Reply #2: "Manucher Ghorbanifar, a former Iranian SAVAK agent with close ties to...

[Peace Patriot]

...to Israeli intelligence...."

Connecting some dots here: Ghorbanifar was present at the meeting of "the Rome Group," in 2001, also present, rabid Neo Con Michael Ladeen (organizer of the meeting, on Bush/US payroll). This is the group suspected of concocting the Niger forgeries, and whom I suspect of concocting a lot more than forgeries (a scheme to plant WMDs, probably nukes or nuke material, in Iraq, after the invasion, which is at the heart of Treasongate--Treasongate being a panicked effort by the Bushites to cover up the scheme and its foiling, after the Brits chief WMD expert David Kelly found out about it--scheme probably foiled by the Brewster-Jennings counter-proliferation network). Ghorbanifar was a SAVAK agent (which I didn't know before--although I picked up that one of his aides is a former Shah minister). SAVAK was the Shah of Iran's torture group, the goons who inflicted 25 years of horror on the Iranian people, after the US/Israel destroyed Iranian democracy in 1953. So, what Ghorbanifar may be up to is re-installing a Shah type regime in Iran, that he could be a major figure in (Grand Inquisitor and Master of Torture Chambers?).

The WMD-planting theory of Treasongate is that the "Rome Group" cooked up a 2-part scheme, 1) to draw the CIA out into a public position of no-nukes in Iraq, with the crude, easily detectable Niger forgeries; and 2 ) to discredit the CIA forever, by planting nukes in Iraq to be "found" by the US troops who were "hunting" for WMDs after the invasion (notably accompanied by Judith Miller), with the additional huge benefit to Bush/Blair's political fortunes. Ghorbanifar may have had a personal vendetta against the CIA for their exposing him as a fabricator in the '80s. Re: part 2, there was a parallel cover story that Ghorbanifar was running, recently revealed--and early on debunked by the CIA--that Iran stole nuke material from Iraq just before the invasion--the purpose of this Ghorbanifar planted story perhaps being to cover up any botching up of the Bush junta operation (a nuke spill; discovery of the scheme, etc.), and possibly also to be used later as an excuse to invade or bomb Iran. However, see #2 below.

Puzzles: (perhaps someone can help me out with this?)

1. Libya. I know that Mossad is likely out of control (much like Rumsfeld's OSP), but why pick on one of the weakest Arab regimes back then? Was it--as with Iraq--just because it was weak? That it could be easily picked off? And what of the Lockerbee plane crash? Is there any suspicion that that was trumped up against Ghadhafi?

2. The crudeness of the Niger forgeries clued me into possible misdirection. (If they were not intended as convincing proof of an Iraq nuke program, what WERE they intended for?) (i.e., The Bush junta could surely have concocted better forgeries than this, if they had wanted to.) Ghorbanifar's story of Iran stealing nuke material from Iraq (easily and early debunked by the CIA) also has a smell of misdirection about it. The story immediately collapsed upon investigation. So what could be the purpose of this easily disprovable story? I'm thinking that Ghorbanifar was engaged in probing the CIA for honest agents and operations. Identifying people for the Bushites to purge. This story ran in March 2003, right at the beginning of other events (invasion of Iraq, efforts to plant WMDs in Iraq, Treasongate). Could it have been an effort to detect who, in the CIA, would be likely to detect and expose the WMD-planting scheme--an effort both to uncover and perhaps to foil/purge/kill members of the Brewster-Jennings network (an extensive CIA worldwide network of covert agents and contacts, keeping track of and countering WMD proliferation, headed by Plame). Such a project would be of benefit to Ghorbanifar, even aside from planting WMDs in Iraq and getting away with it. He is a notorious arms dealer, and having Bush & Co. in the White House gave him the perfect opportunity to clear the way for arms proliferation, since the Bushites had no loyalty to their own CIA and despised honest information and counter-proliferation.

See
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=109553&mesg_id=109553