STOP THE PRESSES. Chalabi disclosed to Tehran the US had broken Iran's secret communications code. "Drunk" Pentagon civilian reportedly gave Chalabi the higly classified information. From the New York Times, which along with other news orgs apparently had known about the nature of the breach, but complied with US intelligence officials' request not to disclose its exact nature, 'til today, since it was already leaking out:

Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi leader and former ally of the Bush administration, disclosed to an Iranian official that the United States had broken the secret communications code of Iran's intelligence service, betraying one of Washington's most valuable sources of information about Iran, according to United States intelligence officials...

The Bush administration, citing national security concerns, asked The New York Times and other news organizations not to publish details of the case. The Times agreed to hold off publication of some specific information that top intelligence officials said would compromise a vital, continuing intelligence operation. The administration withdrew its request on Tuesday, saying information about the code-breaking was starting to appear in news accounts...

American officials said that about six weeks ago, Mr. Chalabi told the Baghdad station chief of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security that the United States was reading the communications traffic of the Iranian spy service, one of the most sophisticated in the Middle East.

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.

American officials reported that in the cable to Tehran, the Iranian official recounted how Mr. Chalabi had said that one of "them" — a reference to an American — had revealed the code-breaking operation, the officials said. The Iranian reported that Mr. Chalabi said the American had been drunk...

The account of Mr. Chalabi's actions has been confirmed by several senior American officials, who said the leak contributed to the White House decision to break with him.

It could not be learned exactly how the United States broke the code. But intelligence sources said that in the past, the United States has broken into the embassies of foreign governments, including those of Iran, to steal information, including codes.

The F.B.I. has opened an espionage investigation seeking to determine exactly what information Mr. Chalabi turned over to the Iranians as well as who told Mr. Chalabi that the Iranian code had been broken, government officials said. The inquiry, still in an early phase, is focused on a very small number of people who were close to Mr. Chalabi and also had access to the highly restricted information about the Iran code.

Some of the people the F.B.I. expects to interview are civilians at the Pentagon who were among Mr. Chalabi's strongest supporters* and served as his main point of contact with the government*, the officials said.

More soon. [Big thanks to E.]

Post Script: If this* doesn't sound like a certain Pentagon civilian deputy to Doug Feith's Office of Special Plans......[Alas, am told by a friend that it's not. That individual doesn't have that sort of access. Times piece is sure pointing in that interesting direction, however, isn't it? Wisful thinking?]

Post Script II: Not to be totally obnoxious. But someone riffed today on the theme, wonder if Iran did not believe that what it had gotten from Chalabi was so valuable? And would the CIA really want to disclose if something truly highly sensitive had been compromised by espionage? I think one well informed friend must have known the basic story for a while.

Will Congress please initiate public hearings, and will someone please put whoever gave this stuff to Chalabi in jail?

A friend claims to know about the specific intercepts but won't say because the agency asked him not to. What's left to be compromised at this point? [Update, now apparently he got permission to say. I'm still waiting to hear. Something about two Iranians....What? I'm losing you.]

MORE: From the NY Sun:

American intelligence officials have collected intelligence in the last six weeks that strongly suggests Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi has compromised America’s penetration of Iranian top secret communications in Tehran, according to American officials. Concerns about the intelligence breach first surfaced after Mr. Chalabi held an unreported meeting with an Iranian Revolutionary Guard General whose last name is Sulaymani, according to an American intelligence official. General Sulaymani heads the Quds command, for the revolutionary guard, a unit of that service in charge of funding anti-Israeli terror organizations as well as anti-American activities inside Iraq. The information on Mr. Chalabi was collected through a separate report regarding two Iranian officials discussing the information Mr. Chalabi apparently gave them.

Hmm. The last time I heard Suleymani mentioned was in Michael Ledeen's NRO piece last week, when he wrote:

[SCIRI's] Hakim reports regularly to an Iranian intelligence official named Sulemani, surely one of the most dangerous men in the country. And SCIRI has its own militia, the Badr Brigades, which at least until very recently conducted military maneuvers with units of the Revolutionary Guards on Iraqi territory adjoining the Iranian border.

Are the Iranians rolling over laughing at having hoodwinked among the very most zealous pro Israel members of the US foreign policy elite, into accepting into their inner circle someone sending the very most sensitive US intelligence to the very people planning and conducting terror operations against Israel and the US? How easy does it get? Posted by Laura at June 1, 2004 10:38 PM