Chalabi Reportedly Told Iran That U.S. Had Code

The article leads me to believe the secret was disclosed to Chalabi in Iraq so maybe he was there or perhaps it was Bremmer? One thing is for certain. Not many people knew this information. It would be VERY tightly guarded.

All codes are breakable even the most sophisticated. It is simply a matter of time. The value of being able to decypher a message quickly as opposed to slowly is self-evident, and losing this ability with respect to Iranian communications is reason enough to dissociate with Chalabi.

I don't post here but once in a blue moon but I read FR all the time and hold all of you in high esteem. Section9 is absolutely right -- horse hockey to the MAX. All the bits and pieces came together for me when I read Jack Wheeler's analysis, which I must post in its entirety due to restricted (subscriber-only) access:

THE REAL SCANDAL IN IRAQ
Behind The Lines
Dr. Jack Wheeler
Thursday, May 27, 2004

In order to understand what is going on in Iraq right now, it is simply imperative that you do a quick re-read of Childishness in Iraq written in August of 2003 and posted in Classics. This will give you the initial background on Ahmad Chalabi and the source of the vendetta Jordan’s King Hussein, the CIA, and the State Department have been conducting against him.

What’s changed is that the line in the second paragraph about Jerry Bremer following the lead of Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz rather than “his putative bosses at State” is no longer true. Bremer’s real boss is Robert Blackwill, Deputy National Security Advisor at the White House. He is directly in charge of US policy and operations in Iraq, and he has sold out to the squishes at State and the CIA. Which means he has sold America out to the UN.

This is a first-class disaster, folks. It is the real scandal in Iraq, not the humiliation of Baathist thugs by seven yahoos in one cell block of Abu Ghraib. The trashing of Ahmad Chalabi, epitomized by Newsweek’s cover story this week entitled “Our Con Man in Iraq,” means that State and the CIA have staged a coup in Iraq – and that only Chalabi had the guts to oppose it. So he had to be destroyed.

Here’s the sordid deal. Just like Chalabi exposed King Hussein’s conspiracy with Saddam Hussein to dismember Saudi Arabia in 1990 (again, read Childishness in Iraq), and warned that the CIA’s plot to have Iraqi officers overthrow Saddam in 1996 had been penetrated (it was, it failed, dozens of officers were shot), so now Chalabi exposed Saddam’s gigantic oil-for-food bribery scheme.

It was Chalabi’s people who found the Oil Ministry documents and gave an initial summary of the bribes to an Iraqi newspaper, Al Mada, which published a list of 270 bribe-takers on January 29, 2004. Billions of dollars in bribes were dispensed by Saddam through the UN program to politicians, bureaucrats, and journalists in over a score of countries – including the son of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the crook who administered the program, Benon Savon, and vast numbers of French, German, and Russian officials.

And Chalabi has the goods on them all. "The Iraqi regime, like all dictatorships, kept meticulous records with countless cross-references," he notes – and all those records are in his and the Iraqi National Congress’ possession.

This left Bob Blackwill with a choice. He could cooperate with Chalabi, authorize a full independent forensic accounting of the bribery scheme, use its disclosure to flush out the massive corruption within the UN bureaucracy and force French, German, Russian, and UN support for securing peace and democracy for Iraq. Or he could panic, demonize Chalabi, and make a deal with Kofi Annan that in exchange for squelching the scandal, the UN would give its imprimatur over the creation of an interim Iraqi government to be appointed by a UN bureaucrat, Lakhdar Bhrahimi.

Now you see why this is such a disaster. The tragedy is that it could have been the total opposite, an opportunity at last to put the insufferable arrogance of Kofi Annan’s United Nations and the America-hating “international community” on a leash. The Bush White House has instead acted precisely as we would expect of a Kerry White House – sell out control of American foreign policy and national security to the UN.

For the blame cannot be laid just at Blackwill. There can be no “If only the Czar knew” cop-out. George Bush has failed us here. He has wimped out. His support of Rumsfeld and refusal to fire him over Abu Ghraib was not from strength, but from weakness. He was allowed to keep Rummy as long as control of Iraq was taken away from the Pentagon and given to State.

Bush’s capitulation was formalized on May 11, when he signed a National Security Presidential Directive giving the State Department full authority to direct US operations in Iraq after June 30, and not the Pentagon.

This is why the raid on Chalabi’s home in Baghdad on May 20, conducted by Iraqi and US security forces and CIA agents, was not only done without Rumsfeld’s approval, it was done without his knowledge. It was ordered by Bob Blackwill via Jerry Bremer, who did not say a word of the order to the Pentagon.

Then the media campaign to trash Chalabi was launched, with every pimp for State and prostitute for the CIA in journalism – from traditional Pogos like Newsweek and the New York Times to websites like Stratfor to columnists like Arnaud de Borchgrave -- parroting every slander State-CIA could invent.

Arnaud’s case is especially sad, for he is converting his reputation as a legendary war correspondent into that of a trollop who writes what he’s bidden by the countries and agencies that pay him to do so. Thus he writes in a UPI column on May 20, “With Tehran’s blessing, Chalabi went to establish cordial relations with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq’s supreme Shiite leader.” Arnaud knows full well this is a lie – that the Mullahs in Tehran want Sistani killed – they are terrified of him setting up a separate Shia power center in Iraq and are backing the cleric-thug Muqtada al-Sadr. Yet he writes it anyway, because he was instructed to do a hit piece.

Perhaps you’re wondering here, “Yes, Jack, I know that the State Department is riddled with and run by liberal squishes – but surely the CIA folks aren’t, right?”

This may disillusion some, but the demoralizing truth is that Langley is dominated by left-wing gutless bureaucrats just like Foggy Bottom. There are a lot of good people in the Agency (or, for old timers, The Three Bad Words), especially in paramilitary ops. But a very substantial fraction of Langley desk-jockeys are as squishy as any pinstripe.

The tragic fact is that the CIA has never recovered from its emasculation by Senator Frank Church (D-ID) and Jimmy Carter’s DCI Stansfield Turner in the 1970s. Bill Casey under Reagan didn’t have the time before Iran-Contra to turn it around. Thus the disgrace of the CIA’s pathological support of Islamofascist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in Afghanistan in the 1980s – which was responsible for the Taliban’s seizure of power and Al Qaeda given sanctuary in Afghanistan from where the September 11 attack on America was planned.

This story is told in Gulbuddin and the CIA, written in October 2001, updated and posted in Classics.

Now we can see that the biggest mistake of George Bush’s presidency was not firing Clinton’s holdover, George Tenet and installing his own CIA Director. Tenet and Blackwill, with Colin Powell’s acquiescence, have staged a palace coup, overthrowing Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz regarding Iraq.

With Chalabi out of the way and the Oil-For-Food scandal squelched, they are free to have their stooge, octogenarian Adnan Pachachi named by Brahimi as Iraq’s interim president. This will delight all the Arab dictators and princes in the Middle East, as he is a fellow Sunni Arab, and will signal the intention of the US to help keep them in power. It will infuriate the Kurds and Shias who comprise over 80% of Iraqis.

Real democracy in Iraq and the Middle East? Fuhgeddaboutit. The pinstripe and spook sophisticates are far too “realistic” to lift a finger to achieve it – and will do their level best to stymie any effort to. They will do whatever is necessary to ensure George Bush’s noble dream of real freedom for Iraq remains a pipedream.

So as our soldiers continue to win the war in Iraq militarily, the war is already lost politically. That, folks, is the real scandal in Iraq.

* * *

NOTE: The article referenced in the first paragraph is available to non-subscribers and I STRONGLY urge you to read it. It explains so much, and all the usual suspects emerge in all the usual places. Also one or two AHA! moments.

GO: http://tothepointnews.com/article.php?id=99&i=

NOTE: I should also say I am still optimistic that GWB & Rumsfeld are a coupla steps ahead of this little State/CIA party. It seems to me the Staties have displayed a bit of flailing desperation here, that reeks of overplaying their hand. Patience is in order, and patience is what GWB OWNS. A few very smart guys (Perle, Ledeen, someone at Am Spectator) have even speculated that the smear of Chalabi may actually improve his chances of one day being duly elected in Iraq. And please do not misunderstand: Chalabi is in no way a saint or a savior or the end all, be all. But the trashing of Chalabi represents a far greater concern re: our internal war behind the war.

One further note. You may have noticed that Wheeler, near the end, presumed Pachachi to be the chosen one: they are free to have their stooge, octogenarian Adnan Pachachi named by Brahimi as Iraq’s interim president. Well, today we saw that Pachachi turned down the job. But this gives little comfort in light of who was appointed prime minister (the guy with the REAL power) -- Alawi. Richard Perle & David Frum mentioned both men in their book An End to Evil: Moreover, both State and the Agency had their preferred candidates -- Adnan Pachachi in the case of State, Iyad Alawi in the Case of the CIA..."

Lots of questions and possibilities.

Right - including the possibility that the intelligence sources were telling the NYT the truth - that Chalabi passed classified info to the Iranians.

WHAT!!!

According to American officials, the Iranian official in Baghdad, possibly not believing Mr. Chalabi's account, sent a cable to Tehran detailing his conversation with Mr. Chalabi, using the broken code. That encrypted cable, intercepted and read by the United States, tipped off American officials to the fact that Mr. Chalabi had betrayed the code-breaking operation, the American officials said.

....The Iranians sent what American intelligence regarded as a test message, which mentioned a cache of weapons inside Iraq, believing that if the code had been broken, United States military forces would be quickly dispatched to the specified site. But there was no such action.

Hmmm....

Obviously the US was too sophisticated to bite on the test message ("Water purification plant at Midway is broken"). Why act so ham-fistedly on information in another Iranian cable, that might be misinformation, anyway? Wouldn't Chalabi be more valuable to the US as conduit of misinformation than on the sidelines? Tell him the US plans to raid their nuclear plant in August, stuff like that. During WW-II every British agent using a radio in Europe was either turned or executed by the Funkabwehr, and likewise every German agent in Britian. The British were critical of the FBI for loudly arresting German spy rings in the US instead of turning them.

The whole story doesn't quite add up to me.

Might be true? Who knows what to believe. This is hall of mirrors type stuff. Very hard to sort out with all the malicious leaking.

Right, NYT is certainly not a credible source for anything. Take it with a grain of salt.

The agit-prop continues. They keep beating the drums for "Uriah Heep" Chalabi like Ricky Ricardo pounding out a frantic rendition of Bablu.

How do we know Chalabi is not a friend of the United States?

Remember that---as a bonafide conservative---President Bush values loyalty, so if the administration is letting Chalabi hang out to dry, he's gotta be as dirty as the evidence shows he is.

I don't presume to speak for anyone else (sarcasm), but when my leader----I mean, of course, the President of the United States of America---decides that United States interests are better served by Chalabi talking a hike----as a conservative, red-blooded American, I snap to attention. What my President thinks is good for America, for our military, and for US national security, is paramount on my list of Top Ten Conservative Priorities.

Interesting to note the defence of Chalabi.. at the very least his is no better/worse than so many leaders in the ME...either way he is toast..move on! Give him to Jordan as a present and set an example to all. He has proven to be of no importance in the scheme of things.

"Another no comment ping."

No comment from me, either. But this will be soon rectified, I'm sure.

see post #10 here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1145982/posts

Resignation #1.

Weakest link is now gone....yeah.