I would imagine the LWJ gets mileage from it, and to say no one would go on the record from a journalistic perspective gives you two things, 1) the perception of credibility, and 2) plausible deniability when the subject of credibility is brought up so I am not usually impressed when a journalist says my sources, "...don't want to be identified, or won't go on the record." I also compare it to the intelligence weenies who use classifications as a substitute for reliability. If it's Top Secret than it has to be credible beyond something from an unclassified source...get my drift?
These so-called Iranian 'rat lines' are not a new discovery and if you look at them you will see they are also major commercial routes used by thousands of motorists a day to transit between the two countries. It is comparable to saying that a lot of illegal contraband flows into the U.S. from Juarez via the El Paso entrance point...duh, thousands and thousands of vehicles flow through there everyday. Much like in the U.S. there are not enough resources sitting on the border to catch every nefarious item or person coming through; and drug dealers, arms dealer, illegal immigrant smugglers, and agents of a hostile state know this and they exploit it...
- PT
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