There's an incredible parallel between our pattern of interaction with Chalabi and our pattern with Saddam, although on very different levels, and accelerated for the former. In both cases we early on supported them despite international criticism and dubious at best records. We overlooked all kinds od stuff because each served our politcal agenda at the time. Then, when each had served our purposes and were of no further use, we cut them loose. Each experiences a brief period of pseudo-neutrality, and then makes mives which are contrary to our interests. Suddenly in each case we discover the skeletons that had been dancing in the rest of the world's front yards for quite some time, turn on them, and attack. If you think about it, it's an amazingly similar pattern, although Saddam's was played out for decades while Chalabis only took a few years, and the scale of Saddam's actions were on an entirely seperate level fom Chalabi's.
My bad... that was not Chalabi. Here's the caption... Mrs. Bush applauds her special guest, Dr. Adnan Pachachi, President of the Iraqi Governing Council, during President Bush's State of the Union Address at the U.S. Capitol Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2004. "Sir, America stands with you and the Iraqi people as you build a free and peaceful nation," said the President in his acknowledgement of Dr. Pachachi. White House photo by Paul Morse.
This story speaks for itself. America's 'Best Friend' A Spy? May 21, 2004 U.S. troops outside Chalabi's home (Photo: AP) (CBS/AP) Senior U.S. officials have told 60 Minutes Correspondent Lesley Stahl that they have evidence Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi has been passing highly-classified U.S. intelligence to Iran. The evidence shows that Chalabi - who was once seen as the man likely to lead Iraq by White House and Pentagon officials - personally gave Iranian intelligence officers information so sensitive that if revealed it could, quote, "get Americans killed." The evidence is said to be "rock solid." Sources have told Stahl a high-level investigation is under way into who in the U.S. government gave Chalabi such sensitive information in the first place. In addition, sources told Stahl that one of Chalabi's closest confidantes — a senior member of his organization, the Iraqi national congress — is believed to have been recruited by Iran's intelligence agency, the Ministry of Information and Security (MOIS) — and is on their payroll. Chalabi has denied passing any information to Iran. The revelations about the former exile came on a day that saw Iraqi police backed by U.S. troops raid Chalabi's Baghdad home and offices. American soldiers and armed U.S. civilians could be seen milling about Chalabi's compound in the city's fashionable Mansour district. Some people could be seen loading boxes into vehicles. Aides said documents and computers were seized without warrants. A senior coalition official said several people were arrested and that arrest warrants were issued for "up to 15 people" on allegations of "fraud, kidnapping and associated matters." Chalabi supporters suggested that the raid was politically motivated bid to intimidate the former exile, who has become extremely vocal in his criticism of Washington. At a press conference after the raid, Chalabi lashed out at the ruling Coalition Provisional Authority, complaining it was coddling former members of Saddam's Baath Party and treating Iraqis badly. "I am America's best friend in Iraq," Chalabi said. "If the CPA finds it necessary to direct an armed attack against my home, you can see the state of relations between the CPA and the Iraqi people." The raid was a symbol of how far Chalabi's stock has fallen in the eyes of U.S. officials. In exile, Chalabi's U.S.-financed Iraqi National Congress provided intelligence information on Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Chalabi produced a string of defectors whose stories suggested that Saddam posed an imminent threat to the United States because of his weapons of mass destruction. A key claim came from a Chalabi-sponsored defector who told U.S. intelligence that in order to evade U.N. inspectors, Saddam put his biological weapons labs in trucks. The assertion that Saddam had mobile weapons labs was a major feature of Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech to the U.N. on why military action needed to be taken against Iraq. "We know that Iraq has at least seven of these mobile biological agent factories. Ladies and gentlemen, these are sophisticated facilities. For example, they can produce anthrax and botulinum toxin. In fact, they can produce enough dry biological agent in a single month to kill thousands upon thousands of people," Powell said. The flow of information caused Chalabi's star to rise in White House and Pentagon circles, despite some warning signs about his reliability. For example, Chalabi, a former banker, was convicted of fraud in absentia in Jordan in 1992 in a banking scandal and sentenced to 22 years in jail. He has denied any wrongdoing. Ironically enough, Chalabi's downfall began with an action he had enthusiastically supported: the U.S. invasion of Iraq. No weapons of mass destruction - or mobile weapons labs - were found. As 60 Minutes reported, a postwar analysis by the government of Chalabi's defectors has found that many of them exaggerated - and that their information about weapons of mass destruction and Saddam's links to Al Qaeda was wrong. In an interview with 60 Minutes, Chalabi minimized the importance of the defector who told of the mobile weapons labs. "What he said is that these are mobile biological labs. He did not say that they are weapons factories. There's a big difference," Chalabi said. Chalabi, who had returned to Iraq with a private army of 700 "freedom fighters" following the invasion, began to lose favor with U.S. officials as it became increasingly clear that much of information he supplied was suspect. Chalabi holds a seat on the Iraqi Governing Council, but he has been unable to build a base of popular support with the Iraqi people. The New York Times and the Washington Post report that Chalabi has been feuding with L. Paul Bremer, the American civilian administrator in Iraq. The Times quoted Chalabi aides as saying the former exile's relationship with Bremer was so bad that he skipped Governing Council meetings that Bremer attended. Earlier this week, the U.S. ended the $340,000 monthly payment it was making to Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. That action was followed by the raid on his Baghdad home.
This is why you don't hitch your wagon to weasels. This is yet another example of something that the Bush White House was warned about before the fact and they didn't listen. Now it's come back to bite them in the rear. The judgement shown by the current leadership seems to be incredibly off, and as this story points out, possibly dangerous to our nation. First one of the folks with top security clearance blows the cover of an intel officer, with contacts in the field, while we are in a state of war. That's a felony and undermines national defense. What's worse is they did it because they were mad that they got caught in a lie. Now the person who provided them with faulty witnesses and intel prior to the war, and they paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a month to, apparently was dealing classified info to the Iranians.
Maybe yes and maybe no. If we was trading intel with the Iranians then he, absolutely, should be stopped. If the U.S. just went after him because he had the nerve to suggest that Iraqis have control of Iraqi oil, and that the U.S. troops should leave then no.
The Bush Administration was wrong and incompetent for backing Chalabi in the first place. They are not wrong for dumping him now.
Via Josh... _____________ A note from a reader who is a former US government official ... OK, the press has now understood that Chalabi was providing US intelligence to the Iranian intelligence service. That's a start. Here are some questions you might want to ask. Where did he get the intelligence to leak? Who gave Chalabi the leaked classified information? Was it lawful to provide Chalabi with classified USG military information that included such things as where our troops were and what they were doing? Who is under investigation as a result of the intercepts of the Iranians discussing the intelligence provided by Chalabi? Who are the investigators? Has this been referred to the Department of Justice? Did his provision of that information to Iran result in the death of US soldiers in Shi'ia areas? Are the intel leaks the reason for the raids of Chalabi's home? Are the intel leaks the reason they cut off his income? Why did the USG say that Chalabi was not a "target" of the raids on his home? (It's possible other members of his family are the ones who are being used directly to provide the intel to Iran.) Hmmmm. Who were Chalabi's US government interlocutors? What a mystery ... -- Josh Marshall
Holy cow. The Bushies were funding one of the Axis of Evil. What does that make them? Dupes, incompetents, or traitors? http://www.nynewsday.com/news/natio...2,0,4141685.story?coll=ny-worldnews-headlines May 21, 2004, 7:29 PM EDT WASHINGTON -- The Defense Intelligence Agency has concluded that a U.S.-funded arm of Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress has been used for years by Iranian intelligence to pass disinformation to the United States and to collect highly sensitive American secrets, according to intelligence sources. . . .
didn't america already make it clear that iraq was going to maintain control of its oil? i thought we already said that to make it clear to everyone that we weren't on some dreamed up imperialistic crusade for natural resources.
I may be paranoid, but the first thing I could think of when I heard this was CIA/DIA setup, Here's why: 1. Assuming you want to influence the upcoming elections with "your guy", but he's seen as an "American Lackey" how do you change that? Make him a hero to the Iraqi's by staging a public falling-out with his supposed masters. This makes him more palatable all around. 2. Listening to BBC, he made it very clear, despite the supposed anger, to make sure that he was only denouncing the CPA, not the US in general. He made it very clear that he "was still a friend of the US and grateful to Bush". This distinction was not, from what I could tell, made in the Al Jazeera stories, even though they generally weren't particularly friendly to Chalabi. 3. The only members of the Iraqi Governing Council who I heard decry the raid on the record were Kurds - the largest pro-America faction - though this may just be a coincidence. 4. The timing seems somewhat suspect - the story very much helped to break the endless "Abu Garab" series of negative Iraq stories with a "less offensive" series of negative Iraq stories. 5. I'd do it. It to be a reasonable and effective course use of covert tactics if I were working for the CIA. It's low-cost, because it absorbs some of the Abu Garab stuff, it helps to support a "friend", and it doesn't do any real harm to Americans or the President. 6. It'd even be a reasonable course of action to take without Chalabi's active involvement, though the risk of alienating Chalabi would be higher. You still make a person who is most fundamentally alligned with US intrests more powerful. A temporary ruffeling of feathers won't make him into a radical instantly. The fact that he's a crook is unemportant - we've made plenty of deals with crooks in the past. It seems to be one of the "acceptable evils" for US foreign policy. Anyway, just a thought. I assume the CIA/DIA is doing "something" to help our "friends" in the election. I would rather think that they are smart enough to set something like this up, as opposed to being the inept fools that they've been made out to be.
Oh, brother. Check out the cabal of Chalabi supporters coming to fuss at Rice. I almost feel sorry for her. (nah!) The soap opera continues... May 29, 2004 Conservative Allies Take Chalabi Case to the White House By ELISABETH BUMILLER ASHINGTON, May 28 — Influential outside advisers to the Bush administration who support the Iraqi exile leader Ahmad Chalabi are pressing the White House to stop what one has called a "smear campaign" against Mr. Chalabi, whose Baghdad home and offices were ransacked last week in an American-supported raid. Last Saturday, several of these Chalabi supporters said, a small delegation of them marched into the West Wing office of Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, to complain about the administration's abrupt change of heart about Mr. Chalabi and to register their concerns about the course of the war in Iraq. The group included Richard N. Perle, the former chairman of a Pentagon advisory group, and R. James Woolsey, director of central intelligence under President Bill Clinton. Members of the group, who had requested the meeting, told Ms. Rice that they were incensed at what they view as the vilification of Mr. Chalabi, a favorite of conservatives who is now central to an F.B.I. investigation into who in the American government might have given him highly classified information that he is suspected of turning over to Iran. Mr. Chalabi has denied that he provided Iran with any classified information. The session with Ms. Rice was one sign of the turmoil that Mr. Chalabi's travails have produced within an influential corner of Washington, where Mr. Chalabi is still seen as a potential leader of Iraq. "There is a smear campaign under way, and it is being perpetrated by the C.I.A. and the D.I.A. and a gaggle of former intelligence officers who have succeeded in planting these stories, which are accepted with hardly any scrutiny," Mr. Perle, a leading conservative, said in an interview. Mr. Perle, referring to both the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency, said the campaign against Mr. Chalabi was "an outrageous abuse of power" by United States government officials in Washington and Baghdad. "I'm talking about Jerry Bremer, for one," Mr. Perle said, referring to L. Paul Bremer III, the top American administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority in charge of the occupation of Iraq. "I don't know who gave these orders, but there is no question that the C.P.A. was involved." In Baghdad, coalition authorities vigorously denied Mr. Perle's assertion. "Jerry Bremer didn't initiate the investigation," Dan Senor, the spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority, said in a telephone interview. Similarly, Mark Mansfield, a C.I.A. spokesman, called Mr. Perle's accusation that the agency was smearing Mr. Chalabi "absurd." A Defense Department official who asked not to be named said that Mr. Perle's accusations against the D.I.A. had no foundation. Mr. Chalabi has been a divisive figure for years in Washington, where top Pentagon officials favored him as a future leader of Iraq and top State Department officials distrusted him as unreliable. Either way, Mr. Chalabi and his exile group, the Iraqi National Congress, fed intelligence to the Bush administration about Iraq's unconventional weapons that helped drive the administration toward war. Intelligence officials now argue that some of the intelligence was fabricated, and that Mr. Chalabi's motives were to push the United States into toppling Saddam Hussein and pave the way for his installation as Iraq's new leader. Although Mr. Chalabi's supporters outside the administration have been caustic in their comments about his treatment, there has been relative silence so far from Mr. Chalabi's supporters within the administration. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, who favored going to war in Iraq and was a patron of Mr. Chalabi, did not respond to numerous requests this week for an interview. Mr. Wolfowitz's spokesman, Charley Cooper, said in an e-mail message that Mr. Wolfowitz believed that Mr. Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress "have provided valuable operational intelligence to our military forces in Iraq, which has helped save American lives." Mr. Cooper added in the message that "Secretary Wolfowitz hopes that the events of the last few weeks haven't undermined that." The current views of Vice President Dick Cheney and his chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, are not known. Both strongly supported Mr. Chalabi before and during the war in Iraq. Last Saturday, participants in the meeting with Ms. Rice and her deputy, Stephen Hadley, said Ms. Rice told them she appreciated that they had made their views known. But she gave no hint of her own opinion, participants said, and made no concessions to their point of view. Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, also attended the meeting. A larger meeting later that day, with Mr. Hadley alone, included Danielle Pletka, a vice president of the American Enterprise Institute, a research institution in Washington. In an interview, Ms. Pletka said that Mr. Chalabi had been "shoddily" treated and that C.I.A. and State Department people had been fighting "a rear guard" action against him. "They've been out to get him for a long time," Ms. Pletka said. "And to be fair, he has done things and the people around him have done things that have made it easier for them. He is a prickly, difficult person and he drives them crazy. He never takes no for an answer, even when he should." Ms. Pletka added: "There are questionable people around him — I don't know how close — who have been involved in questionable activities in Iraq. He is close to the Iranian government. And so all of these things have lent credence to the accusations against him." Mr. Perle said the action against Mr. Chalabi would burnish his anti-American credentials in Iraq and possibly help him to be elected to political office. "In that regard, this clumsy and outrageous assault on him will only improve his prospects," Mr. Perle said. Mr. Perle said that he had no business dealings with Mr. Chalabi, but that he believed the C.I.A. and D.I.A. were spreading false information that he did. He also said that Mr. Chalabi was not alone in supplying intelligence to the United States government that turned out to be false. "I know of no inaccurate information that was supplied uniquely by anyone brought to us by the Iraqi National Congress," Mr. Perle said. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/29/politics/29CHAL.html
Nope they didn't. The plan to the UN recently wasn't released at that point, and the U.S. was keeping control. It appears now that the new government will control. It just depends on how much real autonomy the new government will have.
Is this stuff on the level?? If true, why is Chalabi even around to complain? From the Times... June 2, 2004 Chalabi Reportedly Told Iran That U.S. Had Code By JAMES RISEN and DAVID JOHNSTON WASHINGTON, June 1 — Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi leader and former ally of the Bush administration, disclosed to an Iranian official that the United States had broken the secret communications code of Iran's intelligence service, betraying one of Washington's most valuable sources of information about Iran, according to United States intelligence officials. The general charge that Mr. Chalabi provided Iran with critical American intelligence secrets was widely reported last month after the Bush administration cut off financial aid to Mr. Chalabi's organization, the Iraqi National Congress, and American and Iraqi security forces raided his Baghdad headquarters. The Bush administration, citing national security concerns, asked The New York Times and other news organizations not to publish details of the case. The Times agreed to hold off publication of some specific information that top intelligence officials said would compromise a vital, continuing intelligence operation. The administration withdrew its request on Tuesday, saying information about the code-breaking was starting to appear in news accounts. Mr. Chalabi and his aides have said he knew of no secret information related to Iran and therefore could not have communicated any intelligence to Tehran. American officials said that about six weeks ago, Mr. Chalabi told the Baghdad station chief of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security that the United States was reading the communications traffic of the Iranian spy service, one of the most sophisticated in the Middle East. According to American officials, the Iranian official in Baghdad, possibly not believing Mr. Chalabi's account, sent a cable to Tehran detailing his conversation with Mr. Chalabi, using the broken code. That encrypted cable, intercepted and read by the United States, tipped off American officials to the fact that Mr. Chalabi had betrayed the code-breaking operation, the American officials said. American officials reported that in the cable to Tehran, the Iranian official recounted how Mr. Chalabi had said that one of "them" — a reference to an American — had revealed the code-breaking operation, the officials said. The Iranian reported that Mr. Chalabi said the American was drunk. The Iranians sent what American intelligence regarded as a test message, which mentioned a cache of weapons inside Iraq, believing that if the code had been broken, United States military forces would be quickly dispatched to the specified site. But there was no such action. The account of Mr. Chalabi's actions has been confirmed by several senior American officials, who said the leak contributed to the White House decision to break with him. It could not be learned exactly how the United States broke the code. But intelligence sources said that in the past, the United States has broken into the embassies of foreign governments, including those of Iran, to steal information, including codes. The F.B.I. has opened an espionage investigation seeking to determine exactly what information Mr. Chalabi turned over to the Iranians as well as who told Mr. Chalabi that the Iranian code had been broken, government officials said. The inquiry, still in an early phase, is focused on a very small number of people who were close to Mr. Chalabi and also had access to the highly restricted information about the Iran code. Some of the people the F.B.I. expects to interview are civilians at the Pentagon who were among Mr. Chalabi's strongest supporters and served as his main point of contact with the government, the officials said. So far, no one has been accused of any wrongdoing. In a television interview on May 23, Mr. Chalabi said on CNN's "Late Edition" that he met in Tehran in December with the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the Iranian president, Mohammad Khatami. He also said he had met with Iran's minister of information. Mr. Chalabi attacked the C.I.A. and the director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, saying the agency was behind what Mr. Chalabi asserted was an effort to smear him. "I have never passed any classified information to Iran or have done anything — participated in any scheme of intelligence against the United States," Mr. Chalabi said on "Fox News Sunday." "This charge is false. I have never seen a U.S. classified document, and I have never seen — had a U.S. classified briefing." Mr. Chalabi, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, said, "We meet people from the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad regularly," but said that was to be expected of Iraqi officials like himself. Some defenders of Mr. Chalabi in the United States say American officials had encouraged him in his dealings with Iran, urging him to open an office in Tehran in hopes of improving relations between Iran and Washington. Those defenders also say they do not believe that his relationship with Iran involved any exchange of intelligence. Mr. Chalabi's allies in Washington also saw the Bush administration's decision to sever its ties with Mr. Chalabi and his group as a cynical effort instigated by the C.I.A. and longtime Chalabi critics at the State Department. They believe those agencies want to blame him for mistaken estimates and incorrect information about Iraq before the war, like whether Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. One of those who has defended Mr. Chalabi is Richard N. Perle, the former chairman of the Defense Policy Board. "The C.I.A. has disliked him passionately for a long time and has mounted a campaign against him with some considerable success," Mr. Perle said Tuesday. "I've seen no evidence of improper behavior on his part. No evidence whatsoever." Mr. Perle said he thought the C.I.A. had turned against Mr. Chalabi because he refused to be the agency's "puppet." Mr. Chalabi "has a mind of his own," Mr. Perle said. American intelligence officials said the F.B.I. investigation into the intelligence leak to Iran did not extend to any charges that Mr. Chalabi provided the United States with incorrect information, or any allegations of corruption. American officials said the leak about the Iranian codes was a serious loss because the Iranian intelligence service's highly encrypted cable traffic was a crucial source of information, supplying Washington with information about Iranian operations inside Iraq, where Tehran's agents have become increasingly active. It also helped the United States keep track of Iranian intelligence operations around the world. Until last month, the Iraqi National Congress had a lucrative contract with the Defense Intelligence Agency to provide information about Iraq. Before the United States invasion last year, the group arranged for Iraqi defectors to provide the Pentagon with information about Saddam Hussein's government, particularly evidence purporting to show that Baghdad had active programs to develop weapons of mass destruction. Today, the American intelligence community believes that much of the information passed by the defectors was either wrong or fabricated. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/02/politics/02CHAL.html?hp If this story is on the level, Chalabi is lucky to be alive. And Richard Perle, along with his good friends, is still singing his praises. Unbelievable.
