An Astounding Tale of CIA Ops Against Iran

Former CIA operative Kevin Chalker touts his exploits in The New Yorker to "repair his reputation"

Kevin Chalker, aka Fred E. Snappleton, in a 2022 company photo

Most espionage aficionados are quite familiar with spy jargon like dead drops, brush passes, secret writing, and so forth. Experts and former practitioners, though, are familiar with a lesser-known element of the spy business, summed up in the acronym “MICE.” It stands for the various reasons that officials—say, Iranian nuclear scientists—turn coat: Money, Ideology, Compromise, and Ego. After reading an extraordinary piece about spy ops in The New Yorker magazine this week, I propose adding another letter—D, for death threats.

The idea came to mind about two-thirds the way through reporter David D. Kirkpatrick’s compelling deep dive into the tumultuous life, career, and travails of one Kevin Chalker, a former CIA operations officer who once played a key role in persuading Iranian nuclear scientists to defect—or be killed.

And he was very good at it, Chalker told Kirkpatrick, an assertion the writer corroborated with other sources.

“The most salient reason for his success…was surely his existential offer: defect or die,” Kirkpatrick wrote. Since Israel’s assassinations campaign in Iran was no secret to the government’s nuclear scientists, Chalker’s offer to exfiltrate them ”could almost be considered humanitarian,” one of his colleagues recalled, because Chalker was ‘throwing them a lifeline.’

“Of the many scientists he approached, three-quarters ultimately agreed to cooperate,” Kirkpatrick writes.

Kirkpatrick volunteers that the Los Angeles Times first reported on the project known as Brain Drain back in 2007. “But the details of the ‘invitations’ to Iranian scientists have not previously been reported.”

The CIA is prohibited by law from carrying out the assassinations, but passing along names to the Israelis was an effective sleight of hand. What happened after that was not a great concern to the agency, by Kirkpatrick’s account.

But there was this: “Citing stories from friends in the U.S. Special Forces, Chalker said he believed that, on at least a few occasions, U.S. commandos—such as Delta Force operatives, Navy SEALs, or members of the CIA’s paramilitary Ground Branch—have carried out targeted killings of Iranian military officers. (Chalker said that the operators even had a term of art for such killings: X-boxing.) He could not name any Iranian scientists assassinated by Americans. But he is confident that those who rebuffed him were, in fact, killed—one way or another.”

In effect, Kirkpatrick’s tale amounts to a gripping “as-told-to” feature—with this major exception: He has persuasively corroborated the essential elements of Chalker’s story, as well as knocked down the former CIA man’s self-serving fibs and exaggerations.

And what a story it is, chock-full of the many operational tactics, tradecraft tricks, and cryptonyms Chalker employed in several of his recruiting episodes.

But why is Chalker spilling the beans?

Chalker’s reasons for talking, particularly to Kirkpatrick, are both simple and complex. The New Yorker writer was a three-time Pulitzer winner during his 22 years with the New York Times who had written about Chalker’s previous legal problems. The ex-CIA man is evidently down and out, his reputation in tatters because of several negative stories involving his post-CIA involvement with Qatar and a nasty lawsuit against him by Elliott Broidy—a mega-donor to President Donald Trump—all of which Kirkpatrick recounts in detail but is beyond the scope of our interests here.

Which takes us back to MICE, and particularly its first and last letters: Money and Ego. Chalker and Broidy had settled the lawsuit on confidential terms, Chalker told Kirkpatrick, but “he wanted to repair his reputation. He had always been an American patriot, he insisted, and to prove it he was willing to talk publicly, for the first time, about his years of clandestine work for the CIA—which, he said, had ‘prevented Iran from getting a nuke.’”

He was also pissed that the CIA had not had his back when he fell into trouble, but he obviously hoped telling his story could get him new clients and cash. In a fine irony, those are some of the same reasons Iranians agreed to defect or spy for him (along with that “D,” of course, for death threat).

Nolo Contendere

Which leaves the question of why the CIA hasn’t taken action to prevent or punish Chalker for committing what appears to be an egregious violation of his oath to keep secrets. Not that we’re arguing it should, but in 1978 the agency vigorously and successfully pursued former top CIA Vietnam strategy analyst Frank Snepp in court for not submitting his manuscript for Decent Interval, his blistering account of the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Saigon, to agency censors. The Justice Department did not charge him with disclosing classified information. Former CIA officials often tell journalists they have to get permission from the agency before discussing certain subjects.

A former senior CIA counter-proliferation officer said “certain parts” of Chalker’s account “seem very classified and could put defectors at risk.”

Does the CIA have good reason for letting Chalker tell his story? Cui bono? we always ask, especially in the shadow world. Who benefits from Chalker’s tale? From one perspective, the agency certainly comes out looking good, especially in comparison with Tulsi Gabbard’s ODNI and Kash Patel’s FBI, both hopelessly corrupted by President Trump’s retribution campaigns.

David Kirkpatrick did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment. A CIA spokesman fielded SpyTalk’s questions about Chalker and the New Yorker piece but did not provide answers by press time. ###