Chalabi betrayed US code-breaking success

[winterbadger]

from the BBC

A former ally of the US in Iraq, Ahmed Chalabi, told Iran that Washington had cracked codes used by Tehran's spy network, US media reports say.

(snip)

Mr Chalabi was once seen by the White House as a possible Iraqi leader, but the relationship has soured badly.

One can understand why.

Comments

Curiouser and Curiouser

[robbysmom.livejournal.com]

yes, and the New York Times print edition says they knew this information last week, but were asked to hold onto it until now(ish). Online, it;s front page, too, here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/02/politics/02CHAL.html?hp

WaPo cites the Times in its online article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8464-2004Jun2.html


Also, the online edition has this, implicating Chalabi (not for the first time) in some "bad intelligence":

"Mr. Powell's assertion about the mobile labs was one of the most dramatic elements of his presentation to the United Nations, which was intended to make public the Bush administration's best case for invading Iraq. For days before this speech, Mr. Powell sat in a conference room at the C.I.A., examining the sources of information for each accusation that he planned to make."

"But intelligence officials now say that serious doubts have arisen about the three other sources as well. Curveball had provided his information to German intelligence officials and may have been a relative of an aide to Mr. Chalabi, according to American intelligence officials. That source, described in the C.I.A. white paper as having provided "the majority of our information on Iraq's mobile program," was never interviewed by American intelligence officials before the war, an American government official said Tuesday, and the German government had developed doubts about his information last May. "

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/02/politics/02inte.html?pagewanted=2

[dwarfrage.livejournal.com]

This has been floating around for a bit...

I heard it first here last week: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/

Of course I got there from http://www.andrewsullivan.com/ but hey I try to be balanced in my blogs.

More Curious(er)

[robbysmom.livejournal.com]

and checking into the Times contention that the Admin. ok'd their release of the info because it had been elsewhere reported, there's this from 5/28, in the National Review:

http://www.nationalreview.com/ledeen/ledeen200405280920.asp

But it points out something I wondered about today, that is, if the code was broken, why did the Iranian station head use it to transmit the information ot Tehran. NRO has said:

"The FBI is said (by, among others, the notorious liar Sidney Blumenthal, who is now sliming away for Salon and the Guardian) to have opened an investigation into the source(s) of the "leak" of 'highly classified information' from somebody to Chalabi. From there it is said to have arrived in the hands of the Iranians' spymaster in Baghdad, and said spymaster is purported to have sent it on to Tehran. Several, maybe even most, leading journalists in town have been told — after promising not to reveal it — that the 'highly classified information' was the fact that we had broken the Iranian code and could therefore read messages between Baghdad and Tehran. And many leading journalists have also been told that the 'leaker' was some 'drunk' from the Coalition Provisional Authority (which makes one wonder why the FBI is snooping around Washington — if it actually is — instead of examining bar bills in Baghdad). Notice, too, that the tacit assumption here is that the Iranian spymaster used the same insecure code to tell Tehran he knew the code was insecure. Which makes him an idiot. But we know that Iranians are highly professional. Ergo he's not an idiot. Ergo the story is idiotic, if you get my drift."

Ledeen admits that "Chalabi is a friend" and/but then goes on to say:

"I do believe that the INC, along with every other significant organization in Iraq, has been penetrated by the extremely skilled Iranian intelligence services, and therefore I would not be at all surprised to find one or another of his associates working with Tehran. "



From 5/24 we have mention of a source of the info about Calabi, but not the code issue:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13490

"Jordan's King Abdullah fueled the U.S. move against Iraqi leader Ahmed Chalabi by providing bombshell intelligence that his group was spying for Iran, The [New York] Post has learned."

Re: More Curious(er)

[winterbadger]

The NR are a bunch of idiots. Nothing in any of the reporting about this that I've seen (though I haven't read all of the articles people have mentioned here) has said the FBI was specifically and solely investigating in Washington; the FBI often sends personnel out of the US to carry on criminal investigations (they had agents involved in the raids on Chalabi's office and house in Iraq). And if the Iranians really did know we'd broken their code, it's entirely possible that their ambassador/DCM/SC/etc. decided it was more important to warn Tehran of that than to preserve the secret that they knew we knew what they were saying. News commentary that's highly biased is one thing; news commentary that invents "facts" in order to use them as evidence of stupidity is, well, stupid.

Re: More Curious(er)

[robbysmom.livejournal.com]

oh, certainly: NRO and WSJ in their editorial pieces are absolutely rabidly pro-Chalabi and anti-CIA and often FBI. It tracks well with what oen reads in _Plan of Attack_ about fissures of views between neocons and cons in the adminsitration (which meshes with the "sibling rivalries" between federal agencies). I donm't think is news, per se, but it does lay out some contours of opinion.

Posted within the last hour is this Chicago Sun Times piece, which appears to include original reporting, as well as nods to the work of other news agencies.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/iraq/iran02.html