MidEast Report

CHALABI
Last week's New Yorker had this piece on Ahmad Chalabi, and I have to say that, after reading it, I almost admire the guy. This man is a veritable Mozart of bullshit. He paid attention in class, learned how the U.S. foreign policy game was played, kissed the right behinds, and knew when to blow sunshine and when to blow smoke. I enjoyed this bit:

Six weeks before the U.S. invasion, in a February 5, 2003, address to the United Nations, Secretary of State Colin Powell—who had initially found the intelligence on W.M.D.s inconclusive—spoke of unnamed eyewitnesses, one of whom had supplied “firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and rails.” It was, he testified, “one of the most worrisome things that emerges from the thick intelligence file we have on Iraq.”

Bob Drogin and Greg Miller, of the Los Angeles Times, recently reported that the source of this intelligence was an Iraqi defector code-named Curveball, who is allegedly the brother of one of Chalabi’s aides. (Chalabi says that the defector is not related to anyone in his organization.) Curveball is said to have approached German intelligence officials and provided them with detailed maps and descriptions of mobile weapons labs. Curveball neglected to tell German officials that before fleeing Iraq he had been jailed for embezzlement. Moreover, U.S. and U.N. experts searched every corner of Iraq for the mobile labs; all they found were two trucks, whose function is still in dispute. Last January, Cheney cited those trucks as conclusive proof that Iraq had mobile weapons labs, but experts have said that they more likely contained equipment for weather balloons.

By the time I asked Chalabi about Curveball, the defector had become a sore subject. “These are the sorts of reports we are expected to deny?” he asked, his voice rising. “Anonymous reports about anonymous people? No one even knows who this person is! How are we supposed to know?” Chalabi questioned why he was being blamed for defectors’ inaccuracies, when it was the U.S. intelligence community’s job “to check these people out.” He asked, “What would you want us to do? Hush it up when these people tell us these things?”

From this story, the Pentagon's process of "vetting" defectors seems a bit like Navin R. Johnson method for establishing the identity of Mrs. Nussbaum in The Jerk:

CURVEBALL: Saddam has mobile weapons factories. I've seen them firsthand.

WOLFOWITZ: How do we know if we can trust you?

CHALABI: I'll vouch for him.

WOLFOWITZ: Okay, as long as you've got a voucher!

posted by Matt Duss @ 11:45 AM