WASHINGTON — Retired Marine Gen. James Cartwright — former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — is the target of a criminal investigation into who leaked details of a cyber-attack against Iran in 2010, it was revealed yesterday.
Cartwright played a key role in conceiving and implementing a strategy known by the code name Olympic Games, which involved a series of cyber-strikes against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.
The attack included the creation of the Stuxnet computer virus — in cooperation with Israeli intelligence — that is believed to have disabled more than 1,000 of Iran’s centrifuges used to enrich uranium as part of the country’s nuclear program.
The secret program was disclosed last summer, a few months before the presidential election, and immediately became the focus of a government-wide investigation.
As of now, no one has been charged, and the Justice Department declined comment yesterday.
But law-enforcement officials told media outlets that Cartwright is the target of the probe by the US attorney in Baltimore, a formal step before charges are filed.
In 2012, New York Times reporter David Sanger spilled details about the sabotage of Iran’s computers and published them in a book that was excerpted in the paper.
Sanger wrote that Cartwright at the program’s outset joined intelligence officials “in presenting a radical new idea to [former president] Bush and his national security team.”
Congress demanded an investigation, which was announced by Attorney General Eric Holder. At the time, President Obama declared that he had “zero tolerance” for “these kinds of leaks.”
In the course of the hunt for the leaker last year, the feds looked at phone and e-mail records of White House, defense and intelligence officials who communicated with Sanger.
After the operation was revealed, the White House denied that the leak had been planned.
But the publicity had the effect of showing the administration taking action as Obama was facing criticism for failing to halt Iran’s nuclear program.
Cartwright left government and now works at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in DC.
He was a key adviser to Obama when the president conducted a lengthy review of troop levels in Afghanistan.
And Washington Post investigative reporter Bob Woodward has even called Cartwright Obama’s “favorite general.”
Former Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), once the top House Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, told NBC, “Clearly what was going on here was a method and it should have been protected. I think it’s had devastating consequences.”
The investigation is one of multiple leak probes, including the disclosure of National Security Agency data-gathering techniques and a probe of a report by Fox News reporter James Rosen on North Korea.