[plschwartz]

1. His song:
Chilabi, oh oh
Cantare, oh oh oh oh
Nel blu dipinto di blu
Felice di stare lassu
etc

2. His story
from the May 21, 2004 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0521/p01s01-woiq.html

In Iraq, key US ally falls from grace
Thursday, US forces raided the Baghdad house of Ahmed Chalabi, who loomed large in the decision to invade Iraq.

By Annia Ciezadlo | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

BAGHDAD - A year ago, Ahmed Chalabi was the darling of American policymakers, a political powerhouse with unprecedented access to the highest levels of the Pentagon.

It's hardly an exaggeration to say that he changed the course of Iraqi history: the information he and his party gave to the US about weapons of mass destruction - much of which proved to be false - was central to Washington's decision to launch the war that toppled Saddam Hussein.

But Thursday, US troops raided his house and the offices of his Iraqi National Congress political party. Earlier this week, his party's monthly US stipend of $340,000 was abruptly cut off.

Mr. Chalabi's standing is a marker of sorts showing the philosophical shift in the US effort to create an Iraqi body politic.

Hours after the raid, Chalabi repudiated the American occupation authority and declared himself a leader of the new Iraq.

"My relationship with the Coalition Provisional Authority doesn't exist," he told a packed room at "Chinese House," in the

wealthy Mansur neighborhood of Baghdad. "And together with the governing council, we are still seeking to form a stable government."

Thursday at 10:30 a.m. local time, American troops and Iraqi forces surrounded Chalabi's compound in Mansur and entered the house. They overturned desks, seized computers and documents, and loaded boxes into waiting cars. Coalition officials told Associated Press that warrants had been issued for "up to 15 people" on allegations of "fraud, kidnapping, and associated matters." An Iraqi National Congress (INC) spokesman, interviewed on the Arabic language Al Jazeera satellite TV channel, said troops accused Chalabi of harboring terrorists.

Observers say that Chalabi's fall from American graces began months before Thursday's sudden raid. After allegations that Chalabi had provided faulty intelligence to American defense leaders - mainly, weapons of mass destruction that were never found - the American government cut off his party's monthly stipend.

In recent days, American officials have hinted that Chalabi was impeding US investigations into funds allegedly skimmed from the United Nations oil-for-food program during the time of Saddam Hussein. In a strange twist, Chalabi claimed Thursday that one of the reasons for this raid was his leading role in opening the investigation.

Last year, Chalabi was one of 25 Iraqis handpicked by US authorities for Iraq's governing council. His name was originally floated as a possible finance minister, though that idea was eventually scrapped, in large part because of his 1992 conviction for embezzlement in the neighboring country of Jordan. (Chalabi, who lived in exile for years during Hussein rein, claimed the conviction was politically motivated.)
Despised in Iraq

In Iraq, Chalabi is so widely despised that people blame him for everything from kidnapping and assassinations to electrical outages. But he continued to wield influence with American authorities, in large part, through his long-standing relationship with the Pentagon.

But Chalabi began distancing himself from American powers long before Thursday's raid. On June 30, American authorities are slated to hand over power to an interim Iraqi government composed of highly respected technocrats who will shepherd the country through national elections scheduled for January 2005.

The interim government is being chosen by UN officials in consultation with US and British authorities and with the governing council itself. It is intended to include a wider array of groups than that of the 25 member council.

As plans for the transitional government progressed, Chalabi grew increasingly critical of US and UN authorities. In recent weeks, he began to press for an increased role for the political parties represented on the governing council, and began launching bitter attacks at UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi.

"The dirty UN employees are double agents: they were spies for the Americans and also received bribes from the former regime," fumed a columnist in Al Mutamar, the INC's daily newspaper. Striking an anti-American note, the writer accused "Brahimi and his American masters" of trying to prevent Iraqi national elections.
Losing influence

Chalabi's objections were no surprise. As a political appointee viewed as illegitimate by most Iraqis, he stood to lose his influence once Brahimi's plan came into being.

Desperate to keep its place the US appointed government, Chalabi's party has accused the UN special envoy of everything from "impudence" to leading a "white coup" in conspiracy with the Jordanian government.

But in Baghdad, few were convinced by Chalabi's reincarnation from the Pentagon's man in Baghdad to Arab nationalist hero. "People see them as opportunistic attacks, in order to divert people's attention to events which took place long ago," says Saad Jawad, a professor of political science at Baghdad University. "Had he attacked something and provided something better, people would have accepted it."

In fact, Chalabi is so distrusted that immediately after the raid, a rumor circulated in Baghdad: The American authorities in a last ditch attempt to salvage their man's reputation had staged the raid to increase his stature among the people as an anti-American figure.

"I think that he will try to improve his popularity and tell the Iraqis 'Look, you have a nationalist leader now, and he's against the Americans. I don't think people are so naive as to accept it," says Professor Jawad.

Alls quiet from the DoD

3. Best result? Have the CIA bundle him off to Jordan where 25 years in stir eagerly awaits him

[slickoe]

Gone are the days when we could just weaken a country thru economic warfare and then just put our puppet in charge (like the Shah, Pinochet, etc.) Some ivory tower WASP blueblooded countryclub pinheads think it's still the 20th century apparently. Well Castro is still in power, an Allende clone is still running Venezuela despite all our efforts to stage a coup there, Lula is running Brazil, and God only knows what will happen to Iraq. Imagine, Bush, Cheney and his pack of Oil company gangsters actually thought they could put a crook like Chalabi in power over there.

[plschwartz]

Senior Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmed Chalabi says his relationship with the U.S.-led administration in Baghdad is now "non-existent."
His comments Thursday followed early morning raids on his house and office in Baghdad by Iraqi police, backed by U.S. troops.

[plschwartz]

Intelligence: A Double Game
Has Chalabi given 'sensitive' information on U.S. interests to Iran? He denies it, but the White House is wary
By Mark Hosenball
Newsweek
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4881157/
May 10 issue - Ahmad Chalabi, the longtime Pentagon favorite to become leader of a free Iraq, has never made a secret of his close ties to Iran. Before the U.S. invasion of Baghdad, Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress maintained a $36,000-a-month branch office in Tehran—funded by U.S. taxpayers. INC representatives, including Chalabi himself, paid regular visits to the Iranian capital. Since the war, Chalabi's contacts with Iran may have intensified: a Chalabi aide says that since December, he has met with most of Iran's top leaders, including supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his top national-security aide, Hassan Rowhani. "Iran is Iraq's neighbor, and it is in Iraq's interest to have a good relationship with Iran," Chalabi's aide says.

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But U.S. intelligence agencies have recently raised concerns that Chalabi has become too close to Iran's theocratic rulers. NEWSWEEK has learned that top Bush administration officials have been briefed on intelligence indicating that Chalabi and some of his top aides have supplied Iran with "sensitive" information on the American occupation in Iraq. U.S. officials say that electronic intercepts of discussions between Iranian leaders indicate that Chalabi and his entourage told Iranian contacts about American political plans in Iraq. There are also indications that Chalabi has provided details of U.S. security operations. According to one U.S. government source, some of the information Chalabi turned over to Iran could "get people killed." (A Chalabi aide calls the allegations "absolutely false.")

Why would Chalabi risk his cozy ties to Washington by cuddling up to Iran's fundamentalist rulers? Administration officials say Chalabi may be working both sides in an effort to solidify his own power and block the advancement of rival Iraqis. A U.S. official familiar with information presented to policymakers said that White House advisers were concerned that Chalabi was "playing footsie" with the Iranians. Yet Chalabi still has loyal defenders among some neoconservatives in the Pentagon. They say Chalabi has provided information that saved American lives. "Rushing to judgment and cutting off this relationship could have unintended consequences," says one Pentagon official, who did not respond to questions about Chalabi's dealings with Tehran. Each month the Pentagon still pays his group a $340,000 stipend, drawn from secret intelligence funds, for "information collection."

Still, the State Department and the CIA are using the intelligence about his Iran ties to persuade the president to cut him loose once and for all. Officials say that even some of Chalabi's old allies in Washington now see him as a liability. If Chalabi's support in the administration was once an iceberg, says one Bush aide, "it's now an ice cube."

[plschwartz]

Chalabi stands by faulty intelligence that toppled Saddam's regime
By Jack Fairweather in Baghdad and Anton La Guardia
(Filed: 19/02/2004)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...19/wirq19.xml&
An Iraqi leader accused of feeding faulty pre-war intelligence to Washington said yesterday his information about Saddam Hussein's weapons, even if discredited, had achieved the aim of persuading America to topple the dictator.

Ahmad Chalabi and his London-based exile group, the Iraqi National Congress, for years provided a conduit for Iraqi defectors who were debriefed by US intelligence agents. But many American officials now blame Mr Chalabi for providing intelligence that turned out to be false or wild exaggerations about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

Ahmad Chalabi: 'we've been entirely successful'

Mr Chalabi, by far the most effective anti-Saddam lobbyist in Washington, shrugged off charges that he had deliberately misled US intelligence. "We are heroes in error," he told the Telegraph in Baghdad.

"As far as we're concerned we've been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important. The Bush administration is looking for a scapegoat. We're ready to fall on our swords if he wants."

His comments are likely to inflame the debate on both sides of the Atlantic over the quality of pre-war intelligence, and the spin put on it by President George W Bush and Tony Blair as they argued for military action.

US officials said last week that one of the most celebrated pieces of false intelligence, the claim that Saddam Hussein had mobile biological weapons laboratories, had come from a major in the Iraqi intelligence service made available by the INC.

US officials at first found the information credible and the defector passed a lie-detector test. But in later interviews it became apparent that he was stretching the truth and had been "coached by the INC".

He failed a second polygraph test and in May 2002, intelligence agencies were warned that the information was unreliable.

But analysts missed the warning, and the mobile laboratory story remained firmly established in the catalogue of alleged Iraqi violations until months after the overthrow of Saddam.

America claimed to have found two mobile laboratories, but the lorries in fact held equipment to make hydrogen for weather balloons.

Last week, US State Department officials admitted that much of the first-hand testimony they had received was "shaky".

"What the INC told us formed one part of the intelligence picture," a senior official in Baghdad said. "But what Chalabi told us we accepted in good faith. Now there is going to be a lot of question marks over his motives."

Mr Chalabi is now a member of the Iraqi Governin

[plschwartz]

Maybe a little over the top but check their facts not adjectives
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2004/3114chalabi.html
This article appears in the April 9, 2004 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
Ahmad Chalabi's Bay of Goats

by Michele Steinberg

On March 31, Fallujah, Iraq, was a scene out of Hell. Associated Press reported: "Jubilant residents dragged the charred corpses of four foreign contractors including at least one American through the streets Wednesday and hanged them from the bridge spanning the Eurphrates River. Five American soldiers died in a roadside bombing nearby.... It is reminiscent of the 1993 scene in Somalia, when a mob dragged the corpse of a U.S. soldier through the streets of Mogadishu...."

This is a Hell that was created by the neo-conservative "Children of Satan," the cabal of Straussian liars in the Bush Administration who launched the Iraq war on false pretenses: lies about the imminent danger posed by Saddam Hussein's non-existent weapons of mass destruction, lies about Iraq's connection to the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, and lies about the ease with which the "regime change" in Iraq would come about.

An exaggeration? Not at all.

Remember the warnings by Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni (ret.), then Commander-in-Chief of the Central Command, who bitterly battled Sens. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the Senate Armed Services Committee in January 1999 over the Senators' desire to invade Iraq with a small band of Iraqi exiles? Review General Zinni's speech to the U.S. Naval Institute in March 2000, in which he warned, "There are congressmen today who want to fund the Iraqi Liberation Act, and let some silk-suited, Rolex-wearing guys in London gin up an expedition. We'll equip a thousand fighters and arm them with $97 million worth of AK-47s and insert them into Iraq. And what will we have? A Bay of Goats, most likely."

Remember the January 1999 Foreign Affairs article that exposed the Iraqi National Congress (INC) by name, after its head, Ahmed Chalabi, a neo-conservative lunatic, told a U.S. Senate hearing in Spring 1998: "Give the Iraqi National Congress a base protected from Saddam's tanks, give us the temporary support we need to feed and house and care for the liberated population, and we will give you a free Iraq, an Iraq free of weapons of mass destruction, and a free-market Iraq. Best of all, the INC will do this all for free."

Foreign Affairs wrote, "The INC plan is so flawed and unrealistic that it would lead inexorably to a replay of the Bay of Pigs. U.S. officials would ultimately face the choice of intervening directly or watching the [INC] get butchered."

In contrast to these sobering warnings, the following were the ravings of then-Chairman of the Defense Policy Board Richard Perle, a leading Straussian neo-conservative, in an October 2002 interview with PBS's Frontline television magazine, in which he insisted that the war on terrorism would be lost without an Iraq war:

Frontline: Is there any point about Iraq one must understand so that an educated view can be made?

Perle: ... I think there would be dancing in the streets if Saddam were removed from power, and that reaction of the Iraqi people would be reflected in the attitude of the Arab world, generally. So the notion that if we go after Iraq we are somehow going to advance in the direction of a war against Islam that will turn out to be far worse for us, I think is really quite mistaken....

Frontline: If we go into Iraq and we take down Hussein?

Perle: Then I think it's over for the terrorists.

Frontline: Why so optimistic?

Perle: Because having destroyed the Taliban, having destroyed Saddam's regime, the message to the others is, "You're next." Two words. Very efficient diplomacy. "You're next, and if you don't shut down the terrorist networks on your territory, we'll take you down, too. Is it worth it?" Of course it isn't worth it. It isn't worth it for any of them.

Perle was not just deluded, he was lying. It was a lie repeated over and over by Vice President Dick Cheney, by the other neo-cons in the Defense Department, such as Kenneth Adelman, a Perle ally also on the Defense Policy Board. They were repeating the fabrications of Chalabi and his INC, to get a war to overthrow Saddam Hussein. The cost of tolerating their lies is the death count in Fallujah on March 31, 2004, and the many thousands of dead since the United States launched the Iraq war in March 2003. And it is not over.

The following report should be the basis for the U.S. government putting Chalabi in jail—instead of installing him as a corrupt tyrant over the Iraqi population. Investigations by the Senate, the DOD, and the General Accounting Office (GAO) are looking into INC fraud in fabricating reports on weapons of mass destruction, the misuse of U.S. funds, and profiteering from the Iraq war through lucrative contracts doled out by the neo-cons in the Pentagon. But instead of being removed from positions of trust, Chalabi is today virtually running intelligence collection operations in Iraq through the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)-administered "Information Collection Program"—and being paid with U.S. tax dollars to do it.
Chalabi's Dance of Death

Perle and Chalabi's "dancing in the streets" has turned out to be a dance of death.

Information provided to EIR by a variety of highly qualified sources, ranging from Arab experts on Islamic fundamentalism, to active and retired military and intelligence personnel, indicates that Chalabi's intelligence role may be directly endangering the lives of American troops, allies, and innocent civilians.

For example, is Chalabi providing false, self-serving, information—as he and the INC did about weapons of mass destruction and Iraqi terrorist links prior to the Iraq war? Is Chalabi's INC fabricating reports that point to "foreign terrorists," and not a guerrilla war against the American occupation, because they must maintain the myth of "dancing in the streets"?

One military officer, a Middle East expert, told EIR that "this is an insurgency that opposes occupation, not foreign fighters." He warned that if the Pentagon neo-cons "believe their own propaganda," instead of actual intelligence, then many, many more lives will be needlessly lost.

Chalabi wears many hats, all given to him by the U.S. occupation. Among his positions:

* Chalabi is the most powerful member of the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), placed on the body as a spy and U.S. puppet by Dick Cheney's neo-con cabal. According to businessmen operating in Iraq, Chalabi, the bank embezzler and "aristocrat," can be seen ordering around U.S. generals as if they are children. After all, Chalabi, unlike the U.S. uniformed military, has a direct hot-line into the most powerful offices in the United States: Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.

* Chalabi has direct access to the Oval Office, through Dick Cheney's shadow National Security Council. On Jan. 20, 2004, the day of Bush's warlike State of the Union address, Chalabi visited the President in his office, and was seated next to First Lady Laura Bush in the VIP gallery during the speech. While Chalabi was not chosen by his colleagues on the IGC to be part of the delegation on Jan. 19 to brief the UN Security Council, he travelled with them to the United States and ran things from behind the scenes. With this access and muscle behind him, Chalabi can eliminate the opposition—as long as the U.S. military is there to protect him.

* Chalabi is in charge of the "de-Ba'athification" program, deciding whether Iraqi families can obtain work—a matter of life or death in occupied in Iraq. According to U.S. Sen. Jack Reed (R-R.I.), Chalabi is "most divisive person in Iraq." Reed was one of five Senators who visited Iraq in mid-March 2004, along with Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.), Carl Levin (D-Mich.), Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), and Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who warned that Iraq was on the edge of "a civil war." At a March 18 news conference, Reed and Rockefeller, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that there is no justification for the U.S. government appointing Chalabi to run the "de-Baathification." After seeing the conditions in Iraq "on the ground," Reed prophetically warned that he expects that violence will increase and become even "more sophisticated and lethal."

* Chalabi is the de facto "jefe maximo" of the INC, which receives $340,000 each month from the DIA for a so-called "Information Collection Program" that is the main source of intelligence for the Coalition Provisional Authority on the Iraqi resistance. In this capacity, Chalabi runs the debriefing of prisoners arrested or captured by the occupation military and security forces.

Meet the Children of Satan

Ahmed Chalabi is not a slick operator who is defrauding the United States. Rather, he is a member of the inner circle of neo-con imperialists—the majority of whom were followers of the German-born fascist philosopher Leo Strauss (1899-1973). The network was exposed in detail for the first time in an April 2003 campaign pamphlet issued by Lyndon LaRouche, candidate for the Democratic Party Presidential nomination in 2004, entitled "Children of Satan: The Ignoble Liars Behind Bush's No-Exit Iraq War."

The Straussian "policy is to permanently transform the United States, from a Constitutional republic, dedicated to the pursuit of the general welfare and a community of principle among perfectly sovereign nation-states, into a brutish, post-modern imitation of the Roman Empire, engaged in murderous imperial adventures abroad, and brutal police-state repression at home," the pamphlet charges.

About Strauss, the pamphlet explains: "Although a Jew, who was active in the Vladimir Jabotinsky-led Revisionist Zionist circles in Germany in the 1920s, Strauss was also a protégé and enthusiastic promoter of the ideas of two leading intellectual figures of the Nazi Party: existentialist philosopher and Friedrich Nietzsche-revivalist Martin Heidegger; and Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt, who wrote the legal opinion justifying Adolf Hitler's February-March 1933 post-Reichstag Fire dictatorial putsch. Schmitt personally arranged for Strauss to leave Germany on a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship in 1932."

The very dogma of the Straussians is to lie to the public: "For Leo Strauss and his disciples, the ignoble lie—disinformation—was the key to achieving and holding political power. And raw political power was the ultimate goal. For Strauss and the Straussians, there were no universal principles, no natural law, no virtue, no agape, no notion of man in the living image of God."

Indeed, the key players in the Iraq war-drive are all direct products of Strauss' teaching, or were recruited by by Perle and Wolfowitz, more than 30 years ago, from the Senate staffs of Henry "Scoop" Jackson (D-Wash.), Clifford Case (R-N.J.), and Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.). Other members of the Iraq war conspiracy today include: Stephen Cambone, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; Abram Shulsky, head of the DOD Office of Special Plans (OSP); Michael Ledeen and Stephen Bryant of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA); John Podhoretz, editorial page editor of Rupert Murdoch's yellow tabloid, the New York Post; Attorney General John Ashcroft; I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff and chief National Security Advisor to Vice President Cheney; and Gary Schmitt, executive director of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which produced a draft of the "preventive war" doctrine that Cheney put out in September 2002 to justify the Iraq war.

It was this Straussian network that promoted Chalabi and built up the INC, with help from the British Foreign Office and Israeli intelligence, after the CIA discarded Chalabi in 1996 as a fraud.

Around 1997, Wolfowitz and Perle—who have known Chalabi, a fellow graduate of the University of Chicago, since 1985, through an introduction by their common mentor, Albert Wohlstetter, the former Trotskyite-turned-RAND Corporation Cold Warrior—enlisted the help of Gen. Wayne Downing (ret.) and former CIA Director James Woolsey, to promote the overthrow of Saddam Hussein—to be replaced by Chalabi! For Wolfowitz and his former boss Cheney, this was the unfinished business of 1991, when their plan to march on Baghdad at the end of the Gulf War was rejected by President George H.W. Bush.

In 1998, Perle initiated a campaign, in league with his fellow neo-cons, demanding that President Bill Clinton overthrow Saddam Hussein and recognize Chalabi's INC as a provisional government. When Clinton rejected the policy, the Straussians planted scare stories about Iraq's WMD and mobilized the right-wing Israeli lobby to ram through the Iraqi Liberation Act, which provided their boy Chalabi with $97 million in U.S. funds.

The Iraq Liberation Act was the Americanization of a 1996 policy paper calling for "regime change in Iraq" that Perle had co-authored for Israeli right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu entitled, "Clean Break: A New Strategy for the Realm." Other co-authors included Doug Feith, who became the paymaster of Chalabi's "Intelligence Concoction Program," and David Wurmser, a disinformation specialist in Cheney's office.
Investigating the Fabrications

The Straussian plot to get their Iraq war began the instant that George W. Bush took office, beginning with a Goebbels-style propaganda campaign, planting stories in the media about Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction. The sources for these fraudulent scare stories were Chalabi's stable of INC members and their families.

Already, investigative journalists for Knight-Ridder, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, and Newsweek have confirmed several instances in which "defectors" paid by the INC were the sole source for information that turned out to be completely specious, but which was played up and repeated by the President and top members of his Administration.

For example, the story of the so-called "mobile bio-weapons" labs came from the brother of an INC leader codenamed "Curveball," who turned up in Germany, and had never been spoken to by any U.S. agency. Yet, this INC hoax is quoted as the Gospel truth by Vice President Cheney to this day. A report of a camp in Iraq using Boeing aircraft for terrorist training was also an INC fake. As to allegations of massive production of weapons of mass destruction, the locations given by an INC defector to Judith Miller of the New York Times at which biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons were allegedly produced, were quickly revealed to be frauds when the UN inspectors were admitted into Iraq and given free rein to inspect everything they requested. (The neo-cons reportedly believed that Iraq would never allow inspectors to return.)

The INC lies have not gone unnoticed, but the investigations so far have been a pale shadow of what should be done, given the the cost in human lives, and the damage to the U.S. Constitution. The investigative steps include the following.

* In late February, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence opened up a full investigation into the role of the INC and Chalabi in providing intelligence that led to Bush's decision to invade Iraq. On March 2, Knight-Ridder newspapers added that "House Democrats have asked the DIA to turn over raw intelligence" supplied by the INC. The Intelligence Committee is demanding documents from the White House as well.

* On March 12, it was announced that the Army cancelled a $327 million contract with Nour USA, a small, newly formed company, whose president, A. Huda Farouki, had close ties to Chalabi. In Feburary 2004, Newsday had reported that Chalabi had received a $2 million fee for arranging the contract.

* The GAO is now investigating the INC for misuse of government funds, Newsweek reported in its April 5, 2004 issue. The probe was requested by Senator Levin and Presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.). Newsweek commented that what is under scrutiny "is not whether Chalabi prodded America into a war on false pretenses, it is whether he used U.S. taxpayer dollars and broke U.S. laws and regulations to do so." The INC claims at least 108 news stories have been the result of the work of its "Information Collection Program."

[LANMaster]

US gov't reporting "rock solid" evidence that Chalabi was spying for Iran.

[plschwartz]

What a great summary of Iraq.

When do you suppose the lies and spin are going to start asto why this man was trusted so.
BTW Kennedy a man admitted his mistake, Powell has begun to.
Does anyone believe Bush will ? But then again he is just the shell of a man but a wimp inside.

[DNeurococo]

This Chalabi thing is very interesting. Like most of the corruption going on over in Iraq, there is a lot more to it than meets the eye. Josh Marshall's blog had some good questions on Chalabi:

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

[LANMaster]

Good and fair questions, DN.

[plschwartz]

There are a variety of stories as to the Chalabi raid one or more or all could be true.
1.
Starting from the top espionage

Chalabi aide is suspected spy
Intelligence chief believed to be working for Iran ran a program that had its funding from the Pentagon abruptly cut off this month




By Knut Royce
STAFF WRITER; Tom Brune of the Washington bureau contributed to this story.

May 21, 2004, 12:00 AM EDT

WASHINGTON -- Administration officials believe that Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi's intelligence chief - named in an arrest warrant issued during a raid of Chalabi's home and offices yesterday - is an Iranian spy.

Intelligence chief Aras Karim Habib, 47, is a Shia Kurd who ran a program for Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress which the Pentagon funded to gather Saddam Hussein-era documents and provide informants until it abruptly dropped its support this month. The Information Collection Program had received $340,000 a month since October 2002.

A U.S. intelligence source said information about Karim's activities came in part from a detainee at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where hundreds of Taliban and al-Qaida fighters are being held.

Another source with access to sensitive intelligence and who was interviewed separately confirmed that the United States had developed information leading it to believe "this guy is an agent of the Iranians."

It was unclear yesterday whether the cancellation of payments to the information program was linked to the new intelligence about Karim. Though some Pentagon officials have said much of the intelligence provided by the program justified its funding, others complained much of it was suspect.

It also was unclear yesterday whether the arrest warrant for Karim was related to his alleged espionage activity. At a news conference, Chalabi said a member of his staff told him three agents "supervising" the raid had identified themselves as "from the FBI and CIA." An FBI official in Washington said his agency was not involved in the Baghdad raid, and a CIA spokesman said none of his agency's personnel were present.

Chalabi confirmed that one of the arrest warrants named Karim, but that Karim was not detained. A senior law enforcement and justice official in Iraq told the AP yesterday that warrants had been issued for the arrests of "up to 15 people" on allegations of "fraud, kidnapping and associated matters."

Attempts to reach Karim and INC spokesman Francis Brooke in Iraq yesterday were unavailing.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a longtime ally of Chalabi, told a Senate panel this week that the Pentagon had ended its intelligence relation with the INC because of the upcoming transfer of sovereignty at the end of June. He said the INC had provided "some very valuable intelligence."

Disclosure that Karim is believed to be an Iranian intelligence agent follows reports in Newsweek this week that the State Department and CIA were expressing concern about a "surge in recent intelligence," alleging that Chalabi and the INC had been passing sensitive intelligence to Iran.

Karim, according to a 2001 article in the respected Intelligence Newsletter, had been selected by Washington to help prepare for the overthrow of Hussein. He is the son of the former secretary-general of the Democratic Party of Kurdistan.

Shortly after the Ayatollah Komeinei assumed power in Iran, Karim began espousing fundamentalist Shia ideas and fled Iraq to take refuge in Iran.

Tom Brune of the Washington bureau contributed to this story.

Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.

2. Wolfowitz
Last week, the Pentagon abruptly halted its monthly payments to Mr. Chalabi. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said it was part of the transition to Iraqi sovereignty. And, he responded to Chalabi critics, who accuse him of misusing the funds and providing misleading or faulty information.

“There has been some very valuable intelligence that has been gathered through that process that has been very important to our forces. but we will seek to obtain that in the future through normal intelligence channels,” Mr. Wolfowitz said.

3.
WASHINGTON, May 21 (Xinhuanet) -- US intelligence agencies believe Ahmad Chalabi, the former Iraqi exile once strongly backed by some Bush administration officials, may have passed classified information on the American occupation of Iraq to Iran, the Wall Street Journal said in a report on Friday.

Recent intelligence, including communication intercepts, suggest Chalabi, who has been serving on the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, provided contacts in Tehran with details of US security operation and political plans, the report said, citing unnamed officials.

"Is there reason to think he provided sensitive information to Iran? That is absolutely true," the report quoted a US official assaying.

The claims appear to be part of a mushrooming number of investigations of Chalabi and his political party, the Iraqi National Congress. An Iraqi judge had issued an arrest warrant forseven of Chalabi's employees on charges of corruption, kidnapping,torture, car theft and misuse of government property for personal purposes, the report said.

Iraqi police and US soldiers raided Chalabi's home and office in Baghdad on Thursday, and seized documents, computers, personal belongings and weapons during the operation.

After the raid, a furious Chalabi said he was breaking ties with the US-led coalition authorities. Enditem

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/20...nt_1484004.htm
4.
But the Sunni neighbourhood of Adhamiya, north of Baghdad, many remember Chalabi as a long-time Washington lackey.

"It is more honourable to be Baathist than to serve the interests of the Americans and the Israelis," said Riad Jamil, a 40-year-old businessman.

'US agents'

Mustapha Hamdi accused Chalabi and the Iraqi Governing Council of being "agents of the Americans."

"http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/CA1CD89C-3327-434D-AAAA-35532C64D830.htm

The chequered past of the Iraqi National Congress president - he was sentenced in 1992 by a Jordanian military tribunal to 22 years in prison for fraud - does not speak in his favour.

"This guy deserves what is happening to him, he is a thief," said Qussai al-Obaidi.

Another resident, Riad Jamil, wondered why Chalabi was outraged over the raid and pointed out that "this is the Iraqis' daily life."

Some did not hesitate to predict he would suffer the same fate as Izz al-din Salim, the council president killed in a car bomb attack on Monday.

But Chalabi does have some supporters. A few hundred people demonstrated against the raid near the coalition headquarters on Friday.

"We have something in common with Chalabi: we favour de-baathification," one of the demonstrators, theology student Sayyad Hussain, said.

5. Oil for food
hmad Chalabi is in possession of "miles" of documents with the potential to expose politicians, corporations and the United Nations as having connived in a system of kickbacks and false pricing worth billions of pounds.
rest at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...ixnewstop.html

Some say that these records were taken because he was jamming an investigation of this program. Others suggest the records were taken to prevent them being audited
6. Finally there is the accusation that when the old saddam dinar was replaced Chabali pocketed $22mil lots more dirt at http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?...articleId=7774

All together now:
Chalabi, oh oh
Cantare, oh oh oh oh
Nel blu dipinto di blu
Felice di stare lassu

[Wino]

Man, to go from Guest of Honor at the State of the Union, the Great Iraqi Hope, to an Iranian spy in less than six months, is quite a fall. GWB needs to check out his insider friends a little better in the future or is Chalabi just another scapegoat? Whatever happened to taking personal responsibilities for your actions and errors. Being punished for out duping the dupes - grifters grifting grifters - this is more confusing than the pea and shell game!

[plschwartz]

Would not Chalabi passing information to Iran be treasonous?
Would this not be the highest level of treason since Major Andre ?

[Rollin' Rog]

What did you expect? The Bush administration has followed an "ends justify the means" philosophy from the beginning. And Chalabi was just that kind of guy. He is not above using ruthless or underhanded means to advance his ends and the Bush administration knows that, and he knows them. Gangsters always turn against each other when under pressure because they eventually become paranoid and don't know who to trust. It's almost amusing to watch it play out in Iraq.

[plschwartz]

Here is perhaps the most believable reason that Bush turned on Chalabi - all of the other stuff seems to have been wel known (including passing stuff to Iran??)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...NG5F6PP2T1.DTL

...But Chalabi's downfall may have been in opposing efforts by the United Nations to broker a face-saving deal to transfer nominal sovereignty to a new Iraqi government by June 30.

Chalabi turned against his American sponsors -- and especially against U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, whom the Bush administration is counting on to finesse a deal.

Brahimi is widely known to distrust Chalabi and to want him to have no role in the new government. For his part, Chalabi has waged a full-throated political war against Brahimi. In recent weeks he had appeared to be having some success in encouraging opposition to Brahimi's negotiations between rival Iraqi factions.

Chalabi also has created an international scandal by producing documents that he claims prove a high-ranking U.N. official received millions of dollars in bribes from Hussein. But Chalabi has refused to let U.S. or U.N. officials examine the documents to verify their authenticity.

"The puzzle is why the Bush administration acted now, if there were rumors of financial improprieties back in December," said Juan Cole, a Middle East history professor at the University of Michigan who edits Informed Comment, an authoritative Web log on Iraq.

Cole answered his own question: "You act on them now to neutralize Chalabi's opposition to the Brahimi plan. The Bush people seem to really believe that his re-election depends on this transition of sovereignty. There seems to be the theory that if Iraq becomes independent, it will disappear as a huge story. The focus of the public will change, people will say 'well, that's the Iraqis' own business,' and it won't be in the headlines after that. So if Chalabi is in the way, (Bush officials) absolutely have to get rid of him."

Cole said the Bush administration must act quickly to remove Chalabi from the Governing Council and dismantle the rest of his network. "Chalabi is a powerful chameleon, and his power won't go away" if the U.S. actions against him end with Thursday's raid, he added. "We'll see whether this continues."

E-mail Robert Collier at rcollier@sfchronicle.com.