Janine Wedel - Shadow Elite - How the World's New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market

104. See “EB-NEWS 769: Krauthammer, Gaffney, Hanson and Taheri,” EB Benador Associates, www.benadorassociates.com, May 2, 2004, https://mserver3.gmu.edu/frame.html?rtfPossible=true.

105. Jim Lobe, “Tenet v Perle,” LobeLog.com, 2007, http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/?p=13.

106. Jim Lobe, “Dating Cheney’s Nuclear Drumbeat,” Tom Dispatch, August 1, 2005, http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/print/9301/Tomgram%253A%252. The American Conservative argues that, “far from being a martyr for press freedom, the New York Times reporter [Judith Miller] was Chalabi’s mouthpiece” (Justin Raimondo, The American Conservative , November 7, 2005, p. 21, http://www.amconmag.com/2005/2005_11_07/feature.html).

107. Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith, “False Pretenses,” The Center for Public Integrity, January 23, 2008, http://projects.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/.

108. With regard to the mushroom cloud, on October 8, 2002, President Bush said on CNN: “America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof—the smoking gun—that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud” (http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/10/07/bush.transcript/). See, for example, Fred Barnes, “Mohamed Atta Was Here . . . And Met with Saddam Hussein’s Man in Prague,” Weekly Standard 007, issue 46, August 12, 2002.

109. See, for example, Joby Warrick and Walter Pincus, “Bush Inflated Threat from Iraq’s Banned Weapons, Report Says,” Washington Post , June 6, 2008, p. A3.

110. Richard Perle on November 3, 2006, quoted in “Mission Accomplished?” The American Conservative , May 5, 2008.

111. Comments of Meyrav Wurmser, “The War Party,” BBC Panorama , May 18, 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/programmes/panorama/transcripts/thewarparty.txt. See also Dov Zakheim quote in note 16.

112. See, for instance, Jacob Heilbrunn, “Where Have All the Neocons Gone?” The American Conservative , February 11, 2009, http://www.amconmag.com/article/2009/jan/12/00006//.

113. Damascus has been a serious target for the Neocon core for regime change, as Jim Lobe has established. For example, Elliott Abrams, in his capacity as U.S. deputy national security adviser, intimated to a senior Israeli official during Israel’s 2006 incursion into Lebanon that Washington would not object if Israel expanded the war to Syria. Abrams’s colleagues David and Meyrav Wurmser and John Hannah are also big supporters of regime change in Syria (Jim Lobe, “Neo-Cons Wanted Israel to Attack Syria,” Interpress News , December 18, 2006). Members of the Neocon core–powered U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon (including Perle, Feith, Abrams, Gaffney, Ledeen, and Wurmser) were instrumental in the passage of the 2003 Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act. That act established the justification for “regime change” invasion in the region. The appointment of Wurmser to Cheney’s staff in September 2003 was seen by many as a sign that the United States might soon be taking “the road to Damascus.” Tom Barry, “On the Road to Damascus with the Neo-cons,” Asia Times , March 12, 2004, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FC12Ak04.html.

114. Norman Podhoretz, “The Case for Bombing Iran,” Commentary , June 2007, p. 23, commentary magazine.com.

115. See, for example, Ledeen, The Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots’ Quest for Destruction (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2007), as well as countless articles (such as Michael A. Ledeen, “Do the Right Thing: Let’s Avoid Making a Catastrophe Out of an Embarrassment,” National Review Online , January 18, 2006, http://www.aei.org/include/pub_print.asp?pubID=23696). At AEI Ledeen spoke to a mostly supportive audience about “the evil of Islamic fascism,” “Iranian support of international terrorism,” and the threat to American security. The event, which I attended, took place in AEI’s Wohlstetter Conference Center on September 10, 2007.

116. Ledeen’s Iraq activities are murky: It has been established that, ostensibly as a private citizen, he had unescorted access to the Pentagon. Karen Kwiatkowski saw an unescorted Ledeen multiple times after 9/11, when procedures were especially strict (author’s conversation with Karen Kwiatkowski, July 21, 2009).

Regarding Ledeen as point person on Iran, also noteworthy is that Ledeen regularly offered foreign policy advice to Bush II aide Karl Rove, and, according to the Washington Post , “more than once, Ledeen has seen his ideas, faxed to Rove, become official policy or rhetoric.” Thomas B. Edsall and Dana Mil-bank, “White House’s Roving Eye for Politics; President’s Most Powerful Adviser May Also Be the Most Connected,” Washington Post , March 10, 2003, p. A1. See also Jim Lobe, “U.S.: Shadowy Neo-Con Adviser Moves on Iran,” Inter Press Service, June 24, 2003.

With regard to Shulsky, he also roomed with Wolfowitz at Cornell; Packer, The Assassins’ Gate , p. 150.

With regard to OSP veterans being tapped to head the new office, see Laura Rozen, “U.S. Moves to Weaken Iran,” Los Angeles Times , May 19, 2006, p. A29, http://articles.latimes.com/2006/may/19/world/fg-usiran19; and Mary Louise Kelly, “Pentagon Iran Office Mimics Former Iraq Office,” National Public Radio, Morning Edition, September 20, 2006, http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&

islist=false&id=6108983&m=6108984. See also Craig Unger, “From the Wonderful Folks Who Brought You Iraq,” Vanity Fair , March 2007.

Ghorbanifar resurfaced in 2003, this time as an informant to Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Specifically, he met with a Defense Department official, Neocon core collaborator Harold Rhode, in 2001 in Rome, to put U.S. officials in touch with Iranian dissidents, according to Michael Ledeen, who helped broker the meeting (Warren P. Strobel, “Alleged Pentagon Leaks May Be Connected to Battle Over Iran Policy,” Knight Ridder Newspapers, September 3, 2004, www.highbeam.com/DocPrint.aspx?DocId=1G1:121554067). These meetings took place in Rome in December 2001 and Paris in June 2003 (see Joshua Micah Marshall, Laura Rozen, and Paul Glastris, “Iran-Contra II?” Washington Monthly , September 2004, http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0410.marshallrozen.html). In addition to the meetings in Rome, Ghorbanifar helped finance business deals and broker relationships for Richard Perle, as Seymour Hersh has reported. So has the equally enigmatic Saudi financier Adnan Khashoggi. Khashoggi resurfaced in the 1990s with his arrest and extradition to the United States for his borrowing of funds from the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), which collapsed in 1991. He was acquitted. He reemerged again in the 2000s, this time in connection with Richard Perle. In a 2003 article by Seymour M. Hersh, “Lunch with the Chairman: Why Was Richard Perle Meeting with Adnan Khashoggi?” Hersh offers the viable theory that Khashoggi hoped to flaunt his and fellow Saudi Harb Zuhair’s interest in investing in Perle’s company Trireme Partners L.P. for the chance for Zuhair to discuss peaceful alternatives to a U.S. invasion of Iraq (The New Yorker , March 17, 2003, www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/03/17/030317fa_fact?current-Page=5).

With regard to Franklin’s conviction, see, for example, Jerry Markon, “Pentagon Analyst Given 12½ Years in Secrets Case,” Washington Post , January 21, 2006, p. A1. Franklin’s sentence was reduced to house arrest. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/11/AR2009061104280.html.