Reply #70: He's still buddies with Ghorbanifar Merry Fitzmas sattahipdeep

[seemslikeadream]

"Previous versions of the report were redacted and had all the names removed, though it was possible to guess who was involved. This version names Michael Ledeen as the conduit for the report and indicates that former CIA officers Duane Clarridge and Alan Wolf were the principal forgers. All three had business interests with Chalabi."

Alan Wolf died about a year and a half ago of cancer. He served as chief of the CIA's Near East Division as well as the European Division, and was also CIA chief of station in Rome after Clarridge. According to my source, "he and Clarridge and Ledeen were all very close and also close to Chalabi." The former CIA officer says Wolf "was Clarridge's Agency godfather. Significantly, both Clarridge and Wolf also spent considerable time in the Africa division, so they both had the Africa and Rome connection and both were close to Ledeen, closing the loop."

A veteran of the Iran-Contra scandal, Ledeen played an important role in the Iran-Contra "arms for hostages" scandal by setting up meetings between the American government and the Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar. Not all that unexpected coming from a self-proclaimed advocate of Machiavelli's amoralism. Today, Ledeen is among the most visible and radical neoconservative ideologues whose passion for a campaign of serial "regime-change" in the Middle East is undiminished by the Iraqi debacle. Just as the Roman senator Cato the Elder finished his perorations with the command "Carthage must be destroyed," so Michael "Creative Destruction" Ledeen closes his hopped-up warmongering essays with "Faster, please!," an exhortation presumably addressed to his confreres in the Bush administration.

Ledeen has kept the neocon faith – and the same friends – for all these years. He's still buddies with Ghorbanifar. In December 2001, he had a meeting in Rome with Ghorbanifar in the company of the Pentagon's top Iran specialist, Larry Franklin, and Harold Rhode, assigned to the Office of Net Assessment, a Pentagon think tank. Also at the Rome conclave: a number of Ghorbanifar's Iranian friends, including a former senior official of the Revolutionary Guard. Rounding out the distinguished guest list, we have the Italian delegation, consisting of SISMI head honcho Nicolo Pollari, the head of Italy's military intelligence agency, and Italian Defense Minister Antonio Martino, a neocon favorite. Once again, Ledeen plays the middleman – but what kind of a deal was he trying to negotiate?

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http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=7681















It's beginning to look a lot like Fitzmas
Everywhere you go.
Who's gonna do five-or-ten?
We're thinking once again
Of handcuffs and of orange jumpsuits aglow.
It's beginning to look a lot like Fitzmas
Indictments on every score
But the prettiest sight to see
Is the scowl on Darth Cheney
At the slammer's front door.

A warrant or writ, a subpoena that fits
Is the wish of Barney and Ben;
The thought of Turdblossom hung up like a possum
Is the hope of Janice and Jen;
And Mom and Dad can hardly wait for court to start again.

It's beginning to look a lot like Fitzmas
Everywhere you go.
There's an defendant who doesn't want to tell;
One in the White House as well --
The felony kind that doesn't mind the law!
It's beginning to look a lot like Fitzmas
Soon the bells will start
And the thing that will make them ring
Is the indictment that we sing,
Right within our hearts!

crispini