April 8th - Chalabi back on Iraq, flown in by Pentagon
April 17th - Chalabi allegedly tells Iranians about code break
May 20th 2004
- FBI raids Chalabi's office (1)
June 2, 2004
- Morning: A highly confidential detail on the Chalabi case, that only a few top people would know (6) is leaked to the press: 'Drunk' American Blabs To Chalabi
- Evening: Tenet resigns abrubtly in the evening after exchanging words w/ Bush (2)
June 3, 2004
- Chalabi acuses Tenet of spurring the probe against him and of dragging Bush to war under dubious information (3)
- Press leaks Ari Fleischer Testimony: Bush knew of Plame leak and didn't do anything
June 30th US Handover to Iraq Council
July 7th Senate pre War Intelligence report published (blaming CIA)
July 22nd Final 9/11 report published by Senate
(7)
Nov 2nd US election
Doesn't it look like BUSH is the guy who blabbed ? (take the poll)
The "drunk official" story was top secret
lawnorder: On Hill, Rice Pledges Probe Of Alleged Chalabi Leak
Another question yesterday was who leaked word of the intercepted Iranian message referring to Chalabi to reporters in Washington. "Only a handful of people knew about this specific intercept, and most of them were in the White House," one U.S. official said. "A few senior people at the Pentagon had been briefed on it. But very few people in the U.S. government had actually seen the piece of paper describing the intercept.
Morning: The intercept makes it to front page
CBS News | 'Drunk' American Blabs To Chalabi?
NEW YORK, June 2, 2004
[Chalabi]is alleged to have met in Baghdad with a top Iranian agent and disclosed to him that the U.S. had cracked Iran's secret codes and was eavesdropping on all Iranian intelligence messages.
Chalabi told the Iranians he learned about the code intercepts from an American who was "drunk" when he told him.
Afternoon: Tenet resigns abruptly
CIA Director Tenet Resigns (washingtonpost.com): "Thursday, June 3, 2004; 2:54 PM
CIA Director George J. Tenet, dogged by controversies over a string of U.S. intelligence setbacks, has decided to resign for personal reasons and will leave the agency in July, President Bush announced today.
Bush, who accepted the resignation during an hour-long meeting at the White House last night, lauded Tenet, 51, as a dedicated public servant who has fought hard in the war on terrorism.
Leaked intercept was known in advance by Miller ?
The same CBS piece tells us that some reporters at the NYT, Millers paper, had been aware of the code break for weeks
'Drunk' American Blabs To Chalabi?
Several news organizations, including CBS, The New York Times [Millers paper] and Los Angeles Times learned of the alleged betrayal weeks ago. But the agencies agreed to withhold reporting it until now because of U.S. attempts to shore up the intelligence losses.
Iran wanted US to invade Iraq ?
CATO - Did Iran Use Chalabi to Lure U.S. into Iraq?
Chalabi and his cohorts are accused of informing Tehran (search) that the United States had broken the communications code of Iran's intelligence service. If true, this could become the most prominent espionage episode since the Alger Hiss (search) case in the late 1940s, for it raises the question of which official in the U.S. government passed such sensitive information to Chalabi.
Clearly, the allegations are extremely serious and should be the subject of a thorough, independent investigation. But such an investigation also needs to look at another possibility. What if the Chalabi-Iran information pipeline flowed both ways?
It is well established that much of the information that Chalabi's organization, the Iraqi National Congress (search), supplied to the United States in the months leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq was erroneous. The inaccurate intelligence was most evident with regard to the vast arsenal of weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein's regime supposedly possessed, but it also involved assurances that U.S. forces would be welcomed as liberators and that the post-Saddam political transition would be rapid and easy.
The conventional wisdom is that Chalabi was the architect of that campaign of disinformation. But what if he was not the source but merely the channel for it? Is it possible that Iran used Chalabi and his organization to lure the United States into invading and occupying Iraq?
Tenet started all the leaks investigations ?
If Chalabi is correct, then Tenet initiated both the Plame investigation and the Chalabi / Iran investigation and probably the AIPAC leak investigation too which was ongoing for 2 years before it hit the papers on September. On Sep 4, 2004 Pat Buchanan publishes an article about Larry Franklin and his delivery of top secret documents to 2 AIPAC employees. FBI also suspects Chalabi may be one of Franklin's "customers" (5) for US policies about Iran information