Cloak, Dagger and... Google?

Recently when the Bush Administration went to the CIA for names of Iranians who could be sanctioned for their involvement with Iran's nuclear program the CIA refused saying there sources were to valuable to expose. So what did they do when rebuffed? They googled it.

Frustrated, the State Department assigned a junior Foreign Service officer
to find the names another way -- by using Google. Those with the most hits under
search terms such as "Iran and nuclear," three officials said, became targets for
international rebuke Friday when a sanctions resolution circulated at the United
Nations.

The results? About what you'd expect when you try and replace a clandestine intelligence network with an internet search engine.

There is nothing that proves involvement in a clandestine weapons program,
and there is very little out there at all that even connects people to a
clandestine weapons program," said one official familiar with the intelligence
on Iran. Like others interviewed for this story, the official insisted on
anonymity when discussing the use of intelligence.

So what was the purpose, to try and look tough? To pointedly rebuke the Iraq Study Group's recommendation that they negotiate with Iran? To show the world how impotent the civil war in Iraq has made us?