This might be the ground-shaking story that Josh Marshall was hinting about a few months ago. Apparently, there were secret, unauthorized backroom meetings between the Department of Defense, Italian intelligence, and notorious Iran-Contra figure Manucher Ghorbanifar who is so untrustworthy the CIA has issued an order forbidding their people from talking to him. The players include Ghorbanifar and:
Ledeen apparently organized the first of the meetings, held in Rome in December 2001. The presence of Italy's equivalents to Rumsfeld and Tenet means that this was a big meeting. Neither the CIA nor State Department were informed. Appropriately pissed off, both get Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley to order Feith to put a stop to the meetings, but they continued, apparently including open discussion of the US's plans to invade and occupy Iraq.
The other piece of big news: "under terms of a compromise agreed to by both parties, a full investigation into the matter was put off until after the November election". In other words, the Republicans forced the Democrats into accepting a cover-up. This story raises numerous open questions about the Iraq intelligence scandal, what went through this back-channel, what was Israel's involvement, whether this connects to the Chalabi or Niger yellowcake scandals, and just what we haven't been told yet.
Edit 7:00PM: Juan Cole has an analysis and there's already a Wikipedia entry for Larry Franklin
Posted by Warrior Tang at August 29, 2004 05:23 PM