Feith-Based Initiatives

Laura Rozen

August 31, 2004

From War and Piece:

More Investigations of Feith's Office

We know there is an FBI investigation of Larry Franklin, an Iran analyst who works in the office of Doug Feith, the undersecretary of Defense for Policy, for allegedly giving classified US documents to the lobby group Aipac. And we know there is a second investigation, by the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, of a secret back channel between officials from Feith's office and the former Iran contra arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar, which my colleagues and I reported on over the weekend. In an interview earlier this month, Ghorbanifar told me some interesting details about this back channel's persistence and duration.

Today, we learn from the Boston Globe's Brian Bender that there is yet a third investigation, also from the Hill, by the House Judiciary committee, of the activities of Feith's office. And this one, now in the preliminary stages, focuses not just on the DoD-Ghorbanifar Iran back channel we reported on, but also on whether yet another official in Feith's office, Michael Maloof, was involved in a back channel whose purpose was to destabilize Syria:

But investigators for the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is closely scrutinizing the office as part of a formal probe of pre-Iraq War intelligence-gathering, and Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee, who are conducting a preliminary probe, say that the full picture of the office's activities may include more than meets the eye. They are seeking additional documents and interviews from policy officials.

After months of delay, the investigators said, they are getting cooperation from Feith and his staff.

Some of the incidents that prompted the probes are already known.

Franklin and another employee, Harold Rhode, met secretly with Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms dealer, in Italy in December 2001 and subsequently in Paris. The Paris meeting was not approved by Pentagon officials . . .

But one congressional investigator said staffers are looking into whether there was an exchange of money between US officials and Ghorbanifar or other Iranians, and whether any proposals for cooperation included seeking assistance from the Mujahedin-e Khalq, a group in Iraq that is seeking to overthrow the Iranian regime but is labeled a terrorist group by the US State Department.

Another Near East policy official, F. Michael Maloof, was stripped of his security clearance a year ago after the FBI linked him to a Lebanese-American businessman under investigation by the FBI for weapons trafficking. A handgun registered to Maloof was found in the possession of Imad el Hage, a suspected arms dealer.

Investigators are seeking to learn whether Maloof's alleged contacts with Hage and a hard-line former Lebanese general, Michel Aoun, may have been part of a back-channel effort to destabilize Syria, which has occupied Lebanon for nearly two decades . . .

The official said he is trying to determine if some of the office's activities may have been prohibited by the Hughes-Ryan Amendment, which holds that all activity to undermine a foreign government must be approved by the president in a specific document approving such activity.

I have been told that a Feith official who was part of the DoD-Ghorbanifar back channel had indeed advocated for Ghorbanifar to be compensated for the information the Iranian arms dealer was giving their group. What's more, I strongly suspect that the "other people" Ghorbanifar told me he helped arrange for that official to interview in Paris when they met in June 2003 were members of the MEK, which have a big headquarters in Paris. [About a month before this meeting, a State Department-authorized US-Iran back channel, under UN aupices, collapsed; the US withdrew after it allegedly obtained intelligence that al Qaeda suspects in Iranian custody had helped organize a May 13, 2003 bombing in Riyadh. Before it collapsed, that authorized back channel's focus had been on negotiations over a possible exchange of Al Qaeda suspcts in Iranian custody for MEK members in Iraq.] The MEK has long been a key source of intelligence, via Israeli intelligence, about Iran's nuclear program.

What's at issue here? Whether these alleged Feith office back channels were not just about intelligence gathering [which would be problematic in and of itself], but if they had aspirations to be operational.