Ney – Iran Gone Missing

It is nothing short of amazing that the guilty plea of Congressman Robert Ney of Ohio has A) created such a little splash, and B) has not been connected to wider issues in the health of the nation. Witness this little paragraph in the Justice Department release on his plea:

In his plea agreement, Ney also admitted to charges that he had accepted thousands of dollars worth of gambling chips from a foreign businessman. According to the documents filed today in court, in February 2003 and again in August 2003, Ney made two trips to London, during each of which he and members of his staff met with a foreign businessman who was hoping to sell U.S.-made airplanes and airplane parts in a foreign country.

via TPM Muckraker

Who is this foreign business man and what is the foreign country? Both are well known — though here unnamed, and elsewhere little talked about.

The man is a Syrian national known as “The Fat Man” a habituee of London gambling parlours, and a partner in FN Aviation of Cyprus — which wanted to get some deals done with the “foreign country,” Iran. Not only that, but two bottom feeders from Harriet Meyers Texas law firm are involved, and Wait! There’s More! You can read more about these fine fellows and their relation to Mr. Ney here and here.

Ney himself was a Persian speaker (of unknown fluency), having spent some time in Iran as an ESL teacher.

Wayne Madsen, always rich with hidden tunnels and unexpected connections, sees a very bizarre scheme afoot in which Ney is privy to damaging information about arms smuggling and the vice president.

In reality, Gonzales’ prosecutors are more interested in how much Ney discovered about links between top GOP and White House officials and the arms smuggling business involving Iran, Iraq, and the Zayat, Abdul Qadeer (AQ) Khan, and other shady networks connected to neocon and Russian-Israeli Mafia activities. By finding out what Ney knows, Cheney and his neocon provocateurs will be able to neutralize any embarrassing information on their proliferation activities prior to the November 7 election.

I can seldom follow Madsen’s prose, much less his conceptual lattice, but here’s a link if you want to give it a try. Scroll down to Sep. 17-18, 2006 — SPECIAL REPORT. Madsen doesn’t use “hot links” like the rest of the blogging world.

So, while I am dubious of Madsen’s claims it sure seems that Mr Ney’s connections with arms dealers and Iran, not to mention putative former CIA connections, would be worth a long hard look. Toledo Blade, where are you? [This is the only article on Ney that turns up in a search on their web site.]