Chalabi involved US, Iran policy making again, current and former intelligence officials say
Larisa Alexandrovna
Published:
Monday May 1, 2006
Print This | Email This Ahmed Chalabi, the man who helped provide cooked intelligence on Iraq to the Pentagon and the New York Times in the lead-up to war, is once again being engaged in US policy decisions, current and former intelligence officials say.
According to two former high level counterintelligence officials, one
former senior counterterrorist official and another intelligence
officer, Chalabi is acting as broker between the US Ambassador to Iraq,
Zalmay Khalilzad, and Iranian officials in what are now stalled
diplomatic efforts between the US and Iran.
"[Ahmed] Chalabi inserted himself and brought a proposal to Zel," one
intelligence source said.
Intelligence officials say the proposal that Chalabi delivered asked
both the US and Iran to focus diplomatic talks on the Iraqi insurgency,
leaving all discussion of Iran's nuclear program off the table. The
talks, however, are now stalled.
It is unclear, however, who has tasked Chalabi to act as middleman or
who he is representing in these attempts at negotiations.
"Either he is taking it upon himself or being asked to intervene," one
former senior counterintelligence official said. "What we know is that
Chalabi has approached the US Ambassador to Iraq with a request from
what appears to be the Iranian leadership to engage in talks."
Asked what is motivating Chalabi to attempt talks between Iran and the
United States, another former intelligence official put it simply: "He
is close to Iran."
This "closeness" to Iran could also be the reason the Office of the Vice
President and the Pentagon decided to re-employ Iran-Contra middleman
and arms dealer, Manucher Ghorbanifar. An earlier RAW STORY report
revealed that Vice President Cheney and the Pentagon re-hired
Ghorbanifar as "the man on the ground" in order to monitor any talks
between the US ambassador and Iran.
"Khalilzad has been authorized to enter into discussions with the
Iranians over the issue of stability inside Iraq," one former
intelligence source asserted.
Discussions between the US and Iran over Iraq's insurgency are now on
hold for unspecified reasons. Sources close to the UN Security Council
and a former high ranking intelligence official, however, say that the failure of this
latest attempt to bring Iran to the table is part of an ongoing
pushback by Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to squash
diplomatic activities, which they are said to view as a sign of
"weakness."
Chalabi's reemergence has created no small concern in the intelligence
community.
"Ask yourself: who has most benefited by [Chalabi's] actions of the
last five years? Where does he own a house? What languages does he
speak?" one former intelligence official said.
The answer, of course, is Iran.
Chalabi's checkered past
Allegations of Chalabi acting on behalf of Iran are not new. The former
head of the Iraqi National Congress is known abroad for counterfeiting
and bank fraud. He was convicted in absentia in 1992 by a Jordanian court and sentenced to twenty-two years of hard labor for the
collapse of Petra Bank, which under Chalabi's leadership could not
account for $200 million in holdings. Chalabi has not served any jail
time.
Chalabi burned the CIA on multiple occasions, including fabricating a
letter in which he implicated former CIA officer Bob Baer in an
assassination plot against now deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
By all expert
accounts, he has not been a source trusted in the intelligence
community.
When asked if Chalabi's duplicity could be summarized in a single
sentence, Baer told RAW STORY, "The CIA doesn't trust Chalabi because he
has a long history of making arrangements with other countries... [and]
not telling anyone about them."
Baer provides an account of run-ins with Chalabi in his bestselling
book See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War
on Terrorism, which was used as the basis for the Academy Award
nominated film Syriana.
Yet despite security concerns, Chalabi was brought on board as a
Pentagon intelligence asset in the lead-up to war with Iraq. The Iraqi
expatriate allegedly provided the bulk of information regarding a
secret Saddam Hussein weapons stash and concocted a fable in which fallen Gulf
War Navy Pilot, Scott Speicher was alive and being held inside
an Iraqi prison, sources say.
Chalabi had his home and offices raided by US forces in May 2004, following
allegations he was passing classified US secrets to Iranian
intelligence. His intelligence chief, Aras Karim, said to be an Iranian
asset, had already fled.
In June of 2004, the FBI began an investigation into lower level
Pentagon employees who may have had contact with Chalabi, in order to
identify the person providing Chalabi with US secrets.
"An FBI investigation is under way to discover who leaked information
about NSA intercepts to Mr. Chalabi," the Guardian reported in June
2004. "That investigation was said by intelligence sources to focus on
a small group of Pentagon officials who worked closely with Mr.
Chalabi, but a Pentagon spokesman angrily denied the report last week."
Yet Chalabi's close working relationship consisted of a small cabal of
hawks operating out of an ultra-secretive group called the Office of
Special Plans; more specifically, Chalabi's closest contacts were then
Undersecretary of Defense Policy Douglas Feith, then Deputy Secretary
of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Both Feith and Wolfowitz have had their clearances pulled in the past
for leaking classified information.
It is not known what, if any, contact Chalabi had with lower level
staff members at the Pentagon.
Chalabi had most recently been appointed to head the
oil ministry in Iraq, despite being unable to win a single seat in
Iraq's December election.
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Larisa Alexandrovna, Raw Story's Managing
Investigative News Editor, regularly covers national security and
intelligence stories. Related articles:
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