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Ewing2001 Has compiled a comprehensive list of links an articles pertaining to 911. This is required reading for anyone interested in understanding that horrid day ESPECIALLY since the presstitutes refuse to their job.
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Michel Chossudovsky's Magazine on 911 and Post-911 Analysis Issue No.5-out now:Bush's "Project for a New American Century" Was 9/11 a Hoax? Diving up the Spoils of War Website Topics of the month: Was Kelly assassinated for "pulling the plug" The Forged Intelligence on Iraq Who's Who on the 9/11 "Independent" Commission Hot ranking thread: Counterpunch
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After 9/11: Pentagon met with Iran-Contra Figureposted by ewing2001 on Friday August 08, @05:44PMfrom the AP dept. 
Meeting involved Harold Rhode and Larry Franklin from Douglas Feith's Office of Special Plans Pentagon Met With Iran-Contra FigureBy PETE YOST, Associated Press -Fri, Aug 08, 2003
Photos: Manucher Ghorbanifar, Douglas Feith
WASHINGTON - Pentagon officials met over a three-day period in late 2001 with a long-discredited Iranian who was a middleman in the Iran-Contra scandal, Defense Department officials said Friday.
Manucher Ghorbanifar sat in on a series of meetings in Europe between two defense officials and two other Iranians who the Bush administration had been told had information useful to the United States in its then-fledgling global war on terrorism, a senior defense official said on condition of anonymity. The meetings occurred not long after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he said.
One of those two defense officials in the 2001 meetings also had another chance contact in 2003 with Ghorbanifar, the Pentagon source said late Friday. The 2003 meeting was unplanned and unscheduled, the source said.
Earlier Friday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said at President Bush's Texas ranch that Pentagon officials met more than a year ago with Ghorbanifar, and referred to it as a single meeting.
Standing at Rumsfeld's side, Bush said, "We support the aspirations of those who desire freedom in Iran" when he was asked if the meeting with Ghorbanifar was a good idea and if his administration wants a regime change in Iran.
Another senior Pentagon official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Defense Department participants in the 2001 meetings were two people from the office of Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith.
The two Pentagon officials who met with Ghorbanifar were Harold Rhode and Larry Franklin. Franklin was on loan to Feith's office from the Defense Intelligence Agency, said the official. Feith is the Pentagon's undersecretary for policy.
The official who spoke later Friday said Ghorbanifar didn't arrange the meetings, nor was he the one believed to have information to offer. He didn't explain how Ghorbanifar got involved and why he sat in on the meetings.
Rumsfeld's comments followed disclosure of the Ghorbanifar contact in the newspaper Newsday.
"One or two Pentagon people were approached by some people who had information about Iranians that wanted to provide information to the United States government," said Rumsfeld.
Ghorbanifar, according to congressional testimony 15 years ago, was among those suggesting that profits from the Reagan White House's secret arms-for-hostages deals with Iran be funneled into covert arms shipments to U.S.-backed Contra rebels fighting the leftist government of Nicaragua.
Subsequent public exposure of the two operations that the Reagan administration had concealed from Congress gave rise to the scandal that scarred the last two years of Reagan's presidency.
Known to the CIA even before the Iran-Contra scandal as someone to avoid, Ghorbanifar in the 1980s failed two lie detector tests for the spy agency, which issued a "burn notice" to other agencies advising that the U.S. government should have nothing to do with him.
"Ghorbanifar is clearly a fabricator and wheeler-dealer who has undertaken activities prejudicial to U.S. interests," stated a CIA report that surfaced in congressional hearings into the Iran-Contra scandal in 1987.
Despite the CIA report, Ghorbanifar, an exiled Iranian businessman, managed to attend meeting with Reagan's aides about arms deals, playing on U.S. desires to free American hostages held by terrorists in Lebanon.
When asked to explain the Pentagon's contact with Ghorbanifar, Rumsfeld said that "people come in offering suggestions or information or possible contacts, and sometimes they're pursued."
"A meeting did take place, and the information was moved around the interagency process to all the departments and agencies," said the defense secretary. "There wasn't anything there that was of substance or of value that needed to be pursued further."
Rumsfeld said it was "absolutely not" the case that the meeting with Ghorbanifar was intended to be part of any other ongoing, unofficial talks with Iranians.
The Bush administration's posture toward Iran has become increasingly strident since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
After Iran's pro-reform president was re-elected in the summer of 2001, some Iranians had predicted Tehran would push for improved relations with the United States, but Iran's supreme leader ruled out any Iranian help for a U.S.-led attack on Afghanistan.
Iran, however, condemned the Sept. 11 attacks and assured U.S. officials through Swiss intermediaries it would try to rescue any American military personnel it found in distress on its territory.
In his State of the Union speech on Jan. 29, 2002, President Bush characterized Iran as being part of an axis of evil. Since then administration officials have repeatedly denounced what they characterize as Iran's expanded support of regional terrorist groups and its program to develop nuclear weapons. Iran says its nuclear program is solely to produce electricity.
Associated Press Pentagon reporter Pauline Jelinek contributed to this report.
Newsday -August 8, 2003
Washington -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Friday confirmed a Newsday report of a secret meeting between Pentagon officials and an Iranian arms dealer in 2001 but said the exchange "went nowhere."
A senior Defense official Friday night confirmed a second exchange in June between a Pentagon official and the arms dealer, Manucher Ghorbanifar, a central figure in the Iranian arms-for-hostages affair. But the official said it was an "unscheduled, unplanned" encounter in Paris, unrelated to the original meeting.
The first meeting involving Ghorbanifar, shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, came about after two Iranians approached the U.S. government through a go-between with information they said would be valuable in the U.S. fight against terrorism, the official said. He would not be more specific.
Two Defense Department officials were dispatched to Europe for a three-day meeting with the Iranians, a meeting Ghorbanifar also attended. Administration officials said the Pentagon officials worked in the Office of Special Plans under Undersecretary Douglas Feith.
Charlotte -Sat, Aug. 09, 2003
Meeting took place more than 1 year ago; Powell `blindsided'
WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld confirmed Friday that Pentagon officials met secretly and discussed Iran with a controversial and discredited figure in the Iran-Contra scandal. Rumsfeld said the talks "went nowhere."
Rumsfeld, speaking after a meeting with President Bush in Crawford, Texas, described the contact with Manucher Ghorbanifar as a routine effort to gain information about Iran and said the meetings took place more than a year ago.
Officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the meetings between the Pentagon officials -- who work for Undersecretary for Defense Policy Douglas Feith -- took place without the knowledge of Secretary of State Colin Powell.
"I think a lot of people in this building were blindsided," said one State Department official.
Some administration officials and Middle East analysts believe a Pentagon office Feith oversees, the Office of Special Plans, sought to devise its own policies and operate its own intelligence operations on Iran and Iraq.
Asked whether he had authorized the secret talks, Rumsfeld confirmed only that the meeting had taken place. "There wasn't anything there that was of substance or of value that needed to be pursued further," he said.
Ghorbanifar, an Iranian businessman, acted as middleman in illegal arms-for-hostage shipments to Iran in the 1980s.
Lunch with the Chairman
New Yorker 2003-03-17
By SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Why was Richard Perle meeting with Adnan Khashoggi?
Photo: Adnan Khashoggi
During the Reagan Administration, Khashoggi was one of the middlemen between Oliver North, in the White House, and the mullahs in Iran in what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal. Khashoggi subsequently claimed that he lost ten million dollars that he had put up to obtain embargoed weapons for Iran which were to be bartered (with Presidential approval) for American hostages. The scandals of those times seemed to feed off each other: a congressional investigation revealed that Khashoggi had borrowed much of the money for the weapons from the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (B.C.C.I.), whose collapse, in 1991, defrauded thousands of depositors and led to years of inquiry and litigation.
Khashoggi is still brokering. In January of this year, he arranged a private lunch, in France, to bring together Harb Saleh al-Zuhair, a Saudi industrialist whose family fortune includes extensive holdings in construction, electronics, and engineering companies throughout the Middle East, and Richard N. Perle, the chairman of the Defense Policy Board, who is one of the most outspoken and influential American advocates of war with Iraq.
WSWS.org -1 August 2001
By Patrick Martin
Photo: John Negroponte, Otto Reich
The Bush administration appealed to Senate Democrats July 27 to move ahead with the confirmation of two top-level diplomatic nominees whose appointments have been delayed because of their role in defending right-wing dictatorships and death squads in Central America.
...a hearing for John Negroponte, nominated for US ambassador to the United Nations, would be held as early as next week. No hearing has yet been set for Otto Reich, nominated for assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs.
Photo: Elliott Abrams
Negroponte and Reich are two of the three Bush administration appointees with direct operational roles in the Central American counterinsurgency campaigns of the 1980s. The third is Elliott Abrams, named as director of the office for democracy, human rights and international operations at the National Security Council, a White House position which is not subject to Senate confirmation. Abrams was convicted of lying to Congress about the Iran-Contra affair, but was later pardoned by Bush’s father in 1992.
Negroponte was US ambassador to Honduras during the years when the right-wing Nicaraguan Contra forces were based in southern Honduras, just across the border from Nicaragua, supplied and armed illegally by the Reagan administration. Abrams was assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs during that period and worked closely with Oliver North in organizing the illegal arms supplies to the Contras. Reich headed the Office of Public Diplomacy, a State Department agency which illegally funded pro-Contra propaganda both in the US and internationally.
...Gloating celebration of US military might are the trademarks of Rupert Murdoch's news channel, but Col North has taken the trend to new extremes.
DCMilitary.com -August 8, 2003
Word leaked out last Tuesday that DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, was setting up a trading market for investors to bet on expected future political and economic events in the Middle East. These events would include possible assassinations, bombings, and a possible North Korean missile attack.
The following day, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said, "I share your shock at this kind of program. We'll find out about it but it is being terminated."
Two days later, Adm. John Poindexter, head of the Pentagon's Office of Terrorist Information Awareness and creator of the Policy Analysis Market scheme, terminated himself.
Poindexter's group was originally named the Total Information Awareness Office and had come under fire for its plans for massive electronic eavesdropping. Poindexter previously gained fame for his part in Iran-Contra affair.
The PAM scam was intended to help military authorities predict terrorist action by carefully scrutinizing investor information and analyses. In other words, watch the tote board and see where money is going.
On Dec. 1, the "Washington Wire" column in the Wall Street Journal published this gratifyingly noir item about the postelection drama in Florida: "Madame Butterfly" Theresa LePore wasn't always an embattled Palm Beach ballots chief. In the 1980s, she moonlighted as a flight attendant on private planes owned by Saudi weapons dealer Adnan Khashoggi, a middleman in Reagan administration arms sales to Iran. Connoisseurs of Khashoggi-centric conspiracy theories should have little difficulty using this information to finger Khashoggi as the mastermind of the plot to deny Al Gore the presidency. Khashoggi has close ties, from Iran-Contra and elsewhere, to the Republicans, and vaguely defined ties to Dubya's father. (In a 1990 court case, Khashoggi's phone records revealed that Khashoggi had spoken at least twice with George Bush's vice-presidential office during 1985 and 1986.) LePore worked for Khashoggi during the 1980s, when, according to her official biography, she was chief deputy supervisor of elections in Palm Beach County, a job she held until 1996, when she was elected supervisor of elections. Ergo, LePore has been working as a Khashoggi asset to elect the son of Khashoggi's old comrade-in-arms, George Bush! Chatterbox doesn't actually believe this, of course. But the Journal's tidbit does provide an occasion to play one of Chatterbox's favorite games, "Six Degrees of Adnan Khashoggi," in which the shadowy international arms merchant is connected to every scandal of the past 40 years and some that occurred even earlier. (It helps that Khashoggi is a "connector," to borrow a term from Malcolm Gladwell's book, The Tipping Point. Click here for Gladwell's explanation of how connectors rule the universe, and click here to read Chatterbox's favorable review of The Tipping Point in the Washington Monthly. See also Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball's classic 1987 New Republic article, "The Swami of Iranamok," which describes the connector role played by Khashoggi's spiritual adviser, Shri Chandra Swamiji Maharaj.) "Six Degrees of Adnan Khashoggi" is a slightly misleading name for this parlor game because in Khashoggi's case, it's rarely more than one or two degrees. Allow Chatterbox to demonstrate: Iran-Contra. Khashoggi brought Manucher Ghorbanifar, Iranian arms buyer, into contact with the arms-selling Israelis. Khashoggi himself provided crucial bridge loans and lost somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 million in the whole affair. Imelda Marcos' Shoe Collection. In 1990, Khashoggi was tried, and acquitted, on charges that he helped the Marcoses conceal ownership of four buildings in New York. Wedtech. Remember e.bob wallach, the crony of Ed Meese who, maddeningly, spelled his name in lowercase letters? wallach was an adviser to Wedtech Corp., a now-defunct Bronx-based minority contractor to the Pentagon. In that capacity, he tried to get Khashoggi onto Wedtech's board. Khashoggi never joined Wedtech's board. wallach was eventually convicted of defrauding Wedtech. BCCI. The most complicated bank scandal in human history. Khashoggi had a big account with BCCI's Monte Carlo branch. The Death of Princess Di. Khashoggi was the uncle of Dodi Fayed, Di's rich boyfriend, in whose speeding limo both Dodi and Di perished. The Gaudiness of Donald Trump. Trump bought his yacht, the Trump Princess, from Khashoggi (apparently via the Sultan of Brunei) after Iran-Contra put Khashoggi's finances in a brief tailspin. The Kennedy Assassination. Joseph A. Ball, the principal author of the Warren Commission report on JFK's death, represented Khashoggi in his 1980 divorce from Soraya Khashoggi. After the death of her second husband, Aristotle Onassis, Jackie Kennedy was romantically tied in press accounts to Khashoggi, though in all likelihood they were just friends. Watergate. Ball also represented John D. Ehrlichman during his Watergate troubles. Khashoggi had earlier contributed secret-but-apparently-legal funds to Richard Nixon's 1968 presidential campaign. Khashoggi attended Nixon's funeral in 1994. The Breakup of the Beatles is often attributed to tensions that arose when John Lennon and Paul McCartney got married. In an interview this past October on British television, McCartney, now a widower, declared his love for a woman named Heather Mills, who was a toddler at the time of the Beatles' breakup. Had McCartney left his wife Linda for Mills at the time, perhaps the Beatles would have remained together. Prior to dating McCartney, Mills reportedly dated Adnan Khashoggi. The Synfuels Fiasco. In a program promptly shut down by the Reagan administration and subsequently missed by no one, President Jimmy Carter passed a law empowering the Energy Department to provide loan guarantees for the manufacture of gasohol. Khashoggi used the money to set up an ethanol plant in Louisiana that went bust in the late 1980s. When it did, the federal government was forced to pay out $70 million to Khashoggi's creditors. Charlie Chaplin's Seductions of Teen-Age Girls took place in a Beverly Hills mansion that was subsequently owned by Adnan Khashoggi. Katharine Hepburn's Endorsement of Harris Wofford in the 1991 Pennsylvania Senate race apparently stemmed from her fury at Wofford's opponent, Dick Thornburgh, for falsely accusing Wofford of soliciting a contribution from Khashoggi when Wofford was president of Hepburn's alma mater, Bryn Mawr. Hepburn's endorsement wasn't scandalous. (Though it should be noted that Hepburn was a resident of New York at the time.) But Thornburgh's accusation that Wofford solicited money from Khashoggi was clearly a cheap shot. In fact, Khashoggi had asked to establish a Middle Eastern program at Bryn Mawr, and Wofford rejected the offer, advising Khashoggi to give money to Bryn Mawr's scholarship fund instead. Click here to see the Adnan Khashoggi Campus Center at American University in Washington, D.C.
...Also, drawing from a Sept. 23 article by Greg Burton in the Salt Lake Tribune:
Slate -
...passage from Peter Bergen's new book, Holy War, Inc.:
During this period Mohammed bin Laden [a.k.a. Osama's rich dad, now deceased] would also jump-start the career of another Saudi billionaire, Adnan Khashoggi, known in the West for his flamboyant spending, his walk-on part in the Iran-contra scandal, and his nephew, Dodi Fayed, who died along with Princess Diana in the Paris car crash. In the early 1950s Mohammed needed some trucks for his construction business in a hurry. Khashoggi was able to make a $500,000 purchase of trucks in the United States, for which Mohammed paid him a commission of $50,000. It was Khashoggi's first business deal.
More at Disinfopedia
By Jim Lobe
Asian Times - Aug 12, 2003
Iran-Contra alumnus Michael Ledeen (and close Perle associate) has renewed ties with his old acquaintance, Manichur Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms merchant who became the key link between the NSC's Oliver North, the operational head of Iran-Contra, and the so-called "moderates" in the Islamic Republic.
To what end? It appears that certain elements in the Pentagon leadership, specifically Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, are trying to sabotage sensitive talks between Tehran and the State Department on cooperation over al-Qaeda and other pressing issues affecting Afghanistan and Iraq.
They think that Ledeen's old friend Ghorbanifar can help, according to Newsday, which reported on Friday that two of Feith's senior aides - without notice to the other agencies - have held several meetings with the Iranian, whom the CIA has long considered "an intelligence fabricator and nuisance".
< 9/11 Report - The real Saudi Ties are U.S. Ties | U.S. Soldiers in Iraq: "Bring us home" >
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Col Oliver North, the officer at the heart of the Iran-Contra scandal, has emerged as the first star of the wartime US television ratings battle, after some highly jingoistic reporting from the front line.
