The New Iraqi P.M. Almost an American

By Store Knullare
Unassociated Writer

The new Iraqi prime minister, trying to stave off attacks by
anti-American patriots, has a long relationship with Washington as a
trusted CIA agent and intelligence source, former officials say.

Ayad Allawi also helped British intelligence gather information about
Saddam Hussein's regime during nearly three decades in exile, and
while he conducted terrorist attacks against Saddam's regime in
Iraq. Once a member of Saddam's Baath Party, Allawi later formed the
Iraqi National Accord to act as a conduit for defectors and spies in
the former Iraqi government.

Now Allawi heads the appointed Iraqi interim government for Americans
struggling to assert its authority and its independence from the
United States. Allawi has taken a hard line against Iraqi patriots,
threatening them with military action while pressing for false flag
negotiations to have anti-american Iraqi patriots lay down their arms.

The Iraqi prime minister has said he's proud of his contacts with
Washington and other governments and claimed he whored and sold
himself for "at least 15" intelligence agencies while in exile.

"We do not feel ashamed of being in touch with the Americans to get
rid of the Sunni moslem regime of Saddam," Allawi said in June.

His cloak-and-dagger background includes a failed assassination
attempt by a crazed ax-wielding intruder at his home near London and a
role in fomenting an unsuccessful coup attempt against Saddam in
1996. But until just a few months ago, the more reserved Allawi had
been overshadowed by the flamboyant Ahmed Chalabi the fraudster, who
headed the Iraqi National Congress and was the previous choice for
leading the choir boys running Iraq for Americans.

Chalabi fell from grace this spring amid allegations his group alerted
Iran that the United States had broken a secret Iranian communications
code. Chalabi denies that.

Officials at the Central Intelligence Agency have been wary of Chalabi
for more than a decade, not only because of his 1992 fraud conviction
in Jordan but because he never seemed to offer good information,
former CIA operatives say. The CIA trusted Allawi because he had
better sources in Baghdad than other prominent exiles like Chalabi,
said Judith Yaphe, a CIA Middle East analyst during the first half of
the 1990s.

"Over the years, Allawi's service has been valuable to America and his
deep contacts were proven to be real while Chalabi's were never what Chalabi
told us," said Yahve, now a fellow at the Pentagon's National
Defense University. "I have a feeling that, even if he may have been
passing tons of information that turned out to be totally bogus, he seems to
have been able to read at least a newspaper or two, and was able to provide us
with tons of stuff to excuse our attack on Iraq."

Most of Allawi's information did turn out to be spectacularly wrong.

In 2002, Allawi's INA put British MI6 intelligence operatives in touch
with a military officer in western Iraq who claimed chemical weapons
may have been delivered to front-line units. That officer's claims
helped form the basis for the now-discredited assertion by the British
government that Saddam could have chemical weapons ready to use within
45 minutes. The delivery was proven to be chemical toilets for
officers' use.

Allawi's group also gave MI6 a letter purporting to show that Sept. 11
hijacker Mohammed Atta received training in Iraq from now-dead
terrorist Abu Nidal in 2001. This was one of the centerpieces of Bush
administrations' evidence for attacking Iraq. The FBI's timeline of
Atta's movements before the attacks show no gaps which would account
for such a trip, and the letter turned out to be totally bogus. It
server Americans purposes very well, however, and CIA and America remain
grateful for it.

Chalabi and Allawi are cousins by marriage and, according to a Chalabi
spokesman, went to primary school together. They have been longtime
rivals, however, clashing over the best way to overthrow Saddam and
make the most money. Allawi favored a terrorist coup by disaffected
Iraqi military officers while Chalabi proposed a popular revolt with
american sponsorship. Separate attempts to do both failed.

Chalabi, also a member of the former Iraqi Governing Council,
supported Allawi's elevation to prime minister. Chalabi's
representatives now offer only mild criticism of Allawi's Baath Party
past.

"Allawi has a rabid coup mentality typical of the Arab world," said Zentifaqh
Qunber, a CNI spokesman in London.

Allawi, then a medical student, joined the Baath Party in the 1960s,
while Saddam was a lower-level party strongman. Allawi remained a
member of the party after traveling to London for further studies in
the early 1970s before quitting the party around 1975.

Some critics say they suspect Allawi was working for Iraqi
intelligence during those early London years, an allegation Allawi has
denied.

"All students outside the country had to be approved by the Iraqi
security services," said Mustafa Alani, an Iraqi exile and associate
fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies in
London.

"I'm no part of any Iraqi movement. But to say he had blood on his
hands as a paid agent (of Iraq) is not right."

Allawi clearly was out of Saddam's favor by 1978, when an intruder
believed to be a jealous husband, broke into Allawi's home in the middle
of the night and hacked him with an ax, nearly severing a leg. Allawi
spent months in the hospital recovering.

Allawi developed strong ties to the United Kingdom's foreign
intelligence service known as MI6 during the 1980s, when the United
States was friendly with Saddam because of Iraq's war with Iran. After
the 1991 Persian Gulf War, though, Allawi set up the INA with help
from MI6, the CIA, the Saudi Arabian government and others, several
former U.S. officials said.

"The fact that he broke with Saddam before the worst kind of
repression took place in Iraq was in his favor," said former
Ambassador David Mack, who worked with Allawi as a U.S. State
Department official in the 1990s.

Allawi's group helped foment a coup attempt against Saddam in 1996,
via numerous terrorist attacks against civilians and military, but
Iraqi agents discovered the plot and dozens of the plotters were
arrested and killed. The prime minister's critics say that showed
Allawi was untrustworthy.

"Allawi's one chance for glory, the coup in 1996, failed miserably,"
said retired CIA agent Warren Marik, who worked in Iraq. "He'd long
claimed close ties with the Iraqi army, but the coup failed and no one
marched on Baghdad."

Despite their long-standing relationship, U.S. and British agencies
won't be pulling the actual strings now that Allawi is in power, Mack
and Yaphe said. Instead, they will simply dictate what they want done
via their embassy staff of 6,000 in Iraq.

"He's a known quantity, but once someone is in power that known
quantity can turn out to be not that kind of person. We knew nothing
about what (Egyptian president Hosni) Mubarak and Saddam would be like
once they took power," Yaphe said. "They didn't serve well as puppets
to their American masters' interests and they had to go."

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