irancontra

more from emptywheel:

Totally different point--Ghorba. What I'm most fascinated is the way that Ghorba and Chalabi are both selling a kind of access to the Iranians, but we saw with Ghorba that he was either lying (he didn't have that access under the Ayatollahs), or--more likely--he's an Iranian operative and he is a master at stringing us along. Anyway, maybe it's just as simple as Ledeen thinks he is running Ghorba, when in fact the reverse is true.

interesting again, for a bunch of reasons. ledeen has been involved in intel ops for 3 decades or more - the idea that "it's just as simple as Ledeen thinks he is running Ghorba" is really absurd on it's face - given that this whole thing has been a public charade. JJA would be torturing nuns at this point.

like ew - i'm certainly interested in why they called on ghorba. if they wanted someone 'useful' they could have found a cleanskin. there's something very weird going on that even my paranoid brain can't envisage. i strongly suspect that the lesson they learnt from irancontra was that they needed more bamboozlement.