Rumsfeld confirms Iran-Contra meeting
By WILLIAM DOUGLAS
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld confirmed Friday that Pentagon officials met secretly and discussed Iran with a controversial and discredited figure in the Iran-Contra scandal. But Rumsfeld said the talks "went nowhere."
Rumsfeld, in a session with reporters following 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.
State Department officials, speaking on condition that they not be identified, said that the meeting 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 a State Department official, asking not to be identified.
Some administration officials and Middle East analysts believe that 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 secret talks with Ghorbanifar in regard to regime change in Iran, Rumsfeld confirmed only that the meeting had taken place and said information had been shared with other agencies of the government.
"There wasn't anything there that was of substance or of value that needed to be pursued further," Rumsfeld said.
Ghorbanifar is an Iranian businessman who served as a middleman in the arms-for-hostage shipments to Iran in the mid-1980s.
>From those encounters, Ghorbanifar earned a reputation in the intelligence community as a liar. In 1984, the CIA issued a "burn notice" on Ghorbanifar, recommending that no U.S. agency deal with him.
"The CIA had concluded, after past interaction with Ghorbanifar, that he could not be trusted to act in anyone's interest but his own," an independent counsel's report on the Iran-Contra affair said.
According to Rumsfeld, the talks occurred after Pentagon officials were "approached by some people who had information about Iranians that wanted to provide information to the United States government."
A senior U.S. official, who asked not to be identified, said Friday that Ghorbanifar wanted to be paid to help U.S. officials open channels to moderates in Iran. The United States does not have formal relations with Iran and talks with the Middle East nation usually occur through back channels.
"We support the aspirations of those who desire freedom in Iran," Bush said Friday following Rumsfeld's explanation.
Newsday, which first reported the story, said Ghorbanifar met with Harold Rhode, Feith's top Middle East specialist, and Larry Franklin, a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst.
Feith's Office of Special Plans has been under congressional scrutiny for alleged lapses in post-war planning in Iraq, for relying heavily on intelligence of questionable value from Iraqi exiles and for allegedly manipulating intelligence to bolster the case for the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
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