US intelligence fears Iran duped hawks into Iraq war

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."

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And we actually paid him to mislead us and spy on us...

Well, if Israel gave them a hand we have the entire cast of (sentient) characters from Iran/Contra, except Poppy.

The KGB, may they burn, never, with their best efforts, got anywhere close to an agent with Chalabi's access. He hand-fed Cheney's Merry Band of Chickenhawks (MBOC, pronounced mbaaaakkk) for years, populated their fevered dreams. The crap he fed them, and their gullibility in buying it (with millions of our dollars) is the reason we invaded with no Armored Cav to protect our supply lines (no need for that, they'll throw flowers), too little ammo and armor and Reserve MPs running a prison they were neither trained nor organized to run.

This may be in the Top 5 All-World Intelligence Coups.

When the Iraqi police and their American overseers showed up on Chalabi's doorstep, and proceeded to treat him exactly the way they have routinely abused ordinary Iraqis on a daily basis – kicking down the door, trashing the place, and generally humiliating everyone in sight – they were looking for Karim Habib, head of the INC's "Information Collection Program." In addition to charges of corruption leveled by Iraqis, U.S. government sources claim Habib passed classified documents and other tidbits to the Iranians.

It turns out that the INC was basically an Iranian intelligence operation, designed to rid the mullahs of their bitter enemy, Saddam Hussein, and extend Iranian influence into Iraq. Tehran did this in an aboveboard manner, with their open sponsorship of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), funded and trained in Iran, and now a major player in Iraqi politics – and covertly, via the INC.

"There was an ongoing intelligence relationship between Karim and the Iranian Intelligence Ministry, all funded by the U.S. government, inadvertently," said one government source. But one has to wonder. What Patrick Lang, former director of the CIA's Middle Eastern desk, calls "one of the most sophisticated and successful intelligence operations in history," did not succeed inadvertently. Chalabi had to have some help from U.S. government officials – but who?