Family feared exposure after CIA details leaked

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- The wife of a top CIA asset testified Wednesday that she feared her family would be discovered by Russian intelligence agencies after details of a covert operation leaked into print.

The Russian emigre took the stand at the leak trial of ex-CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, 47, who was raised in Cape Girardeau. Prosecutors say Sterling leaked information about a CIA asset nicknamed "Merlin" to New York Times journalist James Risen, who in his 2006 book "State of War" described a CIA effort to thwart Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions by using Merlin to funnel deliberately flawed blueprints to the Iranians.

Sterling denies he leaked information to Risen.

Mrs. Merlin, as she was identified in court, spoke from behind a large screen that shielded her face at the federal courthouse in Alexandria.

She said she feared her identity would be revealed when details about her husband appeared in Risen's book.

"The information in the book can be very useful to the KGB" or a successor agency, Mrs. Merlin said. "My family can be in danger." She said the book provided enough details about her and her husband, including the nuclear plant in Russia where they worked and their arrival in the U.S., that they could have been identified.

Under cross-examination, she acknowledged that nobody had yet connected her with the book or that she had been discovered by the KGB. "No, not yet," she said.

After Mrs. Merlin's testimony, focus shifted to the details of the classified operation in Iran. While Risen's book described the operation as a calamity, prosecutors sought to show that it was careful and meticulously researched, and that Sterling himself supported the operation, undercutting any suggestion that the leaks were justified as the act of a conscientious whistleblower.

In opening statements, prosecutors said Risen's book mistakenly says Merlin discovered the flaws in the blueprints after a cursory review of only a few minutes. In reality, according to prosecutors and Wednesday's testimony, Merlin uncovered that large swaths of the blueprints had been deliberately withheld. That was actually part of the plan, witnesses said -- Merlin was supposed to provide the incomplete blueprints to the Iranians, with a promise to deliver the missing pieces when he received payment.

A nuclear engineer, who also testified behind a screen and using a partial name, said scientists and engineers worked for months on the blueprints that were to be given to the Iranians, carefully embedding hard-to-find mistakes in the blueprints for a nuclear "fireset," which essentially ignites a nuclear warhead.

At all times, the engineers were focused on making sure that they wouldn't inadvertently be giving Iranians information or schematics that would be helpful to Iran. The engineer testified that a team of U.S. experts could only find 25 percent of the embedded errors during a detailed review.

The jury also heard lengthy testimony from a CIA supervisor who oversaw the program, and Sterling's relationship with Merlin as his case handler. The witness, Robert S., said Sterling was a supporter of the Merlin mission. In some internal CIA cables, Sterling passed on some reticence from Merlin about details of the plan, but Robert S. said that ultimately, the plan was executed as envisioned, with Merlin dropping off the blueprints at Iran's mission to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna in 2000.

Defense lawyers, in opening statements, said Sterling had become an outcast at the agency after filing a racial discrimination complaint and that the prosecution is driven by both a vendetta against Sterling and a desire to rehabilitate what the CIA feels is an unfair depiction of the mission as a botched operation.