Harold Rhode is a specialist on the Middle East who worked at the Office of Net Assessment

Office of Net Assessment

The United States Department of Defense's Office of Net Assessment was created in 1973. The Director of Net Assessment is the principal staff assistant and advisor to the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense on net assessment matters...

, an in-house think tank for the Pentagon

The Pentagon

The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, "the Pentagon" is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.Designed by the American architect...

. Rhode retired in 2010 after 28 years as a Pentagon analyst.

Rhode has a PhD from Columbia in Islamic studies and Middle Eastern history. He speaks Persian

Persian language

Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...

, Hebrew, Arabic and Turkish. Rhode was studying in a university in Iran during the early stages of the revolution that brought Ayatollah Khomeni to power.

Rhode was a subject of a probe conducted by the Senate Intelligence Committee for a U.S. government-authorized meeting he and Larry Franklin

Larry Franklin

Lawrence Anthony Franklin is a former U.S. Air Force Reserve colonel who has pleaded guilty to passing information about U.S. policy towards Iran to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee , the foremost pro-Israel lobbying organization in the U.S, while he was working for the Defense...

 had in Rome in late 2001 with Manucher Ghorbanifar

Manucher Ghorbanifar

Manucher Ghorbanifar is an expatriate Iranian arms dealer. He is best known as a middleman in the Iran-Contra Affair during the Ronald Reagan presidency. He re-emerged in American politics during the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq during the first term of President George W...

, who was part of the Iran-Contra scandal.