Chalabi

Last month's raid on Ahmad Chalabi's house and the subsequent accusations that he passed sensitive information to Iran have raised a number of questions. Chalabi has long been a favorite of the Defense Department as a potential leader in the new Iraq. At the same time, the State Department and the CIA have continually dismissed him and looked very unfavorably on him. So did Chalabi really engage with Iran against the US or is this simply a political attempt to discredit him and his backers in the DoD and the White House? While Newsweek reports that the investigation is just starting, and that there is potentially much more there than has yet been disclosed, the Washington Times's Bill Gertz reports that Chalabi is simply being set up.

Within the Bush administration, Mr. Chalabi created enemies at the State Department and CIA, an official said.
"The State Department is petrified he's going to become the prime minister in Iraq and the CIA is afraid that if he becomes a leader, he will never let them into the country," the official said.

Richard Perle, a Chalabi supporter who until recently was a member of a Pentagon policy advisory board, said he doubts that Mr. Chalabi would disclose such information or that Iran would risk revealing that it had learned of the compromise through a suspect communications exchange.

"I think it's absurd on its face to think that if the Iranians had learned from Ahmed Chalabi or anybody else that their most sensitive communications channels were compromised they would reveal that in those channels," Mr. Perle said.

"Instead, they would use those channels for disinformation and would not reveal their knowledge. That's [Intelligence] 101. It doesn't pass the laugh test."