U.S. Soldiers Raid Chalabi's Home in Iraq
May 20, 10:35 AM (ET)
By SCHEHEREZADE FARAMARZI
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - U.S. soldiers raided the home of America's one-time ally Ahmad Chalabi on Thursday and seized documents and computers. U.S. officials, meanwhile, disputed Iraqi claims that American aircraft bombed a wedding party, killing more than 40 people.
Both the raid on Chalabi's home and the airstrike near Syria's border occurred at a time of rising public anger over the U.S. occupation, which an increasing number of Iraqis consider oppressive. The Americans plan to install an interim Iraqi government June 30 and formally end the occupation but retain significant military forces and influence over Iraqi affairs.
At the same time, the Americans are trying to quell an uprising in Shiite regions south of Baghdad by a militia loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, sought in the April 2003 killing of a rival cleric in Najaf.
On Wednesday, American soldiers clashed with Shiite militiamen Karbala and Najaf, killing at least eight, U.S. officials said. No American casualties were reported during the engagements, but assailants with hand grenades killed a U.S. soldier and wounded three in central Baghdad early Thursday, the military said.
A total of 790 U.S. service members have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq last year. Of those, 576 died as a result of hostile action and 214 died of non-hostile causes.
During the raid on Chalabi's home in Baghdad's Mansour district, American soldiers surrounded the compound and armed Americans in civilian clothes and flak jackets were seen milling about.
A Chalabi aide, Haidar Musawi, said a U.S.-Iraqi force surrounded the compound about 10:30 a.m., while Chalabi, a member of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, was inside. They told Chalabi's aides they wanted to search the house for wanted officials in Chalabi's party, the Iraqi National Congress.
A senior coalition official said on condition of anonymity that an Iraqi judge issued several warrants and would make details public later.
Iraqi police were seen loading boxes into vehicles, and neighbors said some members of Chalabi's entourage were taken away. Police took documents and a computer belonging to Chalabi, according to an American witness.
A portrait of Chalabi hanging on the wall had a bullet hole in the forehead.
Chalabi said at a news conference that American soldiers burst into his bedroom carrying pistols.
"I am America's best friend in Iraq," Chalabi said. "If the CPA finds it necessary to direct an armed attack against my home, you can see the state of relations between the CPA and the Iraqi people."
The Americans also raided other offices of the INC, Musawi said.
U.S. officials declined to comment on the raid targeting a longtime ally of the Pentagon. Privately, however, American authorities have complained that Chalabi is interfering with a U.S. investigation into allegations that Saddam Hussein's regime skimmed millions of dollars in oil revenues during the U.N.-run oil-for-food program.
A U.S.-backed investigation has collected more than 20,000 files from Saddam's old regime and hired the American accounting firm of Ernst & Young to review them.
Chalabi has launched his own investigation with a different auditing firm and wants the Americans to pay the bill from an Iraqi oil fund that Washington controls.
Chalabi complained recently about U.S. plans to retain control of Iraqi security forces and maintain widespread influence over political institutions after the June 30 transfer of power from the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority to an Iraqi interim administration.
"It's a provocative operation, designed to force Dr. Chalabi to change his political stance," said Chalabi aide Qaisar Wotwot.
The U.S. military said Wednesday's pre-dawn attack near the Syrian border targeted a suspected safehouse for foreign fighters from Syria about 15 miles from the Syrian border.
The desolate region is populated only by shepherds but is popular with smugglers and the U.S. military suspects militants use it as an entry route. It is under constant American surveillance.
But Iraqis said the Americans attacked a wedding party, and the bride and groom were killed.
Lt. Col. Ziyad al-Jbouri, deputy police chief of Ramadi, said the attack happened about 2:45 a.m. in a desert region near the border with Syria and Jordan. He said between 42 and 45 people were killed, including 15 children and 10 women.
Dr. Salah al-Ani, who works at a hospital in Ramadi, 250 miles east of the scene, put the death toll at 45.
"This was a wedding and the (U.S.) planes came and attacked the people at a house. Is this the democracy and freedom that (President) Bush has brought us?" said a man on the videotape, Dahham Harraj. "There was no reason."
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said the attack was launched about 15 miles from the Syrian border after U.S. forces received "specific intelligence" about foreign fighters slipping into the country.
"We sent a ground force in to the location," Kimmitt told Associated Press Television News. "They were shot at. We returned fire."
U.S. soldiers recovered satellite communications gear, foreign passports and a large amount of Iraqi cash at the site, he said.
Military officials in Washington refused to say whether anyone from a wedding party was among the people killed.
Iraqis interviewed on a videotape from Associated Press Television News said revelers fired volleys of gunfire into the air in a traditional wedding celebration before the attack. American troops have sometimes mistaken celebratory gunfire for hostile fire.
The footage showed a truck containing bloodied bodies, many wrapped in blankets and piled atop one other, after it arrived in Ramadi. Several were children. The body of a girl who appeared to be younger than 5 lay in a white sheet, her legs riddled with wounds and her dress soaked in blood.
Two Iraqis said to have been killed in the attack were buried Thursday in Baghdad. One of them was the wedding singer, mourners said
"At about 3 a.m., we were sleeping and the planes started firing," said one of the mourners, who gave his name only as Bassem. "They fired more than 40 missiles ... I was running ... There are no fighters. These are lies."
Arab media painted reports of the airstrike as an example of what is widely seen in this part of the world as an American campaign against Arabs.
Meanwhile Thursday, Iraqi insurgents ambushed a Spanish patrol protecting troops pulling out of Iraq, the Defense Ministry said. One soldier was wounded.
The patrol came under rifle fire while returning to a Spanish base in the south-central city of Diwaniya after accompanying a convoy heading for Kuwait on its way back to Spain, a ministry official said.
Chalabi severs ties with US-led authority in Iraq
Chalabi severs ties with US-led authority in Iraq
Thu May 20, 2004
BAGHDAD (AFP) - Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmed Chalabi said his relations with the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority were "non-existent" after an overnight raid against his house.
"My relationship with the CPA now is non-existent ..." he told reporters after claiming a firefight had narrowly been avoided between his guards and US-backed Iraqi police during the raid.
"I am America's best friend in Iraq; if the CPA finds it necessary to direct an armed attack against my home you can see the state of relations between the CPA and the Iraqi people."
The former Pentagon favourite also called on US President George W. Bush to hand over sovereignty to the Iraqi people without delay.
"My message to the CPA is let my people go, let my people be free. We are grateful to President Bush for liberating Iraq but it is time for the Iraqi people to run their affairs," he told a press conference.
0 Replies
BumbleBeeBoogie
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Thu 20 May, 2004 05:06 pm
Profile: Ahmed Chalabi
Profile: Ahmed Chalabi
BBC 5/20/04
Ahmed Chalabi was once touted by his American supporters at the Pentagon as a future president of Iraq. But the relationship has soured during the messy occupation and jockeying for power that has followed the US overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
Fourteen months after the invasion the divorce seemed complete, when on 20 May US troops and Iraqi police raided his home and the headquarters of his party, the Iraqi National Congress, in Baghdad.
Chalabi aides said the raid was intended to intimidate him into stopping his recent criticism of US plans for the transfer of sovereignty at the end of June.
'Perfect candidate'
The fact that he is Shia - like the majority in Iraq - secular and pro-Western had made Ahmed Chalabi look like the perfect candidate to replace Sadden Hussein in many American eyes.
He is believed to have been instrumental in providing some of the intelligence - flawed intelligence as it appears to be now - used to support the case for the war.
And after decades in exile, Mr Chalabi was one of the first Iraqis to be flown by the Pentagon to Iraq during the 2003 invasion, supposedly to allow him to consolidate his political base in the country.
But it quickly emerged that Iraqis did not trust this favourite of the Americans, preferring their own religious and tribal leaders, many of whom had stuck it out with the populace through the dark days of Saddam.
Indeed Mr Chalabi's past has continued to haunt him, undermining his credibility in the eyes of ordinary Iraqis.
Chequered career
Born in 1945 in Baghdad to a wealthy banking family, Mr Chalabi left Iraq in 1956 and lived mainly in the US and London, except for a period in the mid-1990s when he tried to organise an uprising in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq.
The venture ended in failure with hundreds of deaths.
Soon after, the INC was routed from northern Iraq after Saddam Hussein's troops overran its base in Irbil.
A number of party officials were executed and others - including Mr Chalabi - fled the country.
Mr Chalabi has been particularly dogged by the collapse of a private bank he established in Jordan in the late 1980s, with the help of King Hussein's brother, Crown Prince Hassan.
CHALABI: KEY DATES
1945 Born in Baghdad
1956 Leaves Iraq
1990 Petra Bank collapses
1992 Founds INC
1995 INC offensive against Iraqi army fails
1996 Flees Iraq after INC base in Irbil overrun by Saddam Hussein's troops
2033 Returns to Iraq
Petra Bank, which became a leading private bank in the country, collapsed in 1990 amid allegations of financial impropriety by Mr Chalabi. Two years later, he was convicted of embezzlement and sentenced in absentia by a Jordanian court to 22 years in prison with hard labour.
Mr Chalabi protests his innocence and has always maintained the case was an Iraqi plot to frame him.
While living in London, where he was granted British citizenship, Mr Chalabi founded the INC, a broad coalition of opposition forces committed to establishing democracy in Iraq.
A seasoned lobbyist in London and Washington who studied mathematics at the University of Chicago and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mr Chalabi has been described as controversial, charismatic, determined, crafty, cunning and ambitious.
But he has consistently discounted the possibility he would take a role in any future government.
"I am not seeking any positions - my job will end with the liberation of Iraq from Saddam's rule," he said before the start of the US-led war.
He did not attend the first US-brokered meeting of Iraqi representatives to start shaping a future government of the country, sending a representative instead.
However, for the Arab media, Mr Chalabi was the epitome of an American stooge, a man who sold his soul to the devil.
Mr Chalabi was also blamed for advising the Provisional Coalition Authority to dissolve the Iraqi army and the Baath party - two decisions that were criticised by many as responsible for the breakdown in law and order and alienating large sectors of Iraqi society.
He has always denied being sidelined, but the first public sign of a possible rift between the Pentagon and Mr Chalabi came in mid-May.
American officials announced then that the monthly payment of more than $300,000 to Mr Chalabi's party, the Iraqi National Congress, was to be stopped.
Is Chalabi a spy for Iran?
America's 'Best Friend' A Spy?
May 20, 2004
Ahmad Chalabi: "I am America's best friend in Iraq."
(CBS/AP) In the latest setback for a man once seen as the possible leader of a free and democratic Iraq, Iraqi police backed by U.S. troops raided the Baghdad home and offices of Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi.
American soldiers and armed U.S. civilians could be seen milling about Chalabi's compound in the city's fashionable Mansour district. Some people could be seen loading boxes into vehicles. Aides said documents and computers were seized without warrants.
A senior coalition official said several people were arrested and that arrest warrants were issued for "up to 15 people" on allegations of "fraud, kidnapping and associated matters."
Senior U.S. officials told 60 Minutes Correspondent Lesley Stahl that they have evidence Chalabi has been passing highly-classified U.S. intelligence to Iran.
The evidence shows that Chalabi personally gave Iranian intelligence officers information so sensitive that if revealed it could, quote, "get Americans killed." The evidence is said to be "rock solid."
Sources have told Stahl a high-level investigation is underway into who in the U.S. government gave Chalabi such sensitive information in the first place.
Chalabi supporters suggested that the raid was politically motivated bid to intimidate the former exile, who has become extremely vocal in his criticism of Washington.
At a press conference after the raid, Chalabi lashed out at the ruling Coalition Provisional Authority, complaining it was coddling former members of Saddam's Baath Party and treating Iraqis badly.
"I am America's best friend in Iraq," Chalabi said. "If the CPA finds it necessary to direct an armed attack against my home, you can see the state of relations between the CPA and the Iraqi people."
The raid was a symbol of how far Chalabi's stock has fallen in the eyes of U.S. officials.
In exile, Chalabi's U.S.-financed Iraqi National Congress provided intelligence information on Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Chalabi produced a string of defectors whose stories suggested that Saddam posed an imminent threat to the United States because of his weapons of mass destruction.
A key claim came from a Chalabi-sponsored defector who told U.S. intelligence that in order to evade U.N. inspectors, Saddam put his biological weapons labs in trucks.
The assertion that Saddam had mobile weapons labs was a major feature of Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech to the U.N. on why military action needed to be taken against Iraq.
"We know that Iraq has at least seven of these mobile biological agent factories. Ladies and gentlemen, these are sophisticated facilities. For example, they can produce anthrax and botulinum toxin. In fact, they can produce enough dry biological agent in a single month to kill thousands upon thousands of people," Powell said.
The flow of information caused Chalabi's star to rise in White House and Pentagon circles, despite some warning signs about his reliability.
For example, Chalabi, a former banker, was convicted of fraud in absentia in Jordan in 1992 in a banking scandal and sentenced to 22 years in jail. He has denied any wrongdoing.
Ironically enough, Chalabi's downfall began with an action he had enthusiastically supported: the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
No weapons of mass destruction - or mobile weapons labs - were found. As 60 Minutes reported, a postwar analysis by the government of Chalabi's defectors has found that many of them exaggerated - and that their information about weapons of mass destruction and Saddam's links to Al Qaeda was wrong.
In an interview with 60 Minutes, Chalabi minimized the importance of the defector who told of the mobile weapons labs.
"What he said is that these are mobile biological labs. He did not say that they are weapons factories. There's a big difference," Chalabi said.
Chalabi, who had returned to Iraq with a private army of 700 "freedom fighters" following the invasion, began to lose favor with U.S. officials as it became increasingly clear that much of information he supplied was suspect.
Chalabi holds a seat on the Iraqi Governing Council, but he has been unable to build a base of popular support with the Iraqi people.
The New York Times and the Washington Post report that Chalabi has been feuding with L. Paul Bremer, the American civilian administrator in Iraq. The Times quoted Chalabi aides as saying the former exile's relationship with Bremer was so bad that he skipped Governing Council meetings that Bremer attended.
Earlier this week, the U.S. ended the $340,000 monthly payment it was making to Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. That action was followed by the raid on his Baghdad home.
0 Replies
ossobuco
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Fri 21 May, 2004 11:14 am
I am wondering if Chalabi related to Lisa Halabi, who became Queen Noor of Jordan?
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BumbleBeeBoogie
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Sat 22 May, 2004 08:00 am
Raid on Chalabi Puts 'NYT' Even More on the Spot
Raid on Chalabi Puts 'NYT' Even More on the Spot
Still waiting for that corrective editor's note.
By William E. Jackson Jr.
May 21, 2004 - Editors and Publishers
In a front page New York Times article this morning, David E. Sanger quotes a senior U.S. intelligence official's assessment of Ahmad Chalabi's information on weapons of mass destruction, which was distributed so avidly by the Times itself in the run-up to the Iraq war: "useless at best, and misleading at worst."
Yesterday, American and Iraqi forces raided and ransacked the Iraqi National Congress leader's office in Baghdad, completing his fall from grace as what the Times terms a "favorite" of the Bush administration. Today, two front-page articles in the paper, and an editorial titled "Friends Like This," take a harsh view of Chalabi. One would never know that the Times itself once relied on him heavily for its "scoops" on Saddam's WMD stockpiles.
In fact, one must painfully recall the now famous May 1, 2003, e-mail to the paper's Baghdad Bureau Chief John Burns from star Times reporter in Iraq, Judith Miller, who wrote: "I've been covering Chalabi for about 10 years, and have done most of the stories about him for our paper. ... He has provided most of the front page exclusives on WMD to our paper."
Oh, how quickly the Times forgets its friends, Chalabi must be thinking today.
Describing Chalabi, Sanger wrote today: "He became a master of the art of the leak, giving new currency to the suspicions about Mr. Hussein's weapons." Leaks? Who was his favored drop? Miller of the Times, although there were many others.
And in today's Times editorial: "Before the war, Ahmad Chalabi told Washington hawks exactly what they wanted to hear about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction ... Much of the information Mr. Chalabi had produced was dead wrong. He was one of the chief cheerleaders for the theory that Iraq had vast quantities of weapons of mass destruction. ... But he can't be made a scapegoat.
"The Bush administration should have known what it was doing when it gave enormous credence to a questionable character whose own self-interest was totally invested in getting the Americans to invade Iraq. ..."
Left unsaid is that the Times should have known better, as well. Yet, incredibly, the paper of record has never run a corrective editor's note to clean up the mess that Miller made for the Times' integrity.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
William E. Jackson Jr. has been covering this subject for E&P since last spring. He was executive director of President Jimmy Carter's General Advisory Committee on Arms Control, 1978-80. After affiliations with the Brookings Institution and the Fulbright Institute of International Relations, Jackson writes on national security issues from Davidson, N.C.
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BumbleBeeBoogie
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Sat 22 May, 2004 08:12 am
Osso, no relationship betwen Lisa Halabi and Ahmed Chalabi.
Noor of Jordan is the fourth wife and widow of the late King Hussein
Hussein bin Talal was the King of Jordan (1952-1999).
Queen Noor was born Elizabeth Najeeb Halaby the daughter of Najeeb Elias Halaby (1915-2003), a former CEO of Pan-American World Airways Pan American World Airways (Pan Am) was at one time the principal international US-based airline.
Her father was former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, and his first wife, Doris Carlquist. She has a younger brother, Christian Halaby, a composer and guitarist, and a younger sister, Alexa Halaby (a University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania
Queen Noor's paternal grandfather, Najeeb Elias Halaby (1878-1928), of Syrian descent, was an oil broker, according to 1920 census records. Retail panjandrum Stanley Marcus, however, recalled that in the early 1920s, Halaby opened Halaby Galleries, a rug boutique and interior-decorating shop, at Neiman-Marcus in Dallas, Texas, and ran it with his Texas-born wife, Laura Wilkins (1889-1987, later Mrs. Urban B. Koen).
Lisa Halaby was raised and educated in the United States, graduating from Princeton University
In 1974, an architect-planner by training, she met King Hussein while working in Jordan on the development of the Amman Intercontinental Airport. They married on June 15
In a New York Times article (May 19, 1978) about the couple's forthcoming wedding, a friend of the bride described her as "a darling, healthy, sunburned, tennis-playing, All-American girl, but she is very sophisticated. I can't see her marrying the average boy." Halaby converted to Islam and before the marriage took place, her first name was changed from Elizabeth to Noor, an Arabic word meaning Light.
She is not the Queen Mother of Jordan, being King Abdullah II
0 Replies
BumbleBeeBoogie
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Sat 22 May, 2004 08:46 am
US investigate how Chalabi obtained intelligence for Iran
Posted on Fri, May. 21, 2004
Officials investigate how INC's Chalabi obtained U.S. intelligence
By Warren P. Strobel and John Walcott
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - The U.S. government has launched an investigation to determine how Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi obtained highly classified American intelligence that was then passed to Iran, Bush administration officials said Friday.
A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the matter's sensitivity, said the compromised intelligence was "highly classified and damaging."
He declined to specify what it was.
The officials spoke a day after Iraqi police, backed by U.S. soldiers, raided the home and offices of Chalabi, a one-time favorite of civilian Pentagon officials who played a key role in building support for invading Iraq.
Two U.S. officials said that evidence suggests that Arras Habib, Chalabi's security chief, is a longtime agent of Iran's intelligence service, the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, or MOIS.
The investigation is likely to be extremely sensitive because Chalabi's most ardent supporters have included not only top civilians in the office of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, but also officials in the office of Vice President Dick Cheney and members of the Defense Policy Board, a Pentagon advisory group.
Chalabi's primary critics in the government include top officials of the Central Intelligence Agency and State Department, who distrust him.
Asked about reports that Chalabi "was helping out Iran," Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, "I have some information." He added, "We'd have to go to a closed hearing to talk about it." Myers also told Congress that since the March 2003 invasion, the INC has "provided very good intelligence to our forces in Iraq that have prevented our soldiers from dying."
The two U.S. officials said Habib is suspected of giving classified U.S. intelligence to officials in Iran, with whom Chalabi has long had close ties. Habib is now a fugitive.
A U.S. intelligence official said the evidence of Habib's ties to Iran includes both intercepts and some documentation. The official said Habib provided sensitive information, some of it classified above top secret, to the Iranians.
The information may have included U.S. reporting on leading figures within Iraq's majority Shiite Muslim community. Chalabi is a Shiite, as are 60 percent of Iraqis and 90 percent of Iranians.
The intelligence official said Habib also was the INC official who handled most of the Iraqi defectors, including one code-named "Curveball," who provided much of the fabricated, exaggerated and unconfirmed information about Iraqi weapons programs and links to terrorism that Bush used in making his case for invading Iraq.
"The bottom line here is that much of the information the administration had about Iraq may have come from an Iranian agent," said the intelligence official. "If that's true, this is a huge scandal."
A senior Chalabi aide denied the allegations and accused the CIA of leading a smear campaign against Chalabi. "No U.S. official has mentioned this to us in any capacity. It's absolutely false," said the official, who asked that his name not be used.
A third senior administration official said the contacts between an INC official or officials and Iranian security services were revealed via electronic intercepts.
Chalabi bitterly denounced the raid Thursday, which Iraqi and coalition officials said was aimed at arresting 15 individuals wanted on charges of fraud, kidnapping and other abuses.
Other members of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council joined in the condemnation Friday and blamed the raid on the Coalition Provisional Authority.
U.S. officials have said the raid was conducted by Iraqis with U.S. troops in a back-up role, but much about who was behind the raid and its precise purpose remains unanswered.
White House spokesman Trent Duffy declined to comment Friday on whether Chalabi or members of his entourage are suspected of having ties to Iran.
Asked about President Bush's view of the Iraqi, who sat near first lady Laura Bush during Bush's January State of the Union address, Duffy offered no endorsement.
"Mr. Chalabi was a man who worked with the coalition and the Iraqi Governing Council on the objective in Iraq, and it's up to the Iraqi people, from here on out, as we transition to a democratic Iraq, on who they decide their leaders will be," the spokesman said.
The INC official said Habib made no secret of his links with the Iranians or travel to Iran, Iraq's largest neighbor and longtime adversary. But he denied Habib was an Iranian agent.
"He's no one's agent," the official said.
MOIS, also known by its Farsi acronym Vevak, is one of the most powerful ministries in the Iranian government, according to information compiled by the Federation of American Scientists, an independent security research group.
Its personnel pose as Iranian diplomats, as well as officials of Iran's airline, students, merchants and employees of Iran's state-controlled banks, the federation's Web site states.
-----------------------------------
(Joseph L. Galloway contributed to this report.)
0 Replies
BumbleBeeBoogie
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Sat 22 May, 2004 08:49 am
BBB
Wouldn't it be interesting if we eventually learn that Iran was using Chalabi to manipulate the US into war in Iraq against Saddam, its old enemy. Iran couldn't defeat Saddam, so did Iran use the US to win its battle and, at the same time, try to convert Iran into an non-secular Islamic government?
BBB
0 Replies
ossobuco
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Sat 22 May, 2004 10:21 am
I hadn't thought so, BBB; I remember when Lisa Halaby married King Hussein. But I saw something about his dealings in Jordan in one of Nimh's posts, and that made me wonder.
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BumbleBeeBoogie
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Sun 23 May, 2004 10:16 am
Chalabi aide reportedly wanted for spying
Chalabi aide reportedly wanted for spying
U.S. suspicions fall on Iraqi politician's ties to Iran
The Associated Press
Updated: 12:35 p.m. ET May 22, 2004
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Kurdish security chief for embattled Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi is being sought by Iraqi and coalition authorities for alleged links to Iran's intelligence service, a senior Iraqi official said Saturday.
There is an arrest warrant for Araz Habib because "he has relations with the Iranian government" and "works for the Iranian intelligence," the official said on condition of anonymity.
Chalabi also told reporters Thursday that Habib was named in a warrant shown to him when Iraqi police, backed by U.S. soldiers, raided his home in western Baghdad. Chalabi did not disclose the charges against Habib, who has not been taken into custody.
A Chalabi aide, Haidar Musawi, told The Associated Press that he did not know Habib's whereabouts. However, Musawi called the allegations a "ridiculous" attempt to undermine Chalabi, a longtime Pentagon favorite who is now out of favor with the U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority.
"These allegations are ridiculous and are coming from a body that wants to fight and tarnish the reputation of a political personality that has its clear political stances," Musawi said. "They are resorting to such means to get back at Dr. Ahmad Chalabi through getting to the officials and employees of" his Iraqi National Congress.
U.S. shuns Chalabi
Chalabi was once groomed as a possible successor to Saddam Hussein and provided much of the information about Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction program on which President Bush justified the Iraq war.
However, with no major weapons stocks found so far and the Iraq crisis worsening, the Bush administration appears anxious to jettison Chalabi as Iraqis prepare to retake sovereignty June 30.
Chalabi's long-standing contacts with Iran have left some in the U.S. government suspicious about his intentions, but Chalabi has denied allegations that he handed over sensitive information to Iran about the U.S. occupation.
U.S. officials have complained privately that Chalabi was interfering with an inquiry into money skimmed from the U.N. oil-for-food program by pursuing his own probe. Chalabi's vigorous campaign to purge former members of Saddam's Baath party appear to have backfired with the Americans now seeking officials of the former regime for key roles in security and other institutions.
Chalabi also has recently accused the coalition of not going far enough in its plans for giving Iraqis political power June 30, although U.S. officials insist they will grant full sovereignty.
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PDiddie
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Sun 23 May, 2004 10:21 am
See, this is what happens when all you can afford is $355,000 a month for intelligence.
You wind up with a double agent.
The Bush administration is even forcing its spies to work two jobs to make ends meet.
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PDiddie
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Sun 23 May, 2004 04:36 pm
I think Chalabi has Bush by the stones.
You gotta admire the chutzpah of this dude. It's like the guy who kills his parents and applies for relief because he's an orphan.
Chalabi defends himself by saying, "Let's settle this with a Congressional investigation. Let the Bush administration bring their evidence and we'll bring ours."
Good bluff. He knows Bush doesn't let out any information. Because everything that comes out makes him look like an idiot.
Bush won't even allow terrorist intelligence documents from the Clinton administration be released to the 9-11 committee.
Chalabi hammers it home by implying that the President of the United States would not be so stupid as to take advice from someone so insignificant as himself. (Would he?)
This, of course, is an example of why you don't make the dumbest guy in the country the president.
Because he can be duped so easily.
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Mr Stillwater
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Sun 23 May, 2004 07:05 pm
Quote:
Chalabi defends himself by saying, "Let's settle this with a Congressional investigation. Let the Bush administration bring their evidence and we'll bring ours."
This guy isn't a spy!! He's a satirist!!
A Congressional investigation into the activities of the Bush Administration in post-Saddam Iraq!!!!! Hope they catch that little piece of cr@p with a suitcase full of greenbacks and false passports on the Syrian border.
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BumbleBeeBoogie
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Mon 24 May, 2004 08:38 am
Relationship with Chalabi proves costly for Bush administrat
Posted on Sun, May. 23, 2004
Relationship with Chalabi proves costly for Bush administration
By John Walcott
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Mr. Chalabi makes many prominent Americans, European and Arabs uneasy because they don't know what several tons of Mukhabarat documents seized by INC will reveal about their secret dealings with Saddam. Rumor has it they contain names of all foreigners rewarded by Saddam for services as "agents of influence." These reportedlyinclude the names of Qatar-based Al Jazeera reporters who worked for Iraqi intelligence.
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BumbleBeeBoogie
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Tue 25 May, 2004 12:27 pm
US intelligence fears Iran duped hawks into Iraq war
US intelligence fears Iran duped hawks into Iraq war
Julian Borger in Washington
Tuesday May 25, 2004
The Guardian
An urgent investigation has been launched in Washington into whether Iran played a role in manipulating the US into the Iraq war by passing on bogus intelligence through Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, it emerged yesterday.
Some intelligence officials now believe that Iran used the hawks in the Pentagon and the White House to get rid of a hostile neighbour, and pave the way for a Shia-ruled Iraq.
According to a US intelligence official, the CIA has hard evidence that Mr Chalabi and his intelligence chief, Aras Karim Habib, passed US secrets to Tehran, and that Mr Habib has been a paid Iranian agent for several years, involved in passing intelligence in both directions.
The CIA has asked the FBI to investigate Mr Chalabi's contacts in the Pentagon to discover how the INC acquired sensitive information that ended up in Iranian hands.
The implications are far-reaching. Mr Chalabi and Mr Habib were the channels for much of the intelligence on Iraqi weapons on which Washington built its case for war.
"It's pretty clear that Iranians had us for breakfast, lunch and dinner," said an intelligence source in Washington yesterday. "Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the US for several years through Chalabi."
Larry Johnson, a former senior counter-terrorist official at the state department, said: "When the story ultimately comes out we'll see that Iran has run one of the most masterful intelligence operations in history. They persuaded the US and Britain to dispose of its greatest enemy."
Mr Chalabi has vehemently rejected the allegations as "a lie, a fib and silly". He accused the CIA director, George Tenet, of a smear campaign against himself and Mr Habib.
However, it is clear that the CIA - at loggerheads with Mr Chalabi for more than eight years - believes it has caught him red-handed, and is sticking to its allegations.
"The suggestion that Chalabi is a victim of a smear campaign is outrageous," a US intelligence official said. "It's utter nonsense. He passed very sensitive and classified information to the Iranians. We have rock solid information that he did that."
"As for Aras Karim [Habib] being a paid agent for Iranian intelligence, we have very good reason to believe that is the case," added the intelligence official, who did not want to be named. He said it was unclear how long this INC-Iranian collaboration had been going on, but pointed out that Mr Chalabi had had overt links with Tehran "for a long period of time".
An intelligence source in Washington said the CIA confirmed its long-held suspicions when it discovered that a piece of information from an electronic communications intercept by the National Security Agency had ended up in Iranian hands. The information was so sensitive that its circulation had been restricted to a handful of officials.
"This was 'sensitive compartmented information' - SCI - and it was tracked right back to the Iranians through Aras Habib," the intelligence source said.
Mr Habib, a Shia Kurd who is being sought by Iraqi police since a raid on INC headquarters last week, has been Mr Chalabi's righthand man for more than a decade. He ran a Pentagon-funded intelligence collection programme in the run-up to the invasion and put US officials in touch with Iraqi defectors who made claims about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
Those claims helped make the case for war but have since proved groundless, and US intelligence agencies are now scrambling to determine whether false information was passed to the US with Iranian connivance.
INC representatives in Washington did not return calls seeking comment.
But Laurie Mylroie, a US Iraq analyst and one of the INC's most vocal backers in Washington, dismissed the allegations as the product of a grudge among CIA and state department officials driven by a pro-Sunni, anti-Shia bias.
She said that after the CIA raised questions about Mr Habib's Iranian links, the Pentagon's Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) conducted a lie-detector test on him in 2002, which he passed with "flying colours".
The DIA is also reported to have launched its own inquiry into the INC-Iran link.
An intelligence source in Washington said the FBI investigation into the affair would begin with Mr Chalabi's "handlers" in the Pentagon, who include William Luti, the former head of the office of special plans, and his immediate superior, Douglas Feith, the under secretary of defence for policy.
There is no evidence that they were the source of the leaks. Other INC supporters at the Pentagon may have given away classified information in an attempt to give Mr Chalabi an advantage in the struggle for power surrounding the transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi government on June 30.
The CIA allegations bring to a head a dispute between the CIA and the Pentagon officials instrumental in promoting Mr Chalabi and his intelligence in the run-up to the war. By calling for an FBI counter-intelligence investigation, the CIA is, in effect, threatening to disgrace senior neo-conservatives in the Pentagon.
"This is people who opposed the war with long knives drawn for people who supported the war," Ms Mylroie said.
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BumbleBeeBoogie
1
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Tue 25 May, 2004 12:32 pm
Was Laurie Mylroie involved as well as Chalabi and Habib?
Was Laurie Mylroie involved as well as Chalabi and Habib?
New doubts over pre-war intelligence
New doubts over pre-war intelligence
JAMES KIRKUP AND ALEX MASSIE IN WASHINGTON
Key quote: "But it is outlandish that we, an exile organisation, which was criticised and vilified by the CIA throughout the past decade, would provide information, and the US officials would take it as credible and go to war on its basis. That is ridiculous" - Ahmad Chalabi, of Iraqi Governing Council.
Story in full:
FRESH doubts were cast on the quality of Britain's pre-war intelligence on Iraqi arms last night, as it emerged that United States authorities are urgently seeking two former MI6 informants whose evidence has now "fallen apart".
US agents have been painstakingly reviewing the intelligence that led Western leaders including Tony Blair and the US president George Bush to the conclusion that Saddam Hussein was pursuing an illicit chemical and biological weapons programmes.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the CIA has established that information from two "supposedly senior" Iraqis who spied for MI6 had "fallen apart".
"Neither had direct knowledge of what they claimed. They were describing what they had heard," one US official said.
The revelation raises questions about the British government's now-infamous weapons of mass destruction (WMD) dossier, published in September 2002.
That dossier, compiled from MI6 reports, claimed that Saddam had an active, growing WMD programme and the ability to launch chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes.
The source of that claim has never been identified, but evidence given during Lord Hutton's inquiry last year established that it came from a single individual who had defected from the Iraqi military.
It has also emerged the claim related to battlefield weapons, not long-range missiles. Ministers including Mr Blair have said they were unaware of that point even when the war began, and experts have cast doubt on whether even the source of the claim had been aware of the distinction.
Despite working closely on Iraq and sharing almost all of their reports, MI6 and the CIA could not agree on the assertion, which was at the centre of the political battle over the government's case for war.
Sir Richard Dearlove, the outgoing head of MI6, last year referred to the 45-minute claim as "a piece of well-sourced intelligence".
George Tenet, the head of the CIA, referred to the assertion as "s***," according to a book published this year by Washington insider Bob Woodward.
British officials last night declined to comment, citing the long-standing government convention of never commenting on intelligence matters.
Further doubt on the quality of information given to intelligence services came from Ahmad Chalabi, of the Iraqi Governing Council, who yesterday denied any responsibility for veracity of information provided by defectors he provided to the US.
Mr Chalabi said the Iraqi National Congress introduced three defectors to US government agencies. "It was up to them to analyse this [information], and the responsibility for reporting to the president after analysing the information is not mine," Mr Chalabi said.
He denied coaching any of the defectors.
"But it is outlandish that we, an exile organisation, which was criticised and vilified by the CIA throughout the past decade, would provide information, and the US officials would take it as credible and go to war on its basis. That is ridiculous," Mr Chalabi said.
Meanwhile, in Iraq, US troops carried out another major operation yesterday against forces loyal to the rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Tanks and troops moved into the heart of Kufa, a stronghold of Sadr, for the first time since the fiercely anti-US cleric launched an uprising against in early April.
US forces fought militiamen near Kufa's Sahla mosque, then raided it for weapons after an Iraqi counter-terrorism force had "cleared" the site, the military said. Soldiers seized a machine gun, two mortar tubes and over 200 mortar rounds as well as rocket-propelled grenade launchers and rounds, according to a statement.
US troops smashed the gate to the mosque complex with an armoured vehicle and killed people inside. Reporters saw bloodstains on the ground that indicated someone had been dragged for at least ten yards. There also was blood in the mosque's bathrooms.
The military stressed that Iraqi security forces entered the mosque before any Americans.
0 Replies
BumbleBeeBoogie
1
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Tue 1 Jun, 2004 09:44 am
American contractors' role in Chalabi raid revealed The Bush Administration may wonder, if they care at all, why the American people and the rest of the world doesn't believe half of what they say. They are so stupid in thinking that their constant lying won't be revealed. Lie after lie after lie.
Maybe we need to be reminded that the issue of "independent contractors" was settled by the courts long ago. Even the Labor Department acknowledges that so called independent contractors under contract who take the majority of their instructions from the employer are, in fact, employees.
---BBB
American contractors' role in Chalabi raid revealed
By Scott Shane
Baltimore Sun
May 31, 2004
When Iraqi police raided the Baghdad home and offices of politician Ahmed Chalabi on May 20, US officials hurried to distance themselves from the operation, saying it was an Iraqi affair and that no US Government employees were involved.
But eight armed American contractors paid by a US State Department program went on the raid, directing and encouraging the Iraqi policemen who, witnesses say, ripped out computers, turned over furniture and smashed photographs.
Some of the Americans helped themselves to baklava, apples and diet soda from Mr Chalabi's refrigerator, sitting in a garden outside to enjoy their looted snacks, according to members of Mr Chalabi's staff.
The contractors work for DynCorp, a subsidiary of Computer Sciences Corporation and the company in charge of training and advising the Iraqi police on a State Department contract. A State Department official confirmed the DynCorp workers' presence during the raid.
The participation of gun-toting American contractors in a raid the US Government has insisted it did not order is the latest instance of problems posed by the 20,000 contract security workers serving in Iraq.
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