Via Steven D. at BooMan, we find another great investigative work (this one by James Bamford) published in Rolling Stone.When [Manucher] Ghorbanifar called Ledeen in the fall of 2001, he claimed, as he often does, to have explosive intelligence that was vital to U.S. interests. "There are Iranians who have firsthand information about Iranian plans to kill Americans in Afghanistan," he told Ledeen. "Does anyone want to hear about it?"
Ledeen took the information to Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser at the White House. "I know you're going to throw me out of the office," Ledeen told him, "and if I were you I would throw me out of the office too. But I promised that I would give you this option. Ghorbanifar has called me. He said these people are willing to come. Do you want anybody to go and talk to them?"
Hadley was interested. So was Zalmay Khalilzad, then the point man on Near East issues for the National Security Council and now the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad. "I think we have to do this, we have to hear this," Hadley said. Ledeen had the green light: As he puts it, "Every element of the American government knew this was going to happen in advance."Seriously, RS can’t have done more to impress me in the last few months. They’ve (for the most part) stopped putting worthless hacks on the front page of their magazine, they’re giving attention to serious artists again, they’ve stopped giving 5-star ratings to awful albums, their anniversary issue was an amazing piece of work, and most importantly, they’ve published a number of phenomenally-written, hard-hitting investigative reports. They’re doing the work that every major media outlet should be doing, and major kudos to them for it.
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