Word: iranian
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...this version of how the Iran affair unfolded, the CIA turf argument evolved into a dispute over whether to trust Manucher Ghorbanifar, the expatriate Iranian merchant and middleman who had offered to help the U.S. establish contacts in Iran. CIA activists in the agency's counterterrorism program supported the use of Ghorbanifar but eventually were outmaneuvered by the agency's Middle East operations officers, who waged a campaign to discredit the Iranian. Once Ghorbanifar was cut out of the delicate negotiations and the operatives at the Iran desk had prevailed in their efforts to have the U.S. bargain directly with...
Cave's negative view of Ghorbanifar failed to prevent the Iranian from becoming the linchpin of the covert operation. By November 1985 the Israelis, who had checked out Ghorbanifar at the request of Adnan Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian businessman who deems himself a peacemaker, had convinced the NSC staff that Ghorbanifar was too well connected in Iran to be ignored. The NSC undertook the Iran initiative, with the now obviously disastrous results...
...including Larry Larkin, one of its senior officers. Aware of the friction and needing the expertise of the desk's operatives, Casey offered them part of the action: they were asked to assess Ghorbanifar. Larkin first attempted to recruit Ghorbanifar as a CIA contract agent, which would put the Iranian under his control. When Ghorbanifar refused, Larkin and his colleagues set out to discredit him. This deepened Ghorbanifar's long-standing distrust...
...Iran, instead of through Ghorbanifar and Khashoggi as had been done before, and reduced the price from $12,000 to $8,000 each. An angry Rafsanjani called Mousavi to declare, "Your friend Ghorbanifar is a thief." Ghorbanifar, feeling betrayed and threatened by a CIA frame-up, then freed his Iranian associates to leak the news that created the scandal...
...jetliner and the subsequent murder of a U.S. Navy diver. The kidnapings also coincided with the latest mission to Beirut by Anglican Emissary Terry Waite, his first since it was revealed last November that the U.S. had sold weapons to Iran in exchange for hostages held by pro- Iranian groups in Lebanon...