Chalabi Raid Sends 'Wrong Message' to America's Arab Allies

Yesterday's early-morning raid on the home and office of Iraqi National Congress (INC) leader Ahmed Chalabi in Baghdad sends "the wrong message" to America's would-be allies in the Arab world, former Pentagon official Michael Rubin tells Insight. "This is a huge blow to America's prestige. The message we've just sent is that we do not stand by our allies, that the United States can't be trusted. We've just told Arab liberals and democrats that it's just plain crazy to work with America."

Rubin, who served as an aide to Deputy Undersecretary of Defense William Luti, spoke with Sunni clerics, Shiite professionals and independent Kurdish businessmen in Iraq in the hours immediately after the Baghdad raid. "Everyone in Iraq believes that because of U.S. actions, we are now heading for civil war. We have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory," he says.

Deeply involved in planning for the Iraq war, Rubin tells Insight that he left the government in April out of a sense of frustration. "This administration has been taking so many hits, many of them based on outright fabrications or on information from 'anonymous intelligence sources,' that I felt I could be more effective on the outside," he says. Rubin now is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

Francis Brooke, an American aide to Chalabi, was at his home in Baghdad when Iraqi troops supported by 25 U.S. military policemen and "an SUV full of OGA guys" -- an acronym commonly used in Baghdad to designate the CIA ("other government agencies") -- stormed the house. Chalabi was awakened by four armed men pointing guns at him. "I myself stood for an hour with an American military person pointing a gun at my chest," Brooke told Insight by phone from Baghdad. "It was totally misplaced."

The raids were carefully orchestrated and appeared part of an effort to embarrass Chalabi. "They had TV cameras across the street," Brooke says. "They were hoping to lead out a bunch of guys in handcuffs, but they didn't find anybody they were looking for." Instead, they seized computers, documents relating to the INC's investigation of the U.N. oil-for-food scandal, a family Koran and a set of prayer beads.

A spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Baghdad insisted in a telephone interview with Insight that the raid was not the work of the CPA, but had been ordered by an independent Iraqi judge. "They wanted six or seven people for questioning," the spokesman said. "I can't tell you their names -- I can't even get one Arab name straight."

American news reports on Friday gave several variants of the alleged charges against the Chalabi aides, ranging from corruption, fraud and vehicle theft to intimidation and blackmail. But INC sources and Rubin believe there is no doubt that U.S. civil administrator L. Paul Bremer ordered the raid. "The decision to 'cut Chalabi down to size' was taken in Washington," Rubin said, "but the operation against Chalabi originated in Baghdad. There is no doubt that Bremer signed off on this. Basically, Bremer has gone mad. This raid shows the U.S. has not learned the lessons of Abu Ghraib, and is still trying to humiliate" perceived opponents. Attempts by Insight to reach Bremer for comment were unsuccessful.

At a press conference in Baghdad after the raids, Chalabi identified one of the individuals allegedly being sought as Aras Habib, his longtime security and intelligence chief. Before the U.S.-led invasion, Habib ran the INC's network of informants within Saddam's regime and identified defectors the INC ultimately helped to escape Iraq. Chalabi's detractors claim that the intelligence provided by those defectors relating to Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs was false or fabricated. But in fact, says Rubin, the INC provided intelligence and human sources at a time when the CIA has no assets inside Iraq at all. "The CIA hates Chalabi because he comes out with information they do not have and that later gets confirmed," Rubin says.

Insight worked with Habib on several occasions before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq while reporting stories involving Saddam's WMD programs, and consistently found him to be reliable, providing documents and sources not connected to the INC and allowing independent verification of the INC allegations [see "Eurobiz Is Caught Arming Saddam," posted Feb 4, 2003, and "How Saddam Got Weapons of Mass Destruction," posted Sept. 30, 2002].

Chalabi also has alienated the State Department, which has taken its cue from neighboring Arab governments seeking to put an end to the experiment in democracy in Iraq and replace the Iraqi Governing Council with a new Arab strongman, Rubin and others believe. "While Americans tend to overlook family relations, Iraqis do not," Rubin says. "[U.N. Special Envoy Lakhdar] Brahimi's daughter is engaged to Prince Ali of Jordan, the brother of King Abdullah." Not only do Iraqis see Brahimi as partial to Jordan, but many feel he is hostile to Iraqi Shias and Kurds.

The first time Brahimi met with the Governing Council, an Iraqi source tells Insight, he said he came not just as the U.N. envoy, but as a "brother Arab." Brahimi's words "sent chills" down the spines of the Shia and Kurdish members of the council.

Since the insurgency began last summer, Habib and the INC have provided invaluable intelligence to the United States "that has saved American lives," says INC spokesman Entifad Qanbar.

Rubin agrees with that assessment. "The most virulent hatred of Chalabi comes from those who have never met him," he says. "Defense Intelligence Agency [DIA] and U.S. military commanders in Iraq who have worked with the INC have given them stellar reviews. They have used INC intelligence to stop operations by insurgents that were targeting Americans. They have caught insurgents red-handed because of information provided by Chalabi. [Secretary of State Colin] Powell and [Deputy Secretary of State Richard] Armitage appear to place greater value on winning bureaucratic battles in Washington than in saving American lives in Iraq."

The most extravagant allegation against Chalabi was launched on Thursday evening by Dan Rather and 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl on the CBS Evening News. In what Rather portrayed as an "exclusive report," CBS claimed that U.S. intelligence operatives were seeking to arrest Chalabi because he had delivered "top-secret U.S. intelligence" to the Islamic Republic of Iran. The intelligence was so sensitive, Rather ventilated, that it could "get Americans killed."

The CBS allegation, which Rather and Stahl said they had learned from "senior U.S. intelligence officials" they refused to name, sounded serious, but it turned out to be a word-for-word repeat of an earlier report that appeared in Newsweek, which also quoted anonymous U.S. intelligence officials. CBS did not credit Newsweek with the alleged "leak."

One of the "former U.S. intelligence officials" who frequently feeds the media with false allegations about Chalabi actually has a name. He is Pat Lang, a former DIA Middle East analyst, who sometimes appears on air as a CBS News consultant.

Lang was quoted by Washington Post reporter Robin Wright in her front-page story on the raids that appeared on Friday, disparaging the intelligence Chalabi's group had provided the United States before the war. "Now it's demonstrable that [Chalabi] told the U.S. government a lot of things that were not true," Lang said.

In citing Lang as an expert on Iraq, neither CBS nor the Washington Post ever has mentioned that Lang has registered with the Justice Department as a foreign agent for an Arab government. "How can somebody working for an Arab government parade about as a neutral analyst?" asks Rubin.

Chalabi has never denied his many visits to Iran or his meeting with high-level Iranian government officials. Before the U.S.-led invasion, Chalabi and top INC officials had to travel through Iran to reach Iraq because Turkey had closed its borders to INC operatives. "Actually, if truth be told, I think Ahmed has actually used the Iranians for our benefit," a key Chalabi supporter tells Insight. Chalabi appears to have been instrumental in getting the Iranian government to drop its support for radical Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr, several sources say.

But in Washington, where no good deed goes unpunished, Ahmed Chalabi is paying dearly for those efforts.

But in Washington, where no good deed goes unpunished, Ahmed Chalabi is paying dearly for those efforts.

Any chance Chalabi is actually guilty as charged?

I personally doubt it.

Be interesting to see what he has to say on the talking heads shows tomorrow.

Patrick Lang, a former director of Middle East analysis at the Defense Intelligence Agency, said in an interview with the New Yorker magazine in May that the Office of Special Plans "started picking out things that supported their thesis and stringing them into arguments that they could use with the president. It's not intelligence. It's political propaganda." - SOURCE

Seymour Hersh quotes Patrick Lang regarding Rumsfeld: 2003-05-12 - "The Pentagon has banded together to dominate the government’s foreign policy, and they’ve pulled it off. They’re running Chalabi. The D.I.A. has been intimidated and beaten to a pulp. And there’s no guts at all in the C.I.A."

Walter Pincus quotes Patrick Lang disputing Iraq/Al-Qaeda ties with regards to "CASE CLOSED": "(The Weekly Standard report) is a listing of a mass of unconfirmed reports, many of which themselves indicate that the two groups continued to try to establish some sort of relationship. If they had such a productive relationship, why did they have to keep trying?" - SOURCE FR thread

NYT's Nicholas Kristof quotes Patrick Lang that when experts wrote reports that were skeptical about Iraq's W.M.D., "they were encouraged to think it over again."

Lang make an appearance in UNCOVERED: THE WHOLE TRUTH ABOUT THE IRAQ WAR along with Joseph Wilson, Scott Ritter, Rand Beers, Henry Waxman, Robert Baer, and David Corn.

More on Lang and Wilson.

National Review on Lang's ties to the LYNDON LAROUCHE organization!

There is every indication that he is a crook, and has been one since the beginning. This is beginning to look like an Iranian Intelligence Operation from the git-go. I don't know why Timmerman is continuing to support the guy. If he has any government sources, they must be people who haven't read the mail.

I don't know why Timmerman is continuing to support the guy.

Because Chalabi is the guy who brought Timmerman to the dance, he feels he has to leave with him. It would be hilarious, if it wasn't so sad, that Timmerman claims that we have made ourselves look bad by "betraying" Chalabi. Quite to the contrary, the Arabs have been laughing at us for a long time because the administration hawks fell for Chalabi hook, line, and sinker. It is not too late to undo the damage that has done, but it was getting close. By this latest action, we may have saved ourselves from irrepareable damage.

Of course the real message to our "ARAB friends" is that the US will only take so much crap and give out so much $$ no matter how many bones you throw us.....when we finally make up our minds that you are screwing us, you are toast.

Im sure some of our Arab allies dont want to be reminded of this.

Hey Saudi Arabia! You guys paying attention!??!?

The hunt is on to find some scapegoat to blame for the problems in Iraq. Chalabi is to be blamed for the intelligence miscues leading to the invasion. The heat has been getting to the administration hawks and Chalabi with the accusations of false information and spying for Iran is to fill the bill for scapegoat. Anybody with a good sense of reality would have known that with Chalabi opposing Saddaam, he would slant any intelligence toward the United States getting rid of Saddaam.

The hawks engaged Chalabi to provide intelligence supporting their wishes to intervene in Iraq. Now that Iraq has proven to be a larger problem than they anticipated, blame has to be shifted from them to someone. With Bush's popularity fading, intelligence failure by Chalabi is hoped to shift the blame to him and save the election. In Washington politics a friend is to be used until it becomes an advantage to bite him in the back.

Yeah...and it's interesting to watch just who it is that is coming to the defense of Chalabi. These are the same people who accused him of lying to us about everything from the WMDs to being greeted with "flowers and love." The so-called Arabs that are all upset, now...were the same Arabs who called Chalabi an American puppet.

It's amazing to watch the left do all they can, not to just undermine this president...but to obstruct this war effort and endanger us all. Those leading the way are most the leftovers from the prior administration, who provide good copy as anonymous sources and so-called high-ranking administration officials. From the resignations over the Museum lootings to classified briefings making it on to the front page of the NY Times, these people have pulled out all stops to diminish Bush...and in the process, endanger us all.

Any chance Chalabi is actually guilty as charged?

Slight but possible. This Michael Rubin is scaring me a little. He came off of a two year policy-making stint in DOD last month, during which time he quite correctly published nothing. Since last month, he has been writing a couple articles as week blasting CIA, the State Department, and Paul Bremer on Iraq. The implication is that Bush is powerless to get his underlings on the same page. Needless to say, I don't want to believe that, as Rubin claims, our supremo in Iraq, Paul Bremer, is a madman.

I am concerned that the administration seems tilting towards the 20% of Iraqis who are Sunni.

Of course Chalabi is going to try to get support from his fellow Shiites in Iran. And the State Department is in communication with the same bunch. Reality is that most Iraqis are Shiites and are both wary of and attracted to Iran. I'm for early elections. Tell the Shiites that they can win but if they reopen the terrorist training camps, we're coming back. There is going to be a bit of a civil war and aside from making sure Saddam doesn't escape I'm not sure how much more we can do for them.

This is a tough situation and I feel a little bad second-guessing the President. But I don't trust these "Chalabi endangered lives" leaks either. Time will tell.

I've always found Timmerman and Insight to be very credible.

I have also found Timmerman to credible in the past.

On the thread that was discussing this last week I posted:

Ahmed Chalabi has a history of working with Iranian intelligence. CIA agent Bob Baer was nearly crucified by the FBI in the mid 1990s after a cable was intercepted describing a plot to overthrow Sadam. The intercept was of an intelligence debrief of Chalabi by Iranian intelligence. Chalabi told them that a CIA agent named Bob something was in Iraq to overthrow Sadam.

Baer was in Kurdish controlled Iraq working with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK)and was recalled to Washington at the insistence of Tony Lake. Lake was concerned that there was a rogue operation going on.

I highly recommend Baer's book "See No Evil" if you are interested in terrorism and the middle east.

P.S. Thank God, Lake was not confirmed as Clinton's choice for CIA Director in 1996.

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