Here's the full UPI Richard Sale piece, excerpted and commented on in next two entries below.

CPA handlers suspected in espionage

By Richard Sale
UPI Intelligence Correspondent

WASHINGTON, May 25 (UPI) -- Officials of Iraq's Coalition Provisional Authority are suspected of having leaked extremely 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."

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has launched a full field investigation into the matter, these sources said.

"The Iranians took us to breakfast, lunch and dinner," said former CIA operations chief Vince Cannistraro, declining to elaborate.

The chief agent of the deception was the U.S.-funded arm of Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, and Chalabi himself has been "an active agent of influence of Iran throughout the whole period Bush administration," in the words of one former long-time Middle East agent.

He added that Chalabi has been an Iranian agent of influence since the 1990s and before: "He made it very clear that his existence depended on Iran."

Chalabi's brother also works for the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security in Lebanon, he said.

Chalabi allegedly passed National Security Agency/CIA intercepts to intelligence agents of the Iranian government using intermediaries or "cut-outs" or "gophers" within the INC, another former CIA agent said.

Some of the intercepts, dated from December, were the basis for a recent Newsweek story, but there are others of a later date in possession of the FBI, this source said.

A former very senior CIA official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told United Press International, "Chalabi passed specially compartmented intelligence, extraordinarily sensitive stuff, to the Iranians."

This source said that some of the intercepts are believed to have been given 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.

The other is still a working Pentagon official, federal law enforcement officials and former CIA officials said.

"These leaks went way beyond some senior Pentagon official talking out of school," the former very senior agency official said. He explained that U.S. officials "are within their authority" and are allowed to talk to someone like Chalabi, but the discussions are "never disseminated."

Chalabi maintains that he is the victim of a disinformation campaign by the CIA, which has waged a vendetta against him since the collapse of a CIA-backed coup attempt against Saddam Hussein in 1995. Chalabi says he warned the CIA that their plot was penetrated by Iraqi agents.

Administration officials said that Chalabi's INC dispatched fake defectors to several Western European or other allied governments before the start of the war with information designed to blacken Iraq and portray it as a "dire menace and garner support," in the words of one.

Chalabi also had an agent from Iran's Ministry of Interior and Security in his entourage, these sources said.

One person who wasn't surprised by the latest flap was former top CIA Middle East field officer Bob Baer, who worked with Chalabi when the latter was in northern Iraq in 1995.

Soon after a meeting with Chalabi, Baer was recalled to Washington to face an FBI criminal investigation into the charge that he had violated Executive Order 12333, issued by President Reagan in 1981, forbidding the assassination of foreign leaders by U.S. intelligence personnel.

Baer was accused, he said, of hatching a plot to kill Saddam Hussein, except the plot was a "total and complete fabrication of Chalabi's," Baer said.

He then referred to the account in his book, "See No Evil," in which Chalabi met with two Iranian intelligence officers, telling them that the National Security Council under senior Clinton adviser Anthony Lake, had dispatched an "NSC team" to northern Iraq to get rid of Saddam.

According to the account, which Baer confirmed for UPI, Chalabi staged a fake phone call in the middle of the meeting with the Iranians, but left a forged letter, written on NSC stationary out on the table for the Iranians to read.

Baer denied any plot on his part, took a polygraph, passed, and the matter was ended -- except he never forget the talents for fabrication possessed by Chalabi.

"He absolutely cooked the whole thing up," Baer said.

Chalabi had hoped to "swindle the Iranians" into believing that the NSC and the Clinton White House were finally serious about getting rid of Saddam and would have no choice but to support the effort, Baer said.

He went on to say that Chalabi had been behind some extremely clever and successful disinformation campaigns, including being the moving force behind a book, "Saddam's Bombmaker," by Khidhir Hamza.

"That was absolutely a Chalabi disinformation operation," Baer told UPI, and he went on to name several topflight U.S. daily newspapers that had been victims of phony Chalabi stories about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction programs in the months before the war.

"He's very slick, very clever with manipulating the facts," Baer said of Chalabi.

Former CIA analyst Stan Bedlington told UPI that the agency had tried to "use and recruit" Chalabi, but that his "information never checked out and was never any good," and so he was dropped "like a hot potato."

Another former CIA agent said that the agency claimed that Chalabi had failed polygraph tests and labeled him as a "fabricator," and even "put out a what the agency calls a `black book' on him, to warn other agencies away," he said.

The intelligence fraud appears to be very widespread, several officials said.

A U.S. intelligence official was quoted in a Newsday story last week as saying: "Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the United States through Chalabi by furnishing through his Information Collection Program information that "kept the Iranians informed about what we were doing."

Several U.S. officials said that from the time Chalabi was flown by the Pentagon into Iraq following the close of combat operations, his followers, especially his FIF militia, had posed a problem.

According to administration officials, Chalabi set up at the Baghdad Hunt Club, from which he was expelled by top U.S. administrator Paul Bremer.

But Chalabi was accompanied by several hundred members of the PUK (Patriotic Union of Kurdestan), a Kurdish-Iraqi political party/militia headed by Jalal Talabani, U.S. officials said.

After their transfer to his own forces, the FIF, Chalabi saw that the Kurdish reinforcements were issued uniforms, insignia, and credentials of Chalabi's 700-man militia which were described by one U.S. official as "your basic bunch of street thugs."

Baer confirmed this account from knowledge and continuing access to his own U.S. intelligence sources, saying that the FIF who were attached to U.S. units -- including FBI, CIA and military troops -- "acted as a criminal enterprise."

Baer said they were desultory in performing any duties but quite energetic when it came to stealing. "They were real thieves," Baer said. "The FBI and CIA would wake in the morning to find that their computers or other equipment had
been stolen."

In addition, Chalabi's FIF had made off with a bunch of U.S. Jeeps, which resulted in batteries in U.S. helicopters beginning to disappear: "The helicopter batteries were compatible for the Jeeps," Baer said.

The CPA eventually decided to deactivate the FIF, and the majority of U.S-based hangers-on returned home, he said.

[thx to M and R.]

Hmm. Chalabi's brother works for Iranian MOIS/Vevak in Lebanon? That's kind of interesting. But maybe it gives each brother a certain amount of value, and a certain amount of protection, with their own agencies. One working outright for the Americans, and perhaps covertly with the Iranians; and the other working outright for the Iranians, and perhaps covertly for the Americans. I wonder if this is a common template?

Posted by Laura at May 27, 2004 12:36 PM