Given the recent statements by Chalabi, almost gleefully remarking that he duped the Americans into going to war, it's interesting that
Unreliable group keeps U.S. support
By Jonathan S. Landay, Warren P. Strobel and John Walcott
Knight Ridder
WASHINGTON - The Department of Defense is continuing to pay millions of dollars for information from the former Iraqi opposition group that produced some of the exaggerated and fabricated intelligence President Bush used to argue his case for war.
The Pentagon has set aside between $3 million and $4 million this year for the Information Collection Program of the Iraqi National Congress, or INC, led by Ahmed Chalabi, said two senior U.S. officials and a U.S. defense official.
They spoke on condition of anonymity because intelligence programs are classified.
The continuing support for the INC comes amid seven separate investigations into prewar intelligence that Iraq was hiding illicit weapons and had links to Al-Qaida and other terrorist groups. A probe by the Senate Intelligence Committee is examining the INC's role.
The decision not to shut off funding for the INC's information gathering effort could become another liability for Bush as the presidential campaign heats up and furthermore suggests that some within the administration are intent on securing a key role for Chalabi in Iraq's political future.
Chalabi, who built close ties to officials in Vice President Cheney's office and among top Pentagon officials, is on the Iraqi Governing Council, a body of 25 Iraqis installed by the United States to help administer the country following the ouster of Saddam Hussein last April.
The former businessman, who lobbied for years for a U.S.-backed military effort to topple Saddam, is publicly committed to making peace with Israel and providing bases in the heart of the oil-rich Middle East for use by U.S. forces fighting the war on terrorism.
The INC's Information Collection Program started in 2001 and was ``designed to collect, analyze and disseminate information'' from inside Iraq, according to a letter the group sent in June 2002 to the staff of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Some of the INC's information alleged that Saddam was rebuilding his nuclear weapons program, which was destroyed by U.N. inspectors after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and was stockpiling banned chemical and biological weapons, according to the letter.
The letter, a copy of which was obtained by Knight Ridder, said the information went directly to ``U.S. government recipients'' who included William Luti, a senior official in Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's office, and John Hannah, a top national security aide to Cheney.
The letter appeared to contradict denials made last year by top Pentagon officials that they were receiving intelligence on Iraq that bypassed established channels and verification procedures. The INC also supplied information from its collection program to leading news organizations in the United States, Europe and the Middle East, according to the letter to the Senate committee staff.
The State Department and the CIA, which soured on Chalabi in the 1990s, viewed the INC's information as highly unreliable.
mercurynews.com
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