US may employ Iran's opposite group for spying

IranMania News:

The US State Department has singled out the Iranian Mujaheedin Khalq Organization (MKO) as a terrorist group, but some administration hawks think its members could be useful, Newsweek said in its latest edition.

According to Iran Daily, at a camp south of Baghdad, known as Ashraf, 3,850 MKO members have been confined but gently treated by US forces since the 2003 invasion of Iraq (once they were allies of Saddam against their own country in the 1980s Iran-Iraq war).

Now the administration is seeking to cull useful MKO members as operatives for use against Tehran, all while insisting that it does not deal with the MKO as a group, American government sources say.

Some Pentagon civilians and intelligence planners are hoping a corps of informants can be picked from among the MKO prisoners, then split from the movement and given training as spies, US officials were quoted as saying by the magazine.

After that, the thinking goes, they will be sent back to Iran to gather intelligence on the ruling establishment, particularly its alleged plans to develop nuclear weapons. Some hawks also hope they could help to "reawaken" the democratic reform movement in Iran.

"They [want] to make us mercenaries," one MKO official told Newsweek.

The group's own former role in terrorist attacks dates back to its support for the US embassy takeover in 1979.