Michael Ledeen’s Long Shadow

From Iran-Contra to Flynnworld — and the bipartisan web few understand

A Death That Demands a Debrief

Michael Ledeen died May 18 at 83 years old. The D.C. press ran obits honoring a "noted neoconservative thinker.” Ledeen was a highly effective and influential person, but they missed the one idea that powered his whole career: how to run real ops without ever holding real office. Ledeen didn’t chase titles, he operated in the background. He built pipelines. He shaped narratives from the edge, handed them off to power players, and watched them work.

Michael Ledeen

Now that he’s passed, it’s a good time to reflect on this figure who had much influence over the last 50 years of Republican politics.

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Rome, Spooks, and the Setup for Iran-Contra

Ledeen’s story doesn’t start in D.C. It starts in Rome in the 1970s, where he worked closely with SISMI — Italy’s military-intelligence agency — and worked joint operations with Mossad. From there, he became a trusted conduit to shuttle Israeli policy pitches straight into Reagan’s National Security Council.

In 1985, Reagan’s National Security Adviser sent Ledeen to Jerusalem. That meeting triggered what the Tower Commission later called “An Opening to Iran.” The opening became a pipeline — Israeli-owned missiles, Iranian buyers, U.S. deniability. Yes, it’s all very confusing.

Ledeen didn’t invent Iran-Contra, and he wasn’t directly involved in the arms running for profit that occurred when Oliver North took the reins. He just made it possible.

Michael Ledeen in 1987, at the time of Iran-Contra.

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Information Warfare: Ledeen’s WMD Legacy

Jump to late 2001. After years of public statements calling a war with Iraq a "desperately needed and long overdue war against Saddam Hussein," Ledeen hosts a Rome meeting between Pentagon higher ups and Italian intelligence operatives. Not long after, forged documents surface claiming Saddam wanted uranium from Africa. You know the line: “The British government has learned…” The psyop landed in Bush’s 2003 State of the Union.

Philip Geraldi, a former CIA officer, told The American Conservative that the forgeries were produced by “ex-CIA officers associated with a certain well-known neocon with close connections to Italy”—and confirmed the name Ledeen when pressed.

Ledeen denied it. Regardless of whether he, himself faked the docs, what is clear: he sold the war like his life depended on it. He said there was “a dire need to invade Iraq.”

That war killed about 4,600 Americans.

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Flynnworld: Ideologue, Ghostwriter, Co-Conspirator

Ledeen didn’t fade after Iraq. He evolved.

In 2014, he teamed up with Michael Flynn — freshly dumped by DIA — and helped craft the Iran-obsessed worldview that would define Flynn’s second act. In 2016, Ledeen wrote The Field of Fight, slapped Flynn’s name on it, and made him a Fox News fixture.

After Trump’s win, Flynn prepped for his infamous Kislyak call with “Barbara Ledeen’s spouse” — that’s Michael again — at his side. The same guy who once sowed the seeds for arms deals with Tehran now coaching Trump’s National Security Adviser on what to say to Moscow in a series of calls that derailed Trump’s first administration from the start. Flynn was fired after 24 days.

Is it a coincidence, or a pattern?

Obama’s Intel guys: Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Flynn in 2014.

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Ezra Cohen-Watnick: Protégé in Power

Ezra Cohen-Watnick

Among Flynn’s first NSC appointments? Ezra Cohen-Watnick. Just 30 years old, no major credentials. But he was tight with the Ledeens and had trained with joint U.S.–Israeli intel programs. When The Atlantic tried to ask Ledeen about Ezra, he cut them off: “I won’t talk to any journalist about Ezra.”

Why so touchy?

Because Ezra wasn’t just a hire. He was a handoff. Even after Flynn’s firing, Ezra, who is also alleged to have close ties to Mossad, survived multiple purges and ended up back at DoD — this time working alongside Simone Ledeen, Michael’s daughter.

Family business.

Flynn’s takeover of the Q influencer movement, as described in my last two podcasts with Jeff and Shannon from the MG Show, led to an interesting side-op: promoting the theory that Watnick was Q.

That’s an interesting one to ponder.

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The Mark Zaid Bridge

The web gets stranger.

Ledeen’s wife Barbara admitted on Facebook that she and Michael were friends with, and have for years attended synagogue with, Mark Zaid — the national security attorney who repped the Ukraine whistleblower and once bragged on Twitter about getting clearances for men caught with child porn. Zaid called the Ledeens “long-time friends.” He’s also clashed with Flynn in court.

Doesn’t matter. This isn’t about partisan lines. It’s about who can still pull strings when it counts.

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7. The 2019 Warning Nobody Took

Jake Hoffman sitting with President Trump in the West Wing on October 30, 2019, on the day Staci Burk called Hoffman to warn Trump of Flynn’s ties to Mark Zaid.

Arizona whistleblower Staci Burk says she warned state Rep. Jake Hoffman about Flynn’s ties to Zaid on October 30, 2019 — while he was in the White House. She was told the message got to Trump. Part of her concern was the following 2016 Facebook post by Zaid, which later proved to be an accurate outline of Flynn’s ops within state GOPs, as it called to “fracture” the party, split off the far right to form its own party, and ultimately replace the GOP with a new, “national security” party.

Two weeks after she made that call, Staci says she was physically approached and followed by a stranger outside of her doctor’s office, who said he just needed to get a picture of her VIN number. Around the same time, two men with suspicious ties began “love bombing” her on Facebook and developed friendships with her.

One of the men was a shadow figure on the left, friends with Alex Soros and a member of Bohemian Grove.

The other, Dan Minnick, longtime friend of Tim Ballard and Ray Epps, who roped Staci into the whole Korean Air plane full of ballots thing. That later led to her being allegedly kidnapped in her own home for nearly 4 months by First Amendment Praetorian (1AP), Flynn’s private security militia comprised mostly of former Erik Prince Blackwater guys. There were serious threats on her life, profound psychological trauma, multiple escape attempts, and even car chases.

All consequences of trying to inform the President of these connections.

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Why It Still Matters

Flynn’s still here, angling for power.

Cohen-Watnick? He’s still itching for intel roles.

Zaid? Trump stripped him of his security clearances, but he’s still perched at the choke-point of deep state lawfare.

And the ideas Ledeen helped mainstream — creative destruction, narrative warfare, cloak-and-dagger diplomacy — they didn’t die with him.

Michael Ledeen is gone. The machine he was involved in is stronger than ever.