Still getting caught up after having been unplugged in the mountains. Some interesting stories over the weekend adding new dimensions to the Chalabi mystery.

This from the Baltimore Sun's excellent investigative reporter Scott Shane, which suggests the only non Iraqis who participated in the raid on Chalabi's compound earlier this month were eight armed US DynCorps contractors seconded to the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior. [Also present was an American employee of the INC, Peg Bartel, whose note of outrage at the raid was sent round by Laurie Mylroie.]

When Iraqi police raided the Baghdad home and offices of politician Ahmad Chalabi on May 20, U.S. officials hurried to distance themselves, saying that the operation was an Iraqi affair and that no U.S. government employees were involved.

But eight armed American contractors paid by a U.S. State Department program went on the raid, directing and encouraging the Iraqi police officers who eyewitnesses say ripped out computers, turned over furniture and smashed photographs.

Some of the Americans helped themselves to baklava, apples and diet soda from Chalabi's refrigerator, and enjoyed their looted snacks in a garden outside, according to members of Chalabi's staff who were there.

The contractors work for DynCorp, a subsidiary of California-based Computer Sciences Corp. and the company in charge of training and advising Iraqi police through a State Department contract.

A State Department official confirmed the DynCorp workers' presence during the raid. A DynCorp spokesman declined to comment.

The participation of gun-toting American contractors paid by U.S. taxpayers in a raid that the U.S. government has insisted it did not order is only the latest instance of problems posed by the estimated 20,000 contract security workers serving with more than 60 companies in Iraq.

Could it be true that US officials working directly for US agencies were not involved in the raid? That the White House decision to cut off Chalabi was not coordinated with the raid on Chalabi's compound?

This new Time piece suggests that coordination may not have been directed by the NSC or Washington, but that Iraq czar Jerry Bremer himself authorized the raid. Further, it discusses the White House tasking NSC Iraq envoy Robert Blackwill with developing a memo on sidelining Chalabi, who had lost the President's favor after a February 2004 interview. In that interview in the the Daily Telegraph, Chalabi was cited as saying something to the effect, WMD intel be damned, I got what I wanted.

The White House meeting in late April opened with the presentation of a seven-page, single-spaced memo titled "Marginalizing Chalabi." Drafted by the National Security Council (NSC), the document detailed three options for sidelining the controversial Iraqi political figure Ahmad Chalabi — methods ranging from gently pushing him offstage to cutting off U.S. funds for his intelligence-gathering operation. Once a Pentagon favorite to lead Iraq, Chalabi had been criticizing Washington for dragging out the transfer of power to Iraqis. It was time for Chalabi to go.

The April memo marked the beginning of the White House's strategy to cut its ties to Chalabi — a campaign that reached its climax late last month when Iraqi police, backed by U.S. forces, raided the former exile's house and office in Baghdad. But that move hardly came out of the blue. New details of the relationship between the U.S. and Chalabi, provided to TIME by senior Administration and intelligence officials, reveal that after a decade of lobbying Washington, Chalabi began to lose his footing early this year after he ran afoul of President Bush and L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq...

The NSC office of Iraqi expert Robert Blackwill was commissioned to draft a plan to cut its ties to Chalabi. Blackwill's recommendations for "marginalizing Chalabi" were endorsed by State Department and CIA officials, who have long criticized intelligence provided by Chalabi.

The Iraqi had also fallen out with Ambassador Bremer. In early spring an Iraqi judge issued a search warrant in an investigation into alleged theft of property and government vehicles by members of Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (I.N.C.). Bremer wanted to make an example of the I.N.C. and prove that no political party is above the law, but the search was stymied: according to a senior U.S. official, the police couldn't get into the I.N.C. offices the first time they went. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) officials who were working in a Pentagon-funded intelligence program attached to Chalabi's group stopped the officers at the door, arguing that the sensitive intelligence inside needed to be protected. But on May 13, after the Administration decided to cut off the $335,000 monthly subsidy to the I.N.C., the DIA agents vacated the I.N.C. offices. Administration officials say Bremer sent the police back a week later, backed by U.S. soldiers. Bremer has denied prior knowledge of the raid, but sources say he authorized it. Bremer didn't inform the White House or the Pentagon of the timing of the move, an official says, but Chalabi had few allies left in Washington willing to defend him.

And what role did alleged espionage charges involving Chalabi and the INC play in the White House decision? It's still being unearthed, Time reports:

The extent of Chalabi's alleged malfeasance is still being unearthed. Senior Administration officials tell TIME that the U.S. is investigating whether Chalabi revealed to the Iranians highly sensitive information about how the U.S. gathers intelligence in the region. Other U.S. officials told TIME that the FBI has begun reviewing logs and other data that might turn up clues as to when sensitive information was divulged; the feds are also interviewing and giving lie-detector tests to U.S. officials in Iraq who may have had access to the information.

Meantime, the Sunday Times is reporting in the most detail about the Iraqi charges of kidnapping and corruption that prompted the May 13 raid on Chalabi's compound itself. Further, the Sunday Times says a whispering campaign about alleged espionage charges involving Chalabi surfaced in the US within hours of the raid.

The investigation into Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress initially seemed unlikely to trouble President George W. Bush - allegations of corruption are endemic in post-war Iraq - yet the presence of US military personnel at the raid on Chalabi's home signalled a breach in Washington's relations with the man dubbed the Savile Row Shi'ite. Within hours, anonymous US intelligence officials were alleging at private briefings that the 59-year-old Iraqi had passed US secrets to the hardline Shi'ite regime in Tehran and that Habib was in the pay of Iranian intelligence.

Chalabi shrugged off the allegations, but they made embarrassing reading for
the Pentagon neo-conservatives who had promoted him as a suitable successor
to Saddam.

Meantime, Kevin Drum has the latest on a weekend raid on the Ramadi offices of the Iraqi National Congress.

As Kevin says, stay tuned.

Posted by Laura at May 31, 2004 07:20 PM