well, well, well, it seems Iran Contra is back.

[whometense]

Laura Rozen:

They're Back
An Iran contra-era fabricator and his associate appear to have opened a new channel to Washington.

From time to time, I call up a longtime associate and business partner of Manucher Ghorbanifar, the infamous Iran-contra arms dealer and intelligence peddler deemed a fabricator by the CIA who lured the Reagan administration to secretly sell TOW missiles to the Tehran mullahs. This elderly Ghorbanifar associate is a former official in the Shah’s government, long financially dependent on Ghorbanifar, whom he serves as a kind of dignified elderly secretary; like many Iranian exiles, he dreams that the mullahs will be overthrown and that he can soon return to his native country from his long exile in France.

Since 9-11, Ghorbanifar and his business associate, both based in France, have tried through various channels and schemes to get back on the U.S. government payroll as intelligence sources on Iran and the Middle East. Their efforts to do so have been thwarted -- until now. The associate told me that he now has channels to the U.S. government, and a response to my inquiry about this from the office of Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte did not include a denial...

...Last May, I first reported in the Los Angeles Times that a new Iranian directorate had been set up in the Pentagon policy shop, under the direction of Abram Shulsky, the former director of the Office of Special Plans, which produced much since-discredited intelligence analysis regarding Iraq. Working inside the six-person directorate, I reported, are two more veterans of the Office of Special Plans: John Trijilio, a DIA analyst, and Ladan Archin, an Iran specialist who formerly studied with Paul Wolfowitz when he was dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. (As deputy defense secretary during Bush’s first term, Wolfowitz was a leading champion of the theories of Iraq academic Laurie Mylroie that Saddam was connected to al-Qaeda, theories that has been discredited by the 9-11 Commission and more recently, by the Republican-dominated Senate Select Intelligence committee.)...

...Amazingly, however, like Chalabi and his INC defectors before them, Ghorbanifar and his associate seem to have found new channels open to the Bush administration. And there’s precious little evidence that anybody is trying to stop them. There may be a Senate Select Intelligence Committee Inquiry on pre-Iran war intelligence in our future.

I can only begin to imagine what Senator Kerry will think about this.

[beachmom]

1. Negroponte was involved with bad stuff in Central America

Wasn't he? I remember some outrage when he was appointed that killings happened in Honduras under his nose as ambassador. I'm not well verse in it, and I saw this on Democracy Now! which sometimes over does stuff. Still, sounds like Negroponte doesn't have high moral ethics.

[whometense]

2. Yep.

Laura Rozen is a careful reporter, and not partisan. I trust her on this.

[blm]

3. That's the problem - IranContra and BCCI have NEVER GONE AWAY.

Every network developed then is still in play. Every one except the investigating network that Mr. Clinton chose to discourage.