Chalabi: Spy or victim?
Has Iraqi politician given US secrets to Iran, or is he target of smear campaign?
Several US prominent papers, including
The New York Times and
The Washington Post, reported Wednesday that Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress and favored before the war began as the next leader of Iraq by many in the Bush administration, is accused of
disclosing to an Iranian official that the United States had broken the secret communications code of Iran's intelligence service.
The New Yorker reports that Mr. Chalabi has had a long and
sometimes rocky relationship with the US and its intelligence agencies.
If the allegation is true it would mark the unmasking of one of the US's
most valuable sources of information about Iran, according to United States intelligence officials. While US media reported the allegations around Chalabi giving information about code-breaking to Iran –
The New York Times said Wednesday that it had been aware of the investigation into Chalabi's Iranian connections for some time, but had sat on the story at the request of the Bush administration – a British newspaper, the
Guardian first
reported US intelligence agencies' worries about Chalabi's Iranian ties in late May. The
Guardian quoted intelligence officials who said that the Iranians "
used the hawks in the Pentagon and the White House to get rid of a hostile neighbor and pave the way for a Shiite-ruled Iraq."
"It's pretty clear that Iranians had us for breakfast, lunch and dinner," said an intelligence source in Washington yesterday [May 24th]. "Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the US for several years through Chalabi."
The Jerusalem Post reported Wednesday that Mr. Chalabi
strongly denied the charge. His supporters in the United States continued to defend him. "I believe that the idea that Ahmed Chalabi was working for the benefit, doing anything for the benefit of the mullahs in Iran is absurd," said Richard Perle, the former Pentagon adviser.
Mr. Perle also told
The New York Times that he thought the CIA had turned against Chalabi because he refused to be the agency's "puppet." Chalabi "has a mind of his own," Perle said. And speaking on
PBS's News Hour, Randy Scheunemann, former president of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq and former Iraq consultant to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, also said that Chalabi was a
victim of a smear campaign, and he also questioned the idea that Iran wanted the US to invade Iraq to get rid of Saddam Hussein.
... I think [what] you see is the culmination of a year's long campaign of character assassination against Chalabi because many in the US Government don't like his message, don't want him involved in the Iraqi political scene and frankly were a little bit worried about the investigation that he was conducting, spearheading on behalf of the Iraqi Governing Council on the oil-for-food program and its abuses of billions of funds and also most sensitively on the development fund for Iraq, which is a $6 billion fund controlled with one signature only, and that's the proconsul Bremer. The
BBC reports that Iran
also denied the charges. "The whole story is completely false," said Supreme National Security Council secretary Hassan Rowhani. And
Reuters reports that Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld said Thursday that
he was unaware if the FBI was investigating the matter or if any Defense Department officials had been questioned about who might have told Chalabi that the code was broken.
CBS News reports that FBI counter-intelligence agents are "focusing on the
highest levels of the Pentagon" in their search for who told Chalabi about the code-breaking. Chalabi allegedly told the Iranians he learned about the code intercepts from an American who was "drunk" when he told him.
There have been numerous reports recently about the role that Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress Party played in the lead up to the war in Iraq, and questions have arisen about the reliabilty and value of the information the group
fed to its supporters in the Pentagon and the White House.
Radio Free Europe reports that the stipend the INC had been receiving from the Pentagon (roughly $335,000 a month) was stopped in May, allegedly because of the lack of concrete information the group was supplying. Chalabi had
also fallen out with the chief US admninistrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, a top US official in Iraq said.
Newsweek reports that
the probe into Chalabi's Iranian connections will widen. Political blogger Joshua Micah Marshall writes in his
Talking Points Memo blog that if the allegation is true, then someone at the Pentagon is "
in a world of trouble."
I'll try not to be too coy. There are a number of folks who could fit that bill. But for anyone who's followed this story, there's one guy who's just got to jump right to the top of the list: an expert on Iran who is extremely close to Chalabi, served as his civilian Pentagon handler for some time in Iraq after the war, and is known for comparing Chalabi to Mohammed and other equally august worthies.
Neoconservatives at the Pentagon and the White House have been the strongest supporters of Chalabi. But in a news analysis for Lebanon's
Daily Star, longtime neocon critic Jim Lobe writes that "signs of their [the neocons] defeat at the hands of both reality and the so-called 'realists,' who are headed within the administration by Secretary of State Colin Powell,
are virtually everywhere." He pointed to the appointment of Chalabi's "arch-rival-in-exile," Iyad Allawi, as the new Iraqi interim prime minister as a sign of the neocons declining fortunes.
Lobe also points to a recent speech given by conservative GOP Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas as another indicator. Sen. Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said last week that "We need to restrain what are
growing US messianic instincts – a sort of global social engineering where the United States feels it is both entitled and obligated to promote democracy – by force if necessary."
In an article carried on many Arab news websites, Dr. James Zogby, president of the Arab-American Institute,
writes of the connections between Chalabi, US Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, and supporters of the Israel's conservative Likud government.
Yet even if Chalabi is in trouble, he still continues to have influence in Iraq.
The New Standard, a left-of-center news website, reports that a US-based company
with close links to Chalabi has been re-awarded a lucrative supply deal by the US Army. Virginia-based Nour USA was originally granted a $327 million contract to supply the new Iraqi military and Civil Defense Forces in January of 2004, but the award was put on hold after questions were raised by officials in Spain and Poland, as well as a rival company, about the US's motives in giving the contract to Nour. The decision was upheld in late May. Also Chalabi's nephew is also in charge of arranging the trial in Iraq of former dictator Saddam Hussein.
Also...
•
How an honest broker in Iraq was defeated - and with him hopes of credibility (
Guardian)
•
Dropping the sovereignty baton (
Asia Times)
` •
Bush consults lawyer in CIA leak case (
New York Times)
•
The terror ties that bind us to war (
National Review)
• Feedback appreciated. E-mail
Tom Regan
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