Curt Weldon: The Troublemaker

Ali’s predictions
Time and again, Ali's epistolary warnings have proved prescient, Weldon contended. But at the behest of then-CIA Director George Tenet, the Paris station chief met with Ali, who's in exile there. That official found Ali's information not only incredible but also dangerously tainted.

In April 2005, four months after Weldon said he told the new CIA director, Porter Goss, about his publishing plans, The American Prospect sternly debunked Ali's credibility. The publication revealed his real name, Fereidoun Mahdavi, and identified him as a "close friend and business partner" of a notorious character from the annals of U.S. intelligence -- Manucher Ghorbanifar, an arms dealer and a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal, the Reagan administration's clandestine arms-for-hostages operation. Years ago, the CIA issued a "burn notice" on Ghorbanifar, forbidding employees to deal with him and warning that he peddled false intelligence in pursuit of his own interests.

The Prospect contacted Mahdavi, who gave confusing statements about his dealings with Weldon. He said that all of the information he passed along came from Ghorbanifar. Mahdavi also claimed that he was well known in Iran -- and therefore a target -- so he couldn't possibly contact anyone there directly and expect to avoid detection. Here was the secret source who had penned certain, dire warnings to Weldon, downplaying his own credibility and tying himself to a man whom the CIA called a fabricator.

Bill Murray, who met with Mahdavi several times when Murray was the CIA's Paris station chief, was incensed by Weldon's claims. "Mahdavi works for Ghorbanifar," whom the CIA still considered verboten, Murray told The Prospect. "The two are inseparable. Ghorbanifar put Mahdavi out to meet with Weldon.... [Mahdavi] never said a single thing that you could look back later and he said it would happen and it did happen." Murray said that Weldon's claims ultimately drove agents to distraction. "Virtually everything Ghorbanifar and his people come up with diverts us. I have hardworking people working for me, and they don't have time for this bullshit."

Weldon hasn't abandoned Ali. "The CIA never offered me a good reason why Ali should be ignored," he wrote in his book. "And because the agency would not do its job, I was obligated to do it." Some of Ali's predictions have proved accurate, such as those about Iran meddling in Iraq or its pursuing closer ties with North Korea. But, critics contend, anyone paying close attention to several newspapers will score an accurate intelligence hit now and then. Ali's boldest claims, particularly about Iran's control of a vast terrorism enterprise, have yet to pan out.

Weldon continues to insist that "everything" Ali predicted has come true. He said so to the Israeli ambassador, Daniel Ayalon, when the two met in Weldon's office in April. The ambassador called Weldon's book "visionary." Then the two discussed Iran's nuclear ambitions with the Israeli military attache, who also attended. Weldon predicted that Iran would have a nuclear weapon in two years. "We say less," the attache replied. Most weapons experts, as well as the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies, believe that Iran's weapons program is at least five years from maturity and probably more, given the difficulty Iran has had producing the necessary materials for a bomb.

In the CIA's vociferous rejection of "Countdown to Terror," Weldon sees an old game. He notes that the Prospect article appeared about two months before the book's publication, suggesting that the CIA launched a pre-emptive attack and sought a liberal magazine that would print the counterclaims. "In the end, the intelligence agencies are the most powerful agencies in this city," Weldon said. "And if you take them on, you don't know where it's going to come from."

"Curt's not an illogical guy," said a former CIA official who knows Weldon and has socialized with him. "But he'll listen to anyone who walks in the door. Whether they're right or wrong, he basically tees off of them, chapter and verse."

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