Wacky Packages
Raw Story claims that the Veep’s office and OSD have put swindler extraordinaire Manucher Ghorbanifar on the government dole again. It was goofy to employ Ghorbanifar in the 1980s; these days only a very special kind of clown would even think of doing so.
What’s the skinny? They want Ghorbanifar to spy, essentially, on the work of US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad, and any steps his office takes to negotiate with Iran over their nuclear issue. Khalilzad is a neocon in as good a standing as someone with a muzzy surname can be. He signed the notorious 1998 PNAC letter. But he’s not barking mad and not a moron, which qualify him for suspicion of treason in Veeperville.
Another intelligence source confirmed the spiking of diplomatic action on Cheney’s behalf, explaining that the Bush administration sees such talks as a “sign of weakness.â€
Boys and girls, some of you are genuinely afraid about Iran developing a nuclear weapon. Be aware that you are a lot more afraid about it than the Bush Administration. The Bush Administration is much more afraid of simply talking to the Iranian government than it is of Iran developing a nuclear weapon.
So what are they doing instead?
As reported by RAW STORY last Thursday, the Defense Department has created a special operations arm of various Iranian dissidents, using terror group Mujahedeen-e Khalq to conduct operations on the ground in Iran. According to current and former intelligence officials, the latest revelations of Ghorbanifar’s involvement again illustrate that Cheney and the Pentagon continue to work on the periphery of protocol in order to bypass US intelligence agencies and resources.
Here’s where my impulse is to say, “passing lightly over the utter moral bankruptcy of using terrorists to conduct ‘operations’ in Iran,” but let’s not. Let’s dwell for a second. The Bush Administration has nothing against terrorism per se. You may, but they don’t. The high-sounding rhetoric they pump us up with means nothing to them in practice. I don’t know if they actually snigger behind our backs or if they just dissociate. It doesn’t really matter. You hawks who think of yourselves as libertarians oughtn’t to be surprised that government officials would lie to your face and flout your noblest impulses, but apparently you are sometimes. You liberals who have backed the Bush Administration in the name of “humanitarian” intervention shouldn’t be surprised that the same people who populated the Nixon and Reagan administrations would get up to the same kinds of murderous covert shenanigans you hated in Southeast Asia and Central America. You don’t have to be that naive.
Now, getting past the utter moral bankruptcy of the subversion the Veepers are getting up to, let’s look at the practical problem: the strategy of fomenting ethnic and sectarian strife inside Iran is a policy of trying to make Iran more like Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s a deliberate effort to make Iran ungovernable.
All you people with your Iranian-blogger solidarity links on your weblogs, do you imagine for a minute that fostering armed nationalistic strife inside Iran puts that country a whit closer to the liberal democracy you and your Iranian blogger buddies dream of? Do you still, at this late date, imagine that those kinds of tensions are things the United States can turn on and off?
No serious person can believe that. Your options now are to snigger behind your Iranian blogbuddies backs or dissociate.
Or you can tumble, as quickly as possible, out of the Iran war clown car.
Okay, so we know why the Veepers want to employ a known crook and probable Iranian intelligence agent like Manny the Manipulator. (Exercise for the reader: Read Laura Rozen and Jeet Heer’s profile of the man from last summer and pinpoint his likely recruitment as a spy for the Islamic Republic. Put your answer in comments, though there’s no prize for this because it’s pretty freaking easy.) Why would Iranian intelligence let Gorba take the job? Reason: chances are, everything he learns about a “special operations arm of various Iranian dissidents, [and] using terror group Mujahedeen-e Khalq to conduct operations on the ground in Iran” goes right back to Tehran.
I’ll go further. A passage from Rozen:
As ï¬rst reported in Newsday, Ghorbanifar secretly met with ofï¬cials from the Pentagon’s Ofï¬ce of Special Plans in Rome in December 2001. The main topic was the supposed threat to U.S. forces in Afghanistan, but the options for regime change in Iran were also discussed.
I’ll bet they were. And I’ll bet that’s why Gorba’s real bosses in Tehran sent him to Rome. In December 2001 they had to be wondering just where they stood in relation to Washington’s new outlook on the Middle East. A month prior to the “Axis of Evil” speech there would have been room for doubt. Iran tacitly cooperated with the US invasion of Afghanistan, which they might have thought was buying them something, but they couldn’t be sure. So they ran an op to get the best sense they could of the Bush Administration’s intentions and capabilities. Consider what they would have been able to make of the mere fact that the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans cut the CIA and Rome Embassy out of the action while letting an Italian SISMI officer sit in. That alone was valuable intelligence. Plus whatever our surprisingly loose-lipped arch-patriots spilled to Ghorbanifar and several Iranian military officers in that hotel room.
You shouldn’t let these people run a surprise birthday party, let alone a war.
UPDATE: Added link to Rozen and Heer article left out of original version. Now the contest – spot Manucher Ghorbanifar’s probable recruitment by Iranian intelligence – can begin.
Comment by Tom Scudder —
April 21, 2006 @ 3:20 am
Typo: ”IraN” in the first sentence after your second blockquote.
Comment by wade —
April 21, 2006 @ 4:01 am
Anyone noticed that things seem to be heating up again in Afghanistan? It’s not like Iran could have an interest in tying us down on two fronts.. how many rounds of the tournament of shadows do we have to lose before we see this great game is not worth playing…
Comment by Frank —
April 21, 2006 @ 8:05 am
Wow. I think you are doing a real service for our country. I had the impression that you used to occasionaly vote for Republicans, yes? I don’t think either one of us will make that mistake again.
Comment by Sven —
April 21, 2006 @ 8:11 am
Been nice knowin’ ya, Jim.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
April 21, 2006 @ 8:52 am
”Why would Iranian intelligence let Gorba take the job? Chances are, everything he learns about a “special operations arm of various Iranian dissidents, [and] using terror group Mujahedeen-e Khalq to conduct operations on the ground in Iran†goes right back to Tehran.”
No, no, this is all part of Bush’s extra-clever plan. Since he knows that the intelligence will flow back, and Tehran knows that he knows, this is really a peace offering — Bush is giving up the location of his own agents as a preliminary to extended diplomacy.
Or maybe not.
(Yes, for those who can’t distinguish tone in comments, this was sarcasm.)
Comment by Nell —
April 21, 2006 @ 9:14 am
My contest entry is too late, since it’s essentially Rich’s: Gorby’s already signed up.
This is one of your best posts ever.
Comment by Jim Henley —
April 21, 2006 @ 9:17 am
Thanks, Nell.But don’t give up. Rich’s comment isn’t even an entry. (I don’t think.) I’m asking people to pinpoint Gorba’s probable *original* recruitment by Iranian (Islamic Republic) intelligence. When and how? I think the clues are all in the Rozen/Heer article, and allow us to chronicle things rather precisely.
Comment by Nell —
April 21, 2006 @ 9:18 am
Ah, I see the the contest objective went right over my head.
Well, I’ll guess December 2000, since that’s when it became clear to the Iranians that the old familiar crowd would be back in power and available for fruitful engagement…
Comment by Doug T —
April 21, 2006 @ 9:19 am
Well, if I had to guess a time, it’s when his sister was imprisoned and he cut some sort of deal with authorities to release her.
The real question is whether Ledeen was an Iranian agent before he met Gorba, or if it was Gorba that recruited him.
Comment by Jim Henley —
April 21, 2006 @ 9:20 am
*Bzzt*!
I’m sorry Nell, your guess is wrong. I can’t say how wrong to be fair to other contestants.
Comment by Nell —
April 21, 2006 @ 9:21 am
Ouch! Well, I’m not through my first cup of coffee and haven’t read the Rozen/Heet article. Which I’ll do this afternoon, and check back. Right now must go be a garden club lady.
Comment by Jim Henley —
April 21, 2006 @ 9:24 am
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner!
Yeah, that would be it. They blackmail him into service in exchange for his sister’s life, and get his signature on something – a receipt for some money, usually – and now he’s theirs.
I think another good question is whether Ledeen is a witting Iranian agent or an unwitting one. He’s just stupid enough to think he really is working for ”dissidents.” Reading Rozen/Heer again last night really brought something home to me: your typical agent profile is someone full of a combination of resentment and delusions of grandeur: arrogance. Ledeen’s scornful statements about the worthlessness of the CIA are very suggestive in that context.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
April 21, 2006 @ 9:58 am
I’m glad that someone else got it. I wouldn’t want to seriously have to guess when he became an agent.
Comment by jlw —
April 21, 2006 @ 10:30 am
I have to say I come down on the side of both sniggering and dissociation from the Cheney crew. They strike me as so full of themselves as seers of the big picture and players of the deep game that they have no problem selling the rest of us bullshit packaged as beef. In a sense, it’s true, they tell themselves, while also feeling that real beef ought to be rationed out only to the real men.
So, it’s perfectly appropriate to use known terrorists M-e-K to conduct terror-like actions against Iran, just as it was appropriate to prop up brutal strongmen in central Asia to help eliminate the a brutal strongman in Mesopotamia. If you understand the whole system the way they do, there is no contradiction. And anyone who says otherwise is just helping the terrorists.
Now, here, eat this burger and smile.
Comment by Mad Science —
April 21, 2006 @ 11:17 am
Well danmit, I’m late to the party.
After reading the Prospect article, ”While cutting the deal to save his sister” was my guess as well.
As for Jim’s question about weather or not Ledeen is a willing Iranian agent or has been false flagged: I want to say he’s an unwitting agent ’cause he just seems that stupid. But Jim makes a good point about Ledeen’s psych profile – he may just be arrogant and delusional enough to believe that he is in control and that by working with the Iranians he can really stick it to CIA and the State dept while still furthering his own neo-con foreign policy goals. Either way the man’s an idiot, but a useful one – if your in the Iranian intelligence service.
Great post by the way Jim.
Mad
Trackback by Rational Grounds —
April 21, 2006 @ 3:00 pm
Iran Gets Its Own Archive Category
Jim Henley has a masterful post on our ongoing shenanigans in Iran. Go read it right now. To whet your appetites: Here’s where my impulse is to say, “passing lightly over the utter moral bankruptcy of using terrorists to conduct…
Trackback by Kn@ppster —
April 21, 2006 @ 7:55 pm
Qom on, people now
I’ve had a couple of emails asking why I’m not blogging the hell out of the ongoing Iran “situation.” Short answers: It’s just too damn depressing, and Jim Henley (among others, but this one’s both fresh and perfect) seems to have it covered in s…
Comment by Gary Farber —
April 21, 2006 @ 8:23 pm
”Do you still, at this late date, imagine that those kinds of tensions are things the United States can turn on and off?”
Have just finished George Crile’s ”Charlie Wilson’s War,” as I’ve mentioned a bazillion times, I know the answer, I know!
Okay, I knew it from a few decades of previous reading on U.S. intelligence agency covert activity, and general reading, and all that.
No.
Cookie, please?
The last few mentions in Crile’s mildly debatable, but recommendable, book, by the way, emphasize the madness of Iran-Contra, and Ghorbanifar as a fabricator. Not that either is remotely news to anyone who has paid the least attention to either topic.
Trackback by Walter In Denver —
April 21, 2006 @ 10:26 pm
War On Terror
Jim Henley: “The Bush Administration has nothing against terrorism per se. You may, but they don’t.” You’ll have to read the rest; I won’t give it away….
Comment by Jim Henley —
April 22, 2006 @ 12:09 am
Frank, thanks for the kind words. I’ve never voted for a Republican President – I used to vote Democratic; now Libertarian – but I was pretty Bush-friendly up through Winter 2002.
I still want a Republican Senate, but acting as a check on a Democratic House and Presidency.
Comment by belle waring —
April 22, 2006 @ 1:27 am
I experienced cognitive dissonance reading this alongside instapundit’s touting of the conviction of some guys in CA for aiding a terrorist organization–to wit: MEK?!
Comment by Bruce Baugh —
April 22, 2006 @ 1:33 am
If you can find a copy, Angelo Codevilla’s 1992 book Informing Statecraft remains a good read. He’s a staunch Reaganite type conservative, but nailed every single one of the problems with intelligence the way the US is doing it now. His dissection of the typical CIA field officer’s deficiencies is particularly sharp, but the whole book is intriguing.
Comment by Frank —
April 22, 2006 @ 2:51 am
Jim- Funny I used to vote libertarian, but now I vote Democratic. The Democratic House and Presidency with a Republican Senate would have sounded better to me a couple of years ago, but its probably more realistic/ better than my current hope for new Nuremberg trials.
Comment by Noumenon —
April 22, 2006 @ 8:10 am
The effectiveness of this post hinges on the truthfulness of ”the Defense Department has created a special operations arm of various Iranian dissidents, using terror group Mujahedeen-e Khalq to conduct operations on the ground in Iran.” But I’ve never seen that story anywhere else.
Comment by Jim Henley —
April 22, 2006 @ 8:55 am
Noumenon: Keep looking.
I suspect there’s more out there.
Keep in mind that we eventually learned that US special ops troops were in Iraq months before the start of open hostilities in 2003. Donald Sensing even wrote a fairly famous blog item in late 2002 saying that ”the war has already begun.” He was right.
Comment by Nell —
April 22, 2006 @ 1:30 pm
This may not persuade, but it’s another expression of the view that the war has already begun: Scott Ritter in June 2005.
Comment by Nell —
April 22, 2006 @ 1:42 pm
From January 2001 onwards I clipped news stories that seemed to me to support the idea that war on Iraq had already been decided on, and from February 2002 onward that logistical (as opposed to political) mobilization for it had already begun.
In particular, there were many clips of intensified air strikes throughout the summer and fall of 2002. Confirmation came in July 2003, when Michael Gordon of the NYT reported Admiral Moseley’s talk to a military audience assessing the effectiveness of ’Southern Focus’, an air campaign begun in May-June 2002 that destroyed all of Iraq’s military communications facilities long before the official invasion began.
I raised this fact in many a blog comment thread during 2004 and 2005, to very little response. Finally, in the context of the leak of the Downing Street Memo/Minutes it became a ”scoop” by Larisa A. at Raw Story (though how a story published in the NYT and the IntlHerald Tribune can be anybody’s ’scoop’ but the original reporter’s is beyond me).
Has anyone read Gordon’s Cobra II? It may offer even more details on the war before the invasion.
Comment by Nell —
April 22, 2006 @ 1:49 pm
On the Iran ’war already on’ front, I’d add this data point from CBC News. There may well be a plausible alternative explanation for this incident.
As there may be for every incident of this kind that happens from here on out. After a certain point, though — and that point definitely depends on one’s beliefs about and experience with U.S. destabilization campaigns — Occam’s Razor comes into play.