New York Times revealed that US has had relations with the extremist anti-Iran terrorist group known as Jundallah.
New York Times’ James Risen and Matt Apuzzo cited two former American officials as saying that a CIA officer found an intelligence report, filed ahead of the 2007 car bombing in southeastern Iran which took the lives of over a dozen Revolutionary Guard members, that had warned that something big was about to happen.
According to the report, the US had links to the Jundallah terrorist group through an FBI counterterrorism task force identified as Thomas McHale.
“Though the report had provided few specifics, the C.I.A. officer realized it meant that the United States had known in advance that a Sunni terrorist group called Jundallah was planning an operation inside Shiite-dominated Iran,” two former American officials familiar with the matter recalled.
“American officials continued to obtain intelligence from inside Jundallah, first through the F.B.I., and then the Pentagon,” the report adds. “Contacts with informants did not end when Jundallah’s attacks led to the deaths of Iranian civilians, or when the State Department designated it a terrorist organization.”
Jundallah conducted numerous gruesome acts of terror in southeastern Iran from 2005 to 2010 killing hundreds of civilian and police targets. The US denied any ties with Jundallah, despite the group’s arrested leader said himself his activities were funded by the US and Israel.