Has Chalabi given 'sensitive' information on U.S. interests to Iran?

[MSgt213]

Has Chalabi given 'sensitive' information on U.S. interests to Iran? He denies it, but the White House is waryBy Mark Hosenball
NewsweekMay 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.

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."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4881157/

[billybob537]

1. If you can't trust Chalabi

Who can you trust??? BA HA HA HA.:evilgrin: :wtf: :dunce: :wow: :spank: :thumbsdown:

[necso]

2. I think that the word is more likely "sold" not "given".

The SOB is keeping is his escape routes open.

[peacetalksforall]

3. Oh my gosh...PNAC's selected man? Do you mean that

there is one more dimension to the mistakes of Rumsfeld, Cheney and their PNAC crew? Gosh, they're experiencing hard times, aren't they?

[TacticalPeek]

4. Josh Marshall has interesting notes on this today:

This should not come as a great surprise. Chalabi's ties to the Iranians are well-known and have long been awkwardly acquiesced in by his supporters in Washington. Moreover, there have been plenty of warning signs of his willingness to play both sides of the fence. Chalabi and his supporters regularly take credit for trying to warn the US that a planned coup attempt, run by the CIA from Jordan in 1996, had been compromised and would fail.

High-ranking CIA agents, however, believed it was Chalabi who had tipped off the Iraqis because he -- i.e., Chalabi -- was not part of it, and thus would have been left out in the cold had it succeeded.

On this point, it has never been clear to me what the nature of the evidence was that made people at CIA believe this. And thus I cannot speak to or vouch for the quality of that evidence. On that point I want to be clear. But I've spoken to enough folks to be quite clear that this was their consensus view of what happened.

Then there's the matter of the bombing of the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad on August 7th, 2003. I'm told that the Jordanians have phone intercept intelligence, which they shared with the US government, showing that Chalabi had advance warning of the bombing, which he chose not to share with the Jordanians or the Americans.

TalkingPointsMemo


(also interesting note on Nader/antiwar/etc)

[bigtree]

5. Chalabi, and others

From Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2003_11_16.php

Remember Khidhir Hamza? He was a rather famous figure in Washington a year ago. He was “Saddam’s Bombmaker” according to a book he co-wrote a few years back.

Hamza was the originator -- or at least the prime proponent -- of the theory that Saddam was enriching uranium through a highly unorthodox but devilishly concealable method --- with very small uranium enrichment facilities scattered and hidden throughout the country.

Here’s a graf from an article by Eli Lake last year in The New Republic …

Shortly after Wolfowitz took his post in February 2001, for example, Chalabi and Brooke brought 1994 defector Khidir Hamza, one of Saddam's most senior nuclear scientists, to meet the new deputy defense secretary. In the meeting, Hamza described how Saddam was trying to refine uranium for his nuclear program using a centrifuge technique in small labs scattered throughout the country. Initially, there had been skepticism within the intelligence community--and specifically the CIA--that Saddam could be refining uranium in this way. But Hamza was insistent, claiming that Baghdad was purchasing from abroad a specific kind of aluminum tube needed for the process. And ultimately, Hamza's intelligence seems to have been borne out. Just last week, The New York Times published an article reporting that "$(i$)n the last 14 months, Iraq has sought to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium."

__________________________________________________________________

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/view /

AHMAD CHALABI, Iraqi National Congress: Saddam Hussein was a threat to the West, and he was the most dangerous threat that-- that could have been envisaged in this time, after-- especially after September 11th.

NARRATOR: According to top Pentagon adviser Richard Perle, Chalabi was without question the single most important source of intelligence the U.S. had on Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

RICHARD PERLE, Defense Policy Board: He's a very capable guy. He's quite brilliant -- Ph.D. in mathematics, with a background at the University of Chicago and MIT, committed to secular democracy -- and is the kind of modern liberal leader that we would hope to see not only in Iraq but throughout the Arab world.

MARTIN SMITH: People say that there are two men who are responsible for the fall of Saddam Hussein. One is George Bush and the other is Ahmad Chalabi. You agree?

AHMAD CHALABI: If somebody else said it, I'm not going to disagree with them. This is-- this is-

MARTIN SMITH: Well, you nagged the U.S. government for 12, 13 years to accomplish this task.

AHMAD CHALABI: Well, I did. I worked very hard because I came to the conclusion very early on that if the U.S. is not heavily involved in helping the Iraqi people get rid of Saddam, Saddam is going to stay, and his son is going to come after.

NARRATOR: When we caught up with Chalabi, he was no longer preoccupied with making the case for war. A steady stream of visitors was coming to his headquarters. Chalabi was busy navigating post-war politics.

MARTIN SMITH: Many people that supported the war no longer do.

AHMAD CHALABI: Yes.

MARTIN SMITH: They feel that they were suckered.

AHMAD CHALABI: Yes, probably.

MARTIN SMITH: They say so.

AHMAD CHALABI: OK. I mean, I don't-- you know, I'm not a--

MARTIN SMITH: Well, I mean, the-- you know, half the people now feel that the war wasn't justified on the grounds that it was argued for.

AHMAD CHALABI: OK.

MARTIN SMITH: Do you feel any discomfort with that?

AHMAD CHALABI: No. We are in Baghdad now.
_______________________________________________________


In December, Iraq's Governing Council was authorized to set up a special tribunal to try war crimes, and a team of U.S. investigators has begun gathering evidence against Saddam and others in his ousted regime.

But the court will be created and run by Iraqis, and is still in a planning stage.

The delegation that traveled to the Netherlands was led by Iraqi lawyer Salem Chalabi, who is coordinating the creation of the new tribunal. Chalabi is a nephew of Ahmad Chalabi, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council.

Salem Chalabi has said the Iraqi tribunal would prosecute lower-ranking suspects before trying Saddam.

http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2004/04/07/iraqi_delegation_visits_netherlands/
____________________________________

Wednesday September 24, 2003 http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1048205,00.html

"Fancy your chances making a fast buck from the reconstruction of Iraq? Well, you'll need to invest in a bullet-proof vest for starters, and then make some well-connected business contacts on the ground. That's where the Iraqi International Law Group can help. Indeed, judging by the blurb on their website http://www.iraqlawfirm.com / , they are the only firm worth consulting if you want to strike it rich in Iraq."

As for its mission, the firm explains: "The lawyers and professionals of IILG have dared to take the lead in bringing private sector investment and experience to the new Iraq. "Our task is to provide a 'last mile' connection between foreign capital, initiative, technology, experience and know-how and the organisations, enterprises, institutions and entrepreneurs in Iraq eager to rebuild this ancient and war-torn country, to catalyse and ignite the realisation of the new Iraq's huge economic potential."

"Amid boasting about its lucrative connections, IILG is surprisingly modest about the family connections of its founder, Salem Chalabi. The website doesn't mention that he is a nephew of Ahmed Chalabi, who just happens to be the leader of the US-backed Iraqi National Congress (INC), a member of the governing council and current president of Iraq."

"One of Ahmed Chalabi's staunchest supporters in Washington is Douglas Feith, a former lawyer who is currently third in the Pentagon pecking order. The pair worked closely together in the run-up to war, with Chalabi providing "intelligence" about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (much of which proved to be wrong) and boasting that he had a secret network inside Iraq which could be harnessed to help run the country once the US invaded."
____________________________________

From my book:

Ominously, in the fall of 2002 the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq http://www.counterpunch.org/nimmo1119.html (Chairman of the Board, Bruce Jackson), was established in the Washington offices of the right-wing American Enterprise Institute. http://www.aei.org/ The CLI engaged in educational and advocacy efforts to mobilize U.S. and international support for policies aimed at ending the regime of Saddam Hussein.

This advocacy came at the same time that Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley were engaged in a series of briefings with foreign policy groups, Iraq specialists and other opinion makers that was termed as a "new phase," by a White House spokesman, who described the goal as building fresh public support for Bush administration policy vs. Iraq.

Members of the CLI met in November of 2002 with President Bush's national security adviser, Condi Rice, in an effort to mount "education and advocacy efforts to mobilize U.S. and international support freeing the Iraqi people from tyranny.

The CLI lobbied for the installation of the so-called Iraqi National Congress to replace the Hussein dictatorship. 52 This group was the creation of the U.S. Congress which, following testimony from Ahmad Chalabi, and defense policy executive, Zalmay Khalilzad, passed the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998, and sanctioned the new U.S. policy of regime change. Almost $100 million in taxpayer funds was provided to the group.

The leader of the dissident organization, Ahmad Chalabi, is a wealthy, U.S.-educated banker whose family fled Iraq when the monarchy was overthrown in 1958. Chalabi's CIA contacts led to the formation of the Iraqi National Congress in 1992.

Chalabi's influence in Washington comes from conservatives in and out of the administration who have been advocating for the deposition of Hussein and who are closely associated with the right-wing American Enterprise Institute and the Project for a New American Century.

Chalabi has been tried in exile by a Jordanian court and sentenced to 22 years in prison on 31 charges of embezzlement, theft of more than $70 million, misuse of depositor funds and currency speculation.

Chalabi's nephew, Salem Chalabi, has associated himself with the so-called Iraqi International Law Group, whose site boasts that their "clients number among the largest corporations and institutions on the planet."

And that: " . . . they have chosen IILG to provide them with real-time, on the ground intelligence they cannot get from inexperienced local firms or from overburdened coalition and local government officials."

Here is a family (Chalabi) that has ingratiated themselves with monied influences, in and out of our government. Their administration benefactors spread our tax dollars around the world with abandon, yet treat the most urgent of our basic needs here at home with miserly neglect. Consistent with Ahmed's U.S. military escort back to his homeland, the Chalabis will assume whatever mandate for power, money, or influence that their Pentagon cabal will provide.

Some of Chalabi's influential friends in the White House include, twenty-year friend Richard Perle and Douglas Feith.
Douglas J. Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and Director of Iraq reconstruction is one of Chalabi's main shills in the Pentagon.

Feith used Chalabi's web of misinformation about Iraqi WMD's to develop a rationale for war against Saddam; including the ‘intelligence' that Saddam was conspiring with bin Laden.

Feith is known for a 1996 paper he co-authored and presented to President Clinton advocating the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. The letter was also signed by Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and others. http://www.thedubyareport.com/iraq2.html

In the letter they argued that, "In the present climate in Washington, some may misunderstand and misinterpret strong American action against Iraq as having ulterior political motives. We believe, on the contrary, that strong American action against Saddam is in the national interest, that it must be supported, and that it must succeed."

Co-author Feith was one of about five members of the Bush administration who formed a separate ‘special plans office' in October 2001, whose purpose was to collect information from the CIA and the intelligence community to develop their own strategy for the war on terrorism. The group highlighted "interrelationships among terrorist organizations and state sponsors." They claimed "strategic alliances between Al-Qaeda and Iraq, despite the argument that such an alliance would have to withstand deep ideological and religious differences. http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/wot/iraq/office_of_special_plans.html

(sidebar)

Among the other participants in the CLI were: president and executive director, Randy Scheunemann (Scheunemann served until recently as a consultant on Iraq to Donald Rumsfeld), Treasurer Julie Finley, Gary Schmitt (director of the conservative foundation, Project for the New American Century) and Richard Perle, (chairman of Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board), who is also closely associated PNAC.
http://www.truthout.com/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi?archive=1&num=53 (Blood Money, William Rivers Pitt) (PNAC Files)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=3021&forum=DCForumID12
http://www.publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/report.asp?ReportID=514&L1=10&L2=10&L3=0&L4=0&L5=0

Members of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq included, John McCain, Newt Gingrich, William Kristol, General Barry McCaffrey, and former CIA director James Woolsey. (Woolsey recently proposed the reinstatement of a constitutional monarchy in Iraq, in which a king would appoint the prime minister.)

George Shultz, Amb. Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, and Elliot Abrams were also involved with the group. Abrams and Bolton are founding members of the CLI.

Elliot Abrams is a senior Bush official on the National Security Council. He was formally head of President Reagan's efforts in the Middle East. Abrams, was convicted for President Reagan's crimes in the Iran-Contra scandal and then pardoned by Bush I.

As assistant secretary of state for Inter-American affairs under President Reagan, Abrams was responsible for the controversial policies of that administration in Nicaragua and El Salvador during the 1980s, and played a key role in the U.S. relationship with Manuel Noriega. In 2000, Abrams was made the improbable president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. In 2001 he was hired by Condolezza Rice for a position on the NSC overseeing Arab/ Israeli negotiations. http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6895 (The Return of Elliot Abrams)

Me Book

[UTUSN]

6. Oops, Thought It Said Info to Us

In which case, my original post might have made sense: Why, Yes, His Swiss Bank Account #s Are Sensitive