Baghdad Photo Op

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The investigative branch of the US Congress is looking into whether Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi broke the law in using US money to attempt to sway US opinion in favor of ousting Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

At issue are tens of thousands of dollars Chalabi and his group received in 2001 and 2002.

Chalabi agreed in writing to use State Department-supplied funds to "implement a public information campaign to communicate with Iraqis inside and outside of Iraq and also to promulgate its message to the international community at large," according to Newsweek magazine's Monday, March 29 issue.

But the terms "strictly exclude" activities that are "associated with, or that could appear to be associated with, attempting to influence the policies of the United States government or Congress or propagandizing the American people."

Yet the INC itself told Congress in 2002 that there were more than 100 news stories published between October 2001 and May 2002 containing information collected by INC informants -- informants who had their expenses paid with State Department money, the magazine said.

These included articles on Saddam's links to terrorism, links to the September 11, 2001 attacks, and his alleged banned biological, nuclear and chemical programs, the magazine reports

UPDATE, April 9, 2005

Here's what a REAL Iraqi protest rally at Firdos Square looks like:

Iraqis burn an American flag during a demonstration in Baghdad, Iraq Saturday, April 9, 2005. Tens of thousands called Saturday for American forces to withdraw from Iraq. The demonstration overflowed Firdos Square, where U.S Marines pulled down a towering statue of Saddam Hussein two years ago to the day.(AP Photo/Karim Kadim)

Men paraded with cardboard cut outs of Saddam, US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair with bloodied fangs and the writing 'international terrorist'.

"In our unity, you have cut off the tongues of all the people who are saying if the occupation left there would be civil war," Sadr said in his speech, delivered to the crowd by his representative Sheikh Nasir al-Saaidi.

Sunni clerics from the Committee of Muslim Scholars, which organized a boycott of historic January elections, also urged followers to join the protest.

"All of Iraq is united against the occupation," said Adnan Hamoud, 45, from the restive Sunni city of Samarra north of Baghdad.

Some Christians paraded around the square with banners reading: "We support Sayed Moqtada's call for national unity."

Iraqis urge US exit

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Tens of thousands of protestors poured into Baghdad's Firdos square to demand US troops leave the country, as 15 Iraqi soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing.

Chanting "No, no, USA," protesters converged Saturday on the square, a symbol of the ouster of former president Saddam Hussein, two years to the day since Baghdad fell to US forces.

The rally is believed to be the largest demonstration since US troops entered the country.

"Oh God, cut off their necks, the way they are cutting off our necks and terrorising us," said Sadr representative Sheikh Nasir al-Saaidi, reading a speech from his boss. "There will be no peace, no security, until the occupation leaves."

Iraqi flags fluttered in the sea of demonstrators, many of whom were dressed in black, the uniform of Sadr's Mehdi Army militia. Many wore green and black Islamic headbands.

Some waved the notorious picture of a hooded naked Iraqi detainee, with wires attached to his body. It was released during the Abu Ghraib prison scandal last year that blemished the US record in Iraq.

Demonstrators also carried signs saying "No to the occupation," "No to the devil" as they descended on the square from north, east and west.

"The war has been finished for two years. What did we get? Nothing. Our country has become the centre of terrorism," said Ali Hussein, 30, from Sadr City, who was dressed all in black. "There is no electricity, no services, no nothing."

A shopkeeper from Sadr City, Baqr Mussa, vented frustration at the continuing US presence and the failure by the Americans to execute Saddam. He was dressed in white religious robes, symbolic of martyrdom.

"We are very angry. We don't believe we've just lived two years since the war. All the buildings are still burnt and destroyed," Mussa said.

WASHINGTON - LA Times — The Bush administration's prewar claims that Saddam Hussein had built a fleet of trucks and railroad cars to produce anthrax and other deadly germs were based chiefly on information from a now-discredited Iraqi defector code-named "Curveball," according to current and former intelligence officials.

U.S. officials never had direct access to the defector and didn't even know his real name until after the war. Instead, his story was provided by German agents, and his file was so thick with details that American officials thought it confirmed long-standing suspicions that the Iraqis had developed mobile germ factories to evade arms inspections.

Curveball's story has since crumbled under doubts raised by the Germans and the scrutiny of U.S. weapons hunters, who have come to see his code name as particularly apt, given the problems that beset much of the prewar intelligence collection and analysis.

U.N. weapons inspectors hypothesized that such trucks might exist, officials said. They then asked former exile leader Ahmad Chalabi, a bitter enemy of Hussein, to help search for intelligence supporting their theory.

Soon after, a young chemical engineer emerged in a German refugee camp and claimed that he had been hired out of Baghdad University to design and build biological warfare trucks for the Iraqi army.

Based largely on his account, President Bush and his aides repeatedly warned of the shadowy germ trucks, dubbed "Winnebagos of Death" or "Hell on Wheels" in news accounts, and they became a crucial part of the White House case for war — including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's dramatic presentation to the U.N. Security Council just weeks before the war.

Only later, U.S. officials said, did the CIA learn that the defector was the brother of one of Chalabi's top aides, and begin to suspect that he might have been coached to provide false information. Partly because of that, some U.S. intelligence officials and congressional investigators fear that the CIA may have inadvertently conjured up and then chased a phantom weapons system.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. troops and Iraqi police mounted a raid on Thursday on the headquarters of the party led by Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi, a former Pentagon favorite who has become increasingly estranged from Washington.

The soldiers raided the headquarters of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and a nearby house also used by Chalabi, and removed computers, files and equipment.

INC spokesman Haider Moussawi said the troops had wanted to arrest two party members but were told by Chalabi they were not present. Chalabi, who returned from exile after the fall of Saddam Hussein, was not detained.

"They have been putting political pressure on us for weeks. It's part of an attempted character assassination and it's politically motivated," he said.

"When someone stands up independently and puts his views firmly it appears the Americans don't like it."

U.S. officials said on Tuesday the Pentagon had cut off its funding of some $340,000 a month to Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress.

Intelligence chief believed to be working for Iran ran a program that had its funding from the Pentagon abruptly cut off this month

By Knut Royce
STAFF WRITER; Tom Brune of the Washington bureau contributed to this story.

WASHINGTON -- Administration officials believe that Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi's intelligence chief - named in an arrest warrant issued during a raid of Chalabi's home and offices yesterday - is an Iranian spy.

Intelligence chief Aras Karim Habib, 47, is a Shia Kurd who ran a program for Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress which the Pentagon funded to gather Saddam Hussein-era documents and provide informants until it abruptly dropped its support this month. The Information Collection Program had received $340,000 a month since October 2002.

A U.S. intelligence source said information about Karim's activities came in part from a detainee at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where hundreds of Taliban and al-Qaida fighters are being held.

Another source with access to sensitive intelligence and who was interviewed separately confirmed that the United States had developed information leading it to believe "this guy is an agent of the Iranians."

It was unclear yesterday whether the cancellation of payments to the information program was linked to the new intelligence about Karim. Though some Pentagon officials have said much of the intelligence provided by the program justified its funding, others complained much of it was suspect.

It also was unclear yesterday whether the arrest warrant for Karim was related to his alleged espionage activity. At a news conference, Chalabi said a member of his staff told him three agents "supervising" the raid had identified themselves as "from the FBI and CIA." An FBI official in Washington said his agency was not involved in the Baghdad raid, and a CIA spokesman said none of his agency's personnel were present.

Chalabi confirmed that one of the arrest warrants named Karim, but that Karim was not detained. A senior law enforcement and justice official in Iraq told the AP yesterday that warrants had been issued for the arrests of "up to 15 people" on allegations of "fraud, kidnapping and associated matters."

Attempts to reach Karim and INC spokesman Francis Brooke in Iraq yesterday were unavailing.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a longtime ally of Chalabi, told a Senate panel this week that the Pentagon had ended its intelligence relation with the INC because of the upcoming transfer of sovereignty at the end of June. He said the INC had provided "some very valuable intelligence."

Disclosure that Karim is believed to be an Iranian intelligence agent follows reports in Newsweek this week that the State Department and CIA were expressing concern about a "surge in recent intelligence," alleging that Chalabi and the INC had been passing sensitive intelligence to Iran.

Karim, according to a 2001 article in the respected Intelligence Newsletter, had been selected by Washington to help prepare for the overthrow of Hussein. He is the son of the former secretary-general of the Democratic Party of Kurdistan.

Shortly after the Ayatollah Komeinei assumed power in Iran, Karim began espousing fundamentalist Shia ideas and fled Iraq to take refuge in Iran.

a senior Iraqi official alleged Saturday that Chalabi's security chief, Araz Habib, was wanted by Iraqi and coalition authorities for alleged links to Iran's intelligence service.

Habib, a Shiite Kurd, was being sought under an arrest warrant because "he has relations with the Iranian government" and "works for the Iranian intelligence," the official said on condition of anonymity.

The allegations against Habib are the latest in a series of complaints by the Americans against Chalabi, whose network of Iraqi exiles in the Iraqi National Congress provided the Bush administration, and some news organizations, with reports on Saddam's purported weapons of mass destruction programs.

Back in '95 the INC fed the US explosive documents, with startling specificity, about Iraq's nuclear program.

One problem:

"But the inspectors were troubled by one minor matter: Some of the techinical descriptions used terms that would only be used by an Iranian. They determined that the original copy had been written in Farsi by an Iranian scientist and then translated into Arabic.

And the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded the documents were fraudulent."

He also was vulnerable because his reputation was never as high within the U.S. State Department and CIA as in the Pentagon. His critics in Washington are becoming more vocal in bringing up his wheeler-dealer reputation, including his 1992 conviction in Jordan in a banking scandal. Chalabi, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison, has denied the charges.

"As people throughout Iraq celebrate the arrival of freedom, America celebrates with them," President Bush said, recalling the moment that symbolized U.S. victory -- a giant statue of the Iraqi president being toppled on Wednesday in the heart of Baghdad.

Why wasn't this the shot that was seen around the world?

Does the scene below look like the fall of the Berlin Wall?

Above Left: Chalabi and his “Free Iraqi Forces” militia are flown into Nasiriyah by the Pentagon on Sunday April 8th. Above Right: Same miltia member seen with Chalabi contingient greets US Marines in center of Baghdad moments before Saddam's statue is pulled down on April 9th.

UPDATE, April 9, 2005
Here's what a REAL Iraqi protest rally at Firdos Square looks like:

Iraqis urge US exit