Death of a Master Manipulator

Michael Ledeen played a key role in making the phony case for the invasion of Iraq—and other damaging skullduggery.

Micheel Ledeen (2018, Formiche.net)

Michael Ledeen, the controversial national security journalist, scholar and schemer who died at age 83 on May 17 from complications following a stroke, played a significant covert role leading up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, as well as other productions of false intelligence for political ends.

Ledeen was featured prominently in The Italian Letter, a 2007 book by SpyTalk Contributing Editor Peter Eisner and Knut Royce, a Pulitzer Prize-winning  investigative reporter at Newsday. Obituaries published this week gave scant attention to the key role Ledeen played in fabricating intelligence to justify the eventually disastrous military campaign to oust Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from power. The main goal of toppling the regime was achieved but the succeeding occupation, at a cost of an estimated $2 trillion, has been judged a military and diplomatic disaster resulting in 37,000 U.S. casualties, at least 200,000 and possibly a million Iraqi civilians dead due to war-related action, and the creation of a virtual Iranian client state in Baghdad. 

It was hardly Ledeen’s first foray into skullduggery. In 1980, according to an investigation five years later by the Wall Street Journal, he was involved in a “disinformation campaign” to discredit President Jimmy Carter’s brother Billy to the benefit of Republican candidate Ronald Reagan. He also published discredited theories that Soviet Bulgaria was behind the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II.  "With Ronald Reagan newly installed in the White House,” journalist Craig Unger wrote in Vanity Fair, “the so-called Bulgarian Connection made perfect Cold War propaganda. Michael Ledeen was one of its most vocal proponents, promoting it on TV and in newspapers all over the world."

Ledeen’s role in the Iraq tragedy is a case study of the manipulation of secret—and blatantly dishonest—intelligence relationships for political aims.

The Italian Letter found that Ledeen, a behind-the-scenes, unofficial envoy of the George W. Bush administration, was deeply involved with Italian military intelligence, which in turn created a forged letter falsely claiming that Hussein had purchased yellow cake—lightly processed uranium—from Niger to build nuclear weapons. President Bush then used that forged information to declare, in his 2003 State of the Union message, that, “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

This is a largely hidden but important chapter in the secret history of America that deserves more attention before time further clouds the facts. A lightly edited excerpt from The Italian Letter follows here:

In October 2002, Carlo Rossella, editor of the influential Italian news magazine Panorama, brought aboard Michael Arthur Ledeen, a prominent, controversial American neoconservative, as a columnist. Ledeen, who had longtime CIA contacts, had been allegedly involved in Italian intelligence operations for decades.

Panorama published a question and answer interview with Ledeen in the October 3, 2002 edition of the magazine. The occasion was the publication of Ledeen’s book, “The War Against the Terror Masters.” In the interview … Ledeen echoed administration pablum about Iraq and the ‘Axis of Evil,’ first declared by Bush in his January 29, 2002 State of the Union address. Ledeen said that US intervention was necessary in Iraq but only as part of a “war of liberation” to “free the Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian and Saudi populations from the tyrants” that rule them.

Ledeen advocated US intervention in Iraq and elsewhere. He said: “This intervention is necessary. But  my opinion is that it would be more effective to start with Iran, because that is the easiest country to liberate. There would be not even a need for military intervention: our best weapon is the Iranians themselves, who hate the regime and who are prepared to face great risks to overthrow their tyrants.”

Panorama published at least eighteen commentaries by Ledeen in 2002 and 2003 after that. His columns also appeared regularly in the conservative National Review in the United States.

Ledeen also was a fellow at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, were he was an associate of James Woolsey, the former CIA director, as well as of other high-octane defense and intelligence veterans who supported and encouraged the Bush administration’s drive in Iraq. Twenty years earlier, Ledeen had worked with the Iran-Contra team that set up its “off the shelf” policy to support Nicaragua’s right-wing contra rebels, while participating in secret negotiations with Iran.

Because of his historical ties to Italy’s power structure and to the Italian intelligence services, Ledeen was later mentioned by many conspiracy buffs as someone who might have had a hand in the Italian letter’s evolution from forgery to intelligence. Ledeen denied any involvement and no evidence was uncovered suggesting otherwise. “I was the target of lies,” he said. “If you feel obliged to repeat those lies, then you will be putting yourself in the same category,” he added, with obvious indignation.

Rumors of Ledeen’s involvement in the Niger uranium forgeries were fanned by disclosure in August 2003 that with the assistance of SISMI [Italian military intelligence] he had arranged for a hush-hush meeting involving Pentagon officials, alleged Iranian intelligence agents and a noted Iranian fabricator, Manucher Ghorbanifar.

Despite his murky past, Ledeen continued to maintain high-level contacts in the White House, including with the president’s top political adviser, Karl Rove. David Kay, who led the CIA-directed post-invasion WMD search team, the Iraq Survey Group, discovered that another of Ledeen’s contacts was Vice President Cheney. At one point during the futile search for Saddam’s weapons Kay received a cable from the CIA telling him that Cheney wanted him to send someone to Switzerland to meet with Ghorbanifar. The never-say-die Iranian con man had a source who, for a mere $2 million (paid in advance), would provide intelligence on Iraq’s nuclear weapons. Kay cabled back to the CIA saying he would not meet with the “known fabricator-peddler” unless ordered to do so. The orders never came. Kay subsequently “discovered the latest Ghorbanifar stunt involved Michael Ledeen.”

“Everyone tells me Michael Ledeen is not a stupid person,” said Bill Murray, former CIA chief of station in Paris, where Ghorbanifar lives. “Then why does he persist in this (fronting for Ghorbanifar)?”

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The phony intelligence proved instrumental in creating a case for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. But to the end, Ledeen denied any role in the Italian machinations. 

In 2016, Ledeen co-authored a book, The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies, with retired Gen. Michael T. Flynn, who would serve a brief and controversial term as national security adviser in President Donald Trump’s first term in office. In that book, he and Flynn said Iran, not Iraq should have been the principal military target in stopping the threat of international terrorism. Flynn was convicted on charges of lying to the FBI but later pardoned by Trump.