Ghorbanifar is back

Larisa:

"The Department of Defense and Vice President Dick Cheney have retained the services of Iran-Contra arms dealer and discredited intelligence asset Manucher Ghorbanifar as their “man on the ground,” in order to report on any interaction and attempts at negotiations between Iranian officials and US ambassador to Iraq, Zelmay Khalilzad, current and former intelligence officials say.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, three intelligence sources identified the Iran-Contra middleman as having been put back on the payroll, acting as a human intelligence asset and monitoring any movement in discussions about Iran’s alleged burgeoning nuclear weapons program.

“Khalilzad has been authorized to enter into discussions with the Iranians over the issue of stability inside Iraq,” one former intelligence source said.

These discussions, however, are now on hold for unspecified reasons. Sources close to the UN Security Council and a former high ranking intelligence official say that this latest failed attempt to bring Iran to the table is part of an ongoing attempt by Cheney and Rumsfeld to squash diplomatic activities.

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.”

Asked if Ghorbanifar was essentially being employed as a spy, one former senior counterintelligence official said, "You could put it that way."

[...]

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.

[...]

If these allegations are true, Ghorbanifar’s recruitment reinstates him to a position he held during the Iran Contra affair, when he was implicated in the scandal of selling arms to Iran in order to fund a right wing terrorist group, the Contras, who were battling the democratically-elected Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

[...]
As previously reported by RAW STORY, the Paris meetings, which were also attended by Congressman Curt Weldon (R-PA) on at least two occasions in the spring of 2003, involved attempts by Ghorbanifar to advance false intelligence in order to implicate Iran in a bizarre uranium theft claim. The assertions were debunked by the CIA and by other US intelligence and military experts."