Word: chalabi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...choosing to go after Chalabi, the U.S. risks alienating some of its few remaining allies in Iraq while inviting fresh doubts about its judgment--all at a time when the U.S. is trying to line up support for the planned transfer of power on June 30 in a last-gasp bid to stave off spiraling discontent with the occupation. "This is always the way the United States does things," Chalabi tells TIME. "One of the first things they do when they come into a place is turn their backs on their friends who were instrumental in bringing them there." About...
...rupture between the U.S. and its favorite son has been months in the making, the product of election-year politics, bureaucratic jousting and deeply personal feuds. In January Bush invited a delegation of the Iraqi Governing Council, including Chalabi, to Washington for the State of the Union address. Chalabi sat just behind First Lady Laura Bush. But that publicity coup masked anxieties. Chalabi says that during a meeting with George W. Bush in the Oval Office, he implored the President not to hand control over Iraq's political future to the U.N. Chalabi has long railed against...
...same time, the U.S. was moving to sever its last remaining ties to Chalabi. The decision to cut Chalabi's U.S. funding--a $335,000 monthly retainer paid by the DIA to the I.N.C. as part of the Information Collection Program (ICP), an I.N.C.-run operation aimed at gathering intel on the former regime--came on May 8, according to someone familiar with the plan. It occurred at a principals' meeting attended by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and CIA director George Tenet. On May 13, DIA officials who worked with...
With questions swirling about Chalabi's fidelity, Administration neoconservatives who once blessed Chalabi as Iraq's President-in-waiting but have watched their influence wane as Iraq has descended into chaos fell over themselves last week trying to cut loose their former friend. One of Chalabi's Pentagon boosters, Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith, insisted to TIME that "there's all this stuff about his advising us on policy and his being highly influential, and it is wildly overstated. The stuff that's been reported about us being very close is just wrong." A top Administration source says Vice...
...intensified FBI and CIA focus on the I.N.C.'s ties to Tehran have now put Chalabi himself under the microscope. "He's been suspected of being an Iranian asset for a long, long time," says Patrick Lang, a former DIA official. Since the beginning of the occupation, the I.N.C. has worked closely with the DIA and the U.S. military in Baghdad, feeding intelligence to the U.S. on the whereabouts of top Baathists and the movements of insurgent cells. But that relationship also gave Chalabi and his aides extraordinary access to members of the U.S. intelligence community. At least...