Max Boot, The Friend We Betrayed, LAT
Los Angeles Times The Friend We Betrayed Max Boot April 7, 2005 In 1987, after he was exonerated of corruption charges, former Secretary of Labor Raymond Donovan issued the classic plea of the wronged man: Which office do I go to to get my reputation back? Whichever office it is, Ahmad Chalabi may want to apply there as well. The leader of the Iraqi National Congress has been the most unfairly maligned man on the planet in recent years. If you believe what you read, Chalabi is a con man, a crook and, depending on which day of the week it is, either an American or Iranian stooge. The most damning charge is that he cooked up the phony intelligence that led to the invasion of Iraq. In the words of that noted foreign policy sage Maureen Dowd: Ahmad Chalabi conned his neocon pals, thinking he could run Iraq if he gave the Bush administration the smoking gun it needed to sell the war. Such calumnies are so ingrained by now that La Dowd published that sentence on Sunday, three days after the release of the Robb-Silberman report that refutes it. The bipartisan commission headed by Chuck Robb and Laurence Silberman did not give Chalabi a totally clean bill of health. It found that two INC-supplied defectors were fabricators. But it also determined that the most notorious liar popularly linked to the INC - a defector known as Curveball who provided false information on Saddam Hussein's biological weapons - was not influenced by, controlled by, or connected to the INC. In fact, over all, the Robb-Silberman report concluded, CIA's postwar investigations revealed that INC-related sources had a minimal impact on prewar assessments. Translation: The CIA's attempts to scapegoat Chalabi for its own failures won't wash. This is only one of many unsubstantiated accusations against Chalabi. Last August, for instance, an Iraqi judge issued an arrest warrant for Chalabi and his nephew, Salem Chalabi. Ahmad was supposedly guilty of counterfeiting, Salem of having an Iraqi official murdered. Within weeks the bizarre charges were dropped for lack of evidence. Unfortunately, no court of law has examined the accusations made by anonymous U.S. spooks that Chalabi told the Iranian government that one of its codes had been broken by the United States. U.S. officials claimed that they found out Chalabi was the source of the leak because they were able to decode a message to that effect to Tehran. But why would Iranian agents use the compromised code to transmit that information? And how would a foreign national such as Chalabi get access to secret intercepts? Guess we're supposed to take the U.S. intelligence community's word for all this, even though its judgment has been discredited in every outside inquiry. Then there's the charge that Chalabi was guilty of fraud at a Jordanian bank he once owned. A secret Jordanian military tribunal convicted him in absentia in 1992. Chalabi argues that this was a frame-up by Jordanians eager to seize his assets and curry favor with Hussein. The truth may come out in a lawsuit that Chalabi has filed in the U.S. against the Jordanian government. In the meantime, claims that he's a swindler must be treated with skepticism. This man risked his life and his fortune to overthrow one of the worst tyrants of the 20th century. He deserves better. More important, the U.S. would have done better in Iraq if it had been listening to Chalabi as much as conspiracy buffs claimed. In early 2003, the Bush administration ignored Chalabi's warnings that liberation should not be allowed to turn into occupation. Chalabi wanted to set up an interim government right away. The administration refused on the grounds that exiles had no standing in Iraq. So instead that well-known Iraqi, L. Paul Bremer III, was anointed potentate. His mistakes, which Chalabi criticized, resulted in a critical loss of momentum. A year later, the U.S. finally appointed a government headed by Chalabi's cousin and rival, Iyad Allawi. If an exile could be appointed in 2004, why not in 2003? But don't worry about Chalabi. Unlike Secretary Donovan, he's done just fine. Contrary to CIA reports that he had no constituency, he has positioned himself at the center of Iraqi politics. He was a leading candidate for prime minister and will probably get a Cabinet post. On second thought, Chalabi is better off not getting his old reputation - that of a U.S. ally - back. Being reviled in Washington may be the best gift that any Iraqi politician could receive. Max Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Thomas Joscelyn, 1981 Papal Assassination Attempt, Weekly Standard
Crime of the Century How the elite media and the CIA failed to Investigate the 1981 papal assassination attempt. by Thomas Joscelyn 04/07/2005 12:00:00 AM A STUNNING REVELATION buzzed throughout Italy last week. According to two Italian newspapers, German government officials had found proof that the Soviet Union ordered the May 13, 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II. The recently discovered documents--which are mainly correspondences between East German Stasi spies and their Bulgarian counterparts--reportedly discuss the Soviet assassination order as well as efforts to cover-up any traces of involvement by Bulgaria's spooks. If the documents are as advertised, then they put an end to one of the great whodunits of the 20th century. The U.S. media has all but ignored this incredible story; which isn't, actually, much of a surprise. Indeed, the elite media in this country never wanted to investigate the threads of evidence pointing to Bulgarian, and thus Soviet, involvement. What is surprising, however, is that in one of the greatest U.S. intelligence failures of all-time, neither did the CIA. In the days following the attempt, a clean and simple narrative quickly emerged. The would-be assassin, Mehmet Ali Agca, was a member of the ultra-right Turkish neofascist group, the Grey Wolves. That part was true, but Italian investigators were also turning up evidence that Agca was really a false flag recruit for another group. The New York Times quickly tried to squash any notion of a broader conspiracy. "Police Lack Clues to Foreign Links Of Suspect in Shooting of the Pope," read one front-page headline on May 17, 1981. Another front-page headline the next day blared, "Turks Say Suspect in Papal Attack Is Tied to Rightist Web of Intrigue." Just over a week later the Times would produce an investigative piece spanning several nations and drawing on the reporting of nine journalists. Titled, "Trail of Mehmet Ali Agca: 6 Years of Neofascist Ties," the piece began, "For at least six years, Mehmet Ali Agca . . . has been associated with a xenophobic, fanatically nationalist, neofascist network steeped in violence . . . " [emphasis added] The article continued, "reports by a team of New York Times correspondents in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States show a clear pattern of connections between the gaunt, taciturn Mr. Agca and an international alliance of right-wing Turkish extremists." [emphasis added] Nor, according to the Times, was there any evidence of a conspiracy: "Intensive investigations . . . have so far failed to turn up the slightest evidence of any 'international conspiracy' to murder the Pope, despite confident assertions of one by the Italian press a week ago. Mr. Agca is not known to have spoken to a single non-Turkish terrorist in the last year or so, let alone to have acted as the agent of any established group in the attack on John Paul." [emphasis added] The Times admitted that Agca's "precise motives [were] unclear," but was confident that "much has been learned of the origins of this previously obscure young man" and that "a fairly complete picture has emerged of his remarkable Odyssey." The Times message was clear: there is no evidence of a conspiracy and there is no need to investigate any further. The Times was not alone in its reporting. Similar reports were published by the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and virtually every other major newspaper investigating the story. All of the early reports painted Agca as "neofascist," or an "Islamic extremist," or as a lone wolf with ties to organized crime. AND IF IT WERE UP TO the elite media the story would have ended there. But, something was wrong with this narrative. Too many threads of evidence pointed to a wider plot that involved the Soviet-controlled Bulgarian intelligence service. Daily Italian newspapers, citing high level politicians and magistrate judges, regularly reported on the
