Time: Inside The Takedown (WH takes down Chalabi)

[UpInArms]

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040607-644167,00.html

The White House meeting in late April opened with the presentation of a seven-page, single-spaced memo titled "Marginalizing Chalabi." Drafted by the National Security Council (NSC), the document detailed three options for sidelining the controversial Iraqi political figure Ahmad Chalabi — methods ranging from gently pushing him offstage to cutting off U.S. funds for his intelligence-gathering operation. Once a Pentagon favorite to lead Iraq, Chalabi had been criticizing Washington for dragging out the transfer of power to Iraqis. It was time for Chalabi to go.

The April memo marked the beginning of the White House's strategy to cut its ties to Chalabi — a campaign that reached its climax late last month when Iraqi police, backed by U.S. forces, raided the former exile's house and office in Baghdad. But that move hardly came out of the blue. New details of the relationship between the U.S. and Chalabi, provided to TIME by senior Administration and intelligence officials, reveal that after a decade of lobbying Washington, Chalabi began to lose his footing early this year after he ran afoul of President Bush and L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq.

The extent of Chalabi's alleged malfeasance is still being unearthed. Senior Administration officials tell TIME that the U.S. is investigating whether Chalabi revealed to the Iranians highly sensitive information about how the U.S. gathers intelligence in the region. Other U.S. officials told TIME that the FBI has begun reviewing logs and other data that might turn up clues as to when sensitive information was divulged; the feds are also interviewing and giving lie-detector tests to U.S. officials in Iraq who may have had access to the information.

The White House has been steadily losing patience with its former client. The beginning of the end came in February when Chalabi was quoted in a London Daily Telegraph article saying that even if the intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs that Chalabi passed to the U.S. before the war was faulty, it was "not important," compared to the end result of toppling Saddam. "We were heroes in error," he said in the article. Chalabi insists he was misquoted, but the damage was done. "That set the President off," a senior Administration official told TIME. The general feeling among top officials was "We gotta do something about this guy."

...more...

[progressivebydesign]

1. WTF?

<<the U.S. is investigating whether Chalabi revealed to the Iranians highly sensitive information about how the U.S. gathers intelligence in the region. Other U.S. officials told TIME that the FBI has begun reviewing logs and other data that might turn up clues as to when sensitive information was divulged; the feds are also interviewing and giving lie-detector tests to U.S. officials in Iraq who may have had access to the information.>>

Geez. In the media last week the White House sources were telling us that Chalabai DID pass info to Iran... guess it was part of that Richard Clarke treatment. Those guys in the White House simply destroy their enemies. Guess Chalabai didn't get the memo from Ari a few years ago.. "watch what you say!". How dare Chalabi criticize them?

[Spazito]

2. There is something about this article that doesn't pass the "sniff"..

test. It reads like an administration plant to try and "make sense" of the whole thing and say the White House was on top of it. Nothing about Saddam's papers which Chalabi has, etc.

[UpInArms]

3. that's how it read to me also

rather like: Time covers WH ass so that the Chalabi issue looks like a real deal rather than the double fake (now we can go for Iran because Chalabi was a double-agent)

[nolabels]

12. First hit on a google got me this

The New Yorker puts it out that the US goverment hired this professional liar to lie to them for a hundred million or so. (Makes you want to just keep on paying them taxes huh)

http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Ahmed_Chalabi
Ahmed Chalabi

Dr. Ahmed Chalabi (also spelled "Ahmad") is part of a three-man leadership council for the Iraqi opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress (INC), which was created at the behest of the U.S. government for the purpose of fomenting the overthrow of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Chalabi, a secular Iraqi Shiite Muslim and mathematician by training, previously served as chairman of the Petra Bank in Jordan, where he engaged in various cloak-and-dagger operations that ended abruptly in August 1989 when he fled the country "under mysterious circumstances" and in 1992 was convicted in absentia for embezzlement, fraud and currency-trading irregularities, sentencing him to 22 years' hard labour. <1>,<2>

In August 2003 a petition was circulating among Jordanian deputies to hold a special session soon in the 110-member house to demand the government take legal steps to seek Chalabi's extradition from Iraq. <3>

During 2004 Chalabi's influence with the U.S. has waned to the point where government funding for him is likely to be discontinued.
(snip)

Try this one also
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040607fa_fact1
THE MANIPULATOR
by JANE MAYER
Ahmad Chalabi pushed a tainted case for war. Can he survive the occupation?
Issue of 2004-06-07
Posted 2004-05-29

Ahmad Chalabi, the wealthy Iraqi Shiite who spent more than a decade working for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, prides himself on his understanding of the United States and its history. “I know quite a lot about it,” he told me not long ago. It was after midnight in Baghdad, but he was still in his office in the new headquarters of the Iraqi National Congress, the exile opposition group that Chalabi helped found in 1992. As a young man, he said, he spent several years in America, earning an undergraduate and a master’s degree in mathematics from M.I.T., and a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Chicago. Chalabi began studying the uses of power in American politics, and the subject developed into a lifelong interest. One episode in American history particularly fascinated him, he said. “I followed very closely how Roosevelt, who abhorred the Nazis, at a time when isolationist sentiment was paramount in the United States, managed adroitly to persuade the American people to go to war. I studied it with a great deal of respect; we learned a lot from it. The Lend-Lease program committed Roosevelt to enter on Britain’s side—so we had the Iraq Liberation Act, which committed the American people for the liberation against Saddam.” The act, which Congress passed in 1998, made “regime change” in Iraq an official priority of the U.S. government; Chalabi had lobbied tirelessly for the legislation.

Three days after our conversation, Chalabi’s Baghdad home was raided at gunpoint by Iraqi police, who were supported by American troops. His offices were also searched. Chalabi had sensed that a confrontation with the Bush Administration was imminent. As he put it, “It’s customary when great events happen that the U.S. punishes its friends and rewards its enemies.” For years, he had been America’s staunchest Iraqi ally, and he had helped the Bush Administration make its case against Saddam, in part by disseminating the notion that the Baathist regime had maintained stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons, and was poised to become a nuclear power. Although Chalabi developed enemies at the C.I.A. who disputed his intelligence data and questioned his ethics, he forged a close bond with Vice-President Dick Cheney and many of the top civilians at the Pentagon, such as Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Under-Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith, and Under-Secretary of Defense William J. Luti. Yet now that the occupation of Iraq appeared to be headed toward disaster, he said, many in the Administration had united in making him the scapegoat. As Chalabi saw it, he had understood America too well, and had been too successful in influencing its foreign policy. “There is a smear campaign that says I am responsible for the liberation of Iraq,” he said. Then he added with a chuckle, “But how bad is that?”
(snip)

[fishnfla]

7. i am with you

seems that way, admin trying to take charge, only thing is: the horses are in the barn, and its burned to the ground.

cant open the door, and its too late to put out the fire....

what a bunch of incompentent clusterfucks.

[creeksneakers2]

4. I have another theory

This decision was made after the outbreak in Fallujah to let Baathists back in charge. The whole country was exploding. Bush decided to do what he has been saying wouldn't do in every speech - cut and run.

Chalabi was anti-Baathist. Allawi is pro-Baathist. I think its all a deal to say "Screw what happens, lets get out of here as soon as we can. This thing is killing us in the polls." Bush will turn Iraq back over to Saddam's forces.

[Spazito]

5. You forget the airbases and embassies that are being built...

bush has no intention of leaving, just selling out to the easiest traitor/s that will strike a bargain re oil, bases, etc.

[BadGimp]

6. "We were heroes in error,"

Un F&@(in Believable!

This man is truly on of them.

[agincourt]

8. My question is,

did Chalabi actually pass info to the Iranians? If Bush says he's an Iranian spy, I start to wonder if he's such a bad guy after all.

[oblivious]

9. An important line is missing from that quotation.

Time quotes:

Chalabi was quoted in a London Daily Telegraph article saying that even if the intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs that Chalabi passed to the U.S. before the war was faulty, it was "not important," compared to the end result of toppling Saddam. "We were heroes in error," he said in the article.

But as I remember, that quote was followed by another line, somthing like... 'If President Bush wants me to fall on my sword, I'm willing to do so.'

Funny they missed that in the Time article, because that seem to be exactly what's happening.

Anyone got that quote?

[kentuck]

10. Did they get the Saddam documents when they raided his home?

Because it has been reported that Chalabi beat the Americans to Saddams papers and had been holding on to them....America wanted them to see if there was any information about WMDs.........or receipts for WMDs that Poppy sold him in the 1980's....

[maddezmom]

11. or does Chalabi have documents tied Cheney to Oil for Food program?

:shrug: