For the Record: Jeet Heer and my article which for the first time revealed the identity of former Rep. Curt Weldon's Iranian intelligence source "Ali" (see "The Front," The American Prospect, April 2005, link: http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=9361) as Fereidoun Mahdavi was reported entirely based on good, old-fashioned gumshoe reporting, nabbing an interview with Ghorbanifar, working Iranian exile sources -- and not even a whisper from any current or former CIA officers. Ghorbanifar himself originally told me in a telephone interview in August 2004 when I was working on a different story that he was talking and meeting with Weldon and Weldon's aide, former CIA analyst Peter Pry (he said this to prove his bona fides as if it was a rationale for why the CIA should again take him as an asset); he said I should call Weldon to ask him about it and that I should mention the name "Mahdavi." Later, in December 2004, I read a New York Sun article that said Weldon planned to write a book based on sensationalistic information he got from a secret Iranian intelligence source. As the New York Sun reported in December 2004, based on talking with Weldon (four months before Jeet and my article appeared):

Since February 2003, Rep. Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania has held a series of secret meetings in Paris with a former high-ranking official in the Shah's government who has correctly predicted, according to Mr. Weldon, a number of internal developments in Iran ranging from the regime's atomic weapons programs to its support for international terrorism, including Al Qaeda.

In other words, Weldon gave important clues away from the get-go, and I already knew from Ghorbanifar that Weldon had been meeting with him and a Ghorbanifar cut-out in Paris going by the name of Mahdavi. Based on Weldon's interview with the Sun, what Ghorbanifar had told me in the phone interview back in August 2004, and conversations with Iranians, I quickly determined that the former Shah-era Iranian government official was probably Fereidoun Mahdavi, the Shah-era Iranian Minister of Commerce, known to be a long time associate of Ghorbanifar. I then went to Paris in January 2005, where I spoke with Mahdavi, who told me he had met and talked to Weldon. "Ali" identified. As I have reported, Mahdavi also said that all of the information he had given to Weldon was from Ghorbanifar because, Mahdavi said, as a former Shah-era official, he was such an important personnage that he could not even call Iran. I went home and Jeet and I wrote the story, which came out in the April 2005 American Prospect.

I have since heard Weldon repeatedly accuse a former CIA officer of leaking me the information on the identity of Weldon's source. That is patently false. I had not even heard of this CIA officer when I worked on my story, indeed was not aware of his existence until weeks after our story was published, when I picked up the NY Times and Washington Post in late May 2005 that had articles about Weldon's new book. Ghorbanifar, Weldon and Mahdavi themselves gave away all the information to determine who Weldon's source was, and what the real source of the information was: Ghorbanifar, a subject of two CIA burn notices from the Iran contra period according to the history books. Whether future history books show that Ghorbanifar managed to rope the US government into buying his fables and fabrications again after all we know about him is still to be determined.

By the way, as one sign of the former congressman's character, I was the person who informed Mahdavi that Weldon was coming out with a book based on his information. I faxed him the Amazon notice. Mahdavi was truly shocked, angry and in disbelief when he learned. When he finally saw a copy of the book, he expressed further shock to see his own handwriting in the faxes Weldon's book reproduces by the dozens. (Weldon later told Mahdavi the book didn't make enough money for him to pay him, as he promised on Meet the Press last year). Weldon's desire to protect his source was overtaken it seems by his greater desire to promote himself.

Posted by Laura at November 11, 2006 09:53 AM