Word: ghorbanifar
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...late 1990s. Since the summer of 2001, he has worked as an Iran expert for Douglas Feith, the Pentagon's third ranking official, a neoconservative long in favor of tougher measures against Iran. In 2001 Franklin and a Pentagon colleague were dispatched to Rome for a meeting with Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms dealer who had been a key figure in the 1980s' Iran-contra scandal. They were seeking intelligence on Iran from him. But the CIA has long considered Ghorbanifar unreliable, and the Bush Administration later cut off the contacts...
...broached by "a group of individuals, citizens of Iran," who wanted to lay the groundwork for better relations with the U.S. after the Ayatullah Khomeini died. Both the Tower commission and congressional investigating committees concluded that the deal had in fact been concocted by Israeli officials working with Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian businessman with links to Khomeini's inner circle. The transactions were handled by National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, with Reagan's approval...
Remember Manucher Ghorbanifar, the Iranian expatriate who was permitted to play a central role in the ill-fated U.S. weapons-for-hostages deal with Iran, even though CIA lie-detector tests indicated that he was not to be trusted? After months of lying low, Ghorbanifar has been telling contacts in the U.S. that he was the intermediary who brokered the deal between Paris and Tehran that resulted in last month's release of the remaining three French hostages in Lebanon...
According to the contacts, the arrangement was that Ghorbanifar would help bring the hostages home just in time to ensure Premier Jacques Chirac's victory in the French presidential election last month. Then, after Chirac won, Ghorbanifar would receive the backing he needed to regain his status as a world-class businessman. But Chirac was defeated in the election, and Ghorbanifar once more found himself out in the cold...
Nevertheless, according to those to whom Ghorbanifar spoke, the Iranian is now saying he came away from the hostage transaction with millions of dollars in fees from the French, a claim that is hotly disputed. "Manucher can barely make rent these days," says a relative. Chirac has denied making payments to free the hostages. A member of the Chirac camp well briefed on the hostage case called Ghorbanifar's story a "big fat joke...