Monday, May 14, 2007

Richard Sale on Chalabi "US knew all along he was Iran's man"

From Col. Lang's SicSemperTyrannis:
"Reproduced here with the permission of Richard Sale and Milt Bearden. Richard informs me that all of this was "on the record." pl
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"Dear Pat: I have been busy working on the Balkans, but wanted to provide some data about Chalabi and Iran.According to more than half a dozen CIA operatives, including former clandestine DO officials, "Agency people became aware that Chalabi had probably been a long-time agent for Iran," in the words of one. These sources, including Whitley Bruner, say that Chalabi was long ago working for Iran in Lebanon, even before the agency recruited him in 1991 and stuck him in as head of the INC. Bruner said of Chalabi: "He never gave the agency any intel on Iran, never submitted to being debriefed.' adding, "He was Iran’s guy."Bruner and others claim that Chalabi "wanted to start low-intensity war with Iraq. He hoped we would get sucked in." The plan was that the INC would "appeal to US benefactors and we would rescue our proxies."Former CIA agent, Bob Baer who went into Kurdistan in 1994, said that Chalabi always came into Kurdistan from Iran, where he had a villa. He said Chalabi was very close to Iranians, and covert operators said IRG folk were often at his house in Salauddin.The INC was totally penetrated by Iranian and Iraqi agents but the CIA didn't care. Chalabi was never entrusted with any secret operations. He was the day to day manager of INC which was putting out anti-Saddam gray propaganda. We wanted Saddam to know about the INC just to keep the pressure on him.In 1996, the CIA was trying to organize a serious attempt to overthrow Saddam using the INA, headed by a former Saddam hit man, Iyad Allawi who had broken with Saddam and walked in to work for MI-6 in the late 1970s. The Brits eventually brought him to the CIA in 1992. Allawi had assets inside Saddam's military but Chalabi betrayed the coup out of jealousy. The INA was the preferred CIA instrument, its intelligence was being checked out by technical means, and its success would have meant the end of Chalabi's funding. In any case, Chalabi got caught fabricating information and the CIA cut him off. He merely went to the Pentagon and the checks kept coming because his fabricated intelligence on Iraq's WMD was so essential to selling the war, this from a man who had already failed four CIA polygraphs so that the agency had issued a "burn" notice on him by the late 1990s. In 2004, Chalabi betrayed to Iran the fact the NSA was listening to mail belonging to Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). Milt Bearden called me in real distress the day the Iranian channel went off the air.But Chalabi's real goal was to get rid of the Baathists in Iraq, and get rid of the army. In spite of promises we had made to senior Iraqi military, some of whom facilitated our entry into Iraq in 2003, Bremer, Wolfowitz and Chalabi broke all those promises and the Iraqis joined the insurgency.

All the best,
Richard Sale"

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