in re:
More Smoke and Mirrors From the MEK Propaganda Factory
&
Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security: a Profile
Massoud Khodabandeh makes the assertion that the report was not authored by the Federal Research Division.
It’s true that I didn’t find a copy of the report at the LOC FRD site:
Library of Congress Federal Research Division
But my failure is not the same as evidence that the report did not come from the FRD.
Can anyone help make a more concrete determination here?
The good folks at FAS gave me this:
This document was obtained by the FAS publication Secrecy News:
http://blogs.fas.org/secrecy/2013/01/mois_loc/
As noted there, it was previously reported by Bill Gertz in the Washington Free Beacon. As also noted, its reliability has been disputed, e.g., here:
http://www.propublica.org/article/government-study-iran-30000-intelligence-ministry
from there:
"Sick pointed to the study’s use of questionable Internet sources as well as flat-out errors. In one section, for example, the study lays out in detail how “Iran’s constitution defines” the intelligence ministry’s official functions. The problem, as Sick notes: Iran’s constitution doesn’t mention an intelligence ministry, let alone define its functions.
Federal Research Division Chief David Osborne said in an email the report “was leaked to the media without authorization” and declined to comment further “because it is proprietary to the agency for which it was written.”
[&]
UPDATE 1/22/13: An official with the Library of Congress says the report was pulled from circulation.