Ledeen Strikes Again

A little while ago, Michael Ledeen made the news again, this time by arranging a meeting in Paris between former Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar and Larry Franklin, a Pentagon aide who has been indicted as a spy for Israel and who works in Douglas Feith���s shadow-CIA in the OSD. Ghorbanifar was the Iranian middleman in the notorious Iran-Contra Scandal that smudged President Reagan���s reputation in the late ���80���s.

But wait, there may be much more on the Ledeen eff-up list in the news. Ledeen is reputed to have excellent contacts in SISMI. Word among the Langley corridor corps has it that Ledeen and Dewey Clarridge, a noted CIA adventurer back in his agency days, may have recently employed their black arts to concoct semi-official Niger yellowcake uranium documentation at the center of the Valerie Plame name-leak affaire. According to the story line, the phony documents were then foisted on SISMI, the hapless Keystone Kop Italian intelligence agency which----presto!---- passed it to the British and American intelligence agencies as more proof of Saddam���s evil intentions.

After both Wilson and the American Ambassador to Niger pointed out the fraudulent nature of the documents, the Neocon express continued barreling down the road to catastrophe in Iraq. Vice President Cheney���s Foreign Affairs maestro I. Lewis Libby set out to discredit Wilson���s subsequent showboat op-ed piece in the NYT and, if he had simply pointed out that Wilson is a self-serving specimen of careerist grandiosity, that would have been acceptable political payback. Bringing in Wilson���s wife was hitting below the belt, but probably not illegal [technically, she had not been in a covert capacity for five years, and thus the law in question did not apply]. Another question concerning the documents��� origin are obvious internal errors such as mistakes about the Niger officials named in the paperwork. It is questionable whether such inaccurate tradecraft would have left a shop supervised by Ledeen and Dewey Clarridge. The FBI���s verdict is that the documents are part of a crooked business deal.

If he is at all involved in the matter, it would be another chapter in Ledeen���s splendiferous history of subterfuge. He is the joker we have to thank for Iran Contra. He used his excellent Mossad contacts and world-class bridge player mind to concoct a plan whereby Israel could market the gigantic PLO arms caches it found in its 1982 foray into South Lebanon [and actually Central Lebanon!] to the Iranians who were fighting none other than Saddam in the bloody 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War. The Israelis needed a broker and Ledeen���s Rube Goldberg-type Contra conspiracy became the transaction blueprint. The Kalishnikovs and RPGs were sold by Israel to Iran for top-dollar and the proceeds skimmed to help the Contras in their insurgency against the Sandinista government. Ghorbanifar, it may be recalled, was Ledeen���s Iranian connection in the complicated soon-to-be scandal.

If the Libby indictment helps bring the GWB administration to a sorry pass much like the Iran-Contra imbroglio paralyzed the Reagan agenda, Ledeen will be influential in discrediting two Republican administrations in twenty years!
Along with his SISMI and Mossad connections, perhaps Ledeen is a secret operative for the Democratic Party as well!!!