Chalabi's Betrayal

Chalabi, complaining bitterly about his former American friends, immediately played the anti-U.S. card like a true Middle Eastern professional. Americans, he told reporters, have outworn their welcome in Iraq and they should let Iraqis run their own affairs and leave. Before the raid on his family and party – Iraqi National Congress (INC) – headquarters, Iraqis regarded him as the American puppet he once was. Now he was properly credentialed as a pol who had stood his ground against the increasingly unpopular occupier.

The chubby, portly Shia scion of an old Iraqi political family lost favor with his American neocon backers when he betrayed a promise he had made about Israel before being flown back by the Pentagon – with some 700 U.S.-trained militia – to the Iraq he had left as a teen-ager more than 40 years ago. Sponsored by Vice President Dick Cheney, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, former Defense Policy Board Chairman Richard Perle, and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, Chalabi was put on the U.S. payroll to the tune of $340,000 a month. He cemented his alliance with the neocon establishment by pledging to recognize and sign a peace treaty with Israel when he made it to the top of the emerging post-Saddam Hussein political establishment.

In recent months, Chalabi gradually eased himself out of the neocon grip. First he went to Tehran to lay the groundwork for a rapprochement between Iraq and its neighbor Iran. Under Saddam, the two countries fought a bloody eight-year war (1980-88) that cost some 1 million lives.

U.S. authorities suspect he passed on to his Iranian interlocutors classified U.S. intelligence. With Tehran’s blessing, Chalabi went to establish cordial relations with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq’s supreme Shia leader. None of these Chalabi political maneuverings was compatible with the promise to sign peace with Israel.

Responding to congressional critics, the Pentagon severed Chalabi’s stipend a month ago. The money was originally allocated to the head of INC for prewar intelligence supplied to the Pentagon by Iraqi defectors. Much of this information provided the rationale for Operation Iraqi Freedom.

There was only one problem with the intelligence gems Chalabi supplied; they were, for the most part, phony.

Some of the “intelligence” turned out to be deliberate disinformation. A number of defectors reaching London and joining INC in recent years were coached in what to tell American debriefers when they got to the U.S.

The State Department and CIA were wise to the deception early in the game. Both agencies discounted defectors’ stories about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, along with tales of a strategic alliance between al-Qaida and the former dictator. But the Defense Intelligence Agency stuck to Chalabi as a valuable intelligence asset – until last month.

During the past 13 months, Chalabi patiently built an influential machine with some of the dollar funds his men discovered. As a prominent member of the provisional governing authority, where he managed economic and financial affairs, he spun a web that included the ministers of Finance, Oil and Trade and the managing director of Iraq’s leading bank. Chalabi has also been in charge of de-Baathification, the massive purge of former members of Saddam’s ruling Baath party.

A mathematical wizard (Ph.D. in mathematics, University of Chicago), Chalabi started his banking career in exile by creating the Petra Bank in Jordan in the early 1980s. His also courted the Jordanian royal family, particularly former Crown Prince Hassan, the late King Hussein’s brother. Thousands of Jordanians entrusted their savings to Chalabi’s banks, which had branches in Beirut, Geneva and Washington.

Before the decade of the '80s was out, the Petra Bank collapsed and Chalabi escaped to Syria, hiding in the trunk of a royal palace car organized by Prince Hassan. Losses in Jordan and in then other branches totaled $500 million.

In 1992, Chalabi was sentenced in astentia to 22 years of hard labor by a Jordanian state security court on 31 charges of embezzlement, theft, misuse of depositor funds and speculation with the Jordanian dinar. The court also handed down harsh sentences and fines to 16 others, including several brothers and relatives who were members of the Petra board.

Jordan’s former Central Bank Governor Mohammed Said Nabulsi told UPI “Chalabi was one of the most notorious crooks in the history of the Middle East.” Chalabi said the Jordanian royal family framed him because he had evidence about secret weapons trafficking between the two Husseins – Saddam and the king.

Chalabi makes many prominent Americans, European and Arabs uneasy because they don’t know what several tons of Mukhabarat documents seized by INC will reveal about their secret dealings with Saddam. Rumor has it they contain names of all the foreigners who were rewarded by Saddam for services as “agents of influence.” These reportedly also include the names of Qatar-based Al Jazeera reporters who were working for Iraqi intelligence.

After his escape from Jordan to Syria, Chalabi flew to London, where he denounced King Hussein. He then sent out scores of all-expenses-paid invitations to Iraqi exiles to a conference in Vienna a month later. The conference created INC – and made Chalabi its president. The rest is history.

Here's a translation of the letter I got from the Healing Iraq blogsite. It was published in several Arab newspapers:

The Marji'iyah (senior Shia clerics) of the Najaf Hawza gave a joint response to what Hassan Nasrallah, the General Secretary of Lebanese Hezbollah, had said in his Friday sermon with regard to the situation in Najaf and Karbala. The statement was signed with the collective name of Ulemma of the Hawza Al-Ilmiyyah of Najaf and Karbala and excerpts from it were given to Azzaman (Translation courtesy of Michael Subotin):

1. It is the movement of Sayyid Muqtada Al-Sadr that is losing legitimacy in the strictest sense, and not the one led by Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Al-Sistani, the overall, most learned and assidious Marji' of Iraq and not the rest of the Marji's, not even Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Kadhum Al-Ha'eri, nor other people of fortitude and experience in the field of politics who are seared by the fire of the Iraqi crisis and its complications wrought by Muslim brethren from well-known Islamic political movements and organizations, nor others besides them, people of judgement, experience and education, engaged in political affairs.

2. It is the movement of Sayyid Muqtada that has encouraged the occupiers to cross the red lines. And as aside from that, the American occupiers while storming into Iraq and marching towards Baghdad through Najaf and Karbala did not commit the stupidities and insolence with regard to the sanctities in the two holy cities they have committed now.

3. And it is clear that the organization of Sayyid Muqtada - and whoever follows the Sadrist movement - were the first to violate the sanctity of the yard of Haydari Shareef (Imam Ali's shrine in Najaf) when they fired shots inside it at Sayyid Abdul Majeed Al-Kho'ei and killed Sayyid Yasiri within it and wounded Sayyid Majeed and killed Sayyid Hayder Al-Kelidar afterwards. And they are the very same who ignited the fuse of the bloody fight, whose victims among gathered believers were sacrificed over control of the shrine of Imam Hussein (peace be upon him), and it is possible for our lord [Nasrallah] to verify the former by asking his Excellence the Marji' Ayatollah Sheikh Ishaq Al-Fayyadh and from the sons of his Excellence the Marji' Ayatollah Sayyid Muhammad Sa'eed Al-Hakim and the latter with the help of his Excellence Sheikh 'Abdul Mahdi Al-Karbala'i, the representative of the Marji'iyah in Karbala and from his Excellence Sayyid Muhammad Ridha Al-Sistani [the son of Grand Ayatollah Sistani] in person.

4. The organization of Sayyid Muqtada is now carrying out intimidation of the general public and arrests of citizens, not only those whom they call collaborators with the occupation, the police, owners of stores selling foodstuffs to occupiers and others, but also students of religious sciences opposed to them and some of the members of the Badr organization [SCIRI], in addition to raiding offices of the Da'wa party in Kufa, and you can verify the former by asking his Excellence Sheikh Muhammad Mahdi Al-Asifi, his Excellence Sheikh Muhammad Hadi Al Radhi, and his Excellence Sheikh Muhammad Al-Yaqubi, and the latter by asking his Excellence Sayyid Omar Al-Hakim and Dr. Ibrahim Al-Ja'fari [GC member].

5. The firing of shots at the great dome of the shrine of Imam Ali (peace be upon him) [in Najaf], according to some specialists was most likely from the weapons of Sayyid Muqtada's followers and not from the weapons of others, inasmuch as the time of shooting was the day fighting flared up in the Valley of Peace cemetery, and there wasn't any fighting from the side of Alnabi street, whereas you claimed in your important sermon that the direction of the shooting was from the side of the Qibla gate [to the shrine], which is the side of Alnabi street.

6. The strike on the home and office of his Excellence Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani happened within the security perimeter whose every span was controlled by the organization of Sayyid Muqtada, and the office of Marji' Ali [Sistani] was in the immediate proximity to the center of the security perimeter of Sayyid Muqtada's organization [office], well guarded, and especially so in the vicinity of both of their offices, and so how can it be conceived - and you being an expert in these matters - that this stringent security perimeter was breached by an unknown organization, which carried out a protracted strike on the home of the Sayyid Marji' [Sistani] and then retreated without the cognizance of the organization of Sayyid Muqtada.

In the Shiia world of politeness and ceramony, this is an extremely harsh letter and has surprised just about everyone. I think Hizbolla has fighters in Moktada's little army.

his scheme is by no means wholly outlandish. Chalabi has recruited significant Shia support, including Ayatollah Mohammed Bahr al Uloom, a leading member of the Governing Council and two other lesser known Council members. Significantly, his support also includes a faction of the Dawa Party that has been excluded from the political process by the occupation authority and which also supports rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Other recently recruited allies include Iraqi Hezbollah. All are joined in a Chalabi dominated Supreme Shia Council, similar to a sectarian Lebanese model. "Sooner rather than later," the Iraqi observer, a close student of Shia politics, points out, "Moqtada al Sadr is going to be killed. That willl leave tens, hundreds of thousands of his supporters looking for a new leader. If Ahmed plays the role of victim, he can take on that role. His dream has always been to be a sectarian Shia leader."

Given the imminence of the announcement of the post June 30 arrrangement, the stakes are very high for the US. The occupation command in Baghdad well understands that Chalabi has the resources and skills to wreck the all-important arrangements for the official handover of power. "People realise that Ahmed is a gambler, prepared to bring it all down," I was told today, "and this raid may not be at all to his detriment."

The Truth About Ahmed Chalabi

An honest man who worked for the US for 20 years had his life turned upside-down for a year for the good work he was wtrying to do. "He is free" is hardly appropriate coda to this - it was a travesty what they did to him:

"Jan. 17 — In 1995, CIA field officer Robert Baer helped organize a rebellion in northern Iraq to topple one of the United States' worst enemies, Saddam Hussein.

To his dismay, his superiors declined to support the rebellion and he was ordered home to CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. He was furious, but nothing prepared him for his reception: He found two FBI agents waiting to question him.

"They show me their credentials, read me my rights and say, 'You are being investigated under murder-for-hire statutes,'" Baer recalls. The FBI began an investigation into whether he had privately attempted to assassinate the Iraqi president — something that is illegal under U.S. law.

Baer says the charges were based on a "silly rumor" and there was never any assassination plan. He was eventually exonerated, but it took a year to clear his name. By then he had had enough.

After 21 years of service, many of them fighting terrorism on the ground in places like Lebanon, Bosnia, Syria and Sudan, Baer resigned from the agency. The failed Iraqi rebellion was not the first time he felt the CIA had missed a major opportunity.

..."

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