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Revenge of the CIA
As television channels replayed footage of a smashed framed photograph of the former Pentagon favourite and Iraqi National Congress leader, Ahmed Chalabi, on Friday, one adviser to the State Department could not resist a smile. "Another shattered illusion for our friends at the Department of Defence," said the adviser. "How much more can they take?"Mr Chalabi's Baghdad villa was raided by Iraqi police on Thursday. Several INC members, including his powerful intelligence chief, are among 15 people named in an arrest warrant for possible fraud charges. According to rumours circulating in Washington, Mr Chalabi himself is suspected of passing classified US intelligence to the Iranian government - reports dismissed as "preposterous" by his aides. Backed to the tune of $27 million by the American taxpayer, although monthly payments have now ceased, and once touted as Washington's choice to lead Iraq, Mr Chalabi is now portraying himself as the politician who dares to stand up to the US. In Iraq nowadays, that could be a winning pitch. Mr Chalabi's relations with Paul Bremer, the American Coalition administrator in Iraq, were never smooth. The two men soon clashed over Mr Bremer's plans for establishing an interim governing council rather than backing a speedy switch to Iraqi sovereignty. For President Bush, a crucial turning point came when Mr Chalabi openly criticised US policies in Iraq at the United Nations. Aides said that to a president who values loyalty highly and expects his friends to do the same, the public comments by Mr Chalabi - formerly the Pentagon's chief source of intelligence on Iraq, including its nuclear capability - were "an eye-opener". Elsewhere, to King Abdullah of Jordan, Mr Bush remarked: "You can piss on Chalabi." This is all, to say the least, disappointing news for Mr Chalabi's former backers, in particular the Deputy Secretary of Defence, Paul Wolfowitz and the Vice-President, Dick Cheney, who gave Mr Chalabi such enormous influence and access in Washington. A Pentagon plane even flew Mr Chalabi triumphantly into post-war Iraq last March. Richard Perle, formerly the chairman of the influential Defence Policy Board at the Pentagon, condemned Thursday's raid as "appalling". Yet in some corners of the Bush administration, the INC leader's dramatic fall from grace has been treated as cause for celebration. In 2003, US State Department and CIA officials were routinely out-manoeuvred and marginalised by hardline Defence Department planners in the build-up to war. Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, was criticised for the distractions of the "UN route" to disarming Saddam. The CIA was ridiculed for its caution in assessing the imminence of the threat that Iraq posed. Both organisations objected to the influence of Mr Chalabi, who still faces fraud charges in Jordan. Both were ignored. Now, opportunities for revenge are coming thick and fast. The failure to predict and plan for an aggressive Iraqi insurgency following the fall of Saddam, and the horror of the Abu Ghraib prison photographs, have already tarnished the standing in the White House of the Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, and his senior aides. The Chalabi raid is another blow and another cue for Mr Rumsfeld's enemies to go on the attack. "At the State Department and at the CIA, they're finally starting to swing some punches his way," said the former adviser. "When it comes to Chalabi, they've been saying for years 'not to be trusted'." On the BBC's The World Tonight on Friday, Christopher Dickie, a journalist who has known Mr Chalabi for 20 years, said: "I interviewed Ahmed about some of the controversy surrounding him. I said: 'Look, a lot of people in the CIA and the State Department say you would do anything to drag the USA into a war with Saddam Hussein'. He looked me in the eye and he said: 'Yes. Absolutely.' " Not any more. The Sunday Telegraph has learnt that the Pentagon was not even consulted by the top US civilian in Iraq, Mr Bremer, before last week's raid on the home of its former protege, although a meeting was held involving both State Department officials and the National Security Council. Earlier in the week, Mr Rumsfeld had seemed unaware that INC funding of $335,000 per month from Congress was to be cut off. It is hard to imagine him being by-passed in similar fashion prior to the events of this spring. With some glee, officials outside the Department of Defence are happy to speculate on the fading lustre of Mr Rumsfeld's star. According to one former senior administration official: "We're finally beginning to see who is responsible for the mess that is Iraq. The prisoner abuse scandal is a disaster for Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and co, because few people believe we're just talking about military police carrying this out. It must go further up, and Seymour Hersh's investigations (in the New Yorker) are demonstrating that. Military intelligence officers were involved. "The raid on Chalabi's villa is another humiliation. The Pentagon relied on Chalabi and his defectors for intelligence on Saddam. They relied on Chalabi for predictions on post-war Iraq. They backed the funding of him. Now he's been discarded and discredited. Senior people in the Department of Defence took all sorts of risks and they haven't paid off." The judgements are harsh, but these are febrile days in the capital. Infighting over Iraq within the Bush administration and on Capitol Hill has reached such a pitch and ferocity that, according to one official within the Coalition Provisional Authority, Washington DC is now referred to as "Sunni Triangle, West". On Thursday, Mr Bush made an unexpected visit to Congress, in an attempt to persuade increasingly restive Republican representatives that events in Iraq are under control. According to one member, the President's visit was intended to head off a "full-scale revolt". If the news continues to be as bleak as during the past month, the revolt may only be postponed. The Abu Ghraib prison scandal, in the minds of many Bush administration officials and formerly sympathetic congressmen, has all but destroyed the possibility of a happy ending to the American occupation of Iraq. According to one retired general: "We've gone from 'failure is not an option' to failure, of some kind, being the only option." A failure, when the stakes are this high, requires a culprit. While Mr Bush continues to promise that the United States will stay the course in Iraq, beyond the transfer of sovereignty on June 30, the "blame game" has begun in earnest in the corridors of his administration. From the State Department in Foggy Bottom, to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, lengthy briefings are being granted. Rivals, particularly if they work at the Pentagon, are being ruthlessly disparaged. Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-05-23 |
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