So Cheney was wired into the network pushing Ghorbanifar�s information? And went along with Ghorbanifar's demand for $2 million advance payment for his information? Has the Senate Select Intelligence committee followed up on this? A close reading of the above indicates there's not only a CIA cable to Kay conveying the vice president's request that Kay meet with Ghorbanifar, but also Kay�s cable back to the CIA refusing to do so without a direct order from DCI Tenet. That�s a document the committee ought to be interested in getting ahold of.In Iraq, [chief Iraq weapons inspector] David Kay had a call from Scooter Libby.
�The vice president wants to know if you�ve looked at this area,� Libby said. �We have indications -- and here are the geocoordinates -- that something is buried there.�
Kay went to the mapping and imagery experts on his team. They pulled up the satellite and other surveillance photos of the location. It was in the middle of Lebanon.
�That�s where we�re going next,� joked one of the imagery experts.
At another point Kay got a cable from the CIA that the vice president wanted him to send someone to Switzerland to meet with an Iranian named Manucher Ghorbanifar.
�I recognize this one,� Kay said when he saw the cable. �This one I�m not going to do.�
Ghorbanifar had been the Iranian middleman in the Reagan administration�s disastrous secret arms-for-hostages deals in the Iran contra scandal. Though he had been a CIA source in the 1970s, the agency had terminated him in 1983 and the next year issued a formal �burn notice� warning that Ghorbanifar was a �talented fabricator.�
This time, Kay read, Ghorbanifar claimed to have an Iranian source who knew all about Iraqi nuclear weapons, but who wanted $2 million in advance, and who would not talk directly to the U.S., only through Ghorbanifar.
Kay discovered the latest Ghorbanifar stunt involved Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, a former NSC colleague of Oliver North who had been involved with Ghorbanifar in the Iran-contra days.
Kay sent a cable to the CIA saying, �Unless you give me direct instructions to talk to him, I will not have any member of the [Iraq Survey Group] talk to this guy. The guy is a known fabricator-peddler, and it will ruin someone. If the [Director of Central Intelligence] wants to send me direct instructions to do it, I will of course do it. But it�s got to be direct.�
The idea was dropped. Cheney was acting as a kind of super-investigator, trying to ferret out the elusive WMD, Kay concluded�(pp. 259-260).
--Laura Rozen
