Insight On-line
Release date: 5/21/04
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Yesterday's early-morning raid on the home and office of Iraqi
national Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi in Baghdad sends "the wrong
message" to America's would-be allies in the Arab world, former
Pentagon official Michael Rubin tells Insight. "This is a huge blow
to America's prestige. The message we've just sent is that we do not
stand by our allies, that the United States can't be trusted. We've
just told Arab liberals and democrats that it's just plain crazy to
work with America."
Rubin, who served as an aid to Deputy Undersecretary of Defense
William Luti, spoke with Sunni clerics, Shiite professionals, and
independent Kurdish businessmen in Iraq in the hours immediately
after the Baghdad raid. "Everyone in Iraq believes that because of
U.S. actions, we are now heading for civil war. We have snatched
defeat from the jaws of victory."
Deeply involved in planning for the Iraq war, Rubin tells Insight
that he left government in April out of a sense of frustration. "This
administration has been taking so many hits, many of them based on
outright fabrications or on information from 'anonymous intelligence
sources,' that I felt I could be more effective on the outside," he
says. Rubin now is a Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in
Washington.
Francis Brooke, an American aid to Chalabi who was at Chalabi's home
in Baghdad when Iraqi troops supported by 25 U.S. military policemen
and "an SUV full of OGA guys" - an acronym commonly used in Baghdad
to designate the CIA ("other government agencies") - stormed the
house. Chalabi was awakened by four armed men pointing guns at him.
"I myself stood for an hour with an American military person pointing
a gun at my chest," Brooke told Insight by phone from Baghdad. "It
was totally misplaced."
The raids were carefully orchestrated and appeared part of an effort
to embarrass Chalabi. "They had TV cameras across the street," Brooke
says. "They were hoping to lead out a bunch of guys in handcuffs, but
they didn't find anybody they were looking for." Instead, they seized
computers, documents relating to the Iraqi National Council's (INC's)
investigation of the U.N. oil-for-food scandal, a family Koran and a
set of prayer beads.
A spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Baghdad
insisted in a telephone interview with Insight that the raid was not
the work of the CPA, but had been ordered by an independent Iraqi
judge. "They wanted six or seven people for questioning," the
spokesman said. "I can't tell you their names - I can't even get one
Arab name straight."
American news reports on Friday gave several variants of the alleged
charges against the Chalabi aids, ranging from corruption, fraud,
vehicle theft, to intimidation and blackmail. But INC sources and
Rubin believe there is no doubt that U.S. civil administrator L. Paul
Bremer ordered the raid. "The decision to 'cut Chalabi down to size'
was taken in Washington," Rubin said, "but the operation against
Chalabi originated in Baghdad. There is no doubt that Bremer signed
off on this. Basically, Bremer has gone mad. This raid shows the U.S.
has not learned the lessons of Abu Ghraib, and is still trying to
humiliate" perceived opponents.
At a press conference in Baghdad after the raids, Chalabi identified
one of the individuals allegedly being sought as Aras Habib, his
long-time security and intelligence chief. Before the U.S.-led
invasion, Mr. Habib ran the INC's network of informants within
Saddam's regime and identified defectors the INC ultimately helped to
escape Iraq. Chalabi's detractors claim that the intelligence
provided by those defectors relating to Iraqi Weapons of Mass
Destruction (WMD) programs was false or fabricated. But in fact, says
Rubin, the INC provided intelligence and human sources at a time when
the CIA has no assets inside Iraq at all. "The CIA hates Chalabi
because he comes out with information they do not have and that later
gets confirmed," Rubin says.
Insight worked with Mr. Habib on several occasions before the
U.S.-led invasion of Iraq while reporting stories involving Saddam's
WMD programs, and consistently found him to be reliable, providing
documents and sources not connected to the INC, allowing independent
verification of the INC allegations [see
"Eurobiz Is
Caught Arming Saddam,"
posted Feb 4, 2003, and "How
Saddam Got Weapons of Mass
Destruction," posted Sept.
30, 2002].
Chalabi also has alienated the State Department, which has taken its
cue from neighboring Arab governments which are seeking to put an end
to the experiment in democracy in Iraq and replace the Iraqi
Governing Council with a new Arab strongman, Rubin and others
believe. "While Americans tend to overlook family relations, Iraqis
do not," Rubin says. "[UN Special Envoy Lakhdar] Brahimi's
daughter is engaged to Prince Ali of Jordan, the brother of King
Abdullah." Not only do Iraqis see Brahimi as partial to Jordan, but
many feel he is hostile to Iraqi Shias and Kurds.
The first time Brahimi met with the Governing Council, an Iraqi
source tells Insight, he said he came not just as the U.N. envoy, but
as a "brother Arab." Brahimi's words "sent chills" down the spines of
the Shia and Kurdish members of the councilmen.
Since the insurgency began last summer, Mr. Habib and the INC have
provided invaluable intelligence to the United States "that has saved
American lives," says INC spokesman, Entifad Qanbar. Rubin agrees
with that assessment. "The most virulent hatred of Chalabi comes from
those who have never met him," he says. "Defense Intelligence Agency
[DIA] and U.S. military commanders in Iraq who have worked
with the INC have given them stellar reviews. They have used INC
intelligence to stop operations by insurgents that were targeting
Americans. They have caught insurgents red-handed because of
information provided by Chalabi. [Secretary of State Colin]
Powell and [Deputy Secretary of State Richard] Armitage
appear to place greater value on winning bureaucratic battles in
Washington than in saving American lives in Iraq."
The most extravagant allegation against Chalabi was launched on
Thursday evening by Dan Rather and 60 Minutes correspondent Leslie
Stahl on the CBS Evening News. In what Rather portrayed as an
"exclusive report," CBS claimed that U.S. intelligence operatives
were seeking to arrest Chalabi because he had delivered "top secret
U.S. intelligence" to the Islamic Republic of Iran." The intelligence
was so sensitive, Rather ventilated, that it could "get Americans
killed."
The CBS allegation, which Rather and Stahl said they had learned from
"senior U.S. intelligence officials" they refused to name, sounded
serious, but it turned out to be a word-for-word repeat of an earlier
report that appeared in Newsweek that also quoted anonymous U.S.
intelligence officials. CBS did not credit Newsweek with the alleged
"leak."
One of the "former U.S. intelligence officials" who frequently feeds
the media with false allegations about Chalabi actually has a name.
He is Pat Lang, a former DIA Middle East analyst, who sometimes
appears on air as a CBS News consultant.
Lang was quoted by Washington Post reporter Robin Wright in her
front-page story on the raids that appeared on Friday, disparaging
the intelligence Chalabi's group had provided the United States
before the war. "Now it's demonstrable that [Chalabi] told
the U.S. government a lot of things that were not true," Lang
said.
In citing Lang as an expert on Iraq, neither CBS nor the Washington
Post ever has mentioned that Lang has registered with the Justice
Department as a foreign agent for an Arab government. "How can
somebody working for an Arab government parade about as a neutral
analyst?" says Rubin.
Chalabi has never denied his many visits to Iran or his meeting with
high Iranian government officials. Before the U.S.-led invasion,
Chalabi and top INC officials had to travel through Iran to reach
Iraq because Turkey had closed its borders to INC operatives.
"Actually, if truth be told, I think Ahmed has actually used the
Iranians for our benefit," a key Chalabi supporter tells Insight.
Chalabi appears to have been instrumental in getting the Iranian
government to drop its support for radical Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr,
several sources tell .
But in Washington, where no good deed goes unpunished, Ahmed Chalabi
is paying dearly for those efforts.
Kenneth R. Timmerman is a
senior writer for Insight.
email the
author
Kenneth R. Timmerman is a senior writer for Insight and author of The French Betrayal of America, just released from Crown Forum.
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