Three years ago today "Secret Talks With Iranian Arms Dealer" (8-8-2003)

[bobthedrummer]

was published and reposted. What a cast of characters, organizations and events are mentioned in this article. Iran/Contra, Oliver North, Michael Ledeen, Ahmed Chalabi, Manucher Ghorbanifar, Douglas Feith, Larry Franklin, Harry Rhode, the CIA, NSA, Feith's various neo-con dominated Pentagon offices, Colin Powell...

Read this in the context of who and what shaped and "influenced" what is going on TODAY August 8th 2006. Some of it is treason, some is war profiteering & war crimes-all of it is evil. That's the BFEE.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0808-12.htm

[Octafish]

1. Iran-Contra II: Fresh scrutiny on a rogue Pentagon operation

Wake up, America!

What the neo-cons want is World War III.

And Corporate McPravda cheers them on...

Iran-Contra II?

Fresh scrutiny on a rogue Pentagon operation.

By Joshua Micah Marshall, Laura Rozen, and Paul Glastris

EXCERPT...

Franklin, along with another colleague from Feith's office, a polyglot Middle East expert named Harold Rhode, were the two officials involved in the back-channel, which involved on-going meetings and contacts with Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar and other Iranian exiles, dissidents and government officials. Ghorbanifar is a storied figure who played a key role in embroiling the Reagan administration in the Iran-Contra affair. The meetings were both a conduit for intelligence about Iran and Iraq and part of a bitter administration power-struggle pitting officials at DoD who have been pushing for a hard-line policy of "regime change" in Iran, against other officials at the State Department and the CIA who have been counseling a more cautious approach.

SNIP...

The Italian Job

The first meeting occurred in Rome in December, 2001. It included Franklin, Rhode, and another American, the neoconservative writer and operative Michael Ledeen, who organized the meeting. (According to UPI, Ledeen was then working for Feith as a consultant.) Also in attendance was Ghorbanifar and a number of other Iranians. One of the Iranians, according to two sources familiar with the meeting, was a former senior member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard who claimed to have information about dissident ranks within the Iranian security services. The Washington Monthly has also learned from U.S. government sources that Nicolo Pollari, the head of Italy's military intelligence agency, SISMI, attended the meetings, as did the Italian Minister of Defense Antonio Martino, who is well-known in neoconservative circles in Washington.

Alarm bells about the December 2001 meeting began going off in U.S. government channels only days after it occurred. On December 12th 2001, at the U.S. Embassy in Rome, America's newly-installed Ambassador, Mel Sembler, sat down for a private dinner with Ledeen, an old friend of his from Republican Party politics, and Martino, the Italian defense minister. The conversation quickly turned to the meeting. The problem was that this was the first that Ambassador Sembler had heard about it.

According to U.S. government sources, Sembler immediately set about trying to determine what he could about the meeting and how it had happened. Since U.S. government contact with foreign government intelligence agencies is supposed to be overseen by the CIA, Sembler first spoke to the CIA station chief in Rome to find out what if anything he knew about the meeting with the Iranians. But that only raised more questions because the station chief had been left in the dark as well. Soon both Sembler and the Rome station chief were sending anxious queries back to the State Department and CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, respectively, raising alarms on both sides of the Potomac.

The meeting was a source of concern for a series of overlapping reasons. Since the late 1980s Ghorbanifar has been the subject of two CIA "burn notices." The Agency believes Ghorbanifar is a serial "fabricator" and forbids its officers from having anything to do with him. Moreover, why were mid-level Pentagon officials organizing meetings with a foreign intelligence agency behind the back of the CIA -- a clear breach of US government protocol? There was also a matter of personal chagrin for Sembler: At State Department direction, he had just been cautioning the Italians to restrain their contacts with bad-acting states like Iran (with which Italy has extensive trade ties).

CONTINUED...

Weird how little interest there seems to be in matters of war and peace, patriotism and treason.

Speaking of traitors...

[bobthedrummer]

3. The AIPAC spy scandal is beyond "paranoid WWIII conspiracy theory"

Larry Franklin only got 12 years.

AIPAC spy scandal (from Wikipedia, with lots of independent links)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIPAC_espionage_scandal

[Octafish]

4. It gets worse: ''The Leak None Dared Call Treason''

In 2004, the USA finally had an agent inside Al Qaeda. Some traitor in the White House outted the guy's name and blew his operation in order to score some political points when John Kerry was on the upswing.

The Leak None Dared Call Treason

by Jpol
July 16, 2006 at 13:39:42
http://www.opednews.com

In the heat of silly season attacks from the right against The New York Times for its "exposure" of Bush administration surveillance of international banking transactions, the public and mainstream media have forgotten about another highly publicized leak just two years ago. That story, which also ran in the Times, dealt a serious blow to the fight against terror. It exposed a mole that had penetrated Al Qaeda, and it crippled a sting operation, allowing numerous subjects of investigation to escape. Some of those subjects may have participated in a major terrorist attack a year later. Unlike the bank records "revelations" of 2006, which were not really secret at all, the leak of 2004 jeopardized national security, and almost certainly cost lives. Yet the right wing Republican spin machine -- now calling for prosecutions under the Espionage Act, death in the gas chamber for Times' Managing Editor Bill Keller, and investigations of the media and of leakers in the name of "national security" -- were strangely silent in 2004. That leak, which occurred in the middle of a Presidential campaign, was clearly designed to advance a purely political agenda, and the leakers were unidentified sources within the George W. Bush administration.

The stage was set for this other leak in the early summer of 2004. The presidential campaign was heating up. The Democratic National Convention was just around the corner. And George W. Bush was sinking in the polls. His job approval ratings, which had been in the 80's and 90's just two years earlier in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, had fallen below 50% for the first time. The American public was even beginning to lose faith in the ability of the Bush Administration to protect it from terrorists. Most polls now showed more than 40% of Americans disapproved of Bush's handling of the war on terror. Significantly, a June 2004 ABC News/Washington Post poll even had John Kerry inching ahead of George W. Bush on the question of which one was better able to deal with terrorist threats, an issue where Bush had once held a formidable advantage.

The administration needed a break, and in June 0f 2004 it got one, or so it evidently thought. On June 12, 2004 Abu Mus'ab al Baluchi was arrested in Karachi, Pakistan. Baluchi was a nephew of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and he was said to be a terrorist "facilitator" who helped others move and plan their attacks. News of his capture was a closely kept secret.

Information provided by Baluchi led Pakistani investigators to Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani whom they captured on July 25, 2004 on the eve of the Democratic National Convention. Ghailani, an occupant of the FBI's "Most Wanted" list had a $5 million price on his head. He was suspected of involvement in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in which 224 people had lost their lives.

Though Ghalani was apprehended July 25th, his capture was not made public until four days later on July 29th, when it was revealed amid much fanfare by Pakistani Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat, in what The Washington Post described as "an unusual late-night announcement on Pakistan's Geo television network." The Post also noted that similar high-profile arrests of terrorist suspects were usually reported to the media "almost immediately." "What difference will it make if we do not rush to make a hasty unconfirmed claim?" the Post quoted Hayat as saying, adding that Hayat "said he saw no connection between the late announcement of Ghailani's arrest and the Democratic National Convention in the United States, where Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts was about to accept his party's nomination for president." (Emphasis added)

CONTINUED...

DIM DRUNK COKE-WHORE

[seemslikeadream]

2. Feith Franklin, Rhode and Ghorbanifar

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002979.html

Reid: Cheney Obstructing Investigation
From Laura Rosen at War and Piece...

Reid on Fire

The New Republic has more on what I reported last month: that Cheney has intervened with chairman Pat Roberts to obstruct the Senate Select Intelligence committee's investigation of the Bush administration's use of Iraq intelligence. TNR write:

...--More dramatically, Reid also made it clear that he believes the delay in the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation of prewar Iraq WMD--the underlying issue behind Tuesday's closed session--is entirely attributable to Vice President Dick Cheney. "Nothing happens regarding intelligence gathering ... unless it's signed off on by the Vice President," he said. " Roberts couldn't do it"--i.e., Roberts couldn't conduct a full investigation without Cheney's approval. When I asked Reid whether he meant to state so flatly that Cheney was personally and directly stalling the Intelligence Committee's work, he didn't pause a beat. In fact he almost stood from his chair. "Yes. I say that without any qualification ... Circle it." ...

I don't understand why we haven't heard Pat Roberts complaining more vociferously about the obstruction he's experienced from the Veep. Why would the Senator stand for the administration bucking oversight and Congressional reporting requirements on Iraq intelligence, torture, black site prisons, etc.? (Via Tapped's Ezra Klein).


http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051103/pl_afp/usitalyintelligenceciairaqniger


But committee staff sources say that before the cooperation ceased, the committee had received from Feith’s office internal memos suggesting that the office may indeed have been conducting unlawful activities. In particular, Democratic staffers are interested in a secret December 2001 meeting of two Feith deputies, Larry Franklin and Harold Rhode, with Ghorbanifar in Rome. The meeting also included members of a foreign intelligence service (Italy’s SISMI). The catch is that it wasn’t reported in advance to the intelligence committee or the CIA, in possible violation of Section 502 of the National Security Act, which says that anyone conducting intelligence activities must inform the committee and the agency

[Octafish]

5. Regime Change in Iran? One Man's Secret Plan.

With Corporate McPravda generating hysteria 24/7/365(6), why this isn't at the top of the radar is understandable.

Exclusive

Regime Change in Iran? One Man's Secret Plan.

By Mark Hosenball
MSNBC.com / Newsweek Dec. 22 issue

What was international man of mystery Manucher Ghorbanifar up to when he met with top Pentagon experts on Iran? In a NEWSWEEK interview in Paris last month, Ghorbanifar, a former Iranian spy who helped launch the Iran-contra affair, says one of the things he discussed with Defense officials Harold Rhode and Larry Franklin at meetings in Rome in December 2001 (and in Paris last June with only Rhode) was regime change in Iran. Ghorbanifar says there are Iranians capable of organizing a peaceful revolution against the ruling theocracy. He says his contacts know where Saddam Hussein hid $340 million in cash. With American help, he says, this money could be retrieved and half used to overthrow the ayatollahs. (The other half would be turned over to the United States.) Ghorbanifar says he told his U.S. interlocutors that ousting the mullahs would be a breakthrough in the war on terror because top Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are in Iran. ("You won't be surprised if you find that Saddam Hussein is on one of the Iranian islands.") Among other intel Ghorbanifar says he and associates gave the Pentagon: a warning that terrorists in Iraq would attack hotels. He also says he had advance info about Iranian nukes and a terrorist plot in Canada. Financial gain was never his objective, he says: "We wanted to give them the money, not to take the money."

The Pentagon cut off contact with Ghorbanifar, whom the CIA years ago labeled as a fabricator, after news about the talks broke last summer. But controversy about the Iranian still reverberates in Washington. Administration sources say that when White House officials OK'd what they believed was a Pentagon effort to gather info about Iranian terrorist activity in Afghanistan, they didn't know Ghorbanifar was involved. When senior officials learned in 2002 about Ghorbanifar—and that regime change was on his agenda—they decided further contacts were "not worth pursuing." But Ghorbanifar says he continued to communicate with Rhode, and sometimes Franklin, by phone and fax five or six times a week until shortly after the Paris meeting last summer. (The Pentagon says any such contacts were sporadic and not authorized by top officials.) In Congress, investigations into the Ghorbanifar story have sparked partisan tensions. Democrats want to know if the Ghorbanifar contacts are evidence of "rogue" espionage by a secretive Pentagon unit that allegedly dealt with controversial Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi; Republicans want to know whether the CIA refused to meet with potential informants merely because the middleman—Ghorbanifar—was someone the agency distrusted. A Defense official says any discussion that Ghorbanifar had with Pentagon experts about regime change was a "one-way conversation."

SOURCE

Still, ignorance is no excuse...

[bobthedrummer]

6. The investigative reporter that broke Iran/Contra (and many other

high crimes and misdemeanors) is Robert Parry.

Here's a great article from just before the stolen election of 2000 that installed the BFEE-it has a wealth of historic information--and time has proved it's accuracy.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2000/110500a.html

[seemslikeadream]

7. preserving liberty may require the rule of a single leader – a dictator

How would the neocon think tanks view martial law? Michael Ledeen, a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, and close and trusted White House adviser, has this to say on p. 173 of his book Machiavelli on Modern Leadership: Why Machiavelli’s Iron Rules Are As Timely and Important Today As Five Centuries Ago: “Paradoxically, preserving liberty may require the rule of a single leader – a dictator – willing to use those dreaded 'extraordinary measures,' which few know how, or are willing, to employ."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/nolan-m2.html