I’ve started to read a lot of political and journalistic blogs lately. It’s a rugged terrain, ranging from the screaming zealots on both sides, through the tunnel-visioned, or those who see conspiracy everywhere, to the amazingly talented journalists who’ve found blogging a way to keep practicing their art in a world of corporate media.
Sometimes, the topics that are raised and examined minutely in the cooperative work of such blogs, end up becoming the stories you see in the “mainstream” media weeks later. For example, the whole Swift Boat thing, still floating around the major newspapers, happened weeks ago in the blogosphere.
On the other hand, sometimes the very interesting stories that turn up on blogs go nowhere, except to endlessly circulate on one guy’s conspiracy blog. Or, despite their obvious significance, the mainstream-media-geist rejects the concept of reporting on the story, for reasons I’m not sure of. (A whole raft of possible reasons come to mind, none of them being a lack of credibility.)
So, I’m not sure what to make of the story I see emerging over the last few days. There are a lot of unnamed sources involved, which damages the credibility. So I have to try and judge the journalistic smarts of the reporters, and how much to trust them. It’s an exercise in responsible consumption of news.
What is this story? No one is really sure yet. There are a few scattered people out there, pulling on threads, not sure what is connected to what, but sniffing that something smells. There are lots of associations, but knowing what they mean isn’t quite possible yet. Reading it is like watching journalism in progress. Remember watching All The President’s Men? It’s like that.
So, since most of my readers aren’t plugged in to this information channel, I thought I’d expose it a bit more. That way, if it shows up in the papers weeks or months from now, you can feel like you’re ahead of the game. OK?
At the Pentagon, there are some pretty arch neo-conservatives, among them Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith. Feith is the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. It’s been pretty well documented that they were instrumental in the preparations for the War in Iraq. (Some would go so far as to say that they manufactured the War in Iraq, but that’s not for this post. For an admittedly left-of-center background on this, you can read this Mother Jones article.) Among their many contributions to the war effort was their support for the now-quite-discredited Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi.
Working for Douglas Feith in the Pentagon are two other guys, Lawrence Franklin and Harold Rhode. (You’ll read more about Rhode in the MJ article.) If you’ve been paying close attention to the news this weekend, you may recognize the name Lawrence Franklin. He is the “Pentagon analyst” involved in an FBI espionage investigation of classified information being passed to Israel.
He’s ALSO mentioned in a very interesting story in the Washington Monthly, which details him, and Rhode, meeting in Rome with some right-wing Italians, including their Minister of Defense and the head of Italian military intelligence, and a couple Iranian exiles.
What’s the big deal? Defense Department guys go to meet with Italian Defense Ministry guys, and some Iranians. Ordinarily no problem. But, did I mention that one of the Iranians was Iran/Contra arms dealer, Manucher Ghorbanifar? (Isn’t that a blast from the past?) And, as the Washington Monthly reports, no one told the State Department or the CIA. The Ambassador didn’t know about the meeting. The CIA regards Ghorbanifar as a “serial fabricator” and won’t let its people have anything to do with him.
So, we have two of the guys who worked on ginning up the case for attacking Iraq, which involved working with an untrustworthy exile, and ignoring or distorting State Department and CIA input, now meeting with an untrustworthy Iranian exile, while ignoring the State Department and the CIA. And, better yet, that particular Iranian was one that already has experience with secret back-channel work with a Republican administration, in the whole Iran-Contra affair. (Why do I hear the voice of “The Simpsons’” Mr. Burns?)
The whole Franklin/Israel connection isn’t clear yet. Blogger Juan Cole seems to think it’s part of a whole “the Neocons are working with Likud to take out the countries they both hate” kinda deal, which puts a whole different spin on how much “espionage” was involved in the passing of those documents. I’ve seen speculation that the leak this weekend about the FBI investigation may have been a way to let conspirators know it was time to start shredding. Others are pointing out that the Italian intelligence services were implicated as the source for the forged “Iraq is trying to buy uranium from Niger” documents that President Bush used in the State of the Union to beat the Iraq War drum. The Italian government is pretty right-wing at the moment. Speculation, speculation.
Is anything there? Will we ever know? Are they already working on the War with Iran? I don’t know. Keep your eyes open.