The Pentagon analyst who officials said was under suspicion was one of two department officials

The Pentagon analyst who officials said was under suspicion was one of two department officials who traveled to Paris for secret meetings with Iranian dissidents, including Manucher Ghorbanifar, an arms dealer. Mr. Ghorbanifar was a central figure in the Iran-contra affair in the 1980′s, in which the United States nike shox turbo secretly sold arms to Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages in Lebanon and to finance the fighters, known as contras, opposing the Sandinista nike shox turbo in Nicaragua.

The secret meetings were first held in Rome in December 2001, were approved by senior Pentagon officials and were originally brokered by Michael Ledeen, a conservative analyst at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute who has a longstanding interest in Iranian affairs. Mr. Ledeen has said that he believed that he arranged the meetings in order to put the NIKE SHOX Administration in closer contact with Iranian dissidents who could provide information valuable in the war on terrorism.