Response: Bamford's Report on Selling War in Iran

James Bamford responds: I have to say, Michael Ledeen brews an excellent cup of Italian espresso -- I wouldn't dream of adding anything to it. When the situation requires, he can also be very good at modesty. He portrays himself as a powerless, misunderstood peacenik who is shocked, shocked that anyone suspect that he would countenance a military solution in Iran. He insists he has "no access to this administration." But as the Washington Post has documented, Ledeen is among Karl Rove's high level "network of advisers." Ledeen once boasted to the reporters that Rove told him, "Anytime you have a good idea, tell me." And, according to the Post, he frequently does: "Every month or six weeks, Ledeen will offer Rove 'something you should be thinking about.' More than once, Ledeen has seen his ideas, faxed to Rove, become official policy or rhetoric."

Ledeen also claims that he has "consistently opposed military invasion" of Iran and Syria. But he certainly makes no bones about his distain for diplomacy. "All this diplotalk about snuggling up to the Syrians makes me sick," he wrote in July. "Down with Assad. Down with Khamene'I." And he frequently uses "take-no-prisoners" language when referring to Tehran and Damascus. "I would insist that my soldiers have the right of 'hot pursuit' into Iran and Syria," he wrote last month, "and I would order my armed forces to attack the terrorist training camps in those countries." In his book The War Against the Terror Masters, he refers to "our enemies" and says, "we must destroy them to advance our historic mission." Sounds like war talk to me.

With so little to challenge in the article, Ledeen spends much of his time defending himself against things of which I didn't accuse him, such as being employed by the Pentagon, and arguing over how many times he's been interviewed. I wrote that Feith brought him into his "cabal," which he certainly did by sending him off to Rome on a secret mission with several people from his Office of Special Plans. And I have yet to find an interview in which Ledeen extensively discusses his role in the Rome meeting. The interview he cited in Raw Story was simply an exchange of several e-mails in which he talks about a recent vacation to Italy, adding, "I did not 'go to Rome.' "

Finally, Ledeen is still in denial about his friend Ghorbanifar who, he says, "looks more reliable today." Despite the fact that my last book, A Pretext for War, was endlessly critical of the CIA, he says I have "swallowed the Company's bait en toto" about Ghorbanifar. In fact, it was Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon that said nothing came of the information Ghorbanifar gave at the Rome meeting.

All of this could be looked at as simply a silly sideshow were it not for the fact that the last time this circus came to town, we ended up in a deadly blood-drenched quagmire in Iraq. In the next war I think we should leave the troops home and send in the clowns.

Share your thoughts here and read " The Next War," James Bamford's report on the Bush administration's secret plans to sell a new war -- with Iran (from the August 10, 2006 issue of Rolling Stone).