 
OK, so I have to be a little
careful what I say here.
We received these documents. We didn't
know who they were from, we still don't
know who they're from.
All of these documents are in Farsi. How did
you even start dealing with this?
How did you know what we had when documents started coming in?
We didn't. The decision was made to translate
them. We had to authenticate them.
We sent a number of reporters overseas reporting
out things in the documents to see if they
had actually happened.
Has there ever been a major leak out of Iran
or the Iranian government ever?
Certainly not anything of this magnitude.
I think it's one of the most important
leaks ever. I think it is on the scale of
the Pentagon Papers or the Snowden documents
because it is something that we've never
seen before. We've never had a major leak
of documents from Iran, which is one of the
most closed societies in the world.
So these are more than 700 pages of documents
generated by the Ministry of Intelligence
and Security, the MOIS, the more
professional, bureaucratic intelligence service in Iran.
And they document a period in 2014 and 2015, when
Iran and the United States and Iraq were all fighting
the Islamic State in Iraq. That was sort of
the height of the Islamic State. And they consist of everything from
cables from intelligence operatives sent back
to Tehran about what they're seeing, to
raw source reports from Iraqis who are working
for the Iranians.
I think the main takeaway — beyond the
fact of the leak, which in some ways is the
biggest news here — it really shows in
very concrete and specific terms how Iran
has woven itself into every part of Iraq's
life, especially since the 2003 U.S. invasion.
So when the U.S. went in and toppled Saddam
Hussein, it just opened the door for Iran
to do something in Iraq that it had always
wanted to do, which was essentially to get
in there and control everything.
The CIA's Baghdad station after the invasion
became the largest CIA station in the world.
It was a very violent time. It was basically
a combat zone. And the problem for the CIA
and for the U.S. generally in Iraq during
that time was it was very difficult for them
to get out of the Green Zone or other protected
areas. And they had to rely, to some degree,
on the new Iraqi intelligence service that
they built up. They kind of purged the old
Iraqi intelligence, Saddam-era intelligence
service, and they built a new one. The U.S.
paid for it. And that was their primary way
in which they began to gather intelligence
on the ground.
The U.S. government is very short-term in terms of
how it views these kinds of conflicts and
indeed, these places. So the U.S. went in
and the CIA cultivated this whole mass of
spies, assets, sources, and then they leave.
You see in the documents several people who
were Iraqis who had worked with the CIA, who are now unemployed. So they go
to the Iranians and say, I'd be happy to
work with you if you pay me. And the Iranians
in these documents are interested in talking
with them. But the first requirement
they have is that they tell them everything
they ever did with the CIA.
Iraqis who had worked for the CIA then become
Iranian assets? I mean, that's going to
make some people shit their pants at Langley,
I would imagine.
I mean, you've covered the CIA for a long
time, Jim, how are they going to —
As you said, they're going to shit their pants. [laughs]
You don't think they have any clue that this has happened?
They may have some clue, but, I mean, to see it in writing like that?
To me, the beauty of these documents, or the power
of these documents, is — like people will
say, Well we knew that Iran had influence in Iraq,
but to see everything in black and white and
in detail.
It would probably be going too far to say
Iran controls everything there, but what these
documents show is that Iran has eyes everywhere.
I went through the draft as it exists now
and I mean, first question I have about it
is how do you deal with the fact that this
administration is going to look to weaponize
anything that they can information-wise to
justify going at Iran?
That's something that we've been struggling
with all along since we got these documents.
To me, the message of these documents  — and I hope this is the way we present it —
is the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a historic
mistake, a strategic blunder of massive proportions.
We invaded and Iran won the war. That is a
lesson to be learned today in how we operate
in the Middle East, what we do in the Middle East.
It's a warning against
further aggression in the region.
I think it's really a good check on the idea that Iran
is this wild and terrifying force in the world.
One of the interesting things about this time
period in 2014 and 2015, Iran and the
U.S. were on the same side. They were both
fighting the Islamic State.
There was almost like an unspoken understanding
that the U.S. would focus on airpower, and
the Iranians would focus on having these ground
troops, their Shia militias.
Iran is — because we know so little about
it, because we have so little firsthand knowledge
and access to it, it's portrayed as, they
see us as the great Satan, we see them as
the great Satan. They're this bloodthirsty,
terrifying regime, and what the documents
show is that they're a lot like the U.S.
government. At least the MOIS is.
What the Iranians are doing in Iraq,
according to these documents, is very much
what the U.S. tried to do after 2003, which
is they're grappling with an unruly country
with deep sectarian divisions and trying to
kind of maintain stability for economic reasons
because they want to have a good, safe way
for Iranians to go on pilgrimages to religious shrines,
because they want to sell their goods
there. So it's very similar to what the
United States has done all over the world.
Iran had two adversaries on its borders.
One was the Taliban Afghan government and the other was the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein.
Both were enemies of Iran. We deposed
both of them.
It's such a huge thing to admit to yourself
as a country that everything we've done
in Iraq for the last 15 years was a mistake.
All these lives lost were in vain, all the
money poured into there has gone for a misbegotten,
tragic mistake. That we have benefitted what
we now consider one of our biggest enemies.
It's almost like, it's such a huge thing
to admit, that nobody wants to admit it.
And I think that's the real power of these
documents.
