One Of The Most Sophisticated And Successful Intelligence Operations In History
Well now. This really is treason.
Agency: Chalabi group was front for Iran
BY KNUT ROYCE
WASHINGTON BUREAUMay 21, 2004, 7:29 PM EDT
WASHINGTON — The Defense Intelligence Agency has concluded that a U.S.-funded arm of Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress has been used for years by Iranian intelligence to pass disinformation to the United States and to collect highly sensitive American secrets, according to intelligence sources.
“Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the United States through Chalabi by furnishing through his Information Collection Program information to provoke the United States into getting rid of Saddam Hussein,” said an intelligence source Friday who was briefed on the Defense Intelligence Agency’s conclusions, which were based on a review of thousands of internal documents.
The Information Collection Program also “kept the Iranians informed about what we were doing” by passing classified U.S. documents and other sensitive information, he said. The program has received millions of dollars from the U.S. government over several years.
An administration official confirmed that “highly classified information had been provided [to the Iranians] through that channel.”
The Defense Department this week halted payment of $340,000 a month to Chalabi’s program. Chalabi had long been the favorite of the Pentagon’s civilian leadership. Intelligence sources say Chalabi himself has passed on sensitive U.S. intelligence to the Iranians.
Patrick Lang, former director of the intelligence agency’s Middle East branch, said he had been told by colleagues in the intelligence community that Chalabi’s U.S.-funded program to provide information about weapons of mass destruction and insurgents was effectively an Iranian intelligence operation. “They [the Iranians] knew exactly what we were up to,” he said.
He described it as “one of the most sophisticated and successful intelligence operations in history.”
“I’m a spook. I appreciate good work. This was good work,” he said.
That this came from the DIA means that Feith is in {big} trouble, I think.
It makes his old law partners words to Salon last week (later retracted) even more interesting:
“Ahmed Chalabi is a treacherous, spineless turncoat,” says L. Marc Zell, a former law partner of Douglas Feith, now the undersecretary of defense for policy, and a former friend and supporter of Chalabi and his aspirations to lead Iraq. “He had one set of friends before he was in power, and now he’s got another.”
Zell, a Jerusalem attorney, continues to be a partner in the firm that Feith left in 2001 to take the Pentagon job. He also helped Ahmed Chalabi’s nephew Salem set up a new law office in Baghdad in late 2003. Chalabi met with Zell and other neoconservatives many times from the mid-1990s on in London, Turkey, and the U.S. Zell outlines what Chalabi was promising the neocons before the Iraq war: “He said he would end Iraq’s boycott of trade with Israel, and would allow Israeli companies to do business there. He said [the new Iraqi government] would agree to rebuild the pipeline from Mosul [in the northern Iraqi oil fields] to Haifa [the Israeli port, and the location of a major refinery].” But Chalabi, Zell says, has delivered on none of them. The bitter ex-Chalabi backer believes his former friend’s moves were a deliberate bait and switch designed to win support for his designs to return to Iraq and run the country.
These neocons are even dumber than I realized.
Update: Either somebody didn’t get his talking points, or a full fledged knife fight is breaking out in the Pentagon:
Thursday’s raid appeared to be a final break between Mr Chalabi and his former US patrons.
But Gen Myers defended the INC, saying its military intelligence had been “useful and accurate” during the year-long occupation.
“The organisation that he is associated with has provided intelligence to our intelligence unit there in Baghdad that has saved soldiers’ lives,” he told a congressional committee.
Gen Myers’ comments reflect the personal support that Mr Chalabi enjoys in some sections of the administration, particularly the Pentagon. However, this support has been overriden by the importance attached to the political process by Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, and Lakhdar Brahimi, United Nations special envoy to Iraq. To them, Mr Chalabi has come to be seen as an obstacle to UN plans to form a caretaker government to assume sovereignty.