Perle Has Found His Iranian Chalabi! And All of The Usual Suspects!

What a shock! Perle, Ledeen, Cheney, Ghorbanifar! Here we go folks! The only question is will congress fall for this cherry picked "intelligence" yet again? Do they even have to anymore?




Fakhravar and Michael Ledeen




Fakhvavar and Richard Perle


<snip>

By all accounts, Perle’s rapport with Fakhravar started more than two years ago, when Fakhravar was in and out of Evin, the infamous Tehran political prison where Canadian journalist Zahra Kazemi was tortured to death in 2003. From prison, Fakhravar had been calling the Persian-language pro-monarchist, anti-regime satellite stations broadcast from Los Angeles. Manda Shahbazi, an L.A.-based businesswoman and exile activist, told me that she heard one of those calls, was moved by Fakhravar’s plight, and managed to contact him. She then talked to Perle, who promptly mentioned the Fakhravar case at an Iranian opposition forum in Los Angeles in May 2004. In short order, Fakhravar called Shahbazi and asked to be put in touch with Perle. When Fakhravar left Iran this past April, his first stop was a Dubai hotel room where he met Perle.

“In my eyes I saw the prince of light,” Fakhravar told the New York Sun a few weeks later. “I could see in his eyes he is worried for our people as well as the American people and this is very important and this is very special.” Perle helped arrange for Fakhravar’s entry into the United States and organized a private lunch for him at the American Enterprise Institute; among those attending were State Department and Pentagon officials, selected journalists, and prominent Iran hawk Michael Ledeen.


Shahbazi, meanwhile, was working to connect Fakhravar with top exile leaders in L.A. and around the world. She had platinum contacts through her father, Yaddolah Shahbazi, a prominent businessman who served as an adviser to the Iranian prime minister during the twilight of the Shah’s regime (and who, for Iran trivia fans, launched a shipping company together with Iranian and Israeli investors that at one point employed Manucher Ghorbanifar, the Iran-Contra arms dealer).


Also note Liz Cheney's haul.....


<snip>

Shahbazi also did some contact-building of her own: In August 2005, according to filings with the State Department’s Office of Protocol, she gave Liz Cheney—the vice president’s daughter and a senior State Department official overseeing the Iran-Syria Operations Group—a Persian carpet valued at $4,000, as well as a glass plate engraved with a quote from Dick Cheney about Iran. The rug was among the dozen most valuable gifts bestowed on U.S. officials by foreigners in 2005. When I asked Shahbazi about it, she said she didn’t remember it.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2006/11/fakhravar.html

This whole article is a must read for the idiot wankers in congress.

the rug now?

probably in her dining room. :grr:

it with them when they leave unless under a certain value? Don't know the rules on this, nor do I claim to, but doesn't look good to me.