IranContra character part of spy case. (NYT) Deja vu.

[blm]

In a statement made public on Friday night, the Pentagon said:
"DOD has been cooperating fully with the Department of Justice on this matter for an extended period of time. The investigation involves a single individual at DOD at the desk officer level, who was not in a position to have significant influence over U.S. policy. Nor could a foreign power be in a position to influence U.S. policy through this individual. To the best of DOD's knowledge, the investigation does not target any other DOD individuals."
...
The Pentagon analyst who officials said is under suspicion was one of two department officials who traveled to Paris for a secret meeting with Manucher Ghorbanifar], an Iranian arms dealer who had been a central figure in the Iran-contra affair.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld confirmed last year that the secret meeting had occurred, but he defended it as an appropriate diplomatic effort. He said the talks went nowhere.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/28/politics/28spy.html

[Hornito]

1. So they're already trying to tamp this down, by making it look

like this person is just a low-level schmuck. BULLSHIT!!

[hedda_foil]

2. Ghorbanifer! Not just Iran Contra, but BCCI and more.

[Eloriel]

4. You know, sometimes I think of Danny Casolaro

when I see the tentacles of the Octopus unraveling in cyberspace.

:hi:

[KittyWampus]

3. Conjecture Regarding Plame- She Was Investigating Illegal Arms Deals

and she was outed to stop whereever she was going.


Have actors in or connected to our government been selling arms to Iran in the last 10 years?

Trying to make sense of all this makes my head hurt.

[Pallas180]

11. CRYING SHAME - go read American Judas in Editorials -

RobertPaulsen took our investigations and wrote a paper on it.And tracked the illegal sales of arms from company to corporation to corporation to hide the trail to Pakistan and North Korea as well as
Libya and Iran...and some others.

Yep. You;re right. The reason for outing Plame was certain people, as a matter of fact two, one elected, one appointed in high office were
illegally selling nuclear components to countries on the US "sanctions" list.

Bless Al Gore for inventing the internet. :)

[Tamyrlin79]

5. A crack

Ladies and Gentlemen, if this is true, we are witnessing a small crack... a keyhole that gives us a view into the network of the cabal. If you believe for one minute that Rumsfeld is telling the truth about the "meeting going nowhere" with Ghorbanifar, then you are naieve. This just demonstrates that the people responsible for Iran Contra are still very much involved in their scheming. As if we didn't know that already. Out gut always told us this was true. But proof that we were correct doesn't hurt...:)

PLEASE let this blow up in their faces and make us have to relive Iran Contra in the months before the election! We've already relived Vietnam... So, why not Iran-Contra??? heheheh! }(

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

6. Thank God it's only a bad apple.

I was worried for a second.

[seafan]

7. Is this Richard Perle ?? Seems I remember reading something....

months ago about Perle meeting with someone in Paris. Anyone else remember?

From the article....

The Pentagon analyst who officials said is under suspicion was one of two department officials who traveled to Paris for a secret meeting with Manucher Ghorbanifar], an Iranian arms dealer who had been a central figure in the Iran-contra affair.

[Octafish]

20. Perle met with Khashoggi...

PNAC Perle Harbor wanted the Iran-Contra action figure to invest $200 mill into his "Trireme Partnership," a Carlyle Group type investment house specializing in counter-terror industries. I kid you not.

LUNCH WITH THE CHAIRMAN

by SEYMOUR M. HERSH

Why was Richard Perle meeting with Adnan Khashoggi?

EXCERPT...

Khashoggi is still brokering. In January of this year, he arranged a private lunch, in France, to bring together Harb Saleh al-Zuhair, a Saudi industrialist whose family fortune includes extensive holdings in construction, electronics, and engineering companies throughout the Middle East, and Richard N. Perle, the chairman of the Defense Policy Board, who is one of the most outspoken and influential American advocates of war with Iraq.

The Defense Policy Board is a Defense Department advisory group composed primarily of highly respected former government officials, retired military officers, and academics. Its members, who serve without pay, include former national-security advisers, Secretaries of Defense, and heads of the C.I.A. The board meets several times a year at the Pentagon to review and assess the country’s strategic defense policies.

Perle is also a managing partner in a venture-capital company called Trireme Partners L.P., which was registered in November, 2001, in Delaware. Trireme’s main business, according to a two-page letter that one of its representatives sent to Khashoggi last November, is to invest in companies dealing in technology, goods, and services that are of value to homeland security and defense. The letter argued that the fear of terrorism would increase the demand for such products in Europe and in countries like Saudi Arabia and Singapore.

The letter mentioned the firm’s government connections prominently: “Three of Trireme’s Management Group members currently advise the U.S. Secretary of Defense by serving on the U.S. Defense Policy Board, and one of Trireme’s principals, Richard Perle, is chairman of that Board.” The two other policy-board members associated with Trireme are Henry Kissinger, the former Secretary of State (who is, in fact, only a member of Trireme’s advisory group and is not involved in its management), and Gerald Hillman, an investor and a close business associate of Perle’s who handles matters in Trireme’s New York office. The letter said that forty-five million dollars had already been raised, including twenty million dollars from Boeing; the purpose, clearly, was to attract more investors, such as Khashoggi and Zuhair.

CONTINUED...

http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/030317fa_fact

[seafan]

23. Much appreciated!

I get the feeling that this Larry Franklin is not as high as this thing is going.

Very curious is the timing of this leak, on the eve of the RNC in NY. Some have said that the leak was intended to shut down an investigation from progressing further.... what seems more likely to me is that it is a cannon ball over the bow of the ship of neocons, foretelling of more to come.

[Octafish]

26. My pleasure, seafan! You're correct about what this looks like.

The real heros of government remember what the zero of the oval office said:

"You're either with us or with the terrorists."

Well, the good people in government service know a crook when they see one. They know who outted Valerie Plame, a CIA NOC working to stop the spread of WMDs, and how that compromised the national security. They know who trusted Ahmed Chalabi, an Iranian spy who fed what the neocons in the White House and Pentagon wanted to hear. They know who outted Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, the double-agent working inside Al Qaeda.

Seems obvious what side Bush and his people are on.

Perhaps the next shots won't be across the bow. Let's hope they aim below the waterline. Then this day will come sooner:

[chookie]

8. Larry Franklin??

"In December 2001, Michael Ledeen first moved to revive the Reagan-Bush era Iran connection, setting up a meeting between two Pentagon civilian neo-cons and Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms dealer, whom the CIA denounced as a criminal and a liar. Three days of meetings took place in Rome, involving Harold Rhode, Larry Franklin, Ghorbanifar, and two still-unidentified officials of the Iranian regime. According to an Aug. 9, 2003 Washington Post account, the Iranians were offering to help the United States in the war on terror. Citing an official Pentagon statement the previous day, the Post reported, "The first contact, in late 2001, had been formally sanctioned by the U.S. government in response to an Iranian government offer to provide information relevant to the war on terrorism.
-snip-
Franklin, a Defense Intelligence Agency officer, was assigned to the Near East/South Asia shop at the Pentagon, where he served as the Iran desk officer, reporting to Bill Luti."


from (PARDON THE SOURCE)
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2004/3122chalabi_ghorbanifar.html
but lots of interesting facts here, worth a look

[T Bone]

9. Harold Rhode is the name given in other DU threads

a long time butt-buddy of Wolfie.

[chookie]

10. You mean Wolfy's buddy who also....

....recently served in Baghdad as the Pentagon liaison to Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi?

Whodda thunk?

A teeny bit of recent background (aug 9 2004):
Standing by Rumsfeld's side, Bush was asked if the meeting (note: between the Pentagon officials and Ghorbanifar) was a good idea and if his administration wants a change in government. "We support the aspirations of those who desire freedom in Iran," the president said, then took a question on a different subject.

According to the account given later by the senior Pentagon official, the contact in 2001 occurred after Iranian officials passed word to the administration that they had information that might be useful in the global war on terrorism. Two Pentagon officials met with the Iranians in several sessions over a three-day period in Italy. Ghorbanifar attended these meetings, "but he was not the individual who had approached the United States or the one with the information," the official said.

What his role was, however, the official did not know. "
http://www.iranexpert.com/2003/meetingsarmsdealer9august.htm

I guess that it was Chalabi, good pal to the US, to Iran, to Israel, and more recently, to Al Sadr.

[Pallas180]

12. Okay. Let's look at what's going on here.

#1) Rummy is coming out with his cover stories immediately

but

2) earlier in the evening, CNN Headlines reported that a high level
person in the Pentagon with ties to Feith & Wolfowitz was being investigated.

3) Larry Johnson ex agent, said it also goes to the National Security
Council.

ties to Feith and Wolfowitz means it's not either one.

It could be Ledeen. It could be Luti.

You wouldn't call Rhode hi level or with contact to NSC. That's disinformation I think .

Then there's something else.

Who leaked it?

Rove? or the CIA?

If it was Rove, and for the moment Israel looks bad, but it gives
Bush the opportunity to stand up for Israel, then Bush gets the
fundamentalist Jewish vote. And they're just as vehement as the
fundamentalist Xians.

If it was the CIA, does the vote go to Kerry??

[Pallas180]

13. Okay. Let's look at what's going on here.

#1) Rummy is coming out with his cover stories immediately

but

2) earlier in the evening, CNN Headlines reported that a high level
person in the Pentagon with ties to Feith & Wolfowitz was being investigated.

3) Larry Johnson ex agent, said it also goes to the National Security
Council.

ties to Feith and Wolfowitz means it's not either one.

It could be Ledeen. It could be Luti.

You wouldn't call Rhode hi level or with contact to NSC. That's disinformation I think .

Then there's something else.

Who leaked it?

Rove? or the CIA?

If it was Rove, and for the moment Israel looks bad, but it gives
Bush the opportunity to stand up for Israel, then Bush gets the
fundamentalist Jewish vote. And they're just as vehement as the
fundamentalist Xians.

If it was the CIA, does the vote go to Kerry??

[Pallas180]

14. OOPS sorry for duplicate..computer hiccupping.

:hi:

[Norquist Nemesis]

15. My unsubstantiated, tin-foil gut feeling about who leaked is

that it's Cheney's office...again. Maybe Scooter's getting sloppy.

But why? One thing thrown out on CNN when I first heard this is that "they" are doing it to blow up an investigation in process. If this is going to NSC/WH, I'm smelling another one of Cheney's cells all over again.

[KoKo]

16. Nation Writer says it's Larry Franklin. Please read her report. She's

working on a story with Josh Marshall (not out yet) but this is her report on what she knows.

August 27, 2004

The FBI investigation.

For months, I have been working with my colleagues Paul Glastris and Josh Marshall on a story for the Washington Monthly about US policy towards Iran. In particular, it involves a particular series of meetings involving officials from the office of the undersecretary of defense for Policy Doug Feith and Iranian dissidents.

As part of our reporting, I have come into possession of information that points to an official who is the most likely target of the FBI investigation into who allegedly passed intelligence on deliberations on US foreign policy to Iran to officials with the pro-Israeli lobby group, AIPAC, and to the Israelis, as alleged by the CBS report. That individual is Larry Franklin, a veteran DIA Iran analyst seconded to Feith’s office.

Here is what I was told in the days before the FBI investigation came to light.

A source told me that some time in July, Larry Franklin called him and asked him to meet him in a coffee shop in Northern Virginia. Franklin had intelligence on hostile Iranian activities in Iraq and was extremely frustrated that he did not feel this intelligence was getting the attention and response it deserved. The intelligence included information that the Iranians had called all of their intelligence operatives who speak Arabic to southern Iraq, that it had moved their top operative for Afghanistan, a guy named Qudzi, to the Iranian embassy in Baghdad, that its operatives were targeting Iraqi state oil facilities, and that Iranian agents were infiltrating into northern Iraq to target the Israelis written about in a report by Seymour Hersh. According to my source, Franklin passed the information to the individual from AIPAC with the hope it could reach people at higher levels of the US government who would act on it. AIPAC presented the information to Elliot Abrams in the NSC. They also presented the part that involved Israelis who might be targeted to the Israelis, with the motivation to protect Israeli lives.

More...and she has her latest update at.....

http://www.warandpiece.com/

[grasswire]

17. then this IS Josh's "tectonic plates" story (eom)

[KoKo]

18. It's hard to know. As of Saturday 9:a.m. Josh's site doesn't mention

anything about this (curious) and yet his partner on the "story" that he's been talking about (Rozen) says she can't say anything more for a
couple of days...but has other information on her site where she says she thinks this is a "controlled burn." :shrug:

The cables as of this a.m. have been pretty quiet about this..

[janx]

25. Very quiet. It's as if the news never even broke. ? n/t

[Vladimir]

19. The more things change... n/t

[UTUSN]

21. Kick for Faux Is Doing All-swiftbot, Not This n/t

[blm]

22. Time for everyone to study up on BCCI and IranContra.

Because those scandals hold the keys to EVERYTHING going on today.

[H2O Man]

24. You are so right!!!

The nation has been focused on some unfinished business concerning Vietnam, which includes some Watergate influences. But the election is far more about the unfinished business of the Iran-Contra days. And when you write that this holds "the keys to EVERYTHING going on today," you are hitting the nail on the head.

[blm]

27. Time for Octafish to start another BCCI info thread.

.