Mound City

Laura Rozen has an article at the American Prospect's website describing her investigation into the soon-to-be-released book by Rep. Curt Weldon, Countdown to Terror. Weldon seems to have recently read the book Charlie Wilson's War (about Rep. Wilson's (D-TX) efforts to lead a covert war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan) and thought he to could run his own freelance intelligence work. The problem is, Weldon's source has already been discredited and U.S. intelligence has been diverted by his efforts.

Weldon apparently thought he could gain some political play out of being the Congressman with the secret Iranian source and would be the one to expose Iranian-backed efforts against the U.S. Too bad the CIA already issued a burn notice on his source, the Iran-Contra arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar, and the information he did have was quickly and thoroughly discredited.

Weldon was on Meet the Press this morning, but I unfortunately missed it. Doubtless he will get some political traction from this, but hopefully his efforts will be exposed for the bungling they are

- Murphy