- A funny thing happened, early in May, when President
Bush met with Jordan's King Abdullah II in Washington. According to news
accounts, the Jordanian ruler provided the President with a dossier, revealing
that Ahmed Chalabi--the head of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and the
darling of the neo-cons in the Office of Vice President Dick Cheney, the
civilian apparatus at the Pentagon, and such Beltway think tanks as the
American Enterprise Institute and the Jewish Institute for National Security
Affairs (JINSA)--was passing top secret U.S. government material to the
most radical ayatollahs in Iran.
-
- It is no secret that the Jordanian government has had
deep misgivings about Chalabi's prominent role in the postwar Iraq occupation
government. Chalabi has a 22-year jail sentence awaiting him in Jordan,
as the result of massive fraud at his Petra Bank in the 1990s. The Jordanian
Ambassador in Washington and King Abdullah II have both publicly accused
Chalabi, and his INC, of being behind the bombing of the Jordanian embassy
in Baghdad in August 2003.
-
- The King's dossier bolstered intelligence already in
the hands of the CIA and the National Security Agency, indicating, among
other things, that Chalabi's so-called Free Iraqi Force was heavily penetrated
by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. National Security Agency (NSA) intercepts
had revealed much deeper ties between Chalabi and radical factions within
the Islamic Republic than had been known to American officials previously.
-
- The dossier, provided by King Abdullah, checked out,
and, as a result, the White House ordered Coalition Provisional Authority
boss Paul Bremer to raid Chalabi's home, and the INC offices. That raid
occurred on May 20, catching both Chalabi, and some of his neo-con allies
in Washington, flatfooted.
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- On May 24, the {New York Times}, {Time}, and {Newsweek}
all reported that U.S. Federal investigators are now conducting a high-priority
criminal probe, to determine who in the Pentagon was passing classified
documents on to Chalabi. Although the news accounts did not name any names,
they all reported that there is a narrow list of people with access to
the secrets, who were also close collaborators and boosters of Chalabi.
-
- Among the leading candidates to join convicted Israeli
spy Jonathan Jay Pollard in the hoosegow, or at least, in the hall of shame,
are: Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith; Near East
South Asia/Office of Special Plans head William Luti; Feith deputies Harold
Rhode, Abram Shulsky and Michael Rubin; Office of Special Plans staffer
Col. Bill Brunner; and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. All
have been known to maintain intimate ties to Chalabi. Another Irangate
``veteran'' and Chalabi booster, Elliott Abrams, who was convicted of perjury
(and later pardoned by President George H.W. Bush), was named the top NSC
official on the Middle East in late 2002, a post he still holds.
-
- The authoritative Republican Party insiders newsletter,
{The Big Picture}, reported on May 24, that, following the raids, an angry
Chalabi phoned the Pentagon, and demanded to speak to his longtime friend
and patron Wolfowitz. Wolfowitz refused to take the call. Wolfowitz's snub
mirrored the actions of other neo-cons, who are desperately clinging to
their positions in the corridors of power at the Defense Department and
the Office of the Vice President--and are, therefore, anxious to cleanse
themselves of links to the now thoroughly discredited Chalabi.
-
- Even Mark Zell, the longtime law partner of Doug Feith,
announced his break with Chalabi, accusing the INC chief of reneging on
his vow to seize power in Baghdad, recognize the government of Israel,
and reopen the oil pipeline between the Iraqi fields and the Israeli port
of Haifa. Following the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, Zell, a West
Bank-based lawyer, had formed a Baghdad business partnership with Salem
Chalabi, Ahmed's nephew and business front man, which reportedly arranged
contracts for Israeli security firms for postwar ``reconstruction'' and
security missions in ``liberated Iraq.''
-
- Several well-placed U.S. and Israeli sources have claimed
that the Chalabi-Zell firm arranged subcontracts, that allowed as many
as 50 Israeli interrogators to work in Iraq. In January 2004, ``Jack''
London, the CEO of CACI--a northern Virginia-based company that provided
interrogators at Abu Ghraib prison--traveled to Israel on a business junket,
to drum up joint-venture business with Israeli security firms. According
to a former top U.S. national security official, both CACI and Titan, the
two American firms implicated in the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, have had
longstanding business dealings with Israeli high-tech companies. The Feith
and Zell international law firm recently established a Washington-based
front, FIST, dedicated to pairing up Israeli and American high-tech companies
for joint venture contracts on homeland security and Defense Department
outsourcing.
-
- Other neo-cons outside of government, including Michael
Ledeen, Richard Perle, Kenneth Timmerman and Laurie Mylroie, are equally
hysterical, defending Chalabi, and even touting his work with the Iranians
as being in the interests of the United States.
-
- One particularly bizarre item surfaced, as this particular
neo-con group scrambled to defend their longtime Iraqi asset. Following
the raid on Chalabi's home and offices, two attorneys, John Markham and
Colette Goodman, fired off an angry letter of protest to the Bush Administration.
Goodman, with the international law firm of Shea and Gardner, is the official
registered lobbyist for the INC, according to papers on file with the Department
of Justice. A leading attorney at Shea and Gardner is R. James Woolsey,
the Clinton era CIA Director, who, as a member of the Bush Administration's
Defense Policy Board, has been one of the biggest promoters of the urban
legend that Saddam Hussein was behind the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on Washington
and New York.
-
- Lawyer John Markham, a longtime leading member of the
overtly Satanic cult known as the Process Church, was later a Justice Department
attorney, responsible for railroad prosecutions of Lyndon LaRouche. Markham,
at the Boston U.S. Attorney's office, was a leading protege of William
Weld, the Boston Brahmin who ran the ``Get LaRouche'' drive, and was later
defeated by John Kerry in a bid to enter the U.S. Senate.
-
- - It Didn't Stop With Iran-Contra -
-
- Beyond the latest falling out among neo-con thieves and
the bizarre resurfacing of John Markham, lies a much deeper scandal: The
Iran-Contra crimes of the 1980s never ended. The usual suspects--in Washington,
in Israel and in Iran--just merely went underground, for much of the Clinton
era, only to resurface, with a vengeance, under the Cheney-Bush regime.
-
- Indeed, the very same American, Israeli and Iranian neo-con
liars and shady arms dealers who brought you the Ollie North Irangate saga,
have been caught, engaged in the same dirty dealings, all over again.
-
- Chief among the Iran-Contra veterans, who are up to their
eyeballs in the present Irangate II caper, is Michael Ledeen, the self-professed
``universal fascist,'' who is also, according to several U.S. intelligence
community sources, a prime suspect in the scheme to forge Niger government
documents, purporting that Iraq was seeking uranium precursor to build
nuclear bombs. A U.S. Federal grand jury is probing the forgery scheme.
-
- In December 2001, 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.''
-
- Rhode and Ledeen go back 20 years, according to Ledeen's
own acknowledgements, in a recent book. Both are proteges of leading British
intelligence operative Bernard Lewis. And both are also prime boosters
of Chalabi. Following the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Rhode was
dispatched from Washington to Baghdad, to be the contact point between
the Office of Special Plans and the INC chief.
-
- 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.
-
- While official Pentagon statements claimed that there
was no followup to the Rome talks, Ghorbanifar, in a Dec. 22, 2003 interview
with {Newsweek}'s Mark Hosenball, reported that he maintained contact with
Rhode and Franklin ``five or six times a week'' up through June 2003, when
he had a second meeting with Rhode in Paris. Pentagon officials later admitted
that there were also meetings in Rome during 2002.
-
- Word of those meetings with Ghorbanifar got back to Secretary
of State Colin Powell, who reportedly hit the ceiling, and went to Defense
Secretary Rumsfeld and National Security Advisor Condi Rice to demand that
all contacts with the discredited Ghorbanifar be severed.
-
- Ghorbanifar had been used by Reagan-Bush National Security
Council staffer Oliver North, as the intermediary between the Iranian government
and Israel. Ledeen, then a consultant to the NSC, had promoted Ghorbanifar
as a trustworthy asset. As part of an elaborate scheme to win the release
of American hostages in Lebanon, Ghorbanifar had brokered the secret sale
of 508 TOW missiles to Iran. Proceeds from the missile sales were illegally
funneled to the Contra rebels, waging a U.S. and Israeli-backed insurgency
against the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. In October 1986, a plane carrying
arms to the Contras was shot down over Nicaragua, and an American crew
member was captured, along with documents and other evidence of the American
covert backing for the rebels. This began what became the ``Iran-Contra
scandal.''
-
- When word of the Ledeen-Ghorbanifar-Pentagon machinations
in 2001-2003 surfaced, Powell also accused Feith of running an illegal
channel to the Iranian regime, undercutting his own sanctioned, but secret
diplomacy with Iranian officials in Geneva, Switzerland.
-
- But as late as August 2003, Ledeen and Ghorbanifar were
at it again, pressing their allies in Feith's office to open up contacts
with the U.S. occupation forces in Iraq. This time, Ghorbanifar claimed
he had Iraqi Shi'ite contacts who could lead U.S. weapons inspectors to
Iraqi weapons grade nuclear material, which had been smuggled into Iran.
He claimed that his sources had ``saved American lives'' by providing details
of Iranian terror plots against American GIs in Afghanistan.
-
- When the so-called source insisted on a $250,000 payoff
before he would reveal where the nuclear material was hidden, the deal
fell through. Ledeen still insists that Ghorbanifar's information was solid.
-
- By the time the 2003 schemes came to light, Ghorbanifar
was also peddling a different tale about his dealings with Pentagon officials
Rhode and Franklin. No longer was he a broker of ``war on terrorism'' collaboration
between Tehran and Washington. According to Newsweek reporter Mark Hosenball,
who interviewed Ghorbanifar in Paris in November 2003, ``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 of
it could be 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 al-Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are in Iran.''
-
- One senior U.S. intelligence source told {EIR} that,
were it not for Colin Powell pitching a fit, the Irangate II schemes would
have gone a lot further. The extent to which this descent into Hell actually
gripped the Bush-Cheney Administration is now a question for Federal investigators
to ferret out.
-
- First published June, 2004
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