From Friend to Foe - Time on Chalabi

[TacticalPeek]

Saturday, May. 22, 2004
From Friend to Foe
After a startling raid in Baghdad, the U.S. launches an investigation into its former ally Ahmad Chalabi. Was he working for Iran?
By ROMESH RATNESAR

Ahmad chalabi likes to sleep in. he does his work at night, engaging in endless back-room meetings and talk sessions that often drag on past midnight. On most days he rises late and eats breakfast alone?but last Thursday his wake-up call came early. At 10 a.m., five armored humvees pulled up outside Chalabi's two-story house in west Baghdad. While U.S. soldiers cordoned off the street, seven Iraqi police officers broke down the front door and stormed the living room.

Chalabi stumbled downstairs to find cops rummaging through his effects and preparing to arrest one of his drivers. "What are you doing here?" he said. "Get out of my house." Upon recognizing Chalabi, a police captain put down his gun and produced arrest warrants for seven of Chalabi's lieutenants. The captain insisted that the raid wasn't at his instigation. "He had no idea whose house it was," says Haider Musawi, an aide to Chalabi. "He said they were just following American orders."

For Chalabi, who four months ago could still boast of Oval Office privileges, being targeted in his own home by his former patrons was stunning enough. But he could do nothing to stop what happened next. An hour and a half after the police finished searching Chalabi's house, a second contingent of cops burst into a compound several blocks away?an ornate mansion known as China House, which serves as the headquarters of Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (i.n.c.). The Iraqis pointed guns at Chalabi's guards and ordered them to load the police vehicles with the office's computers, documents and files. Outside, a group of Americans dressed in civilian clothes watched with approval while smoking Cuban cigars and drinking sodas taken from Chalabi's office fridge. An i.n.c. official tells Time the Americans identified themselves as FBI and CIA but refused to show identification. "The Americans were sitting there, egging on the Iraqis," says the official. "They sat on the veranda saying things like 'Good job, keep at it.'" Then the Iraqis ransacked the place, seizing weapons, ripping down pictures of Chalabi's father, even confiscating a copy of the Koran. An Iraqi officer smashed a framed photograph of the Pentagon's favorite exile himself. "Chalabi is finished," he said.

snip

But at the same time, the U.S. was moving to sever its last remaining ties to Chalabi. The decision to cut Chalabi's U.S. funding?a $335,000 monthly retainer paid by the dia to the i.n.c. as part of the Information Collection Program (icp), an i.n.c.-run operation aimed at gathering intel on the former regime?came on May 8, according to someone familiar with the plan. It occurred at a principals' meeting attended by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and CIA director George Tenet. On May 13, dia officials who worked with the i.n.c. abandoned their office in Baghdad. The next day, the Iraqis who had been working there brought three trucks into the compound to take away files and computers from the office. A confidant of Chalabi's says that by the time the U.S. ordered last week's raid, the i.n.c. had already removed its most sensitive intelligence documents.


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http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,1101040531-641077,00.html



(Have I missed a new style rule, lowercasing name abbreviations: icp, i.n.c., dia?)

[acmavm]

1. Am I stupid or does this sort of sound like they are cutting Chalabi

lose because the closer the election gets, the more of a liability he is? By that I mean that it's been known for quite some time that this guy isn't, nor ever was, on the up-and-up. So are they biting the hand that fed them the intelligence (?) that they so badly wanted to hear because he's such a political liability? And are they also so desperately willing to let him go that they'll sacrifice someone close to the Pentagon (Feith most likely, but maybe even Perle or Wolfie) in order to make it look like they have this mess under control now?

Does anyone else but me think that it's way too late to try to make it look like they've cleaned up their act? I mean, this late in the game, so many deaths and dollars later, can they possibly make it look like they were just innocent babes in the woods taken for a ride by a known embezzler and the American people will buy it?

Something about this whole ugly mess just doesn't smell right to me. Do you think the American people would just 'forgive' these guys for being taken to the cleaners by one of the biggest con men that ever walked the face of the earth. Doesn't that make them look like idiots? Are people just supposed to settle for an 'oops' from these guys and let it go?

Please, someone smarter than I am, explain how this can gain the bush* administration anything. How can they possibly believe they can turn this around in their favor?

[doc03]

2. I just saw Chalabi on MTP, if he is a spy for Iran why ain't he in our

prison with a broom handle up his ass?

[shraby]

3. They needed to get back

any copies of information that they fed him before he could use it to blackmail them because Chalabi was already not going to be in the interim government. With blackmail stuff, he may have been able to hang in there.