The Deep Game
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Tuesday 1 June 2004
My article from last week, 'The Iranian Spy in the House of Bush,'
which took a close look at accusations leveled at the White House's
favorite Iraqi Ahmad Chalabi, generated a number of interesting
responses from truthout readers. Pointedly, many refused to believe that
stories suggesting Chalabi was acting as an agent of Iran in the run-up
to the Iraq invasion were anything more than another Bush administration
plot, the purpose of which was to gin up national support for an attack
against Iran.
The logic people offered to support the idea that we are merely
getting jobbed by the Bush crew again is straightforward, and not easily
cast aside. This administration has been, since day one of their White
House occupation and even before, running the game plan created by the
Project for the New American Century, or PNAC. A central component of
their imperial designs is the need to attack, invade and overthrow many,
if not all, Middle Eastern regimes, thus bringing 'democracy' to the
region. Iran has been a central part of the plan; it is difficult to
miss the intent behind the addition of that nation to the 'Axis of
Evil.' What better way to create support for the next phase of the PNAC
plan, goes the argument, than to devise a scenario by which America was
under an intelligence attack from Iran by way of Chalabi?
Chalabi is accused of passing highly sensitive signal intelligence
to the Iranian government. Specifically, he is accused of informing Iran
that the United States had broken one of their most important codes, and
was basically able to read their mail. Clearly, there is more going on
here than immediately meets the eye. The argument that the White House
has conjured these accusations against Chalabi for their own military
ends, however, fails in the face of several facts.
First of all, it has been known for years in intelligence circles
that Ahmad Chalabi had strong connections to Iran. He bragged to former
U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter in 1997 that he had "tremendous
connections with Iranian intelligence." Chalabi's aide, Aras Karim
Habib, has also been a known associate of Iranian intelligence for
years. The recent raid on Chalabi's residence in Iraq was aimed more at
Habib than Chalabi. Habib escaped capture in the raid, and is believed
to have fled to Terhan. Seized in that raid, however, was the personal
Koran of Chalabi. The book carried an inscription from former Iranian
ruler Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini himself. The inscription read, "To My
Son, Ahmad."
Evidence to support allegations that Chalabi has been acting in the
interests of Iran goes back some ten years. In 1994, Chalabi conjured an
Iraqi defector named Khidir Hamza, who claimed to be a senior member of
Hussein's nuclear weapons team. According to Hamza, Iraq was very close
to completing the development of nuclear weapons. He was given to CIA
agents, who subsequently decided he was utterly without credibility.
Imad Khadduri, the Iraqi nuclear physicist who was in charge of
documenting nuclear development stated flatly that Hamza, "Did not, even
remotely, get involved in any scientific research, except for
journalistic articles, dealing with the fission bomb, its components or
its effects."
Hamza, in attempting to establish his credibility, coughed up a
20-page document which had apparently been developed by "Group 4," the
Iraqi department responsible for designing nuclear weaponry. At first,
the report appeared to be damning evidence that Hussein was developing
nuclear weaponry in defiance of UN sanctions. After a further review by
the International Atomic Energy Agency, however, it was determined that
the report was "not authentic."
In fact, analysis suggests this purported Iraqi nuclear document
was, in fact, a manufactured fraud created by Iranian intelligence.
Several technical descriptions in the report used phrases that would
only be used by an Iranian. The use of the term 'dome,' 'Qubba' in
Iranian, instead of 'hemisphere,' which is 'Nisuf Kura' in Arabic, is
particularly instructive. The usage of these words indicate the document
was originally written in Farsi by an Iranian scientist and then
translated into Arabic.
Iran, apparently, was creating and disbursing false information
intended to demonstrate that Hussein was building nuclear weapons. This
particular fraud, and Hamza himself, was used repeatedly to justify the
invasion of Iraq. It appears to have been a masterful intelligence
operation out of Terhan, one that came to the attention of American
officials by way of Ahmad Chalabi. Thus, the new accusations that
Chalabi is a tool of Iran have a basis in past activities.
Why would a man with such connections to the anti-American regime
in Iran be tolerated in the highest circles of American government? The
answer lies in the old Middle Eastern axiom, "The enemy of my enemy is
my friend." Chalabi's Iranian contacts were tolerated for so long
because he was working to the same end as many within the United States:
the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.
Over time, Chalabi developed deep connections with CIA, and more
importantly, with many who are now power-brokers within the federal
government. He became, most specifically, a prized ally of the cabal of
neoconservative hawks which includes Donald Rumsfeld, ***** Cheney, Paul
Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and William Luti. These men
helped engineer legislation in Congress which eventually funneled some
$100 million into Chalabi's organization, the Iraqi National Congress.
In the run-up to the Iraq invasion, they created a special
intelligence-manipulation bureau within the Defense Department called
the Office of Special Plans. It was here that accusations of vast Iraqi
stockpiles of WMDs, nuclear capabilities and al Qaeda connections were
manufactured and disbursed. Chalabi was the main source for these
now-debunked accusations.
Chalabi had been chosen by Don Rumsfeld to be the next leader of
Iraq, a position which suited Chalabi's all-encompassing desire to come
into possession of Iraq's vast oil revenues. He promised Rumsfeld and
the hawks that he would create a secular Shia government that would
immediately make peace with Israel. In other words, he told the PNAC
crew exactly what they wanted to hear; a central aspect of the PNAC plan
to enact 'regime change' across the Middle East was, in their minds,
about the defense of Israel via the removal of threatening governments.
The wheels came off when none of Chalabi's information - about the
weapons of mass destruction, about the nuclear capabilities, about the
al Qaeda connections, about the ease with which America would occupy
Iraq - turned out to be true. Chalabi felt the winds of his fortune
changing and, still filled with the desire to rule Iraq in the manner
Rumsfeld had promised long ago, turned on his former friends. He began
fashioning himself as a martyr for the Iraqi people, began attacking
America with the same rhetoric used by Moqtada al Sadr and other radical
clerics, in order to develop a power base with the fundamentalist Shia
community. Promises to make peace with Israel at some point were exposed
as the lies they were.
Thus, the White House approved the move to send soldiers into
Chalabi's compound, to cut off his fat monthly paychecks, and to
distance him from the struggle for power in Iraq. According to Newsweek,
the final straw for Chalabi came when Bush and Cheney, "were briefed
several weeks ago about intelligence indicating that someone in
Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress gave the Iranian government 'extremely
sensitive' and 'highly classified' info which could jeopardize U.S.
intelligence sources and even 'get people killed.' Intelligence sources
say potential suspects for the leak include Chalabi himself and his
intelligence chief, Aras Habib." The data given to Iran, sensitive
signal intelligence that let Iran know we had broken some of their
codes, is a damaging breach of national security.
Is this Chalabi story a calculated ruse by the Bush administration
to get them off the hook for this Iraq disaster by scapegoating Chalabi?
Given all the facts at hand, it seems highly unlikely.
It is difficult to imagine a worse situation for the Bush
administration than what is currently unfolding. Chalabi is completely
the creation of those running the White House and the Pentagon. This is
widely known. If it is true that, as they were anointing Chalabi, he was
funneling Iranian disinformation straight to the highest levels of our
government, who subsequently gave him intelligence data which he handed
over to Iran...if this is indeed true, it is a disaster of millennial
proportions for the administration. It reveals this White House to be
saps, played like violins by Iran in a masterful intelligence operation
that removed a long-time enemy of Tehran while setting the stage for a
fundamentalist Shia regime in Iraq that would become a boon ally. How
any aspect of this helps George W. Bush and his crew is hard to see.
Is this Chalabi story a calculated ruse by the Bush administration
to create an environment where war against Iran would be acceptable?
Clearly, they would like this conflict to become a reality. But reality,
in this matter, interferes. Consider a call for war in Iran. The
immediate questions would be:
* With whose army? Our troops in Iraq are badly stretched, and
there aren't many Reserves left. The UN won't have anything to do with
another invasion. It is difficult to believe that we would dare use
Israel as a proxy force, because we'd lose every other country in the
region overnight, including Pakistan, which actually has nuclear weapons.
* With whose vote? Congresspeople have constituents, and the
constituents are badly disturbed by Iraq already. The war is a mess, and
Congress has more than enough political cover to say 'no' this time
around. It isn't 2002 anymore.
* With what money? Bush has spent hundreds of billions on
Afghanistan and Iraq, and has failed (quietly on the first and
spectacularly on the second). Because of Iraq, Congress can, and almost
certainly will, say no to Iran spending.
* With which Pentagon? If you believe Sid Blumenthal's report
that the officer corps in the Pentagon is on the edge of revolt because
of what has taken place already, it is difficult to imagine a scenario
in which they would sit still for yet another military action.
No, this is the real deal. The White House has been forced to turn
on one of their most important allies because his involvement with
Iranian intelligence has been exposed. The American intelligence
community despised Chalabi because Bush and his people cut them out of
the loop in favor of Chalabi, and then turned around and blamed the
intelligence community when Chalabi's data turned out to be bogus.
Last summer, I wrote that one scapegoats the CIA at their mortal
peril. This, a year later, appears to be the final revenge of the
intelligence community against an administration that insulted,
suppressed and blamed them for the failures of the neoconservative
hawks. The fact that the White House provided the hanging rope, in the
guise of the badly compromised Ahmad Chalabi, only makes this dish all
the colder.
William Rivers Pitt is the senior editor and lead writer for t r u
t h o u t. He is a New York Times and international bestselling author
of two books - 'War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know'
and 'The Greatest Sedition is Silence.'
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