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Intelligence Factor
Exiled Iranian Has Another Run As U.S. Informant
Mr. Ghorbanifar Resurfaces With Material on Tehran
After His Iran-Contra Role
Concern He's a New Chalabi
By JAY SOLOMON and ANDREW HIGGINS
July 13, 2006; Page A1
As tensions rise between the U.S. and Iran, Manucher Ghorbanifar has been fanning the flames.
Twenty years after gaining brief notoriety during the Iran-Contra scandal, the France-based Iranian exile has once again found an audience in Washington for insights into his native country -- to the dismay of some U.S. officials who dealt with him in the past.
The Central Intelligence Agency blacklisted Mr. Ghorbanifar in 1984 for providing allegedly bogus information on threats against President Reagan. It soured on him further after the exiled Iranian businessman helped set up an arms-for-hostage deal with Iran that in 1986 rocked the Reagan administration and embarrassed the CIA.
Since the attacks of Sept. 11, as Washington has focused more on Iran's role in the Middle East and beyond, Mr. Ghorbanifar, now 61 years old, has bounced back. He met envoys from the Pentagon in Rome with the blessing of the White House, and shared his views with Republican and Democratic congressmen who traveled to France to meet him and his longtime confidant, Fereidoun Mahdavi, a former Iranian minister, according to American intelligence and congressional officials.
His message: Iran's weapons programs and terrorism connections are expanding, and Tehran is directly targeting the U.S.
CIA operatives have spent hundreds of hours since 2003 trying to corroborate information passed on by Messrs. Ghorbanifar and Mahdavi, former officials involved with the effort say. They say the tips are no better than they were during the Reagan era.
"None of the information bore any ties to reality," says William D. Murray, the CIA's station chief in Paris until his retirement last year. Mr. Murray contends that Mr. Ghorbanifar wants to stoke a hard-line U.S. policy by suggesting that Iran's young population is pro-American and ready to rise up against Tehran's theocratic regime.
Others believe Mr. Ghorbanifar is on to something. Rep. Curt Weldon, a Pennsylvania Republican who is vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, published a book last year on Iran's terrorism threat after meeting in France with Messrs. Ghorbanifar and Mahdavi. The book, "Countdown to Terror," claims that Osama bin Laden was sheltered in a suburb of Tehran as recently as 2003 and that Iran hatched a plot to attack a New Hampshire nuclear power station that same year. The book was cited by politicians and pundits pressing for a tough stand against Iran.
"I didn't create Ghorbanifar. The CIA created him," says Mr. Weldon. "But if the guy has information, I want to listen to him." In his book, Mr. Weldon says that Tehran's purported plot against the New Hampshire power plant "alone is a reason for a military response." The congressman writes that his Iranian exile sources, who go unnamed in the book, provided him "basically a blueprint for mounting a counter-revolution in Iran."
Mr. Ghorbanifar, who has a residence on the Côte d'Azur in southern France, declined through Mr. Mahdavi to be interviewed.
Mr. Ghorbanifar's re-emergence as a source of information for some influential Americans highlights a problem that has dogged U.S. policy toward Iran. Having severed diplomatic relations with Iran after the 1979 revolution, Washington has no formal presence in the country and has struggled to recruit trustworthy informants on the ground, lawmakers and intelligence officials say.
Iranian exiles have been eager to fill the vacuum, much as Iraqi exiles did prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Indeed, some former U.S. officials who have worked with Mr. Ghorbanifar describe him as an Iranian version of Ahmed Chalabi, the onetime Iraqi exile who won the ear of senior U.S. officials by providing them with information about Iraq's weapons programs. Many government officials now contend that information was unreliable.
The Iran issue has exposed age-old chasms within the U.S. government, particularly between the CIA and State Department on one side and the White House and sometimes the Pentagon on the other. Some senior CIA and State Department officials believe that the White House and Congress have been reckless in reconnecting with Mr. Ghorbanifar, according to some recently retired State Department and CIA officials. The CIA, in turn, has come under fire from Congress for failing to develop enough intelligence sources inside Iran, just as it allegedly failed in Iraq.
Meetings between Mr. Ghorbanifar and senior Defense Department officials have sparked calls by some Democrats for an independent investigation by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Democrats on the committee contend that U.S. officials may have ignored legal requirements for meeting foreign agents when they met the Iranian exile, and worry that he may have fed them bogus information. The Pentagon's inspector general says it's conducting its own review of the Defense Department office that helped set up the Rome meeting.
Mr. Mahdavi, Mr. Ghorbanifar's associate, blames the brouhaha on what he views as a CIA grudge dating back to the 1980s. "The CIA does not like Ghorbanifar, and Ghorbanifar doesn't like the CIA," says Mr. Mahdavi.
The U.S. first made contact with Mr. Ghorbanifar soon after the 1979 Islamic revolution, which drove many members of Iran's political and business elite into exile in the West. Mr. Ghorbanifar fled first to Germany, then settled in France, long a favorite refuge for Iranian exiles. (Before returning to Iran after the American-backed Shah fled, Ayatollah Khomeini lived outside Paris.)
Alain Chouet, who until 2002 was head of security intelligence at France's equivalent of the CIA, the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, says the U.S. and major European nations turned to Mr. Ghorbanifar because of his extensive contacts in what the retired spy calls "Tehran-sur-Seine," the community of Iranian opposition figures in Paris.
Intelligence Background
Mr. Ghorbanifar, who is fluent in English and Farsi, understood the intelligence business. While in Iran, Mr. Ghorbanifar worked with the Shah's military intelligence unit, Savak, according to people who worked with him during the 1980s. He subsequently ran businesses in the agricultural products and shipping industries, and was wealthy by the time he left Iran following the revolution.
Though hostile to Iran's new theocratic regime, he managed to develop contacts inside it and was able to return periodically. He was charming, sometimes well-informed, but more loyal to his own interests than to the truth, contends Mr. Chouet, the former French intelligence official. Nonetheless, France's intelligence agency considered him a useful source and kept up contacts with him, says Mr. Chouet. So, too, did Israel, which Mr. Ghorbanifar sold on the idea that there were moderates in the new Iranian regime who could be cultivated, according to former American officials.
The CIA, however, decided he could not be trusted, say several former operatives who dealt with Mr. Ghorbanifar at that time. Information he provided on an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate Ronald Reagan could not be verified and he subsequently failed a string of polygraph tests, according to George Cave, a CIA expert on Iran during the 1980s. "We sent out messages to our liaison offices saying: 'This guy's a fabricator,' " says Duane "Dewey" Clarridge, a CIA operations chief during the 1980s.
The kidnappings of several Americans in Lebanon between 1983 and 1985 by Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based militant group funded and trained by Iran, brought the U.S. and Mr. Ghorbanifar back together. Intent on freeing the hostages, President Reagan agreed to an Israeli-sponsored plan that called for selling arms to Tehran in exchange for the hostages, according to former U.S. officials who worked on the plan. Mr. Ghorbanifar was chosen as the middleman, they say.
During a May 1986 trip to Tehran to execute the deal, Lt. Col. Oliver North, President Reagan's counterterrorism chief, concluded that Mr. Ghorbanifar had been providing false information to both Washington and Tehran, the former U.S. officials say. The Americans had arrived expecting the immediate release of the hostages and meetings with top Iranian officials. The Iranians had been told by Mr. Ghorbanifar to expect a long list of weapons systems from the Americans. The initiative unraveled, though Iran did receive some munitions and antitank missiles, and some of the American hostages were released.
"Ghorbanifar, in the end, was only good at taking care of Ghorbanifar," says Mr. Cave, the CIA's representative on the trip to Tehran, noting that Mr. Ghorbanifar profited from the arms trade. Mr. Cave calls Mr. Ghorbanifar "a con artist of the first rank."
Revelations that the White House used proceeds from the arms sales to fund anti-Communist insurgents in Nicaragua became known as the Iran-Contra scandal, which shattered ties between the Reagan administration and Mr. Ghorbanifar.
Mr. Ghorbanifar continued to dabble in intelligence through the French until the late 1990s. Mr. Chouet, the retired French spy, says Mr. Ghorbanifar was neither as valuable nor as treacherous as some Americans believed. The Iranian exile's main motive, he says, was not money but ego. "He had a very big opinion of himself and thought he could play a big role [in Iran] with help from the West."
The 9/11 attacks provided a new opening for Mr. Ghorbanifar. Michael Ledeen, a prominent neoconservative strategist at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington -- who had helped connect Mr. Ghorbanifar to the White House early in the Iran-Contra operation -- says he received a call from Mr. Ghorbanifar. He offered assistance safeguarding American forces that had moved into Afghanistan, which borders Iran. Mr. Ledeen says Mr. Ghorbanifar told him he had Iranian contacts with intelligence on Iran's terrorist infrastructure inside Afghanistan and on Tehran's plans to use it.
Mr. Ledeen says he was skeptical that the White House would sanction a meeting with Mr. Ghorbanifar because of his history. He says he suggested the meeting anyway to Stephen J. Hadley, then deputy national security adviser in the White House. The White House signed off on a Rome meeting, which Mr. Ledeen says surprised him. Mr. Hadley said it was worthwhile if it could save American lives, Mr. Leeden recalls. The State Department, CIA and other agencies approved the mission, according to Mr. Ledeen and a former Pentagon official involved in the meeting. Mr. Hadley, through a spokesman, declined to comment.
The Pentagon sent two Iran experts, Lawrence Franklin and Harold Rhode, to meet Mr. Ghorbanifar and other Iranians in Rome, according to two people who helped set up the meeting. Mr. Ledeen and representatives of Italy's military intelligence unit, Sismi, also attended. Mr. Ghorbanifar requested that no one from the CIA be present, says the former Pentagon official.
Mr. Ledeen declines to discuss what Mr. Ghorbanifar said at the meeting, as does a White House spokesman. Mr. Rhode held at least one more meeting with Mr. Ghorbanifar in Europe in 2003, according to the former Pentagon official. Mr. Rhode and a Pentagon spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment. A lawyer for Mr. Franklin, who was convicted last year for passing classified information on Iran to pro-Israel lobbyists, says his client is barred from talking to the media.
Democratic Criticism
Newspaper reports about Mr. Ghorbanifar's contacts with the Bush administration prompted criticism from Democratic lawmakers. The White House and other agencies cut off contact with him, according to two people familiar with the matter. Mr. Ledeen says he thinks it was foolish not to make further use of Mr. Ghorbanifar and his sources, noting they were very knowledgeable about Tehran's nuclear program.
Mr. Ghorbanifar found other channels to influence Washington. Starting in 2003, he and Mr. Mahdavi, the former Iranian minister, held a string of meetings in Europe with members of Congress, including Mr. Weldon, the Pennsylvania Republican who had taken a keen interest in Iranian threats to American interests, according to congressional and intelligence officials.
Mr. Weldon's subsequent book was a wide-ranging indictment of Iran's alleged role in terrorism, and criticized the CIA for allegedly failing to act. In the book, Mr. Weldon cited as his primary source an Iranian exile he calls "Ali," whom he said served as a conduit for information from senior officials inside Iran. This source, wrote Mr. Weldon, is a "trusted associate" of Mr. Ghorbanifar, though Mr. Weldon said he was independent. In an interview, Mr. Weldon declined to identify Ali, and said it was "abhorrent" that anyone would leak information about his sources.
In a telephone interview in Paris, Mr. Mahdavi said he's Ali, and that he worked closely with Mr. Weldon on the book. He said much of the information he provided came from Mr. Ghorbanifar. Mr. Mahdavi said his identity was supposed to be kept secret, but that Mr. Weldon had included material in the book that helped identify him. The Washington-based magazine, "American Prospect," last year named Mr. Mahdavi as "Ali."
Some aides to Mr. Weldon, who faces a tough re-election campaign this year, contend his political opponents are distorting his links to Mr. Ghorbanifar. Mr. Weldon says Ali provided him with accurate information on Iran's nuclear programs and Tehran's role in destabilizing Iraq. He says his source predicted in advance an alleged Iranian plot in 2003 to attack the Seabrook nuclear power plant in New Hampshire. In August 2003, Canadian authorities arrested more than 20 South Asian men in Toronto for immigration violations, citing concerns they may have cased a nuclear site inside Canada. No criminal charges were ever brought against the men.
Mr. Weldon says he believes the men, who are predominately Pakistani, were being used by Tehran to mask its involvement in a planned airplane attack on Seabrook that would have claimed more lives than 9/11. A senior Federal Bureau of Investigation official said in an interview that there is no evidence of such a plot.
The CIA, nevertheless, came under pressure from Congress to explore the claims. Mr. Murray, the Paris station chief at the time, was an operative in Tehran before the revolution and speaks Farsi. He met with Mr. Mahdavi in the summer and fall of 2003 in an effort to corroborate his claims. Mr. Murray says he was told by CIA administrators not to meet Mr. Ghorbanifar due to the agency's history with him.
None of the information stood up, said Mr. Murray in a recent interview. Mr. Murray, who retired from the CIA last year, said Mr. Mahdavi had no details to support the claim that Mr. bin Laden was living in an Iranian safe house. Claims of a plot against former President George H.W. Bush couldn't be backed either, he said.
Mr. Mahdavi says everything he passed on to Mr. Weldon for the book is true. He says he's glad Americans are taking an interest in Iran and predicts that change will come soon from inside his home country. "I'm sure it will happen," he says. "Not 99%, but 100%."
Write to Jay Solomon at jay.solomon@wsj.com1 and Andrew Higgins at andrew.higgins@wsj.com2
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