Pentagon Met With Discredited Figure From Iran-Contra Scandal

[NNN0LHI]

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAZBHZ05JD.html

WASHINGTON (AP) - Pentagon officials met over a three-day period in late 2001 with a long-discredited Iranian who was a middleman in the Iran-Contra scandal, Defense Department officials said Friday.

Manucher Ghorbanifar sat in on a series of meetings in Europe between two defense officials and two other Iranians who the Bush administration had been told had information useful to the United States in its then-fledgling global war on terrorism, a senior defense official said on condition of anonymity. The meetings occurred not long after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he said.

One of those two defense officials in the 2001 meetings also had another chance contact in 2003 with Ghorbanifar, the Pentagon source said late Friday. The 2003 meeting was unplanned and unscheduled, the source said.

Earlier Friday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said at President Bush's Texas ranch that Pentagon officials met more than a year ago with Ghorbanifar, and referred to it as a single meeting. snip

Another senior Pentagon official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Defense Department participants in the 2001 meetings were two people from the office of Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith.

more

[blm]

1. IranContra and BCCI never went away.

This will be part of the campaign. The BFEE must be swept away cleanly as some Dems tried to do in the first place.

[RainDog]

13. BCCI leads directly to the Bush/Saudi connection

Khalid bin Mahfouz- 11% investor in Harken Energy and bro-in-law of bin Laden and listed by UN as financier behind 98 Cole bombing

(no link- read Forbidden Truth)

Gaith Pharon and fellow Bush awol from the Nat'l Guard and Poppy recruit James Bath -- Bath was a cover for BCCI folks to buy a Houston airport...Hobby or Intercontinental?

Khassoghi pops up again via Theresa La Pore, his former stewardess (and republican) before she became Madame Butterfly Ballot of Palm Beach...

Abrams, Poindexter, Negropointe, Otto Reich

These people should be in leg irons, not advising this idiot in the oval office.

[kainah]

2. this is follow-up story to this one

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=57449&mesg_id=57449

same story but not really a duplicate thread. With more scandal news, the more stories the better. ;-)

[NNN0LHI]

Thanks. I removed the DUPE tag n/t

[RainDog]

11. the exerpt and link

easier to follow with the actual link

Secret Talks With Iranian Arms Dealer
NY Newsday, August 8 2003
WASHINGTON - Pentagon hardliners pressing for regime change in Iran have held secret and unauthorized meetings in Paris with a controversial arms dealer who was a major figure in the Iran-contra scandal, according to administration officials.
The officials said at least two Pentagon officials working for Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith have held "several" meetings with Manucher Ghorbanifar, the Iranian middleman in U.S. arms-for-hostage shipments to Iran in the mid-1980s.
...
"They were talking to him about stuff which they weren't officially authorized to do," said a senior administration official. "It was only accidentally that certain parts of our government learned about it."
The official would not identify those "parts" of the government, but a former intelligence official confirmed they are the State Department, the CIA and the White House, itself.
...
He said that the immediate objective of the Pentagon hardliners appears to be to "antagonize Iran so that they get frustrated and then by their reactions harden U.S. policy against them."
...
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0808-12.htm

[teryang]

15. Fascist clique conducts its own policy

Pentagon conducts its own foreign policy and intelligence operations. No need for state department or CIA, the neo con fascist clique protected by Herr Rumsfeldt operates its own government.

[Rose Siding]

3. OMG, Just when Feith's also connected here-

Iran recently said it was prepared to turn over five senior al-Qaeda figures, including the son of Osama bin Laden, who are currently in its custody if Washington permanently shuts down an Iraqi-based Iranian rebel group that is listed as a terrorist organization by the State Department.

Pentagon officials, particularly Feith's office, have reportedly opposed the deal, which had been favored by the State Department, because of the possibility that the group, the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, might be useful in putting pressure on Tehran.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EH08Ak01.html

It sure looks like something, dripping out on National Arnold Day and all.

[indictrichardperle]

4. COVER UP

the original story linked from common dreams, i believe..exposed the Feith neo-con secret meeting, conducted without authorization, which Powell and the CIA blew the whistle on.

Now we have this story as spin, to try to soften the potential scandal. Dems in congress....especially KERRY had damn sure better be looking at this. Iran-Contra ? this is worse.

[Rose Siding]

7. How is it softened?

Feith/DoD passed up a chance to get members of al qaeda. AND it was their support of a different terrorist group that held up the deal. I don't know how they'd make that sound good.

[indictrichardperle]

8. simple

read the two articles juxtaposed. The common dreams article is an expose, blowing the whistle . This story is all quotes from "Defense dept officials" a reaction to the original story being leaked. Rummy claims ,

"we just met with them once."

This is the pentagons attempt to spin and minimalize.

[RainDog]

16. my wild hunch

this is pure speculation on my part, but I wouldn't doubt if the meeting was maybe a way to get, say, forged documents about Saddam trying to buy Niger uranium...or one thing?

don't forget, these people played Saddam and Iran against each other during the Iran/Iraq war in the 80s.

Iraqgate was just as bad as Iran/Contra, and Poppy got off, even though he and Reagan armed Saddam.

and don't forget, either, that Iran was sending a big "WAKE UP" to Americans when the Ayatollah released the hostages right as Reagan was being inaugurated.

-Robert Parry's assertion of an "october surprise" engineered by Poppy (delay the release of the hostages to elect Reagan...and on to Iran/Contra and more)

This tactic wouldn't have been anything new, in fact.

Kissinger, it is now acknowledged, made the same deal/promises to South Vietnam when Nixon was running against Humphrey. Kissinger, as Hitchens relates in _The Trial of Henry Kissinger_ met with South Vietnam to stop the Paris peace accords by promising a better deal. Four years and twenty thousand American soldiers' lives later, South Vietnam got the exact same deal.

Kissinger, on the other hand, got to be the power behind the throne, bought with the bones of America's sons and daughters.

Kissinger, of course, was also Dubya's first choice to head the 9-11 investigative committee...but when Kissinger had to reveal his client list, he declined.

[teryang]

14. Neocons decline custody of al qaeda terrorists

...so they can promote terrorism in Iran? Unflippingbelievable.

[yellowcanine]

5. You couldn't make this shit up

Wasn't Ghorbanifar an unindicted co-conspirator of North and Poindexter? We need a full fledged investigation now by an independent special prosecutor of 9-11 and the lead up to the war on Iraq. Too much smoke for there to be no fire. Who will be the first Repub. Senator to call for this? Shelby? Never mind that. Which Demo Senators will have the backbone to do it?

[ewagner]

6. Hats off

HATS off and a :toast: to that intrepid DUer who had a ppost this morning entitled "What's Going On". The visits of Powell and Armitage to Texas followed unannounced and immediately by Rumsfeld and Cheney. Something was INDEED going on and I think this is it.

God I hope this really turns into a scandal. Get legs story!!!

[pansypoo53219]

9. why do Retardican scandals

require a fuckin road map and connect the dots and all we had was a BJ?

and the THANK YOU SCOTUS. that little paula Jones thing DIDN'T DISTRACT THE PRESIDENT AT ALL. when he had terrorism on his mind and trying to get fuckin Freeh to look at Osama been forgotten instead of Monica.
may they ROT.

[RainDog]

10. Hall of Shame

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1013789,00.html

"Convicted felons responsible for thousands of deaths are calling the shots at the White House
The announcement that Admiral John Poindexter's latest brainwave - to encourage betting on the likelihood of a terrorist attack - had been terminated was characteristically bland. It began: "The Director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced today that DARPA's participation in the Futures Markets Applied to Prediction (FutureMAP) program has been withdrawn". The language does not betray the repugnant nature of the project, but then Poindexter is expert at disguising repugnant projects in bland language.
He came to prominence in the Reagan administration, where the word "freedom" was used to justify renewed support for Latin American military dictatorships guilty of some of the most egregious human rights abuses on the planet. President Jimmy Carter had frozen them out, but Ronald Reagan's election meant a renewed round of invitations to Pentagon cocktail parties for Latin American torturers...
It would be wrong to argue that convicted felons should not get a second chance. But this usually requires payment of a debt to society and even remorse, something Poindexter has never shown...In Washington, under this administration, the crimes of the past have been the passport to power; the methods, far from being discarded, have merely been refined."

[Rose Siding]

12. Just amazing

There are no words

[teryang]

17. Men of convictions and death

<The wars these men promoted had left 75,000 dead in El Salvador and 30,000-40,000 dead in Nicaragua, not to mention many thousands dead in Guatemala and Honduras. >

Great reminder.

[hedda_foil]

18. It's one of the top stories at Yahoo. Please rate it to keep it up.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030809/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/pentagon_ghorbanifar

As an AP story, this is beyond huge, folks. Sure we all know far more about the neocons than this reveals, but this story is mainstream and WIDE.

Please rate it a 5 at this link above so it doesn't slide off the page.