Unqualified Offerings

* a blogger hitherto unknown to me, jim henley at Unqualified Offerings, wrote about Larisa's latest ghorba/MEK articles (h/t avendon):

Okay, so we know why the Veepers want to employ a known crook and probable Iranian intelligence agent like Manny the Manipulator.

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 ?rst reported in Newsday, Ghorbanifar secretly met with of?cials from the Pentagon’s Of?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.

Jim points to this article by Laura and asks:

"(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.)"

from Laura's article, the answer is:

After the revolution that overthrew the shah in 1979, but before the theocratic rule of the mullahs solidi?ed, Ghorbanifar was embroiled in clandestine struggles for power. Two of his Paris associates recall that he and other members of his family participated in a July 1980 conspiracy against Khomenei. The “Nojeh” plot was a failed coup attempt led by Iranian air-force of?cers. When it collapsed, Ghorbanifar’s sister was among those sentenced to death by the Islamic regime.

Seeking to save her life, Ghorbanifar, according to one of his friends, found an intermediary in Dubai who made a covert arrangement with the Iranian authorities. Ghorbanifar paid the intermediary a million francs, and the Iranians commuted his sister’s death sentence to ?ve years in prison. That deal was the beginning of his connections with the new regime in Tehran."

It's no surprise that Ghorba is 'owned' by Tehran - perhaps because of a deal 30 years ago for his sister, but also likely for many other reasons since. Is this why the CIA had its 'burn notices' on him - becuase he went to the well with misinformation too often? perhaps.

how then do we explain ghorba's absurd story about iran stealing uranium from iraq in an apparent attempt to implicate iran? was this just another operation to flush out some information?

in the interview with larisa, she said that we should cease thinking about 'nations' per se - but focus on factions and 'cookie companies' - to the extent that is true, why on earth are Rummy and The Veep using ghorba?

Similarly, I was reminded of this from Part3 of the interview with larisa where she describes her leak classification system:

Industrial Military/Intelligence Leaks - 'Solo': same as above, but done without the approval/blessing of any insider. Stealing secrets from military/DOD to essentially make money. A good example of this is the codes Chalabi got a hold of and sold to Iran.

if ghorba and rummy and cheney are in bed with each other - spying on Khalilzad - and given that Chalabi has long been in bed with Rummy & Cheney (and Charlie Black) - to the tune of tens of millions of dollars - was this act of Chalabi's really 'solo'? It all seems like more of a piece of the same puzzle, than some random 'solo' pay-to-say operation by Chalabi.