[LANMaster]

Originally Posted by plschwartz

(from the Australian)

Calls for an earlier election have been coming from Republican and Democrat critics who say the US must move as quickly as possible to an elected government, because it is the only body that Iraqis will see as legitimate and worth fighting for.

The timetable must be adhered to.
Nothin early, nothing late.
The US credibility is vital in this. There should be no adjustment in the timeline whatsoever.

[plschwartz]

LAN
Because he was Bilko and they were the Rizzo crowd. Like every con man he prayed on their greed. In this case it was information. He told them what they wanted to hear and they crossed his palm with (our) silver. I can see ole Wolfie after hearing some good Chalabi news rushing off into the john and having a good wonk.

[LANMaster]

wonk?

I agree, only the intel Chalabi was providing was inflated.

[eggplant43]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

May 29, 2004

Conservative Allies Take Chalabi Case to the White House

By ELISABETH BUMILLER

WASHINGTON, 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.

[plschwartz]

http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/040607fa_fact1
I s a typical New Yorker article about the big Chill.
Its to long to post but well worth the read.

[eggplant43]

The Deep Game

By William Rivers Pitt



Tuesday 1 June 2004

My article from last week, 'The Iranian Spy in the House of Bush,' which took a close look at accusations leveled at the White House's favorite Iraqi Ahmad Chalabi, generated a number of interesting responses from truthout readers. Pointedly, many refused to believe that stories suggesting Chalabi was acting as an agent of Iran in the run-up to the Iraq invasion were anything more than another Bush administration plot, the purpose of which was to gin up national support for an attack against Iran.

The logic people offered to support the idea that we are merely getting jobbed by the Bush crew again is straightforward, and not easily cast aside. This administration has been, since day one of their White House occupation and even before, running the game plan created by the Project for the New American Century, or PNAC. A central component of their imperial designs is the need to attack, invade and overthrow many, if not all, Middle Eastern regimes, thus bringing 'democracy' to the region. Iran has been a central part of the plan; it is difficult to miss the intent behind the addition of that nation to the 'Axis of Evil.' What better way to create support for the next phase of the PNAC plan, goes the argument, than to devise a scenario by which America was under an intelligence attack from Iran by way of Chalabi?

Chalabi is accused of passing highly sensitive signal intelligence to the Iranian government. Specifically, he is accused of informing Iran that the United States had broken one of their most important codes, and was basically able to read their mail. Clearly, there is more going on here than immediately meets the eye. The argument that the White House has conjured these accusations against Chalabi for their own military ends, however, fails in the face of several facts.

First of all, it has been known for years in intelligence circles that Ahmad Chalabi had strong connections to Iran. He bragged to former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter in 1997 that he had "tremendous connections with Iranian intelligence." Chalabi's aide, Aras Karim Habib, has also been a known associate of Iranian intelligence for years. The recent raid on Chalabi's residence in Iraq was aimed more at Habib than Chalabi. Habib escaped capture in the raid, and is believed to have fled to Terhan. Seized in that raid, however, was the personal Koran of Chalabi. The book carried an inscription from former Iranian ruler Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini himself. The inscription read, "To My Son, Ahmad."

Evidence to support allegations that Chalabi has been acting in the interests of Iran goes back some ten years. In 1994, Chalabi conjured an Iraqi defector named Khidir Hamza, who claimed to be a senior member of Hussein's nuclear weapons team. According to Hamza, Iraq was very close to completing the development of nuclear weapons. He was given to CIA agents, who subsequently decided he was utterly without credibility. Imad Khadduri, the Iraqi nuclear physicist who was in charge of documenting nuclear development stated flatly that Hamza, "Did not, even remotely, get involved in any scientific research, except for journalistic articles, dealing with the fission bomb, its components or its effects."

Hamza, in attempting to establish his credibility, coughed up a 20-page document which had apparently been developed by "Group 4," the Iraqi department responsible for designing nuclear weaponry. At first, the report appeared to be damning evidence that Hussein was developing nuclear weaponry in defiance of UN sanctions. After a further review by the International Atomic Energy Agency, however, it was determined that the report was "not authentic."

In fact, analysis suggests this purported Iraqi nuclear document was, in fact, a manufactured fraud created by Iranian intelligence. Several technical descriptions in the report used phrases that would only be used by an Iranian. The use of the term 'dome,' 'Qubba' in Iranian, instead of 'hemisphere,' which is 'Nisuf Kura' in Arabic, is particularly instructive. The usage of these words indicate the document was originally written in Farsi by an Iranian scientist and then translated into Arabic.

Iran, apparently, was creating and disbursing false information intended to demonstrate that Hussein was building nuclear weapons. This particular fraud, and Hamza himself, was used repeatedly to justify the invasion of Iraq. It appears to have been a masterful intelligence operation out of Terhan, one that came to the attention of American officials by way of Ahmad Chalabi. Thus, the new accusations that Chalabi is a tool of Iran have a basis in past activities.

Why would a man with such connections to the anti-American regime in Iran be tolerated in the highest circles of American government? The answer lies in the old Middle Eastern axiom, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." Chalabi's Iranian contacts were tolerated for so long because he was working to the same end as many within the United States: the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.

Over time, Chalabi developed deep connections with CIA, and more importantly, with many who are now power-brokers within the federal government. He became, most specifically, a prized ally of the cabal of neoconservative hawks which includes Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and William Luti. These men helped engineer legislation in Congress which eventually funneled some $100 million into Chalabi's organization, the Iraqi National Congress. In the run-up to the Iraq invasion, they created a special intelligence-manipulation bureau within the Defense Department called the Office of Special Plans. It was here that accusations of vast Iraqi stockpiles of WMDs, nuclear capabilities and al Qaeda connections were manufactured and disbursed. Chalabi was the main source for these now-debunked accusations.

Chalabi had been chosen by Don Rumsfeld to be the next leader of Iraq, a position which suited Chalabi's all-encompassing desire to come into possession of Iraq's vast oil revenues. He promised Rumsfeld and the hawks that he would create a secular Shia government that would immediately make peace with Israel. In other words, he told the PNAC crew exactly what they wanted to hear; a central aspect of the PNAC plan to enact 'regime change' across the Middle East was, in their minds, about the defense of Israel via the removal of threatening governments.

The wheels came off when none of Chalabi's information - about the weapons of mass destruction, about the nuclear capabilities, about the al Qaeda connections, about the ease with which America would occupy Iraq - turned out to be true. Chalabi felt the winds of his fortune changing and, still filled with the desire to rule Iraq in the manner Rumsfeld had promised long ago, turned on his former friends. He began fashioning himself as a martyr for the Iraqi people, began attacking America with the same rhetoric used by Moqtada al Sadr and other radical clerics, in order to develop a power base with the fundamentalist Shia community. Promises to make peace with Israel at some point were exposed as the lies they were.

Thus, the White House approved the move to send soldiers into Chalabi's compound, to cut off his fat monthly paychecks, and to distance him from the struggle for power in Iraq. According to Newsweek, the final straw for Chalabi came when Bush and Cheney, "were briefed several weeks ago about intelligence indicating that someone in Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress gave the Iranian government 'extremely sensitive' and 'highly classified' info which could jeopardize U.S. intelligence sources and even 'get people killed.' Intelligence sources say potential suspects for the leak include Chalabi himself and his intelligence chief, Aras Habib." The data given to Iran, sensitive signal intelligence that let Iran know we had broken some of their codes, is a damaging breach of national security.

Is this Chalabi story a calculated ruse by the Bush administration to get them off the hook for this Iraq disaster by scapegoating Chalabi? Given all the facts at hand, it seems highly unlikely.

It is difficult to imagine a worse situation for the Bush administration than what is currently unfolding. Chalabi is completely the creation of those running the White House and the Pentagon. This is widely known. If it is true that, as they were anointing Chalabi, he was funneling Iranian disinformation straight to the highest levels of our government, who subsequently gave him intelligence data which he handed over to Iran...if this is indeed true, it is a disaster of millennial proportions for the administration. It reveals this White House to be saps, played like violins by Iran in a masterful intelligence operation that removed a long-time enemy of Tehran while setting the stage for a fundamentalist Shia regime in Iraq that would become a boon ally. How any aspect of this helps George W. Bush and his crew is hard to see.

Is this Chalabi story a calculated ruse by the Bush administration to create an environment where war against Iran would be acceptable? Clearly, they would like this conflict to become a reality. But reality, in this matter, interferes. Consider a call for war in Iran. The immediate questions would be:

With whose army? Our troops in Iraq are badly stretched, and there aren't many Reserves left. The UN won't have anything to do with another invasion. It is difficult to believe that we would dare use Israel as a proxy force, because we'd lose every other country in the region overnight, including Pakistan, which actually has nuclear weapons.
With whose vote? Congresspeople have constituents, and the constituents are badly disturbed by Iraq already. The war is a mess, and Congress has more than enough political cover to say 'no' this time around. It isn't 2002 anymore.
With what money? Bush has spent hundreds of billions on Afghanistan and Iraq, and has failed (quietly on the first and spectacularly on the second). Because of Iraq, Congress can, and almost certainly will, say no to Iran spending.
With which Pentagon? If you believe Sid Blumenthal's report that the officer corps in the Pentagon is on the edge of revolt because of what has taken place already, it is difficult to imagine a scenario in which they would sit still for yet another military action.
No, this is the real deal. The White House has been forced to turn on one of their most important allies because his involvement with Iranian intelligence has been exposed. The American intelligence community despised Chalabi because Bush and his people cut them out of the loop in favor of Chalabi, and then turned around and blamed the intelligence community when Chalabi's data turned out to be bogus.

Last summer, I wrote that one scapegoats the CIA at their mortal peril. This, a year later, appears to be the final revenge of the intelligence community against an administration that insulted, suppressed and blamed them for the failures of the neoconservative hawks. The fact that the White House provided the hanging rope, in the guise of the badly compromised Ahmad Chalabi, only makes this dish all the colder.



From: truthout:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/printer_060104A.shtml

[angelize56]

Sources: Chalabi told Iran that U.S. broke its code

Wednesday, June 2, 2004 Posted: 1:38 PM EDT (1738 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- One-time U.S. ally and Iraqi émigré leader Ahmed Chalabi told an Iranian official that the United States had cracked Iran's secret communications code, sources confirmed to CNN Wednesday.

The code was invaluable to Washington for intercepting intelligence from Iran's sophisticated secret service and could have provided information about Iranian operations inside Iraq and around the world.

U.S. officials asked some news organizations not to report the information about 10 days ago because it appeared the Iranians were continuing to use the codes anyway.

"Apparently the Iranians didn't believe Chalabi," one source said. (They will now!)

The specifics on what Chalabi gave to the Iranians were detailed by Jane Mayer, a correspondent for The New Yorker Magazine, in an interview on CNN Tuesday.

Mayer expanded on an article in the current issue of The New Yorker in which she wrote, "According to a Chalabi aide, the INC (Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress) has heard that it will be accused of telling Iran's intelligence service that the U.S. had cracked one of its internal codes."

In her interview with CNN Tuesday, Mayer added that what Chalabi is accused of doing is "telling Iran that we had figured out, we -- the U.S. -- how to crack the code in which they communicated.

"So we were able to intercept their messages to each other ... It could have endangered lives if that was the case. He denies it strenuously."

Accusations that Chalabi had provided Iran with critical intelligence information were first reported last month.

Investigation seeks source of information

Sources said the United States found out about Chalabi's action when an Iranian official in Baghdad sent a cable to Tehran using the broken code, detailing his conversation with Chalabi and Chalabi's warning that the code had been compromised.

The New York Times reported that, in the cable written by the Iranian official, Chalabi described the American who told him about the secret code as "drunk."

Bush administration officials have launched an intensive espionage investigation into who might have given Chalabi the information, the sources said.

The sources said the Iranians sent what U.S. intelligence regarded as a false message designed to test whether the Americans were monitoring their communications -- a message about a weapons cache in Iraq -- believing that if the communications had been compromised, an American team would quickly check the location. No U.S. team was sent.

Chalabi has acknowledged having met with senior Iranian officials, saying his organization has worked with many leaders in the region. But he has insisted he shared no classified information with them.

U.S. intelligence officials two weeks ago had told CNN that Chalabi, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, gave intelligence secrets to Iran so closely held in the U.S. government that only "a handful" of senior officials knew them.

A source of intelligence on alleged weapons of mass destruction when Washington geared up for war with Iraq, Chalabi was the beneficiary of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars for his Iraqi National Congress, with easy access to top officials in Washington.

He was a "special guest" at President Bush's State of the Union address in January, sitting behind first lady Laura Bush. Bush had dinner with Chalabi and other Iraqi leaders during the president's surprise trip to visit the troops in Iraq last Thanksgiving.

After Saddam Hussein's regime fell, Chalabi was appointed to the Iraqi Governing Council and put in charge of its finances.

As the post-war situation deteriorated, and the pre-war intelligence Chalabi supplied about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction did not pan out, the relationship soured.

Ahmed Chalabi

Last month, the Pentagon shut off the monthly stipend of $340,000 to his Iraqi National Congress and U.S. officials accused Chalabi of passing information about its operations in Iraq to Iran, which he denied.

Chalabi's long-standing contacts with Iran left some in the U.S. government suspicious about his intentions. Chalabi has denied other allegations that he handed over sensitive information to Iran about the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

The information he has passed on, as one U.S. official put it, "could get Americans killed."

Iran has acknowledged it had an ongoing dialogue with Chalabi, but rejected accusations that he passed classified intelligence to Iran, according to The Associated Press.

"We had continuous and permanent dialogue with Chalabi and other members of the Iraqi Governing Council," the AP quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi last month. "But spying charges are unfounded and baseless. It's not true at all."

Iraqi police, accompanied by American troops, raided Chalabi's compound last month -- a raid that Chalabi claimed was engineered by elements of the deposed Baathist regime, under protection of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority.

Chalabi has claimed the raid was politically motivated, but coalition officials say it was part of a suspected fraud investigation, authorized by an Iraqi judge and led by the Iraqis.

[DNeurococo]

I'd just like to state for the record that I think we (the U.S. government) should take Chalabi into custody while we still can.

There is certainly something rotton going on over there, and we'd better make sure that Chalabi is around to answer questions.

Unless, they WANT him to run away to Iran - - because he has too much incriminating evidence on White House big shots?

[angelize56]

"There is good news tonight for Ahmed Chalabi. It turns out that all along he was providing accurate, truthful, helpful information. Unfortunately, it was to Iran." —Jon Stewart

[flyeater]

If this story as is now generally told about Chilabi/Iran is true. The real issue will be where did he get the information from? Since we know that he should not have had access to such sensitive material we need to determine beyond question how he got it. This can easily be seen as much more of a security threat then even the Robert Hanssen case.

[plschwartz]

The guys and gals on the right are very quiet, very quiet.
Ole Teflon dubya says why I never met that dudemaybe just shook his hand once. How he got to sit near near his wife - well he must be like Waldo.
Chalabi reminds me more and more of M. Butterfly

[bassetman]

Originally Posted by angelize56

"There is good news tonight for Ahmed Chalabi. It turns out that all along he was providing accurate, truthful, helpful information. Unfortunately, it was to Iran." —Jon Stewart

Lan (I think) said not to get our news from the Daily Show, I disagree!

[plschwartz]

washingtonpost.com

Coded Cable In 1995 Used Chalabi's Name
Intercepted Iranian Message Involved Plot to Kill Hussein

By Walter Pincus and Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, June 4, 2004; Page A01

Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi politician suspected by U.S. authorities of having told Iran this spring that its secret communications code had been broken, was involved in an intercept episode nine years ago, according to senior administration officials.

Officials yesterday recounted an incident in early 1995 when Chalabi's name turned up in an encrypted Iranian cable reporting a purported CIA-backed plan to assassinate Saddam Hussein, then Iraq's president. The message was intercepted by U.S. intelligence and caused a major political stir in Washington.

Similarly, it was an intercept several weeks ago of another Iranian message -- this one from an agent in Baghdad to his superiors in Tehran saying Chalabi had told him that U.S. intelligence was able to read Iran's secret cables -- that has triggered a major counterintelligence probe and concern about Washington's future ability to monitor Iranian developments.

A U.S. law enforcement source said yesterday that FBI investigators, trying to determine the source of the leak, had interviewed at least one Defense Department employee in Baghdad and had administered a polygraph test. More tests were planned, some involving officials at the Pentagon, said the source who demanded anonymity because the investigation is secret. But several senior defense officials said yesterday that they knew of no one at the Pentagon who had yet been approached by investigators.

FBI spokeswoman Debbie Weierman said the investigation is still at its early stage. Noting that Chalabi is a British citizen, she said law enforcement officials are trying to determine "to what extent he is covered by U.S. law barring disclosure of U.S. classified information."

Chalabi, whose exile group -- the Iraqi National Congress -- has received more than $40 million in U.S. payments over the years, has denied that he disclosed secrets to Iran and demanded that the Bush administration investigate the source of the leak about the investigation of him.

The 1995 incident arose at a time when Chalabi was in northern Iraq, working with CIA backing against Hussein. The CIA case officer working with Chalabi at the time was Robert Baer.

Exactly who came up with the assassination idea is subject to some dispute. One U.S. official interviewed yesterday, who was familiar with the event, credited Baer with pushing the plan.

Baer has denied this. In his book "See No Evil: the True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism," published in 2001, he wrote that the plot to kill Hussein was phony, concocted by Chalabi in hopes of enticing Iranian support for his Iraqi opposition efforts.

To prove to the Iranians he had Washington's support to go after Hussein, Chalabi forged a letter on U.S. National Security Council stationery that asked him to contact the Iranian government for help, Baer wrote. The letter said Washington had dispatched to northern Iraq an "NSC team" headed by Robert Pope, a fictitious name.

In a meeting with Iranian intelligence officers, Chalabi left the letter on his desk while he took a phone call in another room, knowing the Iranians would read it, Baer wrote.

What happened next has not been previously reported.

The Iranian intelligence officers sent an encrypted message to Tehran about Chalabi's supposed plot, officials said yesterday. The United States intercepted the transmission. U.S. intelligence had broken Iran's secret communications codes during that period as well.

The contents of the 1995 intercept became the basis of a report that circulated fairly widely in Washington intelligence and law enforcement circles, an official recalled. The result was not only deep distrust within the CIA for Chalabi but also an FBI investigation of Baer.

The concern of investigators, as Baer recounted in his book, was that he was in violation of presidential orders and U.S. law that prohibited assassinations. Baer passed a polygraph test, but it would be almost a year before he and his team were cleared. Nevertheless, Baer's career was damaged and never recovered.

Shortly after the intercept, Chalabi's militia forces and Kurdish fighters went ahead with an attempted coup, launching a three-city strike against Hussein's troops. But the offensive quickly foundered.

The White House, having warned Chalabi not to proceed because Iraqi intelligence had learned of the operation, declined to provide air power to help him. Hussein's troops crushed the attackers, leaving the CIA angry that it had funded such a fiasco and infuriating top officials in the Clinton administration.

Taken together, the intercept and the foiled revolt marked a turning point in the CIA's relationship with Chalabi, an official said. The events explain to a large extent why the CIA later cut Chalabi off from funding and refused to administer money appropriated for his organization in the late 1990s that was aimed at bringing about Hussein's fall. CIA authorities knew the funds were headed for Chalabi, and they would not work with him any further, the official said.

For many years, Chalabi has made no secret of his contacts with leaders in Iran. He has described his ties as purely expedient, reflecting Iran's strategic significance in the region.

One of Chalabi's top lieutenants, Aras Karim Habib, who served as the Iraqi National Congress's intelligence chief, has long been considered by the CIA as a paid agent for Iranian intelligence, according to senior intelligence officials. He has denied that allegation.

Chalabi's attorney, John J.E. Markham II, said yesterday that his client has denied passing sensitive or classified information to the Iranians and is more than willing to tell that to anyone in the U.S. government. "We have not been contacted by anyone from the Department of Justice, the FBI or the CIA," he said.

Staff writers Steve Coll, Allan Lengel and Susan Schmidt contributed to this report.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

[plschwartz]

Helms is of course Jessie Helms then Sen. from N.C.

NB: On Oct 5, the House passed the "Iraq Liberation Act of 1998" by an
overwhelming majority nd the Senate passed it
unanimously Oct 7.

October 7, 1998
CONGRESSIONAL RECORD - SENATE ESTABLISHING A PROGRAM SUPPORT A
TRANSITION TO DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ

Mr. HELMS: Mr. President, I am an original co-sponsor of HR 4655, the
Iraq Liberation Act, for one simple reason; Saddam Hussein is a threat
to the United States and a threat to our friends in the Middle East.
This lunatic is bent on building an arsenal of weapons of mass
destruction with a demonstrable willingness to use them. For nearly
eight years the United States has stood by and allowed the U.N. weapons
inspections process to proceed in defanging Saddam. That process is now
in the final stages of collapse, warning that the U.S. cannot stand idly
by hoping against hope that everything will work itself cut.
We have been told by Scott Ritter and others that Saddam can
reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction within months. The
Washington Post reported only last week that Iraq still has three
nuclear "implosion devices' --in other words, nuclear bombs minus the
necessary plutonium or uranium to set them off. The time has come to
recognize that Saddam Hussein the man is inextricable from Iraq's drive
for weapons of mass destruction. For as long as he and his regime are
in power, Iraq will remain a mortal threat.
This bill will begin the long-overdue process of ousting Saddam. It
will not send in U.S. troops or commit American forces in any way.
Rather, it harkens back to the successes of the Reagan doctrine,
enlisting the very people who are suffering most under Saddam's yoke to
fight the battle against him.
The bill requires the President to designate an Iraqi opposition group
or groups to receive military drawdown assistance. The President need
not look far; the Iraqi National Congress once flourished as an umbrella
organization for Kurds, Shi'ites and Sunni Muslims. It should flourish
again, but it needs our help.
Mr. President: the people of Iraq, through representative
organizations such as the INC, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the
Kurdish Democratic Party and the Shi'ite SCIRI, have begged for our
help. The day may yet come when we are dragged back to Baghdad; I
believe that day can be put off, perhaps even averted, by helping the
people of Iraq help themselves.
Opponents of this initiative--I shouldn't call them friends of
Saddam--have said that the Iraqi opposition exists in name only, that
they are too parochial to come together. They are not entirely
wrong--which is why Senator Lott and Chairman GILMAN (the lead House
sponsor) have carefully crafted the designation requirement in H.R. 4655
to insist that only broad-based, pro-democracy groups be selected by the
President to receive drawdown assistance. I would go further and suggest
to the President that he designate just one group, the Iraqi National
Congress, in which the Kurds, the Shi'ites and the Sunnis of Iraq hold
membership. The opposition must be unified, but it may just take the
leadership of the United States to bring them together.
Finally, this bill gives the Congress oversight over the designation
and drawdown authority. As Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee,
I intend to exercise vigorously that authority. The White Rouse and the
State Department have indicated that they support this bill. We have a
unique opportunity, and I intend to do everything in my power to ensure
that opportunity is not frittered away. The price of failure is far too
high.

[DNeurococo]

Plschwartz wrote:
"Ole Teflon dubya says why I never met that dude [Chalabi], maybe just shook his hand once."

As a friend of mine said, Bush has disowned Chalabi with all the sentimentality of a Stalin or a Beria.

Scwartzy also wrote (quoting an article): "Noting that Chalabi is a British citizen, she said law enforcement officials are trying to determine 'to what extent he is covered by U.S. law barring disclosure of U.S. classified information.'"

Since when has the U.S. troubled itself about legalities? Did it worry about legalities when taking Panama's Noreiga into custody? When taking Saddam into custody? When taking any of several nationalities into custody in Afghanistan (holding them at Guantanamo)?

Chalabli is in Iraq, and the U.S. is currently the authority in Iraq. That is why I say that they should take him into custody NOW, before the hand-off of so-called sovereignity.

Since when do you worry about having legal jurisdiction over a foreign national that you suspect of spying on your country?