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This is one of Ledeen's more interesting recent articles.
...Before getting any deeper in this story, I want to repeat that Chalabi is a friend, and that I don't believe he's an Iranian agent. I do believe that the INC, along with every other significant organization in Iraq, has been penetrated by the extremely skilled Iranian intelligence services, and therefore I would not be at all surprised to find one or another of his associates working with Tehran...
If we're going to worry about Iraqi political groups' associations with Iran, let's look at the really dramatic cases. There's Abdul Aziz al Hakim, the head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). SCIRI is funded directly by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (RG) to the tune of $1.2 million a month, and significant numbers of SCIRI members are paid personally by the RG. Hakim reports regularly to an Iranian intelligence official named Sulemani, surely one of the most dangerous men in the country...
But Hakim is a member of the Governing Council and is in our good graces.
Then there's the Dawa party, represented on the Governing Council by Ibrahim Jaffari. The Dawa is a fundamentalist Islamic party that was part of the Iranian-supported campaign against Saddam Hussein in the early 1980s. Its leaders lived in Iran for years — Jaffari was there from 1982-89 recruiting Iraqis to spy in their homeland, and reportedly informed on Iraqis in Iran who might be problems for the regime — and the party is funded directly by the Iranians. Dawa was believed involved in terrorist attacks against United States targets in the Persian Gulf in the early and mid-1980s. On his frequent trips to Iran, Jaffari meets the top leaders of the Islamic Republic, including Supreme Leader Khamenei.
But Jaffari is in our good graces.
Then there are the Kurds, most of whom are actively engaged in commerce with Iran, including arms, explosives, and alcohol. Jalal Talabani is closely linked to the Revolutionary Guards and the Iranian Intelligence Service, and reported to Tehran on U.S. activities in 1996 during the failed uprising against Saddam. His deputy reports directly to Iranian intelligence. Massoud Barzani, the other prime Kurdish leader, uses his cousin as a conduit to Iran, and the cousin is the head of Kurdish Hezbollah, an Iranian creation. Barzani meets regularly in Baghdad with the Iranians' top man, who was a guest in Barzani's house just two weeks ago. Barzani and Talabani both get funding from Iran.
Both Barzani and Talabani are in our good graces...
I would be the last to argue that we should exclude any Iraqi simply because he has good relations with the Iranian regime — he really has no choice...My questions are simply: If it is bad for Chalabi to do it, why isn't it equally bad for all the rest of them? And if Iran is an enemy, why aren't we treating the mullahs and their henchmen as such?
The answer is, because this "story" isn't about any of that. It's about the failure of the intelligence community to do its job properly, and the fear that they may be held to account...
If Chalabi's handful of defectors hornswoggled the entire U.S. intelligence community, then why are we spending tens of billions of dollars on it each and every fiscal year?...
In my view, the worst of the dupes are those who refuse to see what is in front of our collective nose. Somehow, despite a torrent of evidence, this administration refuses to recognize that Iran was, and is, the greatest menace to us, the greatest sponsor of the terror network, and either in possession of atomic bombs or soon to have them. Even if Chalabi turns out to be a master spy, he cannot be blamed for this enormous intelligence and policy failure. Yet we still have no Iran policy. And the nuclear clock continues to tick in Tehran.
I think this piece is interesting at several levels. One, Ledeen clearly seems to know a lot about current operations involving Iranian intelligence. Two, from what I understand he opposes any sort of policy of US engagement with Iran, or US semi official back channel discussion [any sort not conducted by himself anyhow] with Tehran, even on its nuclear policy; but here he seems to be sanguine about such relationships occurring between the Iraqi leadership the US has helped install, and the Iranian regime. He shows himself utterly absolutist, ideological in the first case, and yet in the case of the Iraqis much more pragmatic. Third, the possibility a US sponsoree like Chalabi might have misled US intelligence about Saddam's banned weapons program is blamed by Ledeen entirely on the US intelligence community, and not at all on Chalabi who perpetrated the alleged deception, nor on his out of government American friends who went all out to champion Chalabi's integrity. Talk about refusing to take any sort of accountability. These are out of government friends of Chalabi who often portray themselves as great authorities on intelligence matters and the region. Yet they don't seem to consider that they should be held accountable -- even morally -- if it turns out that Chalabi indeed was a lying opportunist deceiving two timing Iranian double agent. That said, I think Ledeen raises a legitimate point -- the intelligence community of the US should be more able to protect itself from being deliberately misled by defectors. It is staggering to think that a defector program managed by Chalabi could have gone so far to deceive not just US intelligence but the intelligence agencies of leading governments around the world. How could that have happened?
Fourth, Ledeen himself has reportedly been a freelance negotiator with representatives of Iran at various points, as in during Iran contra. Why does he feel he and his crew are entitled to conduct some sort of back channel foreign policy that he seems to believe Armitage, the Senate-confirmed deputy secretary of state, is not entitled to? Who is authorized to conduct the US's foreign policy on Iran?