AlterNet: The Front: "For well over two decades now, dreamers and schemers who hope to overthrow the mullahs have been lurking along the banks of the Seine, passing secrets and lies through proxies, back channels, and middlemen. Among the Persian plotters marooned in the French capital is a former minister of commerce in the shah's government, who has recently acquired the code name of 'Ali.'

To the influential U.S. congressman who bestowed that somewhat unoriginal alias on him, the elderly bureaucrat is actually an oracle who passes along invaluable intelligence about terrorist conspiracies emanating from Tehran, and an important asset who should be cultivated by the CIA.

Yet 'Ali' is actually a cipher for Manucher Ghorbanifar, the notorious Iranian arms dealer and accused intelligence fabricator – and the potential instrument of another potentially dangerous manipulation of American policy in the Persian Gulf region."

(Via AlterNet.)