partisan.” (The personal criticism of Murdoch -- including language that he “turned a blind eye” to allegations of widespread phone hacking and gave testimony that was “barely credible”-- was adopted by six of the committees 11 members. Voting for the harsh language were five members of the Labor Party and one member of the Liberal Democratic Party, over the opposition of members from Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative Party.)

Beyond the shareholder resolutions, the company is also facing civil actions in the United States.

Mark Lewis, a British lawyer who has been active in suing News Corp. in Britain and collecting damage awards on behalf of hacking victims, told NBC News this week that he has identified at least one American victim of phone hacking who alleges that his phone was hacked in the United States. Lewis says he has teamed up with U.S. lawyers and plans to file a U.S. lawsuit on behalf of the client — whom he declined to identify -- in the next couple of weeks.

Another U.S. lawsuit, filed last year by several large labor union shareholders, alleges that Murdoch has run News Corp “as his own personal fiefdom” and misused company assets “to advance the selfish business interests of his family”—including paying $615 million to purchase a television and film production company owned by his daughter. The company has moved to dismiss the complaint as without merit, but a Delaware judge is set to hear oral arguments on whether the suit should proceed later this month.

Schwartzman and other media analysts said Tuesday it is far from clear what direct impact the House of Commons report will have on many of these matters or on other potential problems the company may face. 

It would be exceedingly difficult, for example, for a rival media firm to challenge Fox News’s broadcast licenses at the Federal Communications Commission. A federal law enacted in 1996 says such challenges to broadcast licenses can only succeed if it could be demonstrated that the broadcaster committed “misconduct” while running the station in question, not wrongdoing by the broadcaster’s corporate owners in other lines of business.

The British report, moreover, has no legal standing in the U.S., although some experts say it could spur British regulators to challenge News Corp’s stake in B Sky B, the huge British pay television firm that has been a major cash cow for the firm.

But the broader impact, they say, could be in diminishing the power and influence of Murdoch himself. The stinging language in the report’s conclusions seems to echo many of the sharpest critiques leveled by News Corp.’s dissident shareholders.

After blasting Murdoch for “willful blindness to what was going in his companies,” the report stated: “This culture, we consider, permeated from the top throughout the organization and speaks volumes about the lack of corporate governance at News Corporation. We conclude, therefore, that Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company.”   

With tensions between Israel and Iran running sky high over the latter's nuclear program, U.S. officials and military analysts are growing increasingly concerned that Israel will launch a multi-phase air and missile attack that could trigger waves of retaliatory missile strikes from Tehran.

Such a shootout could quickly spiral into a regional conflict that would potentially force the U.S. to intervene to protect its interests.

The emerging consensus among current and former U.S. officials and other experts interviewed by NBC News is that that an Israeli attack would be a multi-faceted assault on key Iranian nuclear installations, involving strikes by both warplanes and missiles. It could also include targeted attacks by Israeli special operations forces and possibly even the use of massive explosives-laden drones, they say.

The Iranian response to such an attack is uncertain, but many experts and officials believe it is likely to include retaliatory missile strikes. Iran has more missiles in its arsenal than Israel, according to some estimates, and has the capability of striking targets in most Israeli population centers.

"I think that it would strike Iran as a reasonable response, an eye for an eye," said Christopher J Ferrero, a professor of diplomacy at Seton Hall University in New Jersey and an expert on Middle East missile forces.

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He also said Iran would likely attack major cities with its Shahab 3 missiles, which he said are not as accurate as the Israeli missiles, but would be an effective "instrument of terror … that could certainly cause significant damage to heavily populated suburban and urban areas.

 

 

Israel possesses advanced anti-missile defenses, but those systems could be overwhelmed if Tehran launched large numbers of missiles, as Ferrero expects.

Given the immense difficulties in carrying out successful air strikes on the four key Iranian installations using its warplanes alone -- as laid out last week by the New York Times, U.S. officials say Israel would be likely to coordinate such airstrikes with waves of missiles. This would greatly increase the chances of penetrating fortifications that Iran has built to protect some of its key installations and overwhelm Iran's air defenses, said the former and current U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"Two words:  Jericho missiles," said one former White House and Pentagon official, speaking on condition of anonymity, when asked how Israel would attack Iranian targets at great distances. "They are conventionally armed, have a very small CEP (circular error of probability, meaning they are highly accurate) and can be used in conjunction with a strike fighter operation."

Israel has as many as 100 Jericho ballistic missiles – both short- and medium-range – as well as submarine-launched cruise missiles, though the officials say they believe the latter are unlikely to be used. The short-range Jericho I missiles would be of no use in an attack on Iran, because the targets are far beyond its 300-mile range. However, the  medium-range Jericho II's are capable of  hitting targets as far as 900 miles away – or as far east as Tehran. Israel also tested a Jericho III intercontinental ballistic missile in 2008 and Israeli media have reported that it may have deployed one or more of the weapons, which would put all of Iran within reach.

The missiles would most likely be launched from the Hirbat Zekharyah missile range, midway between Israel and the Mediterranean Coast, according to "Critical Mass: the Dangerous Race for Superweapons in a Fragmenting World," by William E. Burrows and Robert Windrem, and various Israeli press reports.

Although designed to be part of Israel's nuclear deterrent force, the Jerichos can be equipped with high explosives as well as nuclear warheads. U.S. officials have said that an Israeli attack, if it happens, would be intended to surgically take out the nuclear facilities, not inflict the mass casualties that would result from a nuclear attack.

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Iran has no capability to defend against a missile strike, said Ferrero, the expert on Middle East missile arsenals.

"If the Jerichos are accurate enough to get to their targets, they will get to their targets," he said.

What Iran does have is hundreds of Shahab 3 medium range ballistic missiles, according to U.S. estimates. The Shahab 3 also has a range of roughly 900 miles.

Israel, possibly supplemented by U.S. shipborne anti-missile systems – the Aegis Standard Missile-2 -- could intercept and destroy some of the incoming Iranian missiles, said Ferrero. But the numbers favor Iran, he said.

"I believe that (the Iranians) have a sufficient inventory that they could overwhelm those missile defenses and still get enough missiles through to cause damage," he said.

The critical factor may be the number of  missile launchers in Iran's inventory, Ferrero said, because penetrating Israel's defenses would require numerous  missiles, but also enough launchers to be able to fire them off simultaneously. That number is a closely guarded secret, he said.

Additionally, U.S. intelligence estimates say Iran has supplied Hezbollah with more than 40,000 short-range rockets and missiles since 2006. However, U.S. officials are uncertain whether Hezbollah would follow Iranian orders, and risk Israeli retaliation or, if they did, how many they would fire.  The majority of the rockets and missiles are unguided.  Israel and the U.S. have worked on a short-range missile defense system called Iron Dome, but there are concerns that waves of attacks could overwhelm the system.

Also open to question in U.S. and Israeli military circles is whether an Israeli attack would meet its objective: setting back the Iranian nuclear program anywhere from two to five years.

U.S. officials say Israel would be likely to concentrate its attacks on four key Iranian nuclear complexes. Key facilities within those complexes – the Natanz and Fordo centrifuge facilities, both south of Tehran; the Arak research reactor, southwest of Tehran; and a uranium hexafloride production and research facility near the city of Isfahan – are protected by heavy fortifications, they said.

The Jerichos are stored in tunnels in limestone formations around Hirbat Zekharyah and rolled out for firing. They would likely be used as part of a one-two punch, the officials say. The first attack would be carried out by Israeli strike fighters and would be intended to breach the heavily fortified outer ceilings of the facilities. The second (and possibly even third) wave would be missile attacks aimed at destroying the facilities within, the officials said. 

Asked if Jerichos would have the accuracy and the explosive power to take out hardened bunkers or fortifications believed to be protecting Iran's most-sensitive underground nuclear facilities, a current U.S. official replied, "You would be surprised at their accuracy." The official added that the missiles' warheads would contain a special mix of explosives that could penetrate the Iranian defenses.

U.S. officials also say Israel may have learned the location of facilities that fabricate centrifuge components. These, too, could be targeted.

A 2010 book on the possibility of an Israeli attack laid out the difficulties Israel would face if it attempted to use only its strike fighters on those targets.

 "Attacks against the sites at Natanz, Isfahan and Arak alone would stretch Israel's capability and planners might be reluctant to enlarge the raid further," wrote authors Steven Simon and Dana H. Allin, in "The Sixth Crisis – Iran, Israel and the Rumors of War." Simon, then a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, now heads the Middle East Desk at the National Security Council.

The biggest problem is the fortification of the two centrifuge facilities. Simon and Allin describe the challenge using aircraft only.

"Natanz is the only one of the … likely targets that is largely underground, sheltered by up to 23 meters (75 feet) of soil and concrete," they wrote. "… Bombs used in a ‘burrowing' mode, however, could penetrate deeply enough to fragment the inner surface of the ceiling structures above the highly fragile centrifuge arrays and even precipitate the collapse of the entire structure."

But for the attack to have high odds of success, they argue, aircraft would have to drop additional bombs into the cavities created by the first bombs. That would require "time on target" -- a luxury that the Israeli jets at the outermost limits of their 1,100-mile range would likely not have. While they estimate the success rate of such a plan at "better than 70 percent," they call it "complicated and highly risky."

Another difficulty for attacking Israeli aircraft would be finding a route to the targets that could be flown covertly or with the tacit approval of Sunni Arab states, who are at least as frightened of an Iranian nuclear capability as the Israelis.

Simon and Allin (and others) have written that there are three "plausible routes" that Israeli warplanes would take to attack Iran: a northern approach, likely along the Syrian-Turkish border; a central path that would take them over Jordan and Iraq; and a southern route that would transit the lower end of Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The southern route is the most likely, U.S. officials suggest, because the Saudis and other Sunni-dominated Gulf states are eager for someone to take out the Iranian threat. They prefer the U.S. do it, but have reportedly shared intelligence on the Iranian program with the Israelis, if only on a limited basis, according to the U.S. officials.

No matter what route the fighter bombers take, they would use what one U.S. official described as "high-low, low-high" flight paths – flying high first to increase fuel efficiency, then low for most of the trip to evade radar, then climbing high again as the bombs are released in what is known as a "flip toss" from as far as 10 miles from the target.

The Israelis would be prepared to lose aircraft if necessary, the officials said.

Although Simon and Allin do not discuss adding a missile component, other experts, including many current and former U.S. officials, believe the Israelis already have made a decision to have them in the attack menu.

Missile attacks would be coordinated with fighter-bomber attacks (presumably, the Israelis' F-16, F-18 and extended-range F-15I Strike Eagle). The missiles would have to be launched so that warheads strike targets following the strike fighter attacks.  Because of the short flight time, minutes rather than hours in the case of the aircraft, the missile launch would almost certainly take place at the last possible moment to ensure the secrecy of the overall attack.

The Israelis are not planning to use their submarine-launched cruise missile force -- "not enough of them," one official said of the subs. (The Israelis have long had nuclear tipped sub-launched cruise missiles as part of their deterrent force.) 

Beyond the strike fighters and the missile force, U.S. officials suggest the Israelis could use two other "weapons" against Iran.

The first is special operations forces that would be secretly inserted into the country. At the least, they could be employed to illuminate aim points for laser-guided bunker-busting bombs. At the most, they could launch their own attacks on facilities, particularly those believed to contain enriched uranium.

The other is a new generation of large drones with wingspans approaching those of a Boeing 777  (almost 200 feet). Costing $30 million each, the Heron drones are capable of remaining airborne for 40 hours at a time and have a range of 4,600 miles. While they can be equipped with surveillance and electronic warfare equipment, some officials call them "strike drones," meaning they could be loaded with explosives and used to attack Iranian targets.

While the initial days of an Israeli-Iranian conflict would probably be bloody, most experts say that the open warfare would be expected to wind down within days or weeks, since neither side has the ability to occupy the other's territory or enough missiles to sustain attacks.

But that would bring with it its own set of problems, as the conflict would be likely to continue on a lower level, involving covert operations and terrorism.

"You could have a very nasty covert war emerge," said Ferrero.

Robert Windrem is a senior investigative producer for NBC News.