Pentagon pays Chalabi group for dubious data

[zimv20]

link (http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/2443637)


WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon is paying $340,000 a month to the Iraqi political organization led by Ahmad Chalabi, a member of the interim Iraqi government who has close ties to the Bush administration, for "intelligence collection" about Iraq, according to Defense Department officials.

The classified program, run by the Defense Intelligence Agency since summer 2002, continues a long-standing partnership between the Pentagon and the organization, the Iraqi National Congress, even as the group jockeys for power in a future government. Internal government reviews have found that much of the information generated by the program before the U.S. invasion last year was useless, misleading or even fabricated.

Under the unusual arrangement, the CIA is required to get permission from the Pentagon before interviewing informants from the Iraqi National Congress, according to government officials who have been briefed on the procedures.

The CIA has been working with another Iraqi group, the Iraqi National Accord, to help establish an independent Iraqi intelligence service. The relationship between the CIA and Chalabi's group has been strained for years.

A U.S. intelligence official said the maintenance of the separate, exclusive channel between Chalabi's group and the Defense Intelligence Agency was not interfering with the CIA's effort to set up the new Iraqi service.

Among several defectors introduced by Chalabi's organization to U.S. intelligence officials before the war, at least one was formally labeled a fabricator by the DIA. Others were viewed as having been coached by the Iraqi group to provide intelligence critical of Saddam Hussein's rule. Internal reviews by the Pentagon agency and the National Intelligence Council this year concluded that little of the information from the group had any value.

The payments to the group as part of an "intelligence collection program" was authorized by Congress in 1998.

[zimv20]

is anyone as outraged by this as i am? from the group that has now admitted they made up crap about saddam so bush would invade, because "the ends justify the means," we're still paying them some $4 million / year to make up crap.

i can make up some crap for half that!

[mactastic]

can make up some crap for half that!

Apparently you aren't the first to think of that either...

And if that story makes you mad; well you probably don't want to read this (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4499817/) one.

In the frantic months after September 11, Justice Department prosecutors arranged to release an indicted Detroit crack dealer after the man claimed he could help the FBI locate a higher priority target: Osama bin Laden.


But once the accused trafficker, Nageeb Al-Haidari, was free, he allegedly continued to deal drugs—and then fled the country without providing any useful information about the Al Qaeda leader, federal law-enforcement sources tell NEWSWEEK. “He’s a fugitive,” says Michael Liebson, the assistant U.S. attorney in Detroit who had originally overseen Al-Haidari’s case when asked this week about the accused crack dealer’s status. “I have no idea of his whereabouts.”

The U.S. government’s dealings with Al-Haidari are likely to become one piece of a rapidly expanding and highly sensitive internal Justice Dept. investigation. That probe is into the handling of a Detroit counter-terrorism case that has turned into a major embarrassment for the government.
On Oct. 16, 2001, while Haidari was residing in a Detroit jail and about to be sentenced on the state charges, the U.S. attorney’s office in Detroit sent a letter to Paul Bernier, the assistant Wayne County prosecutor who was handling his case, urging that the defendant be freed.

The letter said that Al Haidari “has recently provided valuable information to federal law enforcement” and that the “level and extent of his cooperation would be greatly enhanced if he were to be released on bond, pending sentencing” on the state charges. The letter is signed by the U.S. attorney Alan Gershel and Eric M. Straus, a top prosecutor in the office. It appears to have done the trick: Court records show that Al-Haidari was soon released. Convicted on two of the three counts he was facing (fleeing a police officer and possessing a loaded firearm in a car), he was sentenced to three years probation.

That informant also claimed that Al-Haidari had been involved in other alleged criminal conduct that he had never disclosed to the Feds, despite being paid $9,000 in informant fees by the FBI, according to a law-enforcement source familiar with the matter.

[Ugg]

hmmm, and ~600 are being held in Guantanamo for no reason at all. It sort of makes you wonder if gw's aims are for the good of the country or for the good of his re-election. Well, in all honesty, it doesn't make me wonder at all!

Why do they keep supporting Chalabi? Is he simply the lesser of all evils, if so then they are in very deep doo doo, because his own goals of ruling Iraq seem to take precedence over all other goals.

[toontra]

is anyone as outraged by this as i am? from the group that has now admitted they made up crap about saddam so bush would invade, because "the ends justify the means," we're still paying them some $4 million / year to make up crap.

i can make up some crap for half that!

This is almost unbelievable. Th crook largely responsible for providing the WH with "intelligence" it needed to justify war (which all turns out to be ******) is then financially rewarded?

Just when you thought your cynicism could get no worse!!

[wwworry]

How fake can fake intelligence get? It is abundantly clear that the White House misled us to war. The major media players seem a bit reluctant to call the president on it but I think the general public knows it was sold out.

The New Pentagon Papers (http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/03/10/osp_moveon/)

War is generally crafted and pursued for political reasons, but the reasons given to the Congress and to the American people for this one were inaccurate and so misleading as to be false. Moreover, they were false by design. Certainly, the neoconservatives never bothered to sell the rest of the country on the real reasons for occupation of Iraq -- more bases from which to flex U.S. muscle with Syria and Iran, and better positioning for the inevitable fall of the regional ruling sheikdoms. Maintaining OPEC on a dollar track and not a euro and fulfilling a half-baked imperial vision also played a role. These more accurate reasons for invading and occupying could have been argued on their merits -- an angry and aggressive U.S. population might indeed have supported the war and occupation for those reasons. But Americans didn't get the chance for an honest debate.