Jim Lobe — Flynn Clueless on Syrian Nukes

As part of a continuing inquiry into Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser-Designate Gen. Michael Flynn (ret.), here’s a passage in his book co-authored by Michael Ledeen, on the alleged nuclear plant at Al Kibar in Syria that Israeli air strikes presumably destroyed in 2007....

Hardly an expert on nuclear issues myself, I asked Robert Kelley, who has done considerable research on the alleged Syrian nuclear program, to comment. Kelley is a bona fide expert on things nuclear, particularly in deciphering signals of nuclear-related activity from satellite photos. He has been the leader of a foreign intelligence analysis group at Los Alamos and a chief inspector of Iraqi nuclear programs at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Along the way, he has been a research reactor supervisor, a plutonium facility manager, and a director of the DOE Remote Sensing Laboratory at Nellis Air Force Base. He currently writes on non-proliferation for a number of publications and is an associate research fellow at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute....

In short, Gen. Flynn may have been highly effective at coordinating operations to speedily track down and kill or apprehend suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban cells in Iraq and Afghanistan. But in assessing nuclear weapons programs and in separating actual facts from sheer speculation or prejudice—let alone in presenting information and context clearly and logically (or chronologically)—he is sorely lacking.

Dunning-Kruger effect?

LobeLog
Flynn Clueless on Syrian Nukes
Jim Lobe