It could be that the FBI is hitting back on the CIA, this time not sitting on the info they have.
Another strange juxtaposition.
Iraqi police under the Interior Ministry raid the INC. Now, Deputy Interior Minister gets bombed. I’m not saying… I’m just saying 'sall. I"m sure that there’re any number of people who’d decide to do such a thing.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/05/22/iraq.main/index.html
A suicide car bomb exploded Saturday morning outside the Baghdad home of Iraq’s deputy interior minister, killing six Iraqis and wounding at least 10 others – including the minister and his wife – an Iraqi police official said.
Erm, isn’t this the militia that we largely flew in from America? (trying to get my facts straight - I do know that we were transporting Chalabi’s organization-in-exile back, and I have heard reports that select “illegal militias”, including and specifically Chalabi’s, were flown in by America.
Makes sense. As I understand it, they wouldn’t have any jurisdiction, even if they did need access to some of the files that may or may not have been inside.
heh, the CIA would deny having agents present at Langley.
Yea, I bet the CIA is having a f*ing field day operating in controlled land with so many contractors around.
By the way, SimonX, you’re doing an exceptional (even for you) job documenting this thread. Hats off, I’m interested in following this as far as it goes.
The only part that is dependent upon “an intelligence source” is the DIA’s conclusions about Iran “manipulating” the US “into getting rid of Saddam Hussein.”
Assume, ftsoa, (or for whatever other reason you should choose), that as luci helpfully suggested, Iran’s actions had absolutely zero impact on US decisions. There’re still the issues of the dissemination of classified national security intelligence by a “senior” official(s) to someone known to have extensive ties to Iran and Iran’s intelligence service.
The Bush Admin characterized the info as the kind that could “get people killed.” Most likely, (a member or), members of the Bush Admin are the only available suspects. One of them allowed life-and-death classified national security info to be transferred to the INC and thus to the Iranians.
This is a very serious crime.
(Despite the fact that Perle was previously caught disclosing classified national security secrets to agents of a foreign government and has still been allowed acces to classified info by this Admin.)
Mr. Aras Karim is a Kurdish Iraqi who converted to Shiism after the the ayatollah Komeyni seized power. Mr. Aras Habib went to Iran and joined the Pasdaran.
Khomeini’s Incorporation of the Iranian Military (.pdf)
NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIVERSITY
McNair Paper 48 January 1996
In early May, Ayatollah Khomeini and the clerics announced the formation of a new, independent military force to serve as a counterweight(Note 76) to the army that would be “the key to neutralization of future challenges from the armed personnel and thus to perpetuation of their rule.”(Note 77) This new element was called the Pasdarans (Guardians) and eventually came to be known as the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC or Revolutionary Guards). The Pasdaran was responsible to the religious authorities and operated outside of and parallel to the established military structure.
…the Khomeini government left the basic infrastructure of the armed forces intact while purging the monarchists from the upper ranks. Replacing the monarchists with “ideologically pure” officers…
Pasdaran
By Global Security 3/9/03
The Pasdaran was intended to protect the Revolution and to assist the ruling clerics in the day-to-day enforcement of the new government’s Islamic codes and morality.
The Pasdaran, with its own separate ministry, has evolved into one of the most powerful organizations in Iran. Not only did it function as an intelligence organization, both within and outside the country, but it also exerted considerable influence on government policies.
The Pasdaran, under the guidance of such clerics as Lahuti and Hashemi-Rafsanjani, was also “to act as the eyes and ears of the Islamic Revolution”…
…President Khamenehi and Majlis speaker Hashemi-Rafsanjani were both former commanders of the Pasdaran.
The Pasdaran was quite active in Lebanon. By the summer of 1982, shortly after the second Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the Pasdaran had nearly 1,000 personnel deployed in the predominantly Shia Biqa Valley.
Copyright © 2000-2004 GlobalSecurity.org
Qods (Jerusalem) Force Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC - Pasdaran-e Inqilab)
fas.org
Friday, August 21, 1998 8:56:03 AM
The Pasdaran has maintained an intelligence branch to monitor the regime’s domestic adversaries and to participate in their arrests and trials.
The Baseej (volunteers) come under the control of the [Pasdaran].
The Baseej allegedly also monitor the activities of citizens, and harass or arrest women whose clothing does not cover the hair and all of the body except hands and face, or those who wear makeup.
…foreign operations by the [Pasdaran] …encompass the activities of Hizballah and Islamic Jihad…
Pasdaran personnel operate through front companies and non-governmental organizations, employees or officials of trading companies, banks, cultural centers or as representatives of the Foundation of the Oppressed and Dispossessed…
Qods (Jerusalem) Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is responsible for extraterritorial operations, including terrorist operations. A primary focus for the Qods Force is training Islamic fundamentalist terrorist groups.
The second largest Pasdaran foreign operations relates to the Kurds (particularly Iraqi Kurds)…
The Pasdaran has also supported the establishment of Hizballah branches in Lebanon, Iraqi Kurdistan, Jordan and Palestine, and the Islamic Jihad in many other Moslem countries including Egypt, Turkey, Chechnya and in Caucasia.
The US funded Mr Karim Habib’s intelligence operation.
It is technically correct that someone(s) is documented as being responsible for the US’s decisions re INC’s Information Collection proram.
And someone(s) of “only ‘a handful’ of senior officials” is responsible through omision or comission, mendacity or incompetence, for the sensitive intelligence making it to the INC.
These responsibilities will have to be borne by someone(s).
Someone(s) is in over their head. They prob’ly should’ve stayed at the think tank writing op-ed pieces.
Maybe I’m just unimaginative, but the only out I see for the Adminis to say,
“We knew that. We were just testing you. You see, were playing them. Yeah. We played them like a fiddle. It’s all hush-hush classified counter-intelligence stuff. But, boyo, man, We’d sure love to show you what a good job we were doing Winning The War On Terror[sup]TM[/sup]. Things like these are victories in The War On Terror[sup]TM[/sup]. Just like Libya surrendering it’s North Korean (?) uranium and Iran submitting to tough, effective international inspections.”
Now, if the DIA actually did come to the conclusion that Iran had manipulated the US into getting rid of Hussein…
Iran denies Chalabi spying accusations
But Tehran admits close contacts with embattled Iraqi politician
The Associated Press Updated: 5:00 a.m. ET May 23, 2004
Iran acknowledged Sunday it had a strong dialogue with embattled Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi, but rejected accusations that he passed classified intelligence to Iran.
“We had continuous and permanent dialogue with Chalabi and other members of the Iraqi Governing Council,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said at a press conference. “But spying charges are unfounded and baseless. It’s not true at all.”
© 2004 The Associated Press.
It’s not like the treasonous dissemination of classified information to foreign nationals is anything to be surprised about. It actually seems to be SOP for the Bush administration.
The reason why it would be considered treasonous is a bit different, i.e. in Chalabi’s case it’s the ties to Iran that they should have (and did) know about, whereas in Bandar’s case it’s the ties to terrorist funding that they should have (and did) know about.
Chalabi on ‘Fox News Sunday’ Short version: This is all George Tenet’s fault.
Check this out, from the LA Times:
From Time:
Who tipped Chalabi and Aras Karim Habib off to the coming raid? And who were the DIA officials who worked so closely with Habib at the Information Collection Program? and which Pentagon civilians signed off to Habib, a long time suspected Iranian intelligence agent, heading the Pentagon funded ICP?
Updated news links and more speculation at the War and Piece blog by Laura Rozen, who (according to Kevin Drum) is the go-to site for all things Chalabi. Some exclusives too, including an amusing email from Laurie Mylroie in Baghdad (didn’t know she was there) describing the raid, defending Chalabi.
This is looking to be very rough for the Bush Admin.
The fuckers really look like rank amateurs on the world stage.
No Attack-Iraq-Bush-Backers will be defending the Admin in this thread either.
That’s. Because. They are.
Thanks for all the work, SimonX. I don’t need to watch the news any more; I just read your threads. 
U.S. Steps Up Hunt in Leaks to Iraqi Exile
By DAVID JOHNSTON and RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
Published: May 24, 2004
Federal investigators now suspect that Mr. Chalabi funneled a wide array of Pentagon and C.I.A. secrets to Iran — much more material than they believe he might have obtained through his political contacts with Americans, they said. “This was not the kind of stuff that he would have gotten by accident,” one official said.
Coalition Ordered Chalabi Raid Not Iraqis, Says Council Member
Same court for Chalabi and Sadr! I wonder who sets their agenda?
“Iran made me do it.”
A rather surprising disaster, this turn of events, it will be interesting to see how it develops. I wonder if to a degree Chalabi et al are being used as scapegoats here. If it becomes increasingly obvious to the US population that Bush and Co. had no real grounds to invade Iraq but pushed ahead anyway, they will be seen as corrupt, reckless, and warmongering, or possibly Israel-serving.
If it turns out that they were duped into the course of action they took, they face the charges of gross incompetence and of being unfit to rule, since the evidence accusing Iraq was highly suspect before the invasion and was cited as inadequate by a multitude of experts.
I’m guessing that being accused of incompetence is perhaps better than the alternative, and provides a bit of wiggle room to try refocus public attention on Iran and away from domestic problems. Third war of the term coming up perhaps?
This is fantastic stuff.
[INDENT]Loose Lips on Bush’s Ship [/INDENT]
Someone of “only ‘a handful’ of senior officials” is responsible for life-and-death, classified national security info being transferred to Iran. The Bush Admin characterized the info as that which could “get people killed.” The available suspects are members of the Bush Admin.
Apparently, the ‘leak’ went through the Iraqi National Congress (INC).
Reportedly, Jordan’s King Abdullah provided a dossier that detailed the intelligence transfer as well as other INC crimes. In addition to espionage, the crimes attributed to the INC include extortion, robbery, kidnapping, torture, and, inevitably, embezzlement.
‘Bush administration officials’ have said that both Ahmed Chalabi, INC founder and leader, and Aras Karim Habib, chief of INC’s Pentagon funded Intelligence Collection Program ( ICP ) are suspected conduits for the transfer of the sensitive intel to Iran.
There’s said to be ‘undeniable intelligence’ that Chalabi met with a senior Iranian intelligence, a “nefarious figure from the dark side of the regime - an individual with a direct hand in covert operations directed against the United States.”
As far back as the nineties, and as recently as this month, Mr. Aras Karim Habib been knownwn to be working for Iran. Mr. Aras Karim Habib’s a Kurdish Iraqi who converted to Shiism after the the ayatollah Komeyni seized power. Mr. Aras Karim Habib went to Iran and joined the Pasdaran. The Qods (Jerusalem) Force of the Pasdaran train Islamic fundamentalist terrorist groups. Qods Force supported the establishment of Hizballah and Islamic Jihad branches.The second largest Pasdaran foreign operations relates to the Iraqi Kurds.
Someone is responsible for the sensitive intelligence making it to the INC. This brings us to the FBI’s investigation into who may have passed on the classified information to Chalabi.
INC spokesman Entifadh Qunbar, in a letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee, discusses two contacts in the USG. It describes deputy assistant to the vice president for national security affairs, John Hannah, as the “principal point of contact” for the INC’s ICP and even provided Hannah’s direct White House telephone number.
John Hannah and fellow Vice presidential aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby wrote the dossier meant to serve as the basis for Powell’s February 6, 2003 to the UN. Powell sent the dossier for further fact checking because it contained ‘bullshit’. Qunbar also mentions William Luti, (Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Plans and Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, and former military adviser to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich), who, after working on Cheney’s staff early in the Bush administration, shifted to the Pentagon, where he oversaw a secretive Iraq war-planning unit called the Office of Special Plans.
Curiously enough John Hannah recently arrived at the dead center of the Plame scandal. “It is believed that the FBI officers …interviewed John Hannah…and may be offering an incentive to him to reveal what he knows about other officials.”
The CIA and the State Department each supported then abandoned the INC. The CIA determined that Chalabi had little support in Iraq. And the State Dept noticed that, despite a team of accountants, Chalabi couldn’t account for millions of the US’s money.Yet, in spite of this, the Pentagon resumed funding for the INC and its ICP. Powell recently referred to some ICP provided information as ‘inaccurate,’ ‘wrong’ ‘deliberately misleading’.
The Pentagon funded Mr. Aras Karim Habib’s intelligence operation.
Someone is documented as being responsible for the US’s decisions re INC’s Information Collection Progam.
Is it the same someone who’s responsible for the sensitive intelligence making it to the INC? Maybe the FBI’ll offer Mr. Hannah more ‘incentives’?
Note that this is not new for members of the Bush Amdin. Don’t forget about the ‘Vulcan’ Richard Perle passing classified national security information to agents of a foreign government in the seventies.
Wish this could infect the glurge network.
With all due respect to SimonX’s exhaustive list of reports, am I the only one who sees all of this as being yet another slice from the same bullshit cake that the Niger uranium nonsense was cut from?
We are to believe that somehow Iran’s intelligence service was able to dupe not only the most well funded, well trained, and well equipped intelligence service, but also that of England and Israel? That these folks have been slowly but quite effectively been leading at least three of the world’s very best intelligence services on for years? These are the same folks who are having long running discussions on how a person can avoid facing Mecca while taking a shit, yet they are able to dupe the U.S. into going into war, huh?
And what is the proof for this? Yet more shadowy figures lurking in the dark meeting this guy and that guy. This is all quite reminiscent of the same shadowy folks from Saddam’s gang who were meeting Al Qaeda members. I think there’s been ample proof that such stories were little more than decorative lies to justify a mission that had already been decided.
First off, why would Iran want Saddam gone so badly any way? He was only a threat so long as the U.S. was holding him up. If the U.S. hadn’t supported him so much throughout the 80’s, Iran would have mopped the floor with his ass a long time ago. Secondly, relations between Iran and Saddam had actually started to thaw prior to the war. Both sides had engaged in dialogue and there had been exchanges of prisoners of war.
But all of this was a decoy according to… why it’s the truthful folks at the CIA! Right, Tenet and his gang of truth sayers. The same folks who wound up looking like assholes in from of the U.S. Congress after the WMD excuse fell apart (strangely enough, they were the ones who were saying the Niger “evidence” was not valid).
I’ll agree that there’s definitely been a lot of lies and falsified evidence throughout this nightmare, but the source of that is none other than the world’s biggest spin factory, the White House and it’s various subsidieries like the Office of Special Plans.
If I was to venture a guess as to why the U.S. and their chief puppet are having a falling out, I’d say it was because it’s quite obvious the U.S. has zero credibility left in Iraq. Ahmed Chalabi, doing what he does best, is once again switching the side that is most likely going to gain power, the Shi’ites. Of course, that by default also means Iran will be having some comfortable relations with the expected future leaders of Iraq. And since nothing bothers the Americans more than knowing they’ve done anything in Iran’s favor, the conjure up this lovely butt nugget for the Americans’ consumption. It helps them, as always, place the blame on every place other than where it belongs; squarely on the shoulders of the leaders of the United States.
No, you’re not. I said from the beginning that this struck me as so much GWB CYA, and I’m still subscribing to that magazine. It’s easier for the White House to wash their hands of the Iraq debacle by blaming it all on the duplicity of the soooper-sneaky Iranian undercover uberspy Chalabi than to simply admit that they screwed up eight ways to Sunday on their own.
Depends on how you mean that sentence.
Actually, if you’ll note, nobody’s saying anything remotely of that sort. The CIA at one point thought that Mr. Habib was so dangerous that even his cousin represented a threat to the US. The CIA determined that Chalabi was a snake oil salesman. The State Department said that the INC was untrustable. The DIA labelled one of the defectors provided by the INC’s ICP a ‘fabricator’, yet almost two years later the Bush Admin was still using info provided by that ‘fabricator.’ Colin Powell flat out said that some of what the INC was selling was ‘deliberately misleading.’
Nobody’s saying that the various intel agencies were duped. The charges are that a group of ideologues outside of the Intelligence Community were duped. We’re not talking about America’s best and brightest in the Intelligence Community here. These are think-tank ideologues acting out their ‘big ideas’ and discovering the differences between theory and practice. Wolfowitz is a Mylroie conspiracist for crying out loud.
There were a reasons why the INC’s ICP, (an office ‘within the Department of Defense for collection of specialized national foreign intelligence through reconnaissance programs’, btw) reported directly to Hannah in the VP’s office and Luti in the SECDEF’s office, (and the Office of Special Plans) even though they were funded through the DIA. The CIA and the DIA knew that they were full of shit.
Whatever’s going on, it’s enough for the FBI to start an investigation into the leaking of classified national security info.
The INC definiitely has ties to the IRanian intelligence services.
The WH did use some of the delibertely misleading info provided by the INC. The only part that you’re wuestioning ishwether or not the WH was ‘duped.’
Which, of course, brings us back to the defining question of the Bush Admin - mendacity or incompetence?
Trusting Chalabi is a screw up. The only C they can get for their A is to say that they were involved in a counter-counter-intelligence effort.
There’s not a winning combo for the team on this one.
Sure is, but notice that the media reports are playing up the “Chalabi is a double-crossing spy” while ignoring the “Administration officials kept trusting him even after the intelligence agencies said he was untrustworthy” angle.
It’s a classic case of misdirection.
Iran has proven to be a surprisingly strong intrigue player and a thorn to many a presidents. The worst scandals recently involving presidents, other than Clinton’s, was about dealings with Iran.