The New York Sun March 1, 2004, p. 1 Jockeying Begins for Control of Iraqi Intelligence Agency By ELI LAKE Staff Reporter of the Sun BAGHDAD, Iraq One of the most significant battles going on here is one that hasn't yet hit the newspapers--the maneuvering over who is going to inherit the intelligence agency run by the Free Iraqi movement under Ahmad Chalabi.
The intelligence operation, known as the Information Collection Program, was founded by the Iraqi National Congress and the State Department. In subsequent years it has been largely funded by the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency and has racked up a string of intelligence successes. The CIA station here has started negotiations with Mr. Chalabi's group in a bid to take over the operation, which has come under scrutiny from Senator Clinton, a Democrat of New York, and others for peddling false information to the Bush administration before the war. But the intelligence unit, known as the Information Collection Program, has also led to the capture of U.S. Central Command's 55 most wanted Baathists, uncovered Saddam Husseinıs illegal intelligence stations, and captured documents that uncover the role of foreign corporations in busting United Nations sanctions and trading with Iraq's military, according to a draft summary of the program's activities, obtained by The New York Sun. That summary says that between May 2003 and January 2004 the INC's operatives provided more than 1,300 intelligence reports to the Defense Intelligence Agency's Defense Human Sources unit. Today, the ICP has evolved from its modest beginnings in the fall of 2000 as a State Department program to document war crimes against Kurds to an embryonic intelligence agency and counterterrorism strike force. Funded by the Defense Intelligence Agency at $340,000 a month since the fall of 2002 and before that by the State Department, the ICP has absorbed intelligence officers from the two major Kurdish parties, the Iraqi National Accord and the Iran-funded Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Last week, Mrs. Clinton said she hoped,"this administration will strongly repudiate the statements recently reported by Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi." She cited a recent interview with the London Daily Telegraph, which Mr. Chalabi claimed he never granted and in which he was quoted as saying the intelligence his organization provided before the war was "unimportant." Questions surrounding Mr. Chalabiıs intelligence arose last month after the Knight Ridder newspaper chain published a story claiming that the DIA had determined a defector made available to American intelligence agencies in 2002 had lied about his knowledge of mobile biological weapons labs. That defector was cited as one of four human sources on the mobile labs in Secretary of State Powellıs February 5, 2003, testimony to the United Nations Security Council, but the primary source of the information was a defector residing in a third country made available before the ICP even existed. A Washington adviser to the INC and ICP official, Francis Brooke, told the Sun last week that the information on weapons of mass destruction provided by ICP defectors was only part of a larger program to provide military intelligence to the Pentagon before the war. "One of the things they were concerned about was weapons of mass destruction," he said."But we were also giving information on the order of battle and the physical lay out of Uday's home." Since the war, the task of the program has focused more on counterinsurgency. The summary of the program's activities says, Specifically, the mission of the office is to provide precise, timely, sensitive, actionable information to Coalition Forces. "The Information Collection Program has saved American lives," one Pentagon official told the Sun last week. "They have worked closely with the military." At a tour of the ICP bureau in Baghdad Thursday, uniformed Army officers were meeting with members of the bureau. Since May of 2003, the ICP has cooperated with the 1st Armored Division of the Army, the 82nd Airborne Division and special forces units in Baghdad "to exchange intelligence information regarding the security issue in Iraq," according to the summary. The ICP arranged for coalition forces to first contact General Kamal Mustafa Abdullah Sultan al-Tikriti, Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, where he was first interrogated at the INCıs compound at the Hunting Club in May. The INC's Free Iraqi Forces, which worked on ICP intelligence, also arrested Muhammad Hamza al-Zubaydi, Saddam's former deputy prime minister and member of the Baath regional command. ICP operatives also helped arrange for the surrender of the governor of Basra, Walid Hamid Tawfiq al-Tikriti, on April 29. To be sure, a number of Iraqis have provided coalition forces with information on former Baathists. It is rumored still in Iraq that the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan came up with the tip that led to the capture of Saddam Hussein in December. But no other organization has detailed the organization or activities of Iraq's intelligence services in as systematic way as the ICP. The summary says the ICP has documents which prove that the Iraqi Mukhabarat served as a liaison with Qaeda-sponsored organizations in northern Iraq. Numerous agents in the United States were arrested by the FBI after their name was reported in documents which were passed to the US authorities by the ICP office. In addition to providing information on Iraqi agents abroad, the program has also interviewed a number of officials affiliated with Saddam's organization responsible for deceiving U.N. weapons inspectors. It also has debriefed scientists working with Iraq's Military Industrial Corporation, the principal agency the regime used to obtain prohibited materials during the U.N. sanctions. According to the summary, during these debriefings conducted by ICP and DIA officials, scientists revealed the account numbers of private and government-owned companies used to procure prohibited, dual-use items prior to the war. The summary says this information is being used to freeze assets of foreign-owned companies that assisted Saddam's weapons programs. Since December, the ICP is turning into what may be the intelligence service for a sovereign Iraq, tentatively being dubbed either the Iraqi Military Intelligence Request or the Iraqi Security Service. Under the leadership of longtime INC spy chief, Aras Habib Karem, the organization has expanded its ranks to include intelligence operatives from the two major Kurdish parties, the INA and Sciri. Mr. Karem is an acting deputy at the Ministry of Interior, but his post has yet to be approved by L. Paul Bremer. In its intelligence service capacity, the ICP has screened applicants to the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, a 4,000-strong Iraqi unit trained by the 1st Armored Division that has led to the disruption of terror cells. The Iraqi commander of the new battalion,Ya'arub al-Hashimi, was a Major under the INC's old armed militia. The CIA station in Baghdad this month has started talks with the INC on taking over responsibility for the program from the DIA, according to American and ICP officials. One ICP official told the Sun last week, "The CIA has expressed an interest in the program and taking it over. We are now discussing it."
