Jeet Heer, my colleague and co-writer on the Weldon/"Ali" investigative piece in The American Prospect, sends along this guest post:

How reliable is “Ali”, the deep throat who is supplying Republican congressman Curt Weldon with lurid accounts of Iranian terrorist plots against the United States? As Laura and I have documented, “Ali” is intimately connected with Manoucher Ghorbanifar, an arms dealer with a long history of fabricating information. For that reason alone, the information supplied by Al has to be regarded with suspicion. Why then is Weldon so sure that “Ali” is offering straight goods? Scott Shane writing in the New York Times offers a good explanation:

Mr. Weldon's strongest argument is Ali's report from May 17, 2003, that Iran planned to hijack an airplane in Canada and strike a nuclear reactor in the United States whose name began ‘Sea.’ Mr. Weldon said the plant was later identified as Seabrook Station in New Hampshire. He contended that the August 2003 arrest of 19 Muslim men in Toronto on vague suspicions of terrorism proved the prediction was correct. The congressman said the arrests might have prevented the deaths of ‘hundreds of thousands’ of Americans.

Scott goes on to note, though, that alleged plot against the Seabrook Station is actually much more ambiguous than Weldon’s breathless account:

But Canadian officials later dropped all security-related charges against the men, leaving only routine immigration charges. And Alan Griffith, a spokesman for the Seabrook nuclear plant, said the alleged plot "was never deemed a credible threat" by federal officials.

In fact, this point can be extended further. There is a sharp discrepancy between the vague warnings from “Ali” about “Sea” and the actual legal case against those 19 illegal immigrants. Firstly, those men were all from Pakistan and India, not Iran. Secondly, as with so many other terrorist investigations since 9/11, the case started with large claims by the government and dwindled into a simple case of immigration violation. Those men were in fact simply illegal immigrants, who were enrolled in a fake school. Not nice behavior, perhaps, but not the makings of another 9/11, especially since the fake school had many other students who weren’t from the Islamic world. It was an immigration scam, not a terrorist haven. This November 2003 article from the Toronto Star sums it up well:

But what started out as a sensational terrorism case has devolved into one of simple immigration fraud, with officials now backing away from their initial claim that the men posed a threat to national security.

In sum, even Weldon’s “strongest argument” doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny.

Update: More from former CIA and State Department counterterrorism expert Larry Johnson at the excellent Counterterrorism Blog:

According to Congressman Weldon, Republican from Pennsylvania, the CIA is incompentent because it will not accept as fact the bogus claims of a source who is being spoon fed by a confirmed liar, Manocher Ghobanifar. No doubt that Congressman Weldon is a well meaning American, but he is clearly over his head in dealing with the realities of intelligence.

The conventional wisdom in Washington is that the CIA is rife with buffoons who couldn't find a rogue agent if you stapled one to their forehead. Fortunately this cartoon view of intel is not accurate. Unfortunately the fact that this lie keeps being repeated by the likes of Weldon ends up damaging the morale and effectiveness of the CIA.

Iran represents a threat to the United States. Both Weldon and the CIA agree on that. Unlike Weldon, who is more eager garner headlines than do hard thinking about tough issues, the CIA case officers have put their lives on the line to actually do something about the threat. Unfortunately they cannot talk publicly about their accomplishments. One of my closest friends was involved in a still classified attempt to cold pitch an Iranian intelligence officer who was being targeted by his own government. The Iranians tried to kill him for his effort. The fact is that the CIA has been working diligently behind the scenes and out of the limelight to recruit and manage reliable Iranian intelligence assets. And, best of all, we are having success. Weldon simply lacks the clearances to know what is going on...

Thanks to Stygius for the heads up.

More here, and in the update.

Posted by Laura at June 13, 2005 10:12 AM