http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19094329/site/newsweek/Debunking the Iranian Connection
Some news accounts have suggested Iran may have played a role in the alleged plot to blow up the fuel lines at a New York airport. A closer look finds scant support for that claim.
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Some news accounts and commentary,
based partly on government leaks and partly on speculation, have suggested that the JFK plotters may have had some contact—or at least tried to establish some contact—with both a notorious Al-Qaeda fugitive and with unnamed individuals or organizations in Iran. These accounts indicate there are wisps of evidence connecting two of the accused JFK plotters loosely to Iran.
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The only detailed official account of the alleged plot so far—a complaint for the arrest of the four suspects—does not talk any further about a possible Iranian connection to the plot. U.S. officials told NEWSWEEK that apart from Ibrahim’s alleged assertion that he had contacts there and Kadir’s reported plan to visit Iran for a conference, the idea that Iran played a meaningful role doesn’t add up at this point.
There is no evidence indicating that anyone in Iran ever “knew of the plot,” says a law-enforcement official familiar with details of the investigation. Two U.S. counterterrorism officials, who also asked for anonymity due to the sensitive subject matter, affirmed that American agencies believe the Iranian connection to the plot is an unproductive dead end. One of the officials said there were several possible benign reasons why one of the accused plotters might have been planning to embark on a trip to Iran shortly before his arrest.
Still, the idea of an Iranian connection has sparked excited speculation in the conservative blogosphere and some media outlets. Some commentators and antiterrorist bloggers have noted the fact Venezuela’s increasingly dictatorial left-wing president, Hugo Chavez, has recently been working to establish a close relationship with Iran’s increasingly messianic and anti-Semitic president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
On Tuesday, The New York Sun, a small-circulation daily with an influential neoconservative readership, reported that the FBI was going to investigate possible Iranian links to the plot. The paper’s lead editorial carried the headline AHMADINEJAD AND JFK. The text of the editorial noted, more soberly, that U.S. intelligence agencies appeared to be “reserving … judgment” on the strength of the Iranian connection to the plot. NEWSWEEK’s sources suggested that most U.S. investigators working on the plot believe that the Iranian connection is not significant.
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