an interview with the former senior official of the agency who further elaborated on those differences and pointed out that outside the safeguards department, senior officials were not at all convinced by these documents, including the laptop documents which the IAEA called the alleged studies, and the green salt papers, believing that they were probably fabricated, and they suspected Israel all long as the logical candidate. So I think that we have to differentiate within the IAEA between the leadership of the safeguards department who were working closely with the United States and Israel on one hand, and the other senior officials of the agency including of course ElBaradei himself, who were extremely skeptical of that document. I think that the interesting questions is, why ElBaradei thought thatabout the approach taken by IAEA toward Iran following the stepping down of Mohamed El-Baradei and the beginning of Yukiya Amano’s term? Is it true that Amano has been enormously under the influence of the United States and has failed to provide impartial and unbiased reports on Iran’s nuclear activities?

A: Well, Amano clearly is much more willing to cooperate with the United States than ElBaradei was. I think ElBaradei bowed to some significant extent to the U.S. pressure, allowing the safeguards department to have a sway in determining what would be the IAEA reports in 2008 and particularly in 2009, but Amano clearly has an understanding of the basis on which the United States supported Amano to become the successor to ElBaradei in 2009. This is well-documented in