Reply #18: the Ledeen column on 5/28/04 is enough to make one puke [View All]

[UpInArms]

http://www.nationalreview.com/ledeen/ledeen200405280920.asp

We're going to hear a lot about Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi National Congress (which he heads), and his supporters (soon to be labeled "dupes" and "fools" if not something far worse) in Washington. The FBI is said (by, among others, the notorious liar Sidney Blumenthal, who is now sliming away for Salon and the Guardian) to have opened an investigation into the source(s) of the "leak" of "highly classified information" from somebody to Chalabi. From there it is said to have arrived in the hands of the Iranians' spymaster in Baghdad, and said spymaster is purported to have sent it on to Tehran. Several, maybe even most, leading journalists in town have been told — after promising not to reveal it — that the "highly classified information" was the fact that we had broken the Iranian code and could therefore read messages between Baghdad and Tehran. And many leading journalists have also been told that the "leaker" was some "drunk" from the Coalition Provisional Authority (which makes one wonder why the FBI is snooping around Washington — if it actually is — instead of examining bar bills in Baghdad). Notice, too, that the tacit assumption here is that the Iranian spymaster used the same insecure code to tell Tehran he knew the code was insecure. Which makes him an idiot. But we know that Iranians are highly professional. Ergo he's not an idiot. Ergo the story is idiotic, if you get my drift.

Before getting any deeper in this story, I want to repeat that Chalabi is a friend, and that I don't believe he's an Iranian agent. I do believe that the INC, along with every other significant organization in Iraq, has been penetrated by the extremely skilled Iranian intelligence services, and therefore I would not be at all surprised to find one or another of his associates working with Tehran.

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and if you wonder who Ledeen is, read here:

http://www.alternet.org/print.html?StoryID=15860

excerpt:

A fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, Ledeen holds a Ph.D. in History and Philosophy from the University of Wisconsin. He is a former employee of the Pentagon, the State Department and the National Security Council. As a consultant working with NSC head Robert McFarlane, he was involved in the transfer of arms to Iran during the Iran-Contra affair -- an adventure that he documented in the book "Perilous Statecraft: An Insider's Account of the Iran-Contra Affair." His most influential book is last year's "The War Against the Terror Masters: Why It Happened. Where We Are Now. How We'll Win."

Ledeen's ideas are repeated daily by such figures as Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. His views virtually define the stark departure from American foreign policy philosophy that existed before the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001. He basically believes that violence in the service of the spread of democracy is America's manifest destiny. Consequently, he has become the philosophical legitimator of the American occupation of Iraq.

and on the Iranian code note - I found this:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1078208269063

Mar. 2, 2004 9:01 | Updated Mar. 2, 2004 11:19
Report: Israel broke Iranian code
By YAAKOV KATZ

A secret Israeli intelligence unit, known as Unit 8200, broke a sophisticated Iranian code enabling Israel to monitor communications, including contacts with Pakistan regarding the development of Iranian nuclear weapons, the New Yorker magazine reported on Tuesday.

"On a trip to the Middle East last month, I was told that a number of years ago the Israeli signals-intelligence agency, known as Unit 8200, broke a sophisticated Iranian code and began monitoring communications that included talk between Iran and Pakistan about Iran's burgeoning nuclear-weapons program" Investigative reporter Seymour M. Hersh wrote in the article.

According to the report, Israeli intelligence has created strong ties in Iran over the year, some of which exist till today. Hersh writes that the investigation by the International Atomic Energy Agency (I.A.E.A.) into Iranian nuclear capability was spurred by Israeli intelligence findings which were relayed to the atomic agency via the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

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