The story we've all been waiting for is now up, although it reads more like a cliffhanger than the end of the tale. Apparently, there have been a number of meetings with Iranian dissidents going through Michael Ledeen, a known neoconservative nutcase, to a backchannel at the DOD in Doug Feith's office. The backchannel was apparently for the purpose of encouraging Iranian regime change. Although doing that with the help of Ghorbanifar, a known serial liar, made as much sense as trying the same thing in Iraq with Chalabi. The neocons have a problem with judging character.
I've given up hoping that each successive scandal will actually cause a
earthquake, but possibly this one will.
The investigation of Franklin is now shining a bright light on a shadowy struggle within the Bush administration over the direction of U.S. policy toward Iran. In particular, the FBI is looking with renewed interest at an unauthorized back-channel between Iranian dissidents and advisers in Feith's office, which more-senior administration officials first tried in vain to shut down and then later attempted to cover up.
The story doesn't go into great detail about the connection between this and the Israeli spy story which is why I have the feeling there is a lot more coming out- possibly JMM moved ahead of schedule to get this out with the spy story now in play.
Anyway, it sounds as if although this back channel was manned by neocon nutcases, and the DOD or at least Feith's part of it, was probably on board. In other words, this is not just some midlevel manager, the way it's being reported at present. It may be that the Israeli influence was in encouraging the Iranian regime change that this backchannel was about, but as I said, that part of the story is still unclear.
I hope someone with more knowledge of this area can help connect the dots for the rest of us. I have the feeling there is an enormous amount of subtext here that I'm not getting.