Manucher Ghorbanifar
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Manucher Ghorbanifar |
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Manucher Ghorbanifar (nickname Gorba) is an expatriate Iranian arms dealer. He is best known as a middleman in the Iran-Contra Affair during the Ronald Reagan presidency. He re-emerged in American politics during the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq during the first term of President George W. Bush as a back-channel intelligence source to certain Pentagon officials who desired regime change in Iran.
Iran-Contra
In the 1980s, Ghorbanifar's principal American contacts were National Security Council agents Oliver North and Michael Ledeen. Ledeen vouched for Ghorbanifar to National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane. Oliver North later claimed that Ghorbanifar had given him the idea for diverting profits from TOW and HAWK missile sales to Iran to the Nicaraguan Contras.
Ghorbanifar's suspected duplicity during the Iran-Contra deal led CIA Director William Casey to order three separate lie-detector tests, all of which he failed. Iranian officials also suspected Ghorbanifar of passing them forged American documents. The CIA issued a burn notice (or "Fabricator Notice") on Ghorbanifar in 1984, meaning he was regarded as an unreliable source of intelligence, and a 1987 congressional report on Iran-Contra cites the CIA warning that Ghorbanifar "should be regarded as an intelligence fabricator and a nuisance".
His own cohorts in the arms trading affair were also non-plussed. “I knew him to be a liar,” North eventually acknowledged. Robert McFarlane, the national-security adviser who approved the Iran-Contra arms trades, once described Ghorbanifar as “one of the most despicable characters I have ever met.”[1]
French-Lebanese hostage crisis
Ghorbanifar has been suspected of being a former French DGSE informer, and allegedly accompanied Jean-Charles Marchiani, the right-hand man of former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, during his meetings with the deputy Iranian foreign minister to negotiate the release of the French hostages in Lebanon in the mid-1980s [2].
War on terrorism
In December 2001 Michael Ledeen organized a three-day meeting in Rome, Italy between Manucher Ghorbanifar and Defense Intelligence Agency officials Larry Franklin and Harold Rhode [1]. Also present were two officials from Italy's SISMI. In addition to a position at the American Enterprise Institute, Ledeen was working as a consultant to then U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, who oversaw the Office of Special Plans. The 2001 meeting took place with the approval of then-Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley. The meeting concerned a secret offer from reportedly dissident Iranian officials to provide information relevant to the War on Terrorism and Iran's relationship with terrorists in Afghanistan. [citation needed]
In June 2002, officials of the Department of Defense met with Ghorbanifar and Iranian officials in Paris, France, without approval from the White House or other relevant Executive agencies. It is unclear if the other Iranians were actually MEK members.[citation needed]
Summer 2003 news reports of the meetings prompted an internal review, as well as an investigation by the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld described the meetings as, "There wasn't anything there that was of substance or of value that needed to be pursued further." News reports also indicated that Ghorbanifar sought to be paid for the middleman role. Subsequent contacts with Ghorbanifar were abandoned.[citation needed]
Manucher Ghorbanifar has emerged as the probable origin of the information cited by Congressman Curt Weldon's book, Countdown to Terror: The Top-Secret Information that Could Prevent the Next Terrorist Attack on America... and How the CIA has Ignored it (Regnery Publishing, June 2005) ISBN 0-89526-005-0. Weldon cites an anonymous source, "Ali," believed to be Fereidoun Mahdavi, a former Iranian minister of commerce before the Iranian Revolution who is a close associate of Ghorbanifar.[citation needed]
References
External links
- Michael Ledeen, "Truth About Ghorbanifar", with reply by Theodore H. Draper. New York Times Book Review 36, no. 7, 27 April 1989.
- "Regime Change in Iran? One Man's Secret Plan". Newsweek, 22 December 2002.
- James Risen. How a Shady Iranian Kept the Pentagon's Ear, New York Times, December 7, 2003.
- "Arms dealer in talks with US officials about Iran". Sydney Morning Herald, 9 August 2003.
- Michael Ledeen, "Iran-contra Revisited?". National Review, 14 August 2003.
- Laura Rozen and Jeet Heer, "The Front". The American Prospect, 1 April 2005.
- Dana Priest, "Lawmaker's Book Warns of Iran". Washington Post, 9 June 2005: A08.
- Laura Rozen, "Curt Weldon's Deep Throat". The American Prospect, 10 June 2005.
- Larisa Alexandrovna. Spurious attempt to tie Iran, Iraq to nuclear arms plot bypassed U.S. intelligence channels, Raw Story, January 11, 2006.
- Larisa Alexandrovna. Ghorbanifar Back on U.S. Payroll, Raw Story, April 20, 2006.
- Jay Solomon and Andrew Higgins, "Exiled Iranian Has Another Run As U.S. Informant," Wall Street Journal (13 July 2006) A1.
- Laura Rozen, Three Days in Rome (Mother Jones magazine)
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