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Ahmad Chalabi is in possession of "miles" of documents with the potential to expose politicians, corporations and the United Nations as having connived in a system of kickbacks and false pricing worth billions of pounds. That may have been enough to provoke yesterday's American raid. So explosive are the contents of the files that their publication would cause serious problems for US allies and friendly states around the globe. Late last year and several months before Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority became involved, Mr Chalabi had amassed enough information concerning corruption in the oil-for-food scandal to realise that he was...

Saddam Hussein's son Uday planned to carry out an attack in London to assassinate the leader of an Iraqi opposition group in April 2000, it is being reported. According to the U.K.'s Times of London newspaper, a new Pentagon study based on documents seized during the Iraq war reveal an aborted plot by Uday Hussein's elite paramilitary group — the Fedayeen — to kill London-based Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress. Documents show that Fedayeen's orders were to carry out assassinations and bombings in London, the Times reported. While the study showed no link between Saddam Hussein's regime...

Ahmed Chalabi, the smooth-talking Iraqi politician who pushed Washington to invade Iraq in 2003 with discredited information on Saddam Hussein's military capabilities, died on Tuesday of an apparent heart attack. Haitham al-Jabouri, secretary of parliament's financial panel that Chalabi had chaired, said attendants had found him dead in his bed in his Baghdad home. A news flash on Iraqi state television said the cause was a heart attack. A secular Shi'ite, Chalabi rose to prominence as leader of the then-exiled Iraqi National Congress, which played a major role in encouraging the U.S. administration of former President George W. Bush to...

Keith Weissman and Steven Rosen Are PhDs and Middle East Experts Who Did Some Lobbying. They Thought They Were Doing What Washington Insiders Always Do. Thomas O’Donnell didn’t reveal his job when he phoned Keith Weissman in 2004 and got the policy analyst’s wife. He says he didn’t want to scare her. When Weissman returned the call and found out O’Donnell was an FBI agent, his first reaction was to attempt a joke: “What did I do?” “I’m sure you didn’t do anything,” O’Donnell told him. He wanted to meet that day, for five or ten minutes, and get Weissman’s...

Chalabi espouses free-market doctrine as the best way to cure the area's ills, a prescription that would buoy his neoconservative benefactors if they were here to hear it. "Everyone is looking for employment with the government," he says. "This is a dead end. It's not possible. We need to get the economy going. Construction projects are needed." With a billon dollars in seed money from the Iraqi government for housing projects and a loan program to help residents buy a home, he says, "we would have no unemployment."

One of Iraq's most controversial politicians offers thoughts on the "surge," Iran and where we go from here. ________________________ BAGHDAD--"these people need help. The army must help them more. The government must help them more. They have been fighting alone against a vicious enemy, fighting for all of us to make our country safe." I'm in Diyala province, watching Ahmed Chalabi shouting into a TV camera over the sound of mortar shells. He's imploring the Iraqi state to support tribesmen fighting off al Qaeda attacks such as the one we're now experiencing. In the end our entourage, which had driven...

If you thought efforts were over to rewrite history on the lead-up to the war in Iraq and to smear the head of the Iraqi National Congress, Ahmad Chalabi, then think again. A remarkable pair of reports released last week by the Senate Select committee on Intelligence re-examine for the umpteenth time the pre-war intelligence on Iraqi WMD programs and Saddam’s alleged ties to al-Qaeda. The reports were produced at the demand of committee Democrats as part of a vast fishing expedition aimed at buttressing their old saw, Bush lied-People died. What’s remarkable about these reports are not the facts...

Journal Editorial Report (Paul Gigot) - FNC show page Meme: Fissures in the GOP - immigration Topics: "Are Republicans headed for a political meltdown over immigration?" (as per Opinion Journal web site)"Immigration reform controversy: We'll examine policies under consideration" (as per FNC show page)"Plus, what a hard line on immigration means for this year's midterm elections" (as per FNC show page) Guests Colorado Governor Bill Owens I have a plan, just like the plan that's failing the President Ramesh Ponnuru, National Review illegal immigration isn't really a problem, really Stephen Moore, Walls Street JournalJason Riley, Walls Street JournalPaul Gigot, Walls...

So, under the most trying conditions, the master coalition-builder crafted the Shiite-led United Iraqi Alliance that shocked our spooks and diplomats by dominating the January election. The other big winners--Shiite religious leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, and Kurdish leaders Talabani and Massoud Barzani--turned out to be the very same group Mr. Chalabi had united under the banner of his Iraqi National Congress in the '90s, and which had widely been written off as "exiles." Mr. Chalabi had enough support to make a credible bid for the prime minister's post, only to drop out in the face of strong U.S.-Iranian lobbying (what's...

The original architects of the U.S. empire—long before its celebration by today’s neoconservatives—understood the importance of legitimacy in the neo-colonialist enterprise. In order to achieve some degree of legitimacy, it was important to create a native stooge—what some call a “comprador”—heavily dependent upon American power to govern in the interests of the U.S. government. In Iraq we have had the proverbial “Three Stooges,” as in the movies, often beating up on each other. The first of these was Saddam Hussein, who was essential in helping evict the British from control in Iraq and then in attacking Iran, but who became...

Controversial Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi says he believes he has the votes to become the war-torn country's new prime minister. Mr Chalabi, once supported by the United States only to fall from favour, is part of the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) list that won 140 seats of the 275-member national assembly in the January 30 elections. "I believe I have a majority of the [UIA] votes on my side right now" to become the new government's prime minister, Mr Chalabi told United States ABC television. However, the former exile remained cautious, saying the choice of premier "will be decided...

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iraq's interim defense minister said on Friday the government would arrest Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi after the Eid al-Adha holiday for allegedly maligning the defense ministry. "We will arrest him and hand him over to Interpol. We will arrest him based on facts that he wanted to malign the reputation of the defense ministry and defense minister," Hazim al-Shaalan told Al Jazeera television, adding the measures would start after the Muslim holiday which began on Jan. 20.

The Agency Rides Again - Angleton on Chalabi Michael Ledeen/NRO Like everyone else, I've been reading the stories about my friend Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress, and the accusations that he's an Iranian spy. I don't believe it, but before launching a tirade against the misnamed Central Intelligence Agency I thought I'd better check with the greatest unliving expert on intelligence, the late James Jesus Angleton. He was the longtime chief of CIA counterintelligence, and knew everything there was to know about spying, so I dusted off the ouija board and got him on the second try. JJA:...

NBC news is reporting: But Pentagon officials told NBC News that they were acting at the behest of Iraqi authorities investigating the disappearance of millions of dollars in cash and other assets following the fall of Saddam Hussein. Arrest warrants issued for 16 people An Iraqi judge issued arrest warrants for 16 people affliliated with the INC, and an unknown number were arrested, the officials said. Chalabi, himself a member of the Governing Council, was not arrested, and scheduled a news conference later in the day to discuss the raids. As NBC News reported earlier this week, Chalabi and his...

HER dusty file was one of hundreds of thousands of documents stacked in a house in a wealthy neighbourhood of Baghdad. Asma Rasheed married a pilot, lived comfortably in the presidential compound of Saddam Hussein and directed a microbiology programme that was not supposed to exist. Rasheed’s light blue folder has emerged from a huge archive seized by forces loyal to Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, which opposed Saddam. The archive — a dark who’s who of Iraq — reveals the tiniest details of blandishments and humiliations by a paranoid regime that shared the Nazis’ obsession...

PHILADELPHIA - A former hippie guru convicted in 2002 of a 25-year-old murder wants the judge who presided over his trial to hurry up with an opinion needed to pursue an appeal. Ira Einhorn, 64, is serving life in prison without parole for the murder of girlfriend Holly Maddux. After two trials and nearly 17 years on the run in Europe, he now is incarcerated at the state prison in Houtzdale. In a motion sent to the state Superior Court, Einhorn complains that Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge William J. Mazzola has failed to file a response to his lawyer's Nov....

DUBAI (Reuters) - An Iraqi Islamist group has said it tried to assassinate Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi this week and that four men died in the attack, Al Jazeera television said on Saturday. The channel said it received a videotape from a group calling itself the Islamic Army of Iraq (news - web sites) in which one of the four men, who later died of his wounds, talks to camera. A group with the same name has said in an internet statement that it was holding two French journalists kidnapped on Aug. 20. Chalabi, now a vocal critic of U.S....

Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi politician and former US favourite, has said that criminal charges against him in Iraq have been dropped. A judge issued a warrant in August over an alleged counterfeit operation but no action was taken for Mr Chalabi's arrest when he returned to Iraq. Mr Chalabi also announced that murder charges had been dropped against his nephew, Salem, currently out of Iraq. The fact of the charges being dropped could not be immediately confirmed. On Wednesday morning, Ahmed Chalabi survived what seemed to be an assassination attempt when gunmen opened fire on his motorcade. The BBC's Paul...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Gunmen opened fire Wednesday on a convoy carrying former Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi in an apparent assassination attempt that wounded two of his bodyguards, Chalabi's spokesman said. Chalabi's convoy was attacked in southern Baghdad at about 7:30 a.m. as he returned from the holy city of Najaf, said spokesman Mithal al-Alusi. "The doctor (Chalabi) is in good health. He is safe but two of his bodyguards were injured, " al-Alusi said. Chalabi, a one-time Pentagon favorite who fell out of favor with the United States, returned to Iraq from Iran earlier this month to face...

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Prominent Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi returned to Baghdad, where he has been threatened with arrest on money counterfeiting charges, said a senior aide in his party. "He is back home among his folks," Mithal al-Alusi told AFP. "He will shower, have some tea and then resume his national duties." A judge said on Monday that Chalabi would be arrested upon arrival in Iraq to face the charges against him. Alusi also said Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (INC) party had vacated one of the two buildings that make up its Baghdad headquarters, but would not relinquish the other,...