"Manucher Ghorbanifar" was an Iranian fabricator who lived in Paris and fed bogus information to western intelligence agencies. He is suspected to have been directed by Iranian intelligence to provide disinformation to western intelligence agencies. He provided false information to the U.S. National Security Council with regard to the Iran-Contra arms for hostages process. Despite being labelled a fabricator by the CIA due to his role in the Iran-Contra Affair, he again peddled fabrications to the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency during the build up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq in the War on Terrorism at a meeting in Rome in December 2001 with representatives from the Undersecretary of Defense's office and a related follow-up meeting in June 2003. He approached the DoD officials specifically stating that he did not want to deal with the CIA. Later investigations revealed that policy officials from the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense circumvented the CIA and collected and used fabricated intelligence in the build up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Senator Rockafeller, representing the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, stated that "clandestine meetings between DOD policy officials and Iranians in Rome and Paris in 2001 and 2003... were facilitated by Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian exile and intelligence fabricator. ... Pentagon policy officials ... undertook the collection of sensitive intelligence. ... It was a rogue operation."