Friday, June 04, 2004
Tell me lies...tell me sweet little lies....
The more I read about Ahmed Chalabi, Bush, Tenet and the Iran situation...the weirder it gets.
The Washington Post is reporting that the CIA knew as far back as 1995 that Chalabi was connected with the Iranians:
The 1995 incident arose at a time when Chalabi was in northern Iraq, working with CIA backing against Hussein. The CIA case officer working with Chalabi at the time was Robert Baer.
Exactly who came up with the assassination idea is subject to some dispute. One U.S. official interviewed yesterday, who was familiar with the event, credited Baer with pushing the plan.
Baer has denied this. In his book "See No Evil: the True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism," published in 2001, he wrote that the plot to kill Hussein was phony, concocted by Chalabi in hopes of enticing Iranian support for his Iraqi opposition efforts.
To prove to the Iranians he had Washington's support to go after Hussein, Chalabi forged a letter on U.S. National Security Council stationery that asked him to contact the Iranian government for help, Baer wrote. The letter said Washington had dispatched to northern Iraq an "NSC team" headed by Robert Pope, a fictitious name.
In a meeting with Iranian intelligence officers, Chalabi left the letter on his desk while he took a phone call in another room, knowing the Iranians would read it, Baer wrote.
What happened next has not been previously reported.
The Iranian intelligence officers sent an encrypted message to Tehran about Chalabi's supposed plot, officials said yesterday. The United States intercepted the transmission. U.S. intelligence had broken Iran's secret communications codes during that period as well.
The contents of the 1995 intercept became the basis of a report that circulated fairly widely in Washington intelligence and law enforcement circles, an official recalled. The result was not only deep distrust within the CIA for Chalabi but also an FBI investigation of Baer.
It's pretty clear that the CIA in general didn't trust Chalabi. I can't imagine that Tenet as the head of the CIA trusted Chalabi either. Yet the media and the talk tv circuit (as well as rightwing talk radio) are proclaiming that Tenet left because of all of the intelligence foibles in the CIA. This would include the intelligence information on Iraq.
We had several organizations gathering information on Iraq in advance of our invasion. The CIA was one of them, most certainly. But we also had military intelligence including the Office of Special Plans within the Pentagon. The Office of Special Plans is the group that worked the most closely with Chalabi, according to reports. It's my understanding that the material Chalabi gave to intelligence sources was relied upon fairly heavily when it came to the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Tenet may deserve some of the heat for intelligence failures in the lead up to 9/11 (along with the FBI,NSA,INS, etc). But why is he the one apparently falling on his sword for everything? It's pretty clear that the Iraq intelligence failures don't rest heavily on the shoulders of George Tenet (though he does bear some responsibility).
And why is Tenet resigning over this in the middle of an election year...? Why announce it when Bush is out of the country? And why on the same news cycle as Bush retaining counsel for the Plame case?
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The Washington Post is reporting that the CIA knew as far back as 1995 that Chalabi was connected with the Iranians:
The 1995 incident arose at a time when Chalabi was in northern Iraq, working with CIA backing against Hussein. The CIA case officer working with Chalabi at the time was Robert Baer.
Exactly who came up with the assassination idea is subject to some dispute. One U.S. official interviewed yesterday, who was familiar with the event, credited Baer with pushing the plan.
Baer has denied this. In his book "See No Evil: the True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism," published in 2001, he wrote that the plot to kill Hussein was phony, concocted by Chalabi in hopes of enticing Iranian support for his Iraqi opposition efforts.
To prove to the Iranians he had Washington's support to go after Hussein, Chalabi forged a letter on U.S. National Security Council stationery that asked him to contact the Iranian government for help, Baer wrote. The letter said Washington had dispatched to northern Iraq an "NSC team" headed by Robert Pope, a fictitious name.
In a meeting with Iranian intelligence officers, Chalabi left the letter on his desk while he took a phone call in another room, knowing the Iranians would read it, Baer wrote.
What happened next has not been previously reported.
The Iranian intelligence officers sent an encrypted message to Tehran about Chalabi's supposed plot, officials said yesterday. The United States intercepted the transmission. U.S. intelligence had broken Iran's secret communications codes during that period as well.
The contents of the 1995 intercept became the basis of a report that circulated fairly widely in Washington intelligence and law enforcement circles, an official recalled. The result was not only deep distrust within the CIA for Chalabi but also an FBI investigation of Baer.
It's pretty clear that the CIA in general didn't trust Chalabi. I can't imagine that Tenet as the head of the CIA trusted Chalabi either. Yet the media and the talk tv circuit (as well as rightwing talk radio) are proclaiming that Tenet left because of all of the intelligence foibles in the CIA. This would include the intelligence information on Iraq.
We had several organizations gathering information on Iraq in advance of our invasion. The CIA was one of them, most certainly. But we also had military intelligence including the Office of Special Plans within the Pentagon. The Office of Special Plans is the group that worked the most closely with Chalabi, according to reports. It's my understanding that the material Chalabi gave to intelligence sources was relied upon fairly heavily when it came to the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Tenet may deserve some of the heat for intelligence failures in the lead up to 9/11 (along with the FBI,NSA,INS, etc). But why is he the one apparently falling on his sword for everything? It's pretty clear that the Iraq intelligence failures don't rest heavily on the shoulders of George Tenet (though he does bear some responsibility).
And why is Tenet resigning over this in the middle of an election year...? Why announce it when Bush is out of the country? And why on the same news cycle as Bush retaining counsel for the Plame case?
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