[Media-watch] Iran used Chalabi to dupe US - Newsday - 22/05/2004

[Julie-ann Davies]

The war in Iraq was all Iran's fault ... apparently.
Julie-ann
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Sources say U.S. funded arm of Iraqi Congress was used by Iran

BY KNUT ROYCE
WASHINGTON BUREAU

May 22, 2004


WASHINGTON - The Defense Intelligence Agency has concluded that a
U.S.-funded arm of Ahmad 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.

'Sophisticated' operation

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.

An intelligence agency spokesman would not discuss questions about his
agency's internal conclusions about the alleged Iranian operation. But he
said some of its information had been helpful to the United States. "Some of
the information was great, especially as it pertained to arresting high
value targets and on force protection issues," he said. "And some of the
information wasn't so great."

At the center of the alleged Iranian intelligence operation, according to
administration officials and intelligence sources, is Aras Karim Habib, a
47-year-old Shia Kurd who was named in an arrest warrant issued during a
raid on Chalabi's home and offices in Baghdad Thursday. He eluded arrest.

Karim, who sometimes goes by the last name of Habib, is in charge of the
information collection program.

The intelligence source briefed on the Defense Intelligence Agency's
conclusions said that Karim's "fingerprints are all over it."

"There was an ongoing intelligence relationship between Karim and the
Iranian Intelligence Ministry, all funded by the U.S. government,
inadvertently," he said.

The Iraqi National Congress has received about $40 million in U.S. funds
over the past four years, including $33 million from the State Department
and $6 million from the Defense Intelligence Agency.

In Baghdad after the war, Karim's operation was run out of the fourth floor
of a secure intelligence headquarters building, while the intelligence
agency was on the floor above, according to an Iraqi source who knows Karim
well.

Links between nations

The links between the Iraqi National Congress and U.S. intelligence go back
to at least 1992, when Karim was picked by Chalabi to run his security and
military operations.

Indications that Iran, which fought a bloody war against Iraq during the
1980s, was trying to lure the United States into action against Saddam
Hussein appeared many years before the Bush administration decided in 2001
that ousting Hussein was a national priority.

In 1995, for instance, Khidhir Hamza, who had once worked in Iraq's nuclear
program and whose claims that Iraq had continued a massive bomb program in
the 1990s are now largely discredited, gave UN nuclear inspectors what
appeared to be explosive documents about Iraq's program. Hamza, who fled
Iraq in 1994, teamed up with Chalabi after his escape.

The documents, which referred to results of experiments on enriched uranium
in the bomb's core, were almost flawless, according to Andrew Cockburn's
recent account of the event in the political newsletter CounterPunch.

But the inspectors were troubled by one minor matter: Some technical
descriptions used terms that would only be used by an Iranian. They
determined the original copy was written in Farsi by an Iranian scientist
and then translated into Arabic.

And the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded the documents were
fraudulent.