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UPI scoop? Via Dreyfuss' blog Wednesday.
Next is this, from UPI yesterday, reporting that the FBI is investigating a Pentagon official and a former Pentagon official for having passed classified info to Chalabi. Though not named, the two officials in the UPI story are, according to my sources, Harold Rhode, an official in the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment, and Michael Rubin, now at the American Enterprise Institute. Reports UPI:
Officials of the Coalition Provisional Authority are suspected of having leaked sensitive CIA and Pentagon intercepts to the U.S.-funded Iraqi National Congress, which passed them on to the government of Iran, according to federal law enforcement officials and serving and former U.S. intelligence officials.
These sources also acknowledged that the Bush administration has been the victim of an enormous Iran-perpetrated intelligence fraud that worked to provoke a U.S. military invasion of Iraq in order to defeat Iran's bitter, long-time enemy, a campaign of deception which one U.S. source called "positively a most brilliant and extraordinarily successful operation."
This source said that some of the intercepts are believed to have been given to Chalabi by two U.S. officials of the Coalition Provision Authority, both of whom are not named here because UPI could not reach them for comment.
Other targets of the probe include senior and other Pentagon officials who dealt with Chalabi on a regular basis, this source said.
One former CPA official has returned to the United States and is employed at the American Enterprise Institute, the former very senior official said, a fact which FBI sources confirmed without additional comment.
When Dreyfuss asked Rubin if the story was accurate, Rubin told Dreyfuss "it is untrue."
Can someone send me the UPI original story if they find it? It should be from May 25, 2004.
Update: Hearing much skepticism about this story from various colleagues. One who has run down the AEI part of this said it's wrong on numerous levels. Another colleague expressed skepticism that the characters referred to in the UPI piece would have had access to such sensitive intel, which would seem to make sense. Having not yet been able to see the original UPI Richard Sale piece, I am not sure exactly what the piece is really suggesting: that the two individuals were visited by the FBI to be interviewed as potential witnesses? That is what seems most plausible.
That seems to be what Sidney Blumenthal is suggesting in his Salon piece today.