U.S. Raids HQ of Iraqi Politician Ahmad Chalabi

[Wrath]

BAGHDAD, Iraq — U.S. troops on Thursday suddenly surrounded and raided the house of Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi (search), and also searched the offices of his Iraqi National Congress.



The U.S. military and the Pentagon declined to comment on details of the raid.

American officials in Iraq have complained privately that Chalabi — a longtime Pentagon favorite — has been interfering with a U.S. investigation into allegations that Saddam Hussein's regime skimmed millions of dollars in oil revenues from the controversial United Nations-run oil-for-food program (search).

Once favored by the American government as the possible new leader of Iraq, Chalabi has also recently come under suspicion because he has been openly criticizing the United States for its plans to transfer power to the Iraqi people at the end of June.

Entifadh Quanbar, an INC spokesman in Washington, D.C., told Fox News that soldiers raided Chalabi's home because he has been outspoken about the oil-for-food investigation and Iraqi sovereignty. Quanbar said the raid was a politically motivated attempt to intimidate Chalabi.

Fox News learned that Chalabi has alleged he has files pertaining to the oil-for-food program, though it wasn't immediately clear whether any of those documents were seized in Thursday's raid.

The U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (search) has asked Chalabi to turn over all his oil-for-food files to the Board of Supreme Audit, the official auditing body, Fox News learned.

Chalabi claims L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, has been withholding funds he was supposed to be given to investigate the scandal-scarred program, though CPA officials say he was never promised such funds and does not have the power to conduct such an investigation, sources told Fox.

During Thursday's search, police sealed off Chalabi's residence in Baghdad's swanky Mansour district. Reporters were barred from approaching the scene.

Some people could be seen loading boxes into vehicles. A couple of Humvees were in sight, along with about a dozen U.S. soldiers and several armed Westerners wearing flak vests and using SUVs without license tags — vehicles associated here with U.S. security.

Neighbors said some members of Chalabi's entourage were taken away in the raid.

Salem Chalabi (search), nephew of Ahmad Chalabi and head of the Iraqi war-crimes tribunal, said his uncle told him by telephone that Iraqi and American authorities "entered his home and put the guns to his head in a very humiliating way that reminds everyone of the conduct of the former regime."

The younger Chalabi said the reason for the raid was unclear but "they must be afraid of his political movement."

A Chalabi aide, Haidar Musawi (search), accused the Americans of trying to pressure Chalabi.

"The aim is to put political pressure," Musawi told The Associated Press. "Why is this happening at a time when the government is being formed?"

Musawi said the U.S.-Iraqi force surrounded the compound about 10:30 a.m., while Chalabi was inside. They told Chalabi's aides that they wanted to search the house for Iraqi National Congress officials wanted by the authorities.

The aides agreed to let one unarmed Iraqi policeman inside to look around.

"The Iraqi police were very embarrassed and said that they [the Americans] ordered them to come and that they didn't know it was Chalabi's house," Musawi said. "The INC is ready to have any impartial and judicial body investigate any accusation against it. There are American parties who have a list of Iraqi personalities that they want arrested to put pressure on the Iraqi political force."

Musawi said the Americans also seized computers from INC offices.

Abdul Kareem Abbas, an INC official, said Chalabi's entourage objected to the raid but "we couldn't because they came with U.S. troops."

"They came this morning, entered the office of Dr. Ahmad Chalabi and said that they were looking for people," said Abbas. He said they wanted to make arrests.

Another official, Qaisar Wotwot, said the operation was linked to Chalabi's recent comments demanding full Iraqi control of oil revenues and security after the June 30 transfer of power.

"It's a provocative operation, designed to force Dr. Chalabi to change his political stance," he said.

For years, Chalabi's INC had received hundreds of thousands of dollars every month from the Pentagon, in part for intelligence passed along by exiles about Saddam's purported weapons of mass destruction.

Chalabi, long distrusted by the CIA and the State Department, came under further criticism after major combat ended as the large stockpiles of weapons he had promised existed were never found.

Last week, the Pentagon abruptly cut off the INC's funding, said to have amounted to $335,000 per month.

Chalabi, a secular Shiite Arab and former banker who left Iraq for exile after a left-wing coup in 1958, was convicted of fraud in absentia in Jordan in 1992 for allegedly embezzling over $1 billion from a bank he ran and sentenced to 22 years in jail. He has repeatedly denied the charges.

Chalabi has complained recently about U.S. plans to retain control of Iraqi security forces and maintain widespread influence over political institutions after power is transferred from the CPA to an Iraqi interim administration.

Musawi said Chalabi "had been clear on rejecting incomplete sovereignty ... and against having the security portfolio remain in the hands of those who have proved their failure."

However, U.S. and coalition officials have recently accused him of undermining the investigation into the oil-for-food program. The U.S.-backed investigation has collected more than 20,000 files from Saddam's regime and hired American accounting firm Ernst & Young to conduct the review.

Chalabi has launched his own investigation, saying an independent probe would have more credibility. He took an early lead in exposing alleged abuses of the oil-for-food program and has been trying to force the coalition to give him the $5 million in Iraqi funds set aside for the probe to pay for his effort. The move has been strongly resisted by Bremer.

Chalabi's backers have hired a competing American accounting giant, KPMG, to do its audit, but they want Bremer's administration to pay the bill out of the Iraqi funds, mostly seized Saddam assets and Iraqi oil sales, the CPA controls.

The United Nations is conducting its own investigation, led by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,120434,00.html

[-silent-]

Salem Chalabi (search), nephew of Ahmad Chalabi and head of the Iraqi war-crimes tribunal, said his uncle told him by telephone that Iraqi and American authorities "entered his home and put the guns to his head in a very humiliating way that reminds everyone of the conduct of the former regime."

where would they prefer the guns be aimed at ..

[Seawolf]

About time they busted this scumbag.

[Wrath]

I've been reading some Iraqi blogs ever since the war started and the Iraqi's I've read have hated Chalabi right from the beginning. Here's from a blogger called Riverbend. She was the first female to blog out of Iraq.

Thursday, August 21, 2003

Al-Chalabi... No Strings Attached!
So I just saw Al-Chalabi on tv. He was interviewed by a prominent reporter for Al-Arabiya. I missed it last night and this morning. But my cousin, who has a generator, kindly recorded it for me (she knows Al-Chalabi is one of the few ‘politicians’ that can make me laugh).

What can I say? He is incredible in interviews- almost as good as Bush (comically infuriating). I can see why the Pentagon adopted him- he would be fun to train, a pet monkey of sorts…

Anyway, the interview started out more or less reasonably- he was shining all over (I could swear there was lip-gloss). He really doesn’t know how to talk. I think Bremer should forbid him from giving interviews from now until elections- and if they decide to make him president, someone can just write his speeches for him. But he really is an embarrassment to the CIA at this point.

The most amusing part of the interview was when they showed one of his former bodyguards (who he denied knowing with a vengeance worthy of an Oscar). The ex-bodyguard was complaining how when the INC first came into Baghdad, and began recruiting people, they seemed reasonable enough. Suddenly, they had overtaken the “Sayd Club”, a recreational club (not exclusive to the past regime) and turned the INC into a militia.

They were hijacking cars in the middle of Baghdad during April, May and June, claiming that the cars they were 'confiscating' at gunpoint were ‘looted’ (hence, property of Al-Chalabi?). The cars were kept in the ‘headquarters’ and smuggled out of Iraq and to the Kurdish territory. The nicer ones were split amongst the 'members' of the INC. Someone or another who wasn't getting a piece of the action complained to the CPA and Al-Chalabi & Co. were given a collective slap on the wrist and told not to do it again.

After this was brought up, Ahmad Al-Chalabi was just charming- he promptly sneered and told the reporter that it was all LIES! LIES! LIES! And just how much had they paid that witness!? Then he continued to insult the reporter, telling him that they had stooped to a new low (Al-Chalabi's specialty) or in7i6a6 (in Arabish)! The reporter asked him about Jordanian allegations and the Jordanian parliament wanting to bring him to justice… he said that it was all LIES! And the Jordanian parliament was a disgrace to the people, etc. He wasn’t a crook, he wasn’t a thief, he wasn’t a puppet. The Iraqis and Jordanians are collectively deranged and ridiculous...

In my opinion, the reporter was asking the wrong questions. He should have asked him how he spent the INC funds given to him by the CIA (certainly not on his wardrobe).

The whole interview brought to mind the Associated Press report from August 11 (by Mark Fritz). Especially the first line:

Iraq is swimming in oil, but anybody who thinks that such natural wealth translates into a fat and happy middle class is in for a crude awakening.

...well naturally- we'll have to pay off Ahmad Al-Chalabi's debtors first- can't really expect anything to be left for the people, can we?

- posted by river @ 4:58 PM

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/2003_08_01_riverbendblog_archive.html

NEWS ANALYSIS
Chalabi keeps network, could thwart U.S. goals despite fall from grace
Pals in power give him leverage on U.S. effort to transfer sovereignty

Robert Collier, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, May 21, 2004

The raid by Iraqi police and U.S. agents of the home and political headquarters of controversial politician Ahmed Chalabi seems to mark the dramatic downfall of the man who has long been Washington's closest ally in Iraq.

But Chalabi's days in power may not be over. During the past year, he has amassed a large web of influence and control that stretches from the oil industry to the banking system to the purges of former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party.

Analysts say that unless the Bush administration moves to dismantle his empire, Chalabi will continue controlling much of Iraq's politics from behind the scenes, and he could seriously disrupt American plans for turning over nominal sovereignty to a new Iraqi government on June 30.

"There's widespread concern among objective observers that (Chalabi) is a highly distrusted and polarizing individual, whose support among the Iraqi public is extremely low in public opinion polls," said Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University who last month finished a three-month stint as a senior adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.-run occupation power in Iraq.

"He has certain levers of power," said Diamond. "He's a shrewd player, and much of that power comes from the ministries that he controls."

As head of the Iraqi Governing Council's economic and finance committee, Chalabi has been able to install his relatives or friends as the minister of oil, the minister of finance, the central bank governor, the trade minister, the head of the trade bank and the managing director of Iraq's largest commercial bank. These connections reportedly have allowed firms controlled by his allies to make millions in government contracts.

But Chalabi's power in Washington has been even greater than it is in Baghdad.

Chalabi, who has degrees in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago, has long allied himself with U.S. neoconservatives who advocated an American invasion to overthrow Hussein.

These allies -- ranging from Vice President Dick Cheney to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, State Department official John Bolton and Pentagon adviser Richard Perle -- relied heavily on Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress to produce evidence about Hussein's alleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. This information formed the central justification behind the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Much of the evidence eventually proved false, and some U.S. officials now conclude that it was fabricated, presumably by Chalabi's U.S.-funded organization of spies, exiles and hangers-on.

After the fall of Hussein's regime, Chalabi and his U.S.-trained militia swept into Iraq aboard American military planes. He was quickly given status as Washington's favorite, and he was widely expected to become Iraq's first post-Hussein president.

He was given control of the entire archive of the Hussein regime's secret documents, as well as the so-called de-Baathification process. The powers of the De-Baathification Commission, which Chalabi chairs, are so wide-ranging that it is often called a government within the government.

The commission singled out tens of thousands of former Baath Party members to be fired from their government jobs and has allowed Chalabi to replace them with his followers. It oversees educational reform, tracks down Hussein's funds stashed in foreign banks and compiles lists of pro-Hussein businessmen who are then blacklisted and banned from government contracting.

His nephew Salem Chalabi is in charge of the war-crimes tribunal that is planning to try Hussein and other top former regime officials. His personal militia, paid for almost entirely with U.S. funds, has become the best- financed and best-armed Iraqi force in Baghdad.

Even mundane details show his power. To process the vast mountains of documents, the commission has 50 document scanners. There are only 20 other scanners in all the rest of the Iraqi government.

In recent months, U.S. officials raised repeated questions about allegations that Chalabi was using his empire to enrich himself. It is not the first time he has been accused of corruption -- he is a fugitive from justice in Jordan. In 1992, a court there convicted him in absentia of fraud and embezzlement in the collapse of a major Jordanian bank that he directed and sentenced him to 22 years of hard labor.

But Chalabi's downfall may have been in opposing efforts by the United Nations to broker a face-saving deal to transfer nominal sovereignty to a new Iraqi government by June 30.

Chalabi turned against his American sponsors -- and especially against U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, whom the Bush administration is counting on to finesse a deal.

Brahimi is widely known to distrust Chalabi and to want him to have no role in the new government. For his part, Chalabi has waged a full-throated political war against Brahimi. In recent weeks he had appeared to be having some success in encouraging opposition to Brahimi's negotiations between rival Iraqi factions.

Chalabi also has created an international scandal by producing documents that he claims prove a high-ranking U.N. official received millions of dollars in bribes from Hussein. But Chalabi has refused to let U.S. or U.N. officials examine the documents to verify their authenticity.

"The puzzle is why the Bush administration acted now, if there were rumors of financial improprieties back in December," said Juan Cole, a Middle East history professor at the University of Michigan who edits Informed Comment, an authoritative Web log on Iraq.

Cole answered his own question: "You act on them now to neutralize Chalabi's opposition to the Brahimi plan. The Bush people seem to really believe that his re-election depends on this transition of sovereignty. There seems to be the theory that if Iraq becomes independent, it will disappear as a huge story. The focus of the public will change, people will say 'well, that's the Iraqis' own business,' and it won't be in the headlines after that. So if Chalabi is in the way, (Bush officials) absolutely have to get rid of him."

Cole said the Bush administration must act quickly to remove Chalabi from the Governing Council and dismantle the rest of his network. "Chalabi is a powerful chameleon, and his power won't go away" if the U.S. actions against him end with Thursday's raid, he added. "We'll see whether this continues."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/05/21/MNG5F6PP2T1.DTL

[Method]

this guy is :ugh2:

i've been saying it for close to a year now....

[oPiumologist]

Once favored by the American government as the possible new leader of Iraq, Chalabi has also recently come under suspicion because he has been openly criticizing the United States for its plans to transfer power to the Iraqi people at the end of June.
*sigh*...At this pace the country will want to become a Communist nation.