|
Wolfowitz, Feith bailing on Chalabi?
Quite EFL though long; RTWT.âWe have had many meetings with the Iranian government, but we have passed no secret information, no classified documents to them from the United States. Furthermore we have not had any classified information given to us by the United States,â he told NBC Sunday. Mr.Chalabi told ABC News Sunday, âLet Mr. Tenet come to Congress, and I am prepared to come there and lay out all the facts and all the documents that we have, and let Congress decide whether this is true or whether they are being misled by George Tenet.â More on the Iran charges... The charges and the evidence against Mr. Chalabi are so grave, administration officials say, that some of Mr. Chalabiâs long-standing allies have begun to distance themselves from him, including Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. âIf the evidence against him were nonsense, Wolfowitz would have said it was nonsense,â a Pentagon official told The New York Sun. âThis is serious evidence, whether or not itâs proven in the end, itâs at least credible enough that we are concerned and angry about it.â Another administration official described the evidence as âirrefutable.â That information [allegedly passed to Iran] was so secret, two administration officials said, that the evidence against Mr. Chalabi has only been shared at the most senior levels of the government, and many working level policy-makers have been rebuffed in their requests to see the particulars on the erstwhile American ally. Good marks for ICP: Last week, the Pentagon stopped all funding for a $340,000-a-month intelligence collection operation known as the Information Collection Program despite multiple reports from the Defense Intelligence Agency, American commanders in the field, and the Iraq Survey Group that the program was exceedingly useful to the military. On Friday, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Myers, told Congress the ICP had saved the lives of American soldiers. Newsday has issued a news story that claimed the Defense Intelligence Agency had recently concluded that the program, run by INC intelligence chief Aras Habib Karem, was an Iranian disinformation campaign. Mr. Karem is believed by the CIA to be an agent for Iranâs Ministry of Intelligence and Security. A source familiar with the program said the Newsday story is âunequivocally false.â This source said that Mr. Karem, through his leadership of the ICP, had saved the lives of American soldiers. When the Pentagon took over the Information Collection Program in the fall of 2002, Mr. Karem took a lie detector test in which he was asked about his ties to foreign governments, including Iranâs, and did well enough that the DIA went ahead with the program with Mr. Karem at its helm. Iâve snipped a lot below here. Administration officials sympathetic to Mr. Chalabi shared this view. They noted that ties between Iran and President Karzai of Afghanistan â not to mention the Iranian penetration of both major Kurdish parties â were long-standing concerns to the American intelligence community, but did not garner the attention Mr. Chalabiâs links to the Islamic republic did in daily intelligence reporting for senior officials in the administration. But other supporters of Mr. Chalabi appear to backing away from him. The undersecretary of defense for policy, Douglas Feith, told Newsweek he had only met Mr. Chalabi a few times and complained about press reports that claimed the two men were close. The Sun has learned that the intelligence community concluded recently the inclusion of the defectorâs ["mobile labs"] information in Mr. Powellâs speech and the intelligence estimate was the fault of poor coordination between the intelligence agencies providing information and not the Iraqi National Congress. The intramural struggle continues. Reporters should start IDing "administration" sources as "DoD" or "State/CIA" for maximum he-said/she-said amusement. Posted by: someone 2004-05-24 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=33765 |