WASHINGTON — Pentagon officials met over a three-day period in late 2001 with a long-discredited Iranian who was a middleman in the Iran-Contra scandal, Defense Department officials said Friday.
Manucher Ghorbanifar sat in on a series of meetings in Europe between two defense officials and two other Iranians who the Bush administration had been told had information useful to the United States in its then-fledgling global war on terrorism, a senior defense official said on condition of anonymity. The meetings occurred not long after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he said.
One of those two defense officials in the 2001 meetings also had another chance contact in 2003 with Ghorbanifar, the Pentagon source said late Friday. The 2003 meeting was unplanned and unscheduled, the source said.
Earlier Friday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said at President Bush's Texas ranch that Pentagon officials met more than a year ago with Ghorbanifar and referred to it as a single meeting.
Standing at Rumsfeld's side, Bush said, "We support the aspirations of those who desire freedom in Iran" when he was asked if the meeting with Ghorbanifar was a good idea and if his administration wants a regime change in Iran.
Another senior Pentagon official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Defense Department participants in the 2001 meetings were two people from the office of Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith.
The two Pentagon officials who met with Ghorbanifar were Harold Rhode and Larry Franklin. Franklin was on loan to Feith's office from the Defense Intelligence Agency, said the official. Feith is the Pentagon's undersecretary for policy.
The official who spoke later Friday said Ghorbanifar didn't arrange the meetings, nor was he the one believed to have information to offer. He didn't explain how Ghorbanifar got involved and why he sat in on the meetings.
Rumsfeld's comments followed disclosure of the Ghorbanifar contact in the newspaper Newsday.
"One or two Pentagon people were approached by some people who had information about Iranians that wanted to provide information to the United States government," said Rumsfeld.
Ghorbanifar, according to congressional testimony 15 years ago, was among those suggesting that profits from the Reagan White House's secret arms-for-hostages deals with Iran be funneled into covert arms shipments to U.S.-backed Contra rebels fighting the leftist government of Nicaragua.
Subsequent public exposure of the two operations that the Reagan administration had concealed from Congress gave rise to the scandal that scarred the last two years of Reagan's presidency.
Known to the CIA even before the Iran-Contra scandal as someone to avoid, Ghorbanifar in the 1980s failed two lie detector tests for the spy agency, which issued a "burn notice" to other agencies advising that the U.S. government should have nothing to do with him.
"Ghorbanifar is clearly a fabricator and wheeler-dealer who has undertaken activities prejudicial to U.S. interests," stated a CIA report that surfaced in congressional hearings into the Iran-Contra scandal in 1987.
Despite the CIA report, Ghorbanifar, an exiled Iranian businessman, managed to attend meeting with Reagan's aides about arms deals, playing on U.S. desires to free American hostages held by terrorists in Lebanon.
When asked to explain the Pentagon's contact with Ghorbanifar, Rumsfeld said that "people come in offering suggestions or information or possible contacts, and sometimes they're pursued."
"A meeting did take place, and the information was moved around the interagency process to all the departments and agencies," said the defense secretary. "There wasn't anything there that was of substance or of value that needed to be pursued further."
Rumsfeld said it was "absolutely not" the case that the meeting with Ghorbanifar was intended to be part of any other ongoing, unofficial talks with Iranians.
The Bush administration's posture toward Iran has become increasingly strident since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
After Iran's pro-reform president was re-elected in the summer of 2001, some Iranians had predicted Tehran would push for improved relations with the United States, but Iran's supreme leader ruled out any Iranian help for a U.S.-led attack on Afghanistan.
Iran, however, condemned the Sept. 11 attacks and assured U.S. officials through Swiss intermediaries it would try to rescue any American military personnel it found in distress on its territory.
In his State of the Union speech on Jan. 29, 2002, President Bush characterized Iran as being part of an axis of evil. Since then administration officials have repeatedly denounced what they characterize as Iran's expanded support of regional terrorist groups and its program to develop nuclear weapons. Iran says its nuclear program is solely to produce electricity.
Contributing: Pauline Jelinek.