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In the fall of 1999, when I wasn't in Kosovo or Belgrade, I could occasionally be found taking classes with a dozen future US gov't officials, Mossad agents, and a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs official, etc. at a Harvard grad school class taught by the brilliant US intelligence historian Ernest May. Within two years, I later learned, the Chinese guy had defected to the US in an intricately arranged defection which involved lots of blue US government vans and his wife being at a US embassy party the very same night. Needless to say at the time I was unaware of all of this, just dimly aware of a bunch of people in the class who seemed to be a lot more professionally intelligence-oriented than I, freelance hack, was and a US military guy who also happened to be in my Serbo-Croatian class across the campus. I enjoyed May very much, but I think my instinct about intelligence history is by and large correct and not very academic: you can study it all you want, but intelligence failure is basically the almost inevitable consequence not of a lack of information, but of a failure of imagination. The reason the US didn't foresee Pearl Harbor, Stalin didn't believe Hitler would invade the Soviet Union, the US didn't foresee India's nuclear tests, etc. is not for lack of information. It is about the blindnesses that occur on this side in the processing of information, the inability or unwillingness to yield one's assumptions to think like one's adversary, and the moving of such insights within the bureaucracy. It will make one a big fan of Red Team practices. In any case. The same semester, I was taking classes with current Kerry advisors Ash Carter and Graham Allison, and former Bush I official, Bob Blackwill, now an NSC official overseeing Iraq. Catastrophic terrorism was what we woke up with and what we went to bed with. But the assumption was always WMD terrorism. Not airplanes as missiles, or Amtrak as missiles, etc. Anyhow, in one of those classes, I can't remember any more which one, I studied with the author of this Jersualem Post article:
This week, Chalabi was also scheduled to meet with visiting members of the US House of Representatives, who are in Iraq on a fact-finding mission regarding the UN oil-for-food scandal in which UN officials and foreign governments allegedly earned millions of dollars in scurrilous oil giveaways by Saddam Hussein. Chalabi had been conducting the IGC's investigation of the scandal. His investigation was coming to a fore last spring as the Bush administration was seeking to mollify the UN in order to receive its imprimatur on the handover of governing authority to the Iraqi provisional government.
As a result, last May, Robert Blackwill, the National Security Council's point man for Iraq, had his aides put together an options memo on how to marginalize Chalabi. Shortly thereafter, Maliky ordered the raid on Chalabi's offices.
I am not as inclined to the pro-neocon position Glick takes but she's obviously well informed and worth reading.
Another contact sends this LA Times piece, informing us the US government wasn't so blindsided by Maliky's recent arrest warrants on the Chalabis than its spokesmen have indicated.
U.S. officials were informed in advance that Iraq's interim government planned to crack down on Ahmad Chalabi, a longtime Bush administration ally, and did not object to the move, a U.S. official said.
Early this week, administration officials sought to distance themselves from the furor over arrest warrants issued Sunday for Chalabi, a prominent former exile, and his nephew Salem. They said they were unaware of the Iraqi government's plans.
But a U.S. official acknowledged in an interview Thursday that the Bush administration had been aware of the impending move against the Chalabis.
"We knew we were heading in this direction," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We had had discussions with senior members of the interim government, who had basically been telling us what they had uncovered."
In Iraq, the speculation is widespread that the charges were part of an effort by the interim government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a longtime rival of Ahmad Chalabi, to tighten its hold on power.
U.S. officials publicly tried to steer clear of the confrontation, portraying it as the internal workings of a sovereign country. At the same time, the Americans have avoided taking steps — such as consulting on the criminal charges — that would make Allawi's government appear to be under U.S. control.
Meantime, my wonderful friend Andras writes to take issue with my post from yesterday recommending an article in rumorcontrol alleging Iranian support to Moqtada al-Sadr. Andras writes:
I'm writing as a devoted reader of your blog to let Nyou know that I think Rumor Control's stories about the Iranians should not even be dignified as rumors. To be sure, Shiites everywhere (and many non-Shiite Muslims as well) are very upset about what's happening in Najaf and elsewhere in Iraq. But the notion that Muqtada is a tool of Tehran is simply ludicrous. There are people in Washington who have been agitating for a confrontation with Iran for a long time now; the rumors you refer to may originate with them. But they're projecting their own geostrategic
fantasies that have only the loosest of connections with reality in Iraq
and the region. I would give far more credence to Juan Cole's analysis
of the situation - Juan is fluent in Arabic, knows Iraq, has written an
excellent book on Shiites and their politics there and doesn't have to
rely on Fox News for intelligence and analysis about what's happening
between Samarra and Basra.
Andras has much expertise in the Islamic world and in particular in the preservation of Islamic history and culture, etc. I'll yield to his expertise on this region any day. It's obvious some of the usual suspects would like to take the fun and games to Tehran. But even recognizing this, what is not obvious to me is that one can totally dismiss reports from outside of those circles, that Iraqi Shiite insurgents are getting support from elements in Iran. The evidence seems to be coming from a wider circle than the usual suspects who have been discredited on other matters in Iraq/Chalabi etc. This wouldn't seem to be unknowable. Iraq is not North Korea. We have 150,000 US troops there, we have the biggest CIA field office in history in Baghdad, there are thousands of reporters. When will we know just what is Iran's role in Iraq?
Posted by Laura at August 14, 2004 06:05 PM
