THE IRAN BRIEF: from today's WASHINGTON NOTE:

... Ledeen is a character, but so are we all in one way or another -- but Ledeen's eccentricities have not precluded him from significant influence in this administration. He has been very close to Douglas Feith, John Bolton, Scooter Libby, and perhaps most importantly -- Vice President Cheney.
I'm not going to report all that Josh Marshall, Laura Rozen, and others have already reported on Ledeen.
Suffice it to say that he has been on the periphery of nearly all the foreign policy scandals of the administration. He is a business partner of Richard Perle's and yet the Washington Post used him as a talking head in defense of Perle during the Conrad Black scandal without mentioning Perle's business relationship with Ledeen. Ledeen set up some key meetings between arms dealer and Iran-Contra ghost Manucher Ghorbanifar and now-indicted Larry Franklin, Douglas Feith, and Harold Rhodes.
There are rumors now -- strong rumors -- of a classified Italian intelligence report that may implicate Michael Ledeen for alleged complicity in either helping to "generate," "legitimate," and "promulgate" forged documents about Iraq's attempts to secure uranium from Niger. There are some good investigative journalists trying to access this report...http://tinyurl.com/9mva2
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