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Able Danger is merely the most recent in a litany of controversial allegations championed by Rep. Curt Weldon (R., Pa.).
Last year, in a book called Countdown to Terror, Weldon detailed the revelations of an Iranian exile code-named 'Ali' who, among other things, described a plot to crash planes into a U.S. nuclear reactor. In the mid-1990s, Weldon made headlines with charges that missing 'suitcase-sized' nuclear weapons produced in the former Soviet Union had been secretly buried throughout the United States during the Cold War.
Neither allegation has ultimately been confirmed.
n an interview last week, Weldon delivered this news from Ali: 'Ali's told me that Osama bin Laden is dead. He died in Iran.' (emphasis added) Weldon said he last spoke to Ali three weeks ago.
In 2003, Weldon's belief that bin Laden was being harbored in Iran drove the congressman to contact then-CIA Director George J. Tenet with information provided by Ali. CIA officials discredited Ali, whom they identified as Fereidoun Mahdavi, an exile living in Paris, because he was a close associate of fellow exile Manucher Ghorbanifar, a discredited arms dealer involved in the 1980s Iran-contra scandal.
