Everybody Loves Ahmad--Not
Why Chalabi's Washington pals pulled the plug
The alleged leak of U.S. intelligence, though, was the final straw. Chalabi, a Shiite, has had close and public ties with Shiite-dominated Iran. But Chalabi and his operations chief, Aras Karem Habib, deny giving secrets to Iran as well as the other charges. An INC official said in an E-mail to U.S. News: "The charges of passing intel to Iran are entirely false and are part of a smear campaign by the CIA." Habib, the official said, "has passed a polygraph administered by the CIA on his links with Iran." The test was in the fall of 2002, however, when he became the Defense Intelligence Agency's principal INC liaison.
Habib was part of Chalabi's substantial entourage at the base outside Tallil. He assumed the title of commander of the FIFF but told U.S. News he was a civilian engineer. He recounted participating in an ill-fated uprising in 1995, encouraged by the CIA, that was crushed by Saddam. After 132 people were executed, Washington evacuated some fighters to Guam, Habib said. The White House had refused to support the uprising, and the CIA operative on the scene, Robert Baer, got hung out to dry. In his account, See No Evil, Baer says Chalabi concocted a phony plot to kill Saddam in order to entice Iranian officials to back the revolt. That failed, but the White House found out and accused Baer of leading a rogue operation.
In a monumental case of blowback, Chalabi now appears to have been caught in a still-unexplained web--perhaps one of his own making. One U.S. official involved with Iraq and a longtime Chalabi watcher says the exile leader was the sum total of the Pentagon's plan for postwar Iraq. "They didn't care who ran Iraq," the official said, "as long as his initials were [those of] Ahmad Chalabi."
Chalabi's clashes with Washington, ironically, may now raise his standing at home, where anti-Americanism is a definite political plus. So don't count him out yet. Chalabi, in the end, may prove to have more lives than a Persian cat.
With Chitra Ragavan and Julian E. Barnes
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