Chalabigate
"Weapons of Mass Deception"
2004-05-26
FBI investigating intelligence leaks to Iran
The World Today - Wednesday, 26 May , 2004
Reporter: Tanya Nolan
TANYA NOLAN: As the President talks up the future of Iraq, Washington has launched an investigation into some of the past claims for going to war.
The FBI has been asked to look at claims that some government officials had allegedly provided unauthorised and highly classified information to Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress that was then passed on to Iran.
The investigation comes amid claims that Iran used the US to topple Saddam Hussein's regime, by providing intelligence on weapons of mass destruction to Mr Chalabi and the INC – intelligence which later was proved to be false.
A member of the Iraqi Governing Council, Mr Chalabi's home, along with the INC headquarters in Baghdad, were raided by Iraqi police and US troops last week, who confiscated documents and computers.
The CIA says it has hard evidence which proves Mr Chalabi's intelligence chief, Aras Karim Habib was a paid agent for Iranian intelligence, and had been involved in passing information between the US and Iran.
Vincent Cannistraro is a consultant on international security affairs, and is former senior CIA official, who was also a special assistant for intelligence at the Pentagon, before his retirement in 1991.
I spoke to him a short time ago.
VINCENT CANNISTRARO: The history of connections between CIA and Chalabi is a very chequered one, of course, and CIA has been very sceptical about his capabilities since at least 1995.
But I think those historic rivalries among various agencies and government officials about the value of Chalabi have pretty much been settled in the last few months. President Bush is apparently persuaded that Mr Chalabi is not someone the US can place any further confidence in.
And there are clear indications that Chalabi's head of intelligence and security, a man named Aras Karim Habib, who is a Kurdish Shia, is actually a paid agent of the Iranian intelligence service. There was an arrest warrant issued for Karim a few days ago, and he has apparently escaped to Tehran where he is beyond the reach of US law enforcement.
TANYA NOLAN: So as far as you know, the CIA does have hard evidence to prove that Mr Habib has been a paid Iranian agent?
VINCENT CANNISTRARO: Oh yeah, I think that's the case, but in this instance, it's not CIA that is the action agency, it is the Federal Bureau of Investigation which is a law enforcement agency, because the evidence has pointed quite clearly, not only the fact that Chalabi might be an agent of influence of the Iranian government and that Karim may be a paid agent of the Iranian intelligence service, but it is shown that there is a leak of classified information from the United States to Iran through Chalabi and Karim and that is the particular point that the FBI is investigating.
In other words, some US officials are under investigation on suspicion of providing classified information to these people that ended up in Iran.
TANYA NOLAN: And what was the nature of that highly classified information that was allegedly being passed to Tehran?
VINCENT CANNISTRARO: Well, there are differing reports but some of it I'm told centres on highly compartmented information of US military order of battle for one thing, and other special compartmented information that may have been passed.
I'm not privy to the classified information myself but I am told that the investigators are operating on the basis that very, very sensitive and highly classified information the US Government had, was given on an unauthorised basis to Chalabi and Aras.
TANYA NOLAN: What do you think of the risk though, that the administration took, in using Chalabi as a source of information when it knew his links to Iran?
VINCENT CANNISTRARO: Well, but it wasn't everyone in the US government that was convinced of that. Certainly CIA was suspicious but then CIA was suspected of harbouring a bias against Chalabi.
And particularly policy makers such as Douglas Feith, the Under Secretary of Policy at the Defence Department believed that CIA's accusations meant nothing because they had a bias against Chalabi. And certainly Richard Pearl, one of the leading neo-conservative figures said the same thing publicly about CIA.
So they dismissed these charges because Chalabi was for them, someone very favourable to their point of view. But what they, I think, misjudged was the fact that Chalabi is out for Chalabi. He's an opportunist and will say whatever it is required to advance his own objectives.
TANYA NOLAN: But surely it wouldn't have taken much digging to prove what they had suspected all along, which was that Mr Habib had been employed by the Iranian secret service.
VINCENT CANNISTRARO: Well that's true. There's no question about that. So the legitimate question is why wasn't something done about it?
Why didn't George Tenet, the Director of Central Intelligence make a major issue of this, and we know that he did not – not with the policy makers that counted, such as the President of the United States, who only came to the conclusion about Chalabi quite recently. Why not two years ago when it would have counted more?
TANYA NOLAN: Do you have any doubt that Iran was manipulating America to topple Saddam's regime through Mr Chalabi?
VINCENT CANNISTRARO: Well, I think Iran saw an opportunity here to feed information into the United States through Karim, through Aras Habib Karim and Chalabi that influenced the US decision.
Now, clearly what Chalabi was telling the US was welcomed – I mean, it met the expectations of some of the civilian policy makers, both at the Vice President's office and at the Penatgon.
TANYA NOLAN: Even though there could have been a risk that a lot of this information was coming directly from Iran, which had its own political agenda in Iraq?
VINCENT CANNISTRARO: I think clearly, the Iranian objective was to get rid of Saddam Hussein who for them was their principle enemy. They had fought a long and bloody war with Iraq and they wanted Saddam Hussein out of the picture.
If they were able to influence western public opinion, particularly American public opinion, against Saddam, then they would do everything they could to achieve that objective and it seems that they were able to spread disinformation that found its way into the speeches of policy makers in the United States.
TANYA NOLAN: How serious is that implication?
VINCENT CANNISTRARO: I think it was pretty artful operation by the Iranians because Aras, who was the key figure here, was able to take alleged defectors from Saddam Hussein's regime and feed their information into western services, not just to the United States but to the Germans, to the Belgians, to the Italians, to the British and in other countries.
In some cases that ended up being false confirmation. The United States had a report, for example, that Saddam had mobile bio-weapons labs, then we also got a report from the Germans saying exactly the same thing. They may have got the report from the British saying the same thing.
It turned out being false confirmation because all of the information was sourced to the same person and it was disinformation to begin with.
What the Iranians were feeding the United States through this channel was exactly what the Americans wanted to hear anyway. They already believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. This was just taken as further proof of it. So it was a very receptive audience, I would say.
TANYA NOLAN: Vincent Cannistraro is a consultant on international security affairs and was a senior CIA official up until 1991.
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2004/s1116275.htm
This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Reporter: Tanya Nolan
TANYA NOLAN: As the President talks up the future of Iraq, Washington has launched an investigation into some of the past claims for going to war.
The FBI has been asked to look at claims that some government officials had allegedly provided unauthorised and highly classified information to Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress that was then passed on to Iran.
The investigation comes amid claims that Iran used the US to topple Saddam Hussein's regime, by providing intelligence on weapons of mass destruction to Mr Chalabi and the INC – intelligence which later was proved to be false.
A member of the Iraqi Governing Council, Mr Chalabi's home, along with the INC headquarters in Baghdad, were raided by Iraqi police and US troops last week, who confiscated documents and computers.
The CIA says it has hard evidence which proves Mr Chalabi's intelligence chief, Aras Karim Habib was a paid agent for Iranian intelligence, and had been involved in passing information between the US and Iran.
Vincent Cannistraro is a consultant on international security affairs, and is former senior CIA official, who was also a special assistant for intelligence at the Pentagon, before his retirement in 1991.
I spoke to him a short time ago.
VINCENT CANNISTRARO: The history of connections between CIA and Chalabi is a very chequered one, of course, and CIA has been very sceptical about his capabilities since at least 1995.
But I think those historic rivalries among various agencies and government officials about the value of Chalabi have pretty much been settled in the last few months. President Bush is apparently persuaded that Mr Chalabi is not someone the US can place any further confidence in.
And there are clear indications that Chalabi's head of intelligence and security, a man named Aras Karim Habib, who is a Kurdish Shia, is actually a paid agent of the Iranian intelligence service. There was an arrest warrant issued for Karim a few days ago, and he has apparently escaped to Tehran where he is beyond the reach of US law enforcement.
TANYA NOLAN: So as far as you know, the CIA does have hard evidence to prove that Mr Habib has been a paid Iranian agent?
VINCENT CANNISTRARO: Oh yeah, I think that's the case, but in this instance, it's not CIA that is the action agency, it is the Federal Bureau of Investigation which is a law enforcement agency, because the evidence has pointed quite clearly, not only the fact that Chalabi might be an agent of influence of the Iranian government and that Karim may be a paid agent of the Iranian intelligence service, but it is shown that there is a leak of classified information from the United States to Iran through Chalabi and Karim and that is the particular point that the FBI is investigating.
In other words, some US officials are under investigation on suspicion of providing classified information to these people that ended up in Iran.
TANYA NOLAN: And what was the nature of that highly classified information that was allegedly being passed to Tehran?
VINCENT CANNISTRARO: Well, there are differing reports but some of it I'm told centres on highly compartmented information of US military order of battle for one thing, and other special compartmented information that may have been passed.
I'm not privy to the classified information myself but I am told that the investigators are operating on the basis that very, very sensitive and highly classified information the US Government had, was given on an unauthorised basis to Chalabi and Aras.
TANYA NOLAN: What do you think of the risk though, that the administration took, in using Chalabi as a source of information when it knew his links to Iran?
VINCENT CANNISTRARO: Well, but it wasn't everyone in the US government that was convinced of that. Certainly CIA was suspicious but then CIA was suspected of harbouring a bias against Chalabi.
And particularly policy makers such as Douglas Feith, the Under Secretary of Policy at the Defence Department believed that CIA's accusations meant nothing because they had a bias against Chalabi. And certainly Richard Pearl, one of the leading neo-conservative figures said the same thing publicly about CIA.
So they dismissed these charges because Chalabi was for them, someone very favourable to their point of view. But what they, I think, misjudged was the fact that Chalabi is out for Chalabi. He's an opportunist and will say whatever it is required to advance his own objectives.
TANYA NOLAN: But surely it wouldn't have taken much digging to prove what they had suspected all along, which was that Mr Habib had been employed by the Iranian secret service.
VINCENT CANNISTRARO: Well that's true. There's no question about that. So the legitimate question is why wasn't something done about it?
Why didn't George Tenet, the Director of Central Intelligence make a major issue of this, and we know that he did not – not with the policy makers that counted, such as the President of the United States, who only came to the conclusion about Chalabi quite recently. Why not two years ago when it would have counted more?
TANYA NOLAN: Do you have any doubt that Iran was manipulating America to topple Saddam's regime through Mr Chalabi?
VINCENT CANNISTRARO: Well, I think Iran saw an opportunity here to feed information into the United States through Karim, through Aras Habib Karim and Chalabi that influenced the US decision.
Now, clearly what Chalabi was telling the US was welcomed – I mean, it met the expectations of some of the civilian policy makers, both at the Vice President's office and at the Penatgon.
TANYA NOLAN: Even though there could have been a risk that a lot of this information was coming directly from Iran, which had its own political agenda in Iraq?
VINCENT CANNISTRARO: I think clearly, the Iranian objective was to get rid of Saddam Hussein who for them was their principle enemy. They had fought a long and bloody war with Iraq and they wanted Saddam Hussein out of the picture.
If they were able to influence western public opinion, particularly American public opinion, against Saddam, then they would do everything they could to achieve that objective and it seems that they were able to spread disinformation that found its way into the speeches of policy makers in the United States.
TANYA NOLAN: How serious is that implication?
VINCENT CANNISTRARO: I think it was pretty artful operation by the Iranians because Aras, who was the key figure here, was able to take alleged defectors from Saddam Hussein's regime and feed their information into western services, not just to the United States but to the Germans, to the Belgians, to the Italians, to the British and in other countries.
In some cases that ended up being false confirmation. The United States had a report, for example, that Saddam had mobile bio-weapons labs, then we also got a report from the Germans saying exactly the same thing. They may have got the report from the British saying the same thing.
It turned out being false confirmation because all of the information was sourced to the same person and it was disinformation to begin with.
What the Iranians were feeding the United States through this channel was exactly what the Americans wanted to hear anyway. They already believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. This was just taken as further proof of it. So it was a very receptive audience, I would say.
TANYA NOLAN: Vincent Cannistraro is a consultant on international security affairs and was a senior CIA official up until 1991.
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2004/s1116275.htm
This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Milton Frihetsson, 16:45
