Marble Composition

Curt's Gone Fishing

Here's some fun. Congressman Curt Weldon (R-PA) has apparently gotten bored with representing the good citizens of Chester, Montgomery, and Delaware counties in the Keystone State, so he's got a new mission: playing 007 and tracking down Iranian terrorists (stop it, it's not impossible).

The short story goes something like this: Curt's been running around silly meeting with ex-Iranian officials from the Shah's regime, even traveling to France of all places, to ferret out possible Iranian-sponsored terrorist attacks on the U.S. He's found one incident where he claims (oh the humanity!) that his contacts helped stop, yes STOP!, an Iranian based plot to fly an airliner from Canada into the Seabrook nuclear power plant in New Hampshire. It turns out there's a couple problems with Curt's story:

• His Iranian contact is channeling information from a known fabricator; Manoucher Ghorbanifar is the same man who also turns out to be the central figure in U.S./Iranian arms-for-hostages deal that almost brought down the Reagan administration.
  
  
• His contact is being paid by Ghorby (a cute nickname for an arms dealer)
  


• The CIA issued a "burn notice" for Ghorby, meaning that he was not to be trusted, and everything he gave our intelligence agencies was poop.


• Of the 19 men that were arrested in Canada accused of hatching the plot none of them were Iranian, and the government up north never found enough to charge them with anything more than immigration violations.


• The folks that run the Seabrook plant never found the story credible.


• And, guess what? No Iranians ever flew an airliner into anything.
  

Do you think that's going to stop Curt? Perish the thought, he's got a book to peddle! (Countdown to Terror: The Top-Secret Information that Could Prevent the Next Terrorist Attack on America... and How the CIA has Ignored it). And peddle it he did on Meet The Press this past Sunday.

I wonder whether the rust from the lures on Curt's floppy fishing hat have seeped into his brain, or whether his little trenchcoat cloak-and-dagger act are designed to shore up his "I Protect America" bona fides at home. Either way, if I resided in the 7th congressional district in PA, I'd be asking why my Representative was flying to France to meet with an old ex-Shah official who pumps him full of crap so he can hawk a book. As opposed to, well, helping President Bush destroy Social Security here at home. I mean, come on Curt, where are your priorities?

The positive part of this saga is that we have two excellent reporters on this story: Laura Rozen and Jeet Heer. They have all the goods on our new friend Curt. This wrap-up from the American Prospect's website also highlights two articles from Laura and Jeet here, and here. So if you'd like to dig further, have at it.

Before the United States gets Ahmed Chalabi'd again like we did in Iraq, we better make damn sure that any of this so-called "information" coming out of Iran is actually true. Or maybe we can continue with the American fun of being lied to...

posted by FuzzFinger @ 6/14/2005 06:16:00 PM