Posted on 05/25/2004 11:49:06 PM PDT by F14 Pilot
TANYA NOLAN: As the President talks up the future of Iraq, Washington has launched an investigation into some of the past claims for going to war.
The FBI has been asked to look at claims that some government officials had allegedly provided unauthorised and highly classified information to Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress that was then passed on to Iran.
The investigation comes amid claims that Iran used the US to topple Saddam Hussein's regime, by providing intelligence on weapons of mass destruction to Mr Chalabi and the INC – intelligence which later was proved to be false.
A member of the Iraqi Governing Council, Mr Chalabi's home, along with the INC headquarters in Baghdad, were raided by Iraqi police and US troops last week, who confiscated documents and computers.
The CIA says it has hard evidence which proves Mr Chalabi's intelligence chief, Aras Karim Habib was a paid agent for Iranian intelligence, and had been involved in passing information between the US and Iran.
Vincent Cannistraro is a consultant on international security affairs, and is former senior CIA official, who was also a special assistant for intelligence at the Pentagon, before his retirement in 1991.
I spoke to him a short time ago.
VINCENT CANNISTRARO: The history of connections between CIA and Chalabi is a very chequered one, of course, and CIA has been very sceptical about his capabilities since at least 1995.
But I think those historic rivalries among various agencies and government officials about the value of Chalabi have pretty much been settled in the last few months. President Bush is apparently persuaded that Mr Chalabi is not someone the US can place any further confidence in.
And there are clear indications that Chalabi's head of intelligence and security, a man named Aras Karim Habib, who is a Kurdish Shia, is actually a paid agent of the Iranian intelligence service. There was an arrest warrant issued for Karim a few days ago, and he has apparently escaped to Tehran where he is beyond the reach of US law enforcement.
TANYA NOLAN: So as far as you know, the CIA does have hard evidence to prove that Mr Habib has been a paid Iranian agent?
VINCENT CANNISTRARO: Oh yeah, I think that's the case, but in this instance, it's not CIA that is the action agency, it is the Federal Bureau of Investigation which is a law enforcement agency, because the evidence has pointed quite clearly, not only the fact that Chalabi might be an agent of influence of the Iranian government and that Karim may be a paid agent of the Iranian intelligence service, but it is shown that there is a leak of classified information from the United States to Iran through Chalabi and Karim and that is the particular point that the FBI is investigating.
In other words, some US officials are under investigation on suspicion of providing classified information to these people that ended up in Iran.
TANYA NOLAN: And what was the nature of that highly classified information that was allegedly being passed to Tehran?
VINCENT CANNISTRARO: Well, there are differing reports but some of it I'm told centres on highly compartmented information of US military order of battle for one thing, and other special compartmented information that may have been passed.
I'm not privy to the classified information myself but I am told that the investigators are operating on the basis that very, very sensitive and highly classified information the US Government had, was given on an unauthorised basis to Chalabi and Aras.
TANYA NOLAN: What do you think of the risk though, that the administration took, in using Chalabi as a source of information when it knew his links to Iran?
VINCENT CANNISTRARO: Well, but it wasn't everyone in the US government that was convinced of that. Certainly CIA was suspicious but then CIA was suspected of harbouring a bias against Chalabi.
And particularly policy makers such as Douglas Feith, the Under Secretary of Policy at the Defence Department believed that CIA's accusations meant nothing because they had a bias against Chalabi. And certainly Richard Pearl, one of the leading neo-conservative figures said the same thing publicly about CIA.
So they dismissed these charges because Chalabi was for them, someone very favourable to their point of view. But what they, I think, misjudged was the fact that Chalabi is out for Chalabi. He's an opportunist and will say whatever it is required to advance his own objectives.
TANYA NOLAN: But surely it wouldn't have taken much digging to prove what they had suspected all along, which was that Mr Habib had been employed by the Iranian secret service.
VINCENT CANNISTRARO: Well that's true. There's no question about that. So the legitimate question is why wasn't something done about it?
Why didn't George Tenet, the Director of Central Intelligence make a major issue of this, and we know that he did not – not with the policy makers that counted, such as the President of the United States, who only came to the conclusion about Chalabi quite recently. Why not two years ago when it would have counted more?
TANYA NOLAN: Do you have any doubt that Iran was manipulating America to topple Saddam's regime through Mr Chalabi?
VINCENT CANNISTRARO: Well, I think Iran saw an opportunity here to feed information into the United States through Karim, through Aras Habib Karim and Chalabi that influenced the US decision.
Now, clearly what Chalabi was telling the US was welcomed – I mean, it met the expectations of some of the civilian policy makers, both at the Vice President's office and at the Penatgon.
TANYA NOLAN: Even though there could have been a risk that a lot of this information was coming directly from Iran, which had its own political agenda in Iraq?
VINCENT CANNISTRARO: I think clearly, the Iranian objective was to get rid of Saddam Hussein who for them was their principle enemy. They had fought a long and bloody war with Iraq and they wanted Saddam Hussein out of the picture.
If they were able to influence western public opinion, particularly American public opinion, against Saddam, then they would do everything they could to achieve that objective and it seems that they were able to spread disinformation that found its way into the speeches of policy makers in the United States.
TANYA NOLAN: How serious is that implication?
VINCENT CANNISTRARO: I think it was pretty artful operation by the Iranians because Aras, who was the key figure here, was able to take alleged defectors from Saddam Hussein's regime and feed their information into western services, not just to the United States but to the Germans, to the Belgians, to the Italians, to the British and in other countries.
In some cases that ended up being false confirmation. The United States had a report, for example, that Saddam had mobile bio-weapons labs, then we also got a report from the Germans saying exactly the same thing. They may have got the report from the British saying the same thing.
It turned out being false confirmation because all of the information was sourced to the same person and it was disinformation to begin with.
What the Iranians were feeding the United States through this channel was exactly what the Americans wanted to hear anyway. They already believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. This was just taken as further proof of it. So it was a very receptive audience, I would say.
TANYA NOLAN: Vincent Cannistraro is a consultant on international security affairs and was a senior CIA official up until 1991.
PINGgggg!
Interestingly, the British government seems to have invested much in bolstering its ties to Iran, too.
Britain and EU support the Mullahs in Iran!
And guess who pops up yet again? Why yes, it's good ol' former NSC guy Vincent Cannistraro of Sami Al Arian fame...
Chalabi was used by all concerned for th Oil-for-Food scam. High ups in the US were in on it too. At least thats what they want us to think.
I have a feeling that the State Department and the CIA will not like the results of this investigation.
It comes as no shock to find Vincent is trying to smear Feith, for the Feith memo put a hole in their bulkhead bigger than the one in the side of the USS Cole.
Vincent's claim in the article above concerning the mobile labs is BS- we found several of those labs and three separate teams of experts looked at them and all three teams made the same conclusions about what they were, though the press tried to fabricate 'dissention' by quoting people- who hadn't even seen the labs personally- as if they were experts and part of one of the teams.
Not to mention that the whole idea that the war was based only on intel from the INC [just the false info and not the accurate info they provided] is bogus- the war was going to occur because Iraq never intended to abide by the cease fire agreements, never intended to abide by any of the UN resolutions, never intended to return the abducted Kuwaitis, the US Naval captain, and the American civilians it held prisoner, and because Iraq was harboring terrorists... even before 9/11.
Washington Abuzz Over a New Kind of Scandal [Yep, Plame Worked With Foley!]
LA Times ^ | October 1, 2003 | Doyle McManus and Bob Drogin
Posted on 10/01/2003 7:08:58 AM PDT by seamole
....Wilson's wife works with Foley in the CIA's Nonproliferation Center....."Foley fought with Joseph about keeping the Niger claim out of the State of the Union," Cannistraro explained. "Cheney and Libby made sure it got in. Then you get a report from the CIA casting doubt on the authenticity" — Ambassador Wilson's report.
...She had told friends she was an energy industry consultant...
David Manners, a former CIA case agent in the Middle East...: "If the implication is she ran clandestine operations around the world using her true name, then the real story is: What kind of crazy operation was she running? Because if you're operating clandestinely under your true name, you're a fool."
Excerpted - click for full article ^
Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-scandal1oct01,1,1890560.story?coll=la-home-leftrail
"Well, the Secretary of State's speech relied heavily on material gathered by international intelligence agencies, including Australia's.
Ironically, while the Bush Administration wants this speech to galvanise the international community to go to war against Iraq, its own intelligence agency doesn't see war as the best way of insuring that the world is made safe from Saddam Hussein.
Indeed, last year the CIA chief warned the President that attacking Iraq could lead to catastrophe by provoking Saddam Hussein to use any weapons of mass destruction he had.
Nevertheless, intelligence photos and phone intercepts in particular were the most compelling parts of Colin Powell's presentation today.
So how solid is this evidence?
One person well placed to judge is the former head of the CIA's counter-terrorism unit, Vincent Cannistraro, who's also a former director of intelligence for the National Security Council.
Mr Cannistraro spoke to me a short time ago from his home in Virginia.
VINCENT CANNISTRARO: I was impressed. I think it was a compelling speech. Taken in totality, I think the speech makes a persuasive case that Saddam's engaged in concealing a program of weapons of mass destruction.
I think you could probably nitpick individual pieces of it, and there was certainly no one incident that would prove to be a smoking gun. But I think as taken as a, as a whole, it's a pretty clear pattern of deception by Saddam.
ELEANOR HALL: What was the most convincing evidence?
VINCENT CANNISTRARO: Well, there, there were a couple of pieces. I think the audiotape in which a conversation between two Republican Guard officials takes place and one talks about nerve agents. That certainly was a startling piece of evidence.
That, and the overhead photography of a chemical decontamination plant. That was also verified by a human source on the ground. When you had both a technical collection and human source collection reporting on the same ground event, I think that made it a very conclusive case.
... ELEANOR HALL: Do you believe that the case for war has been made?
VINCENT CANNISTRARO: No, I don't believe the case for war has been made. It is not a case that can be made that war is necessary now in order to stop Saddam. I mean, he's years away from a nuclear program.
He's essentially contained. He's under the microscope of the United Nations. He's being subjected to a pretty rigorous weapons inspection regime. And he can't really move. So I don't think we've made the case for going to war. That's more of a political judgement.
ELEANOR HALL: It's an interesting position that, that intelligence officers are, are in at the moment, isn't it? Because I remember the last time we spoke we were talking about the advice from the CIA to the Government. That in fact going to war against Saddam Hussein was a sure way to make him use any weapons of mass destruction that he may have.
VINCENT CANNISTRARO: And clearly that is the CIA analysis that he's unlikely, Saddam is unlikely to use his weapons of mass destruction unless he is attacked, and then he, in that case, is likely to bring the house down upon him."
So, before the war his position was that our intel was compelling, particularly direct tapes, not third hand fed reports. But that we should leave Saddam alone, because if we attacked him he use WMDs on us.
Read what Michael Rubin of the CPA and AEI after returning from his post. He claimed that the Brits support any form of dictatorship in Iraq and have extremely close relations with the Iranian government.
vincent cannistraro ping
"That he (Saddam) was promoting al-Qaeda is absurd," Cannistraro said. --- USA Today, July 13, 2003And here's Vinnie singing a different tune during the Clinton administration:
"It's clear that the Iraqis would like to have bin Laden in Iraq. The Iraqis have all the technological elements, the tradecraft that bin Laden lacks, and they have Abu Nidal." --- Vincent Cannistraro quoted in "Some Analysts Fear a bin Laden, Saddam Pairing," by John Walcott, The Charlotte Observer, February 14, 1999.
49 posted on 10/01/2003 1:17:03 PM PDT by browardchad
fyi
ping
Interesting.
Helping setting up a Shiite theocracy in Iraq would certainly help them score political points in Tehran. Plus, what would become of a Shiite Iraq sitting next to a Shiite Iran, especially given the fact there's no Iraqi army anymore ?
There is an Iraqi army.
Interesting. One can only imagine what the full story really is.
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