Not exactly my area of expertise, but I would imagine that the CIA is routinely forced to rely on shady characters for information, and that if the CIA were never to talk to shady characters its knowledge would be less and not more.  Not that I’m defending Weldon, mind you.

The intel looks bad because it is compared with the intel we had on the USSR.  The intel from the USSR was good because there were so many people in high ranking positions that were willing to supply the CIA with information.  This occurred because anybody with any analytical abilities could see that Communism as practiced in the USSR was a loser economy.  No mater how many five year plans they came up with they could not compete against the performance of free markets, and it was obvious to anyone who cared to notice.
Those operatives the CIA turned did so less for the money than as a patriotic gesture to rid their country of a form of government that they viewed as a crippling failure.  U.S. turncoats did it strictly for the money. One of the great tragedies of the Cold War was the loss of these men because of traitors in this country gave their names to their Russian controllers.
And there in lies the rub in regards to developing informants in the Middle East.  To turn against any faction of Islam is to turn against Allah.  If by chance or design the U.S. was able to kill Osama bin Laden, stand by for a great morning in all of the Middle East -- even in the most U.S. friendly sections of Iraq -- because he is viewed rightly or wrongly as a great if misguided man of Islamic faith. 
However, if Muslims come to recognize that the more radical elements of Islam are totally devoid of any faith, and come to believe that radical Islam is exploiting faith in Allah to their own selfish ends, the potential to obtain meaningful intel would be greatly improved.
What kind of religion sends children to die?  What kind of religion promises young boys a host of virgins after they blow up themselves and anyone around them?  This kind of attitude and the teaching of hate will one day come back to haunt Islam.  When individual Muslims realize that they need to clean their own house before they worry about what is going on elsewhere in the world, the CIA may find the operatives and information they need.  

I saw a piece in the times about Weldon and his book which lambasts the CIA and pushes a Curveball -esque intelligence source and I nearly burst a blood vessel.  This is Weldon finding specious intelligence, that validates and rationalizes his beliefs, coming from someone creating the intelligence in order to validate and rationalize their political agenda.  Probably. 

In any event, Weldon is irresponsible for advocating in print that the CIA accept this intelligence which they have already deemed not credible.  Did he learn nothing from the Iraq intelligence fiasco, or did that turn out just fine for him since its not the truth that matters but him getting what he wants.

I wouldn't say this a positive development by any means, but out of all the Republicans in the Congress, Weldon is probably the best possible choice to have as spokesman for the bomb Iran crowd if one wants that option totally discredited (the fact that it's Regenery publishing the book helps too).  First of all, Weldon's well known to be quiet erratic to say the least on foreign policy and confrontation with rogue states, as this Crowley piece in The New Republic from 2 years ago makes clear.  Weldon's dialogued with Milosevic, with Belarus's dictator, and has angered the administration with his freelance, war averse North Korea diplomacy (great anecdote in the article, he mentions doing shots with NK diplomats he talked with).  His dovish attitude on the Koreans doesn't seem to jibe with his Iran hawkishness, because TNR has him saying "<span class="articlecontent">the source that I'm working with in Paris," who claims Iran has sent teams to North Korea to buy nuclear weapons, possibly with $1 billion already deposited in a Shanghai bank."  If he really believe that, why would he risk political capital and influence in the administration to try and work out a 1994-style deal with the Koreans?</span&gt  

Furthermore, Weldon was in Iraq last week with Biden, and though this WaPo article has him admonishing the president to pay attention to fighters streaming in from Iran and Syria, he did get in a shot at Rumsfeld, saying "he and others are misleading Americans about the number of functional Iraqi troops...We don't want to raise the expectations of the American people prematurely."  

So he's dovish on Korea, bearish on Iraq, and hawkish on Iran.  What's the constituency, within the administration or in DC for a position like that?  Is there a single consistent, possibly feasible policy that corresponds to all three, or is Weldon simply a very high profile crank who veers from one self-flattering foreign encounter to another?  

While only a fool would look to explain White House and GOP congressional policy with a purely rational eye, it's not clear that Weldon's nuttiness corresponds with that of the people who actually make our Iran policy.  And he certainly doesn't have the liberal-hawk cred of someone like Ken Pollack.  HavingWeldon out in front on this issue may end up being, in the context of a totally fubar'd foreign policy, a good thing. 

The article's subhead is that "once again" his fabrications are brought to the CIA.  This implies that Rozen believes that some of the material in the book are fabrications.

Ghorbanifar is not the author of the book, of course.  Some of Mahdavi's material came from him.  How much?  She states that "the bulk" came from Ghorbanifar, although Mahdavi himself only is quoted as saying that Ghorbanifar provided to Mahdavi "many information [sic]."

So, we have a book that prints materials given by Mahdavi, some of which he obtained from Ghorbanifar.  Ghorbanifar has fabricated in the past.  From this we are to infer that the material in the book is fabricated?  Sorry, but that evidence is pretty light.

I don't say I believe the book, but you need more than that to convince me that it is not even worthy of being considered.