Christ, it's the 80s all over again! Ledeen, SISMI, Ghorbanifar. Wonder if we'll see a revival of the KGB attempt on the Pope stories. And where is Mehmet Agca anyway?
Doug
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August 29, 2004 Ghorbanifar
The story is up, and I can now say that I tracked down and interviewed the Iranian arms merchant Manucher Ghorbanifar for it, earlier this month. With the current FBI investigation targeting those who met with him, I suspect I will be the last American journalist to do so for some time; but who knows, he's unpredictable, as are his American allies.
Go read the piece <http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0410.marshall.html>.
Key points:
1) The secret meetings between Pentagon officials and associates of Ghorbanifar in Europe went on for almost two years, a full year longer than the Bush administration has acknowledged. Ghorbanifar told me of three meetings. While the Pentagon originally told the Post last year that Harold Rhode, an official in Feith's office, had simply run into Ghorbanifar in Paris in June 2003, Ghorbanifar tells me that the two spent weeks planning the meeting.
2) The Italian military intelligence organization SISMI provided logistics and security at the first meeting, in Rome, in December 2001. And the head of Sismi, Nicolo Pollari, as well as the Italian Defense Minister, Antonio Martino, attended the meeting, along with Michael Ledeen, Ghorbanifar, Pentagon officials Harold Rhode and Larry Franklin. [Sismi has been in the news recently for having been reported to have used an Italian middleman to put the forged Niger docs into circulation.]
3) Ghorbanifar told me he has had fifty meetings with Michael Ledeen since September 11th, and that he has given Ledeen "4,000 to 5,000 pages of sensitive documents" concerning Iran, Iraq and the Middle East, "material no one else has received." Ghorbanifar, speaking with me by telephone from France, says those meetings took place abroad because he has been refused a US visa the last two times he has applied.
4) Ghorbanifar has also been meeting with an assortment of other American officials, which I will write about later.