Chalabi involved US, Iran policy making again

* larisa: "Chalabi involved US, Iran policy making again"

"Ahmed Chalabi, the man who helped provide cooked intelligence on Iraq to the Pentagon and the New York Times in the lead-up to war, is once again being engaged in US policy decisions, current and former intelligence officials say.

According to two former high level counterintelligence officials, one former senior counterterrorist official and another intelligence officer, Chalabi is acting as broker between the US Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, and Iranian officials in what are now stalled diplomatic efforts between the US and Iran.

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Asked what is motivating Chalabi to attempt talks between Iran and the United States, another former intelligence official put it simply: "He is close to Iran."

This "closeness" to Iran could also be the reason the Office of the Vice President and the Pentagon decided to re-employ Iran-Contra middleman and arms dealer, Manucher Ghorbanifar.
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Chalabi's reemergence has created no small concern in the intelligence community.

"Ask yourself: who has most benefited by [Chalabi's] actions of the last five years? Where does he own a house? What languages does he speak?" one former intelligence official said.

The answer, of course, is Iran.

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Yet Chalabi's close working relationship consisted of a small cabal of hawks operating out of an ultra-secretive group called the Office of Special Plans; more specifically, Chalabi's closest contacts were then Undersecretary of Defense Policy Douglas Feith, then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Both Feith and Wolfowitz have had their clearances pulled in the past for leaking classified information.