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MANUCHER GHORBANIFAR

Manucher Ghorbanifar (nicknamed Gorba, born May 9, 1945) is an expatriate Iranian arms dealer and reputed former SAVAK agent.

According to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Ghorbanifar was a double agent for Iran and Israel. The CIA director William Casey believed that Ghorbanifar was an Israeli agent.

He is best known as a middleman in the Iran–Contra Affair during the Ronald Reagan presidency. He re-emerged in American politics during the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq during the first term of President George W. Bush as a back-channel intelligence source and conduit to opponents of the Iranian regime inside the country.

Prior to the Iraq War, Ghorbanifar had passed allegations to the Bush administration that "enriched uranium was smuggled from Iraq into Iran and some may remain hidden in Iraq" which the CIA later discovered to be a fabrication created by Ghorbanifar. Ghorbanifar was linked to the Niger uranium forgeries which were forged documents initially released by SISMI that would later be used partly as justification for the Iraq War.

Career
Prior to the 1979 Iranian Revolution Ghorbanifar was an agent of Iran's SAVAK intelligence service, and a partner in an Israeli-Iranian shipping company, Starline Iran, which shipped oil from Iran to Israel. Ghorbanifar knew Israel's military attaché in Tehran, Yaakov Nimrodi, who helped build SAVAK.

In 1980 Ghorbanifar was the liaison between the Shah's last Prime Minister, Shahpour Bakhtiar, in exile in Paris, and conspirators in the Iranian armed forces organising what is sometimes known as the Nojeh Coup. The plot was exposed, and hundreds of officers were arrested at Nojeh Air Base on 9–10 July 1980. Ghorbanifar had owned a shipping company and headed the logistics branch of the Niqab network which organised the civilian part of the plot. He had been recommended for the role by Bakhtiar. Some Iranian sources later accused Ghorbanifar of leaking information to the Iranian government which helped thwart the coup plot. In December 1985 Adnan Khashoggi said in an interview that Ghorbanifar was head of European intelligence under Mir-Hossein Mousavi (Prime Minister from 1981).

In 1981 Ghorbanifar was the source for the Washington Post's stories about Libyan hit squads targeting President Reagan and other senior US figures; in 1986 he said he had created the story "To hurt Libya, an enemy of Israel". Ghorbanifar's role in the Libyan story contributed to the CIA's 1984 decision to issue a "burn notice" against Ghorbanifar.

In the early 1980s Ghorbanifar accompanied arms dealer Cyrus Hashemi to Israel to arrange a $50m arms shipment, codenamed "Cosmos", to Iran. The deal was cancelled at the last minute even though much of the equipment had already been loaded onto a ship in Eilat.

Iran–Contra affair
In the early 1980s, Ghorbanifar approached the CIA with the aim of becoming an intelligence asset and ultimately profiting from the connection. In 1984 after numerous warnings of terrorist plots he provided turned out to be false, the agency issued a "fabricator notice" within the intelligence community, branding him as unreliable. That same year, Ghorbanifar hoped to position himself as a major arms supplier for the Islamic Republic of Iran, which was in the midst of a war with neighboring Iraq. After some initial failed attempts to engage current and former U.S. officials in his plans, Ghorbanifar teamed up with Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi and the two reached out to a pair of well-connected Israeli businessmen with a proposal to sell antitank missiles to Iran from Israeli stocks. The Israelis obtained permission from Prime Minister Shimon Peres but because the weapons were U.S.-made he insisted that the U.S. government had to approve the transaction.

In May 1985 National Security Council consultant Michael Ledeen by coincidence visited Israel and in the course of discussions with Peres about Iran learned of the arms proposal. Ledeen vouched for Ghorbanifar to National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane and Israeli officials including the director general of the Foreign Ministry David Kimche encouraged McFarlane with intimations that the ultimate goal was the reestablishment of ties with so-called "moderates" within the Iranian regime.

Ghorbanifar took part in several U.S. and Israeli-approved arms transactions with Iran starting in August 1985. The deals explicitly called for Iran to bring about the release of all Americans being held hostage by Tehran's allies in Lebanon, Hezbollah. In the end, only three Americans gained their freedom while three more were kidnapped. Subsequent investigations showed that throughout the operation Ghorbanifar repeatedly misled his collaborators. "I knew him to be a liar," North eventually acknowledged. Ronald Reagan later described Ghorbanifar as a “devious character.” McFarlane, who initially oversaw the Iran–Contra arms trades, called Ghorbanifar "one of the most despicable characters I have ever met." Ghorbanifar's relationship with CIA was especially antagonistic. Former CIA official and Iran-Contra figure George Cave, who was involved in the 1984 decision to issue the burn notice, has described Ghorbanifar as "the most totally amoral person I have ever met," while Thomas Twetten, Chief of the Near East Division of the CIA's Directorate of Operations at the time, said of him: "This is a guy who lies with zest."

One of Ghorbanifar's most infamous alleged acts during this affair, according to NSC staff member Oliver North, was to suggest to North that the United States divert profits generated by the Iran arms sales to the Nicaraguan Contras, as a way to bypass the U.S. Congress' prohibition on American assistance to those forces. As North described it later, the two met in a London hotel in January 1986: "Mr. Ghorbanifar took me into the bathroom and Mr. Ghorbanifar suggested several incentives to make that February [arms] transaction work. And the attractive incentive for me was the one he made that residuals could flow to support the Nicaraguan resistance." North had also indicated that Israeli officials first had introduced the idea the previous month. When the commingling of the covert Iran and Contra operations was publicly revealed it became the core of the scandal.

During summer 1986, the U.S. participants in the arms-for-hostages deal tried to find alternative contacts in Iran -- a "Second Channel" -- in large part because of their frustration with Ghorbanifar's untrustworthiness. Ghorbanifar's anger at being labelled a liar may have led him to urge Iranian contacts to leak the Iran-Contra story.

French–Lebanese hostage crisis
Ghorbanifar has been suspected of being a former French DGSE informer, and allegedly accompanied Jean-Charles Marchiani, the right-hand man of former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, during his meetings with the deputy Iranian foreign minister to negotiate the release of the French hostages in Lebanon in the mid-1980s.

War on terrorism
In December 2001 Michael Ledeen organized a three-day meeting in Rome, Italy between Ghorbanifar and Defense Intelligence Agency officials Larry Franklin and Harold Rhode. Also present were two officials from Italy's SISMI. At the time, Ledeen held a position at the American Enterprise Institute and was working as a consultant to then U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, who oversaw the Office of Special Plans.

The 2001 meeting took place with the approval of then-Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, although there is evidence Hadley was unaware that Ghorbanifar himself was involved. (Given that Hadley was a staff member of the Tower Commission that investigated Iran-Contra The meeting concerned a secret offer from reportedly dissident Iranian officials to provide information relevant to the War on Terrorism and Iran's relationship with terrorists in Afghanistan.

Summer 2003 news reports of the meetings prompted an internal review, as well as an investigation by the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld characterized the meetings as insignificant, saying, "There wasn't anything there that was of substance or of value that needed to be pursued further." News reports also indicated that Ghorbanifar sought to be paid for the middleman role. Subsequent contacts with Ghorbanifar were abandoned.

Manucher Ghorbanifar has emerged as the probable origin of the information cited by Congressman Curt Weldon's book, Countdown to Terror: The Top-Secret Information that Could Prevent the Next Terrorist Attack on America... and How the CIA has Ignored it (Regnery Publishing, June 2005) ISBN 0-89526-005-0. Weldon cites an anonymous source, "Ali," believed to be Fereidoun Mahdavi, a former Iranian minister of commerce before the Iranian Revolution who is a close associate of Ghorbanifar.

KHOBAR TOWERS BOMBING

Implications for U.S.-Iran relations
Counterterrorism officials on President Clinton’s National Security Council staff concluded that elements inside Iran, specifically the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), were the perpetrators. They put pressure on the president and his national security adviser, Sandy Berger, to take action. They were joined by others inside and outside the administration, notably FBI Director Louis J. Freeh and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Before taking action, President Clinton insisted on proof that could stand up in both a court of law and the court of public opinion. In the meantime, he ordered a review of military options in case of a decision to punish Iran.

By the time Saudi Arabia and the FBI concluded their investigations, Iranians had elected a new president, Mohammad Khatami, in May 1997. Khatami surprised the international community by urging a “dialogue of civilizations” with the West in order to overcome almost two decades of animosity and Iranian isolation. Clinton, who had initially taken a stand toward the Islamic Republic, including imposing major economic sanctions on the country, reversed his thinking in the hope that Khatami potentially represented a game-changing shift in Iran’s conduct.

The prospect of an opening with Tehran, which intrigued many U.S. allies and even domestic critics of administration policy, drove Clinton’s response to the Khobar attack. The White House and State Department sent various signals to the Iranians, some of which they reciprocated, but ultimately hopes for a significant improvement in relations remained unfulfilled.

In June 1999, Clinton authorized what he later called a “Hail Mary,” sending a direct message to Khatami. Delivered by Omani Foreign Minister Yousef bin Alawi in July, the letter attempted to achieve multiple purposes: to signal Tehran that Washington was open to a rapprochement but also to make clear that the United States held the IRGC responsible for the bombing. Clinton was under pressure from FBI Director Freeh and other domestic actors to press for accountability for the attack.

The attempt backfired. Although Khatami was reportedly happy with the American initiative, especially because it was accompanied by an oral message of strong personal support from Clinton delivered by the Omani envoy, the Iranian president’s colleagues in the leadership, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, reacted vehemently to the text of the letter. Two months later, the Iranians responded with a written denunciation of the allegation of culpability and a refusal to consider boosting bilateral ties under such circumstances.

Beyond the Clinton administration’s miscalculation of Iranian politics, the episode showed that the bombing would continue to cast a long shadow over U.S.-Iran relations in years to come.

[DELETE THIS GRAF] The three-year investigation had led the FBI to conclude that Iran was involved in the attack. At that time, the Clinton administration hoped to open a dialogue with reformist president Khatami, which would be impossible after accusing Iranians of supporting terrorist action. A secret letter, delivered directly to Khatami by Sultan Qaboos of Oman, stated that the United States had evidence of direct Iranian involvement in the act, and demanded that those involved be held responsible for their actions. Khatami refused to begin an investigation and Iranian officials stated that al-Qaeda was responsible for the attack.

GEORGE W. CAVE

George W. Cave was a CIA operations officer and authority on Iran who later reluctantly took part in the Iran–Contra affair at the behest of CIA Director William J. Casey.

Education
Cave attended Milton Hershey School where he graduated in 1947 and was named Alumnus of the Year in 2001. He majored in Middle Eastern studies at Princeton University, where he studied from 1952 to 1956, and joined CIA after graduation.

Career
One account claims Cave served the CIA in Teheran during the 1953 Iranian coup d'état that restored the Shah of Iran to power but he has since indicated he did not join the agency until October 1956. In the mid 1970s he served in Tehran as deputy CIA station chief, with personal ties to the Shah. His agency-given pseudonym in the late 1970s was "Joseph Adlesick." In the series "Documents from the U.S. Espionage Den" he is referred to in volumes 10, 17, 38, 55 and 56. In October 1979, he gave a briefing in Tehran to Abbas Amir-Entezam and Ebrahim Yazdi, based on intelligence from the IBEX system, that Iraq was preparing to invade.

By 1977, when he was working in Jeddah, he had six children, three of whom were in college.

The International Spy Museum interviewed him about his career in June 2012.

Iran-Contra Affair
In March 1986, at the behest of CIA Director William J. Casey, Cave joined the unofficial, but presidentially approved, operation to provide American-made missiles to the Islamic Republic of Iran that constituted part of the Iran-Contra affair. The weapons sales were part of a deal that was supposed to include the release of several American citizens being held hostage in Lebanon by Hezbollah, a close ally of Iran. Cave was one of the participants who hoped that the operation would also eventually lead to improved U.S. and Israeli political relations with the Iranian regime. Over several months, he served as an Iran expert, Persian-English interpreter, and sometime negotiator, in numerous meetings with Iranian representatives in Europe and Washington, D.C. In May 1986 he was part of the delegation that traveled clandestinely to Tehran in hopes of meeting with senior Iranian officials. In November 1986, an exposé of the Tehran mission in a Lebanese news magazine brought the secret deals to an abrupt halt.

In the aftermath of the scandal, in-depth probes by Congress and an Office of Independent Counsel focused intently on Cave's role but generally concluded he had not played a fundamental role. He had been brought in at the CIA director's insistence, had not been aware of all of the plans or tactics of the main actors (such as manipulating weapons pricing), and had objected to the involvement of Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar. His depositions to congressional investigators and testimony in legal proceedings, such as at the trial of senior CIA official Clair George, provided important factual information about the operations and the roles of various NSC, CIA, and other players.

Published Novel
Cave published his first novel, October 1980 in December 2013. In his final interview Duane Clarridge, former CIA operations officer and Iran-Contra figure, hinted that this novel was a largely accurate depiction of how Reagan's October Surprise transpired.