@@ Jews: antagonize Iran so they get frustrated @@
Arash
August 8, 2003
Secret Talks With Iranian
Sources: Meetings 'unauthorized'
By Knut Royce and Timothy M. Phelps
WASHINGTON BUREAU; Staff writer Craig Gordon contributed to this story
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.
The administration officials who disclosed the secret meetings to Newsday
said the talks with Ghorbanifar were not authorized by the White House and
appeared to be aimed at undercutting current sensitive back channel
negotiations with the Iranian regime.
"They [the Pentagon officials] were talking to him [Ghorbanifar] 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.
The senior official and another administration source who confirmed that the
meetings had taken place said that the ultimate policy objective of Feith
and a group of neo-conservatives civilians inside the Pentagon is regime
change in Iran.
This second official said, "United States policy officially is not regime
change, overtly or covertly," but to engage Iranian officials in dialogue
over contentious issues, such as Iran's nuclear weapons program, and to
press the regime to extradite al-Qaida operatives.
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."
He confirmed that Secretary of State Colin Powell complained directly to
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld several days ago about Feith's policy shop
conducting missions that countered U.S. policy.
A spokesman for Feith's Near East, South Asia and 'Special Plans office',
the controversial intelligence office that sources said played a key role in
the Ghorbanifar contacts, did not respond yesterday to an e-mailed inquiry
about those contacts. Newsday's inquiry was e-mailed at the spokesman's
request.
The senior administration official identified two of the Defense officials
who met with Ghorbanifar as 'Harold Rhode', Feith's top Middle East
specialist, and 'Larry Franklin', a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst on
loan to the undersecretary's office.
Rhode recently acted as a liaison between Feith's office, which drafted much
of the administration's post-Iraq planning, and 'Ahmed Chalabi', a former
Iraqi exile disdained by the CIA and State Department but groomed for
leadership by the Pentagon.
Rhode is a protege of 'Michael Ledeen', a neo-conservative who was a
National Security Council consultant in the mid-1980s when he introduced
Ghorbanifar to Oliver North, a National Security Council aide, and others in
the opening stages of the Iran-contra affair.
A former CIA officer who himself was involved in some aspects of the
Iran-contra scandal said that current intelligence officers told him it was
Ledeen who reopened the Ghorbanifar channel with Feith's staff.
Ledeen, a scholar at the 'American Enterprise Institute' in Washington and
an ardent advocate for regime change in Iran, would neither confirm nor deny
that he arranged for the Ghorbanifar meetings. "I'm not going to comment on
any private meetings with any private people," he said. "It's nobody's
business."
Ghorbanifar, who is said to live in Paris, could not be reached for comment
yesterday.
Ledeen once described him as "one of the most honest, educated, honorable
men I have ever known." But the CIA, noting he had failed four polygraph
tests administered during the arms-for-hostages deals, warned its officers
not to deal with him, asserting he "should be regarded as an intelligence
fabricator and nuisance."
The senior administration official said he was puzzled by the resurfacing of
Ghorbanifar after all these years. "It would be amazing if anybody in
government hadn't learned the lessons of last time around," he said. "These
guys [including Ledeen] should have learned it, 'cause they lived it."