US intelligence fears Iran
duped hawks into Iraq war
· Inquiry into Tehran's role in starting conflict
· Top Pentagon ally Chalabi accused
Julian Borger in Washington
Tuesday May 25, 2004
The Guardian
An urgent investigation has been launched in Washington
into whether Iran played a role in manipulating the US into
the Iraq war by passing on bogus intelligence through
Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, it emerged
yesterday.
Some intelligence officials now believe that Iran used the
hawks in the Pentagon and the White House to get rid of a
hostile neighbour, and pave the way for a Shia-ruled Iraq.
According to a US intelligence official, the CIA has hard
evidence that Mr Chalabi and his intelligence chief, Aras
Karim Habib, passed US secrets to Tehran, and that Mr
Habib has been a paid Iranian agent for several years,
involved in passing intelligence in both directions.
The CIA has asked the FBI to investigate Mr Chalabi's
contacts in the Pentagon to discover how the INC acquired
sensitive information that ended up in Iranian hands.
The implications are far-reaching. Mr Chalabi and Mr Habib
were the channels for much of the intelligence on Iraqi
weapons on which Washington built its case for war.
"It's pretty clear that Iranians had us for breakfast, lunch
and dinner," said an intelligence source in Washington
yesterday. "Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the
US for several years through Chalabi."
Larry Johnson, a former senior counter-terrorist official at
the state department, said: "When the story ultimately
comes out we'll see that Iran has run one of the most
masterful intelligence operations in history. They
persuaded the US and Britain to dispose of its greatest
enemy."
Mr Chalabi has vehemently rejected the allegations as "a
lie, a fib and silly". He accused the CIA director, George
Tenet, of a smear campaign against himself and Mr Habib.
However, it is clear that the CIA - at loggerheads with Mr
Chalabi for more than eight years - believes it has caught
him red-handed, and is sticking to its allegations.
"The suggestion that Chalabi is a victim of a smear
campaign is outrageous," a US intelligence official said.
"It's utter nonsense. He passed very sensitive and
classified information to the Iranians. We have rock solid
information that he did that."
"As for Aras Karim [Habib] being a paid agent for Iranian
intelligence, we have very good reason to believe that is
the case," added the intelligence official, who did not want
to be named. He said it was unclear how long this
INC-Iranian collaboration had been going on, but pointed
out that Mr Chalabi had had overt links with Tehran "for a
long period of time".
An intelligence source in Washington said the CIA
confirmed its long-held suspicions when it discovered that
a piece of information from an electronic communications
intercept by the National Security Agency had ended up in
Iranian hands. The information was so sensitive that its
circulation had been restricted to a handful of officials.
"This was 'sensitive compartmented information' - SCI -
and it was tracked right back to the Iranians through Aras
Habib," the intelligence source said.
Mr Habib, a Shia Kurd who is being sought by Iraqi police
since a raid on INC headquarters last week, has been Mr
Chalabi's righthand man for more than a decade. He ran a
Pentagon-funded intelligence collection programme in the
run-up to the invasion and put US officials in touch with
Iraqi defectors who made claims about Saddam Hussein's
weapons of mass destruction.
Those claims helped make the case for war but have since
proved groundless, and US intelligence agencies are now
scrambling to determine whether false information was
passed to the US with Iranian connivance.
INC representatives in Washington did not return calls
seeking comment.
But Laurie Mylroie, a US Iraq analyst and one of the INC's
most vocal backers in Washington, dismissed the
allegations as the product of a grudge among CIA and
state department officials driven by a pro-Sunni, anti-Shia
bias.
She said that after the CIA raised questions about Mr
Habib's Iranian links, the Pentagon's Defence Intelligence
Agency (DIA) conducted a lie-detector test on him in 2002,
which he passed with "flying colours".
The DIA is also reported to have launched its own inquiry
into the INC-Iran link.
An intelligence source in Washington said the FBI
investigation into the affair would begin with Mr Chalabi's
"handlers" in the Pentagon, who include William Luti, the
former head of the office of special plans, and his
immediate superior, Douglas Feith, the under secretary of
defence for policy.
There is no evidence that they were the source of the
leaks. Other INC supporters at the Pentagon may have
given away classified information in an attempt to give Mr
Chalabi an advantage in the struggle for power
surrounding the transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi
government on June 30.
The CIA allegations bring to a head a dispute between the
CIA and the Pentagon officials instrumental in promoting
Mr Chalabi and his intelligence in the run-up to the war. By
calling for an FBI counter-intelligence investigation, the CIA
is, in effect, threatening to disgrace senior
neo-conservatives in the Pentagon.
"This is people who opposed the war with long knives
drawn for people who supported the war," Ms Mylroie said. |
