The Washington Post this morning says insiders finger Larry Franklin, the other guy at the Paris meeting.
"Israeli officials insisted Israel had not spied on the United States since being caught red-handed two decades ago in an espionage scandal involving U.S. Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard, arrested in 1985 outside the Israeli embassy.
“We deny carrying out any intelligence activity. It is a strange story,” said a senior Israeli government official, who declined to be identified. "Israel, for many years, has not carried out intelligence activity in the United States."
Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the Israeli parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said Israel made a “firm decision” 20 years ago, after Pollard’s arrest, not to spy on Washington again."
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=6094139
After you get up off the floor, remember to reattach your ass.
interesting if true
“At the root of the Valerie Plame affair is the role of her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, in refuting the baseless claim that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium yellowcake from Niger. This story was buttresses by documents which turned out to be forged. A prime suspect in this regard is Ledeen, and the accusation is made more plausible because the faked documents first surfaced in Rome, where Ledeen possesses extensive contacts. A federal grand jury is probing this matter. Ledeen, like so many Bush officials, is an alumnus of the 1980s George H. W. Bush-Poindexter-Abrams-Oliver North Iran-contra gun-running and drug-running scandal, and appears to have mobilized these networks as part of the post 9-11 assault on Iraq. In December 2001, Ledeen moved to revive the Iran connection, setting up a meeting between two Pentagon civilian neo-cons and Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms dealer whom the CIA called a criminal and liar. Three days of meetings in Rome involved Harold Rhode, Larry Franklin, Ghorbanifar, and two unnamed officials of the Iranian regime.”
http://www.gaiaguys.net/Likudniks6.04.htm
More from the What’d-you-expect?-I’m-a-snake file.
Exclusive: Regime Change in Iran? One Man’s Secret Plan
MSNBC
Iran’s Chalabi? Manucher Ghorbanifar says he talked secretly with Pentagon officials about plans for regime change in Iran
Dec. 22 issue - What was international man of mystery Manucher Ghorbanifar up to when he met with top Pentagon experts on Iran? In a NEWSWEEK interview in Paris last month, Ghorbanifar, a former Iranian spy who helped launch the Iran-contra affair, says one of the things he discussed with Defense officials Harold Rhode and Larry Franklin at meetings in Rome in December 2001 (and in Paris last June with only Rhode) was regime change in Iran. Ghorbanifar says there are Iranians capable of organizing a peaceful revolution against the ruling theocracy. He says his contacts know where Saddam Hussein hid $340 million in cash. With American help, he says, this money could be retrieved and half used to overthrow the ayatollahs. (The other half would be turned over to the United States.) Ghorbanifar says he told his U.S. interlocutors that ousting the mullahs would be a breakthrough in the war on terror because top Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are in Iran. (“You won’t be surprised if you find that Saddam Hussein is on one of the Iranian islands.”) Among other intel Ghorbanifar says he and associates gave the Pentagon: a warning that terrorists in Iraq would attack hotels. He also says he had advance info about Iranian nukes and a terrorist plot in Canada. Financial gain was never his objective, he says: “We wanted to give them the money, not to take the money.”
I’ll touch on the rest of the points later, it’s breakfast time.
Still Dreaming of Tehran
by ROBERT DREYFUSS & LAURA ROZEN
[from the April 12, 2004 issue]
Speaking to retired US intelligence officers in McLean, Virginia, in January, Ledeen called Iran the “throbbing heart of terrorism” and urged the Bush Administration to support revolutionary change. “Tehran,” he said, “is a city just waiting for us.”
Rhode and another Pentagon official, Larry Franklin, have been talking to Ghorbanifar about options for regime change in Tehran. “They were looking at getting introduced to alleged sources inside Iran, who could give them some inside information on the struggles in Iran,” said Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief. Ghorbanifar, he said, was spinning tall tales about alleged (but unsubstantiated) transfers of Iraqi uranium to Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
**Rhode and Franklin **were critical players in the campaign for war against Iraq. In 2002 they helped organize the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans, the Iraq war-planning unit whose intelligence staffers are now under investigation by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for allegedly manipulating evidence about Iraq’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction and ties to terrorism. Both the OSP and the Rhode-Franklin effort on Iran were run out of the office of Douglas Feith, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and a key neocon ally. Their initiative on Iran reportedly drew a sharp protest from the State Department. Newsday quoted a US official who said that the entire effort was designed to “antagonize Iran so that they get frustrated and then by their reactions harden US policy against them.”
…last September Khomeini’s grandson–dressed in rough-hewn black and brown robes and crowned by a turban, with dark brooding eyes like his grandfather’s–took the podium at AEI, introduced by Michael Ledeen, to call for US assistance to overthrow the Iranian government. He even welcomed an alliance with the Pahlavi monarchists.
Okay, okay. My hyperbole got the best of me. I should’ve stuck some qualifiers in there.
So…
No, I should have. I meant ‘commit espionage’ when I said ‘spy’. I seriously doubt that France or Britain have agents over here trying to influence the decision making process at the highest levels of our gov’t; I don’t doubt that Britain or France have people over here gathering up the sensitive economic data or whatnot.
I agree that financial independance would be a very good thing for Israel.
But I also think that if we were to pull the plug on aid tomorrow, it’d be very difficult for Israel to find an effective method of survival…
But again, I’m not an economist, and I don’t know for certain.
Now that I’ve finished dealing with Brutus it is indeed mmmmkay.
I don’t think we shouldn’t be concerned, in fact, I’ve said as much in this thread.
I just think that there are more apropriate methods of showing our concern.
SimonX I’ve already retracted that statement as factually incorrect, I don’t know what else you want me to do.
People have called for all aid to be stopped, unless I’ve read their posts wrong.
Thanks much, but then please don’t ask me to retract the position I’ve already retracted. I understand I screwed up, that’s why I posted that.
[quote=Brutus]
Sure thing, and a history of spying on us should have us radically rethink that policy of no-questions-asked military aid.]
I’m sorry, I thought it was fairly obvious that when someone says we give them military aid no-questions-asked that ammounts to doing what they want, no-questions-asked.
Undue influence seems to be subjective to me… If our policy makers decide that Israel’s status is our concern, they may be right or wrong, but it seems to be the same as deciding that any other country on this planet should be at the center of our foreign policy.
However, I’ve not had time to read all of the thread you mentioned, so I don’t feel qualified to offer any deeper reaction than that, at least not at present.
Here’s a very interesting piece about
Manucher Ghorbanifar
by: Jane Hunter
October - November 1987
The Link - Volume 20, Issue 4
Page 1
When asked by the Congressional Iran-contra panel counsel whether Ghorbanifar “was a Savak agent who had worked for the Israelis,” [Albert] Hakim said that was so. He also acknowledged seeing information connecting Ghorbanifar to the “intelligence services of Israel.”[sup]2[/sup]
Some CIA officials as well suspected Ghorbanifar had ties to Israeli intelligence,[sup]3[/sup] a point testified to several times by Oliver North before the Iran-contra committees: “[Ghorbanifar] was widely suspected to be, within the people I dealt with at the Central Intelligence Agency, an agent of the Israeli government or at least one of, if not more, of their security services.”[sup]4[/sup]
Michael Ledeen recently denied claims that Ghorbanifar was an Israeli agent. Had they been true, said Ledeen, he would have been further encouraged as to the go-between’s reliability.[sup]7[/sup]
- Iran-contra hearings, June 4 and June 5, 1987; Ronald Koven, “Allegiances of Iranian arms deal intermediary unclear,” Boston Sunday Globe, December 14, 1986 contains details of Star Shipping.
- Alison Mitchell, “CIA Warned Against Dealing With Ghorbanifar,” Newsday, February 4, 1987.
- Taking the Stand, testimony of Oliver North before the Iran-contra committees, Pocket books, New York, 1987, p. 307 and passim.
- Larry Cohler: “Michael Ledeen’s Story,” Washington Jewish Week, June 18, 1987.
I have doubts that Israel is the fragile little flower you seem to think it is. They survived alright when Baker did it. I mean Israel does still exist.
Just writing as I read it. My later posts supecedes the earlier one. Sorry for the confusion.
quoth Brutus, “What should happen is that all defense aid should be suspsended…”
SimonX said, “…use it as leverage when it suits our interests?” and as an example added, “James Baker did it once and got quick compliance.”
ralph124c said, “…a good start would be the immediate suspension of all loans, grants and outright gifts to that country.”
Butus then protested, “I said that we should suspend defense aid.”
Even FinnAgain seemed to notice and said, "You suggested we suspend defense aid as a result of this. "
I’d say that these folks (except you of course) just assumed that the perogative to suspend aid was already a part of our current relationship with Israel.
It would be a very odd relationship that lacked this perogative on our part.
A relationship that required a radical restructuring to add this perogative would be more akin to paying tribute than giving foreign aid.
There’re both denotational and connotational differences between the words ‘stop’ and ‘suspend’.
Now’d be a good time to take note these differences.
Well, you’re wrong. The differences though somehow subtle are mighty large.
Giving aid is a specific subset of possible actions.
“Whatever they say” is a subset of possible actions as well, but it is much broader in its potential scope.
In the former instance (“we give them military aid no-questions-asked”) implies that there’s not a discussion amongst the electorate and politicians of whether or not we should be giving military aid.
In the latter instance (“whatever they say, no-questions-asked”) implies a subservience of the US to Israel.
Since the two sets of actions described are different, and the implied targets of the unasked questions are different, the only significant similarity is the noted lack of questions being asked.
This similarity is not enough though. Not enough to consider the two assertions (“we give them military aid no-questions-asked” and “whatever they say, no-questions-asked”) to be the same argument.
As you were both the one who devised the latter assertion and the one who argued against it, I was struck by the situation’s similarities to the use of a straw man.
But, YMMV
I think that it is too. Something else that is also subjective is the appropriate amount of aid alotted to foreign countries.
So what of it?
Who said it was any different?
[HIJACK]
Is it not part of the Neocon ethos to eventually wean Israel off of the American teat, so to speak?
[/HIJACK]
I think I should very much prefer that only one country be at the center of our Foreign Policy. I’m pretty sure that only one country is at the center of Israel’s foreign policy.
And I’ve got no real problem with Israel going to some lengths to stay informed about US policy, I can understand that, Israel is a state wherein paranoia is a survival skill. Be a bit uncomfortable about it, maybe, but not really alarmed. And if it turns out that that’s all this is about, I’ll shrug it off, have a nice cup chamomile tea, chill.
But if they were pulling strings on our end, trying to affect the outcome rather than merely anticipate the outcome, then I’m jumping up and down mad, rock-chunking, run around screaming with my hair on fire mad!
I mean like reaaaallllly pissed!
Why? This is how nations behave.
You’re talking about the Soviet Union, right?
You jest, but in the case of Iraq, both countries had a reason to get rid of Saddam.
TO: Commissar, SDMB Subversion Committee
Lubyanka, Kremlin Moscow
FROM: Agent X-23, codename “clarifier”
Dangerously close to being exposed by poster Squink. Request immediate action. Information about radio frequency of dental fillings unavailable, may use aluminum hat technology to thwart telepathic rays. Recommend black helicopter…
Yours in Revolution,
"clarifier"
CC: Comrades Stoid, Reeder, Hentor and Sam
(Hey, wait a second…!)
Too late pinko! Moose and squirrel are onto you!
Curses! Tin foiled again!
We do give them aid and an ally, but I’m tempted to ask what we get for it. The ‘democratic ally in the Middle East’ thing has worn thin in my opinion, since I don’t know what that alliance profits America. I’m all in favor of generosity in foreign aid, but if this is a strategic alliance I think we should benefit strategically somehow. I think it’s the opposite: the very close alliance with Israel makes us even more of a target. If this is an alliance, the tail is wagging the dog.