Chalabi: Charges just ‘urban myth’
WASHINGTON – Controversial Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi refused to apologize Wednesday for providing the U.S. government with false information on Saddam Hussein’s weapons and ties to terrorists, calling charges that he did so an “urban myth.”
Chalabi, now a deputy Iraqi prime minister with a chance to become the country’s next leader, is the former exile whose group lobbied vigorously for a U.S. invasion of Iraq. The group, the Iraqi National Congress, provided intelligence agencies and reporters with defectors whose accounts of bioweapons factories and terror training sites proved to be bogus.
Chalabi is visiting Washington to try to mend ties with the Bush administration, which were publicly strained over allegations last year that he or one of his aides told Iran that the U.S. government had broken its secret codes. An FBI investigation of the matter has barely progressed, according to a U.S. official.
Answering questions after a speech at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, Chalabi denied the Iran allegation and said that relations with the White House are improving.
“I think confidence is being built now,” he said.
Chalabi met with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and national security adviser Stephen Hadley on Wednesday, although neither would be photographed with him. He’s to meet with Vice President Dick Cheney, a longtime patron, next week.
Chalabi’s presence poses a dilemma for President Bush and his aides: It comes at a time when questions over the administration’s case for a pre-emptive war against Iraq are being raised anew. But Chalabi could play a major role in Iraq’s future, making him hard to ignore.
On the prewar intelligence, Chalabi pointed to one passage in a March report by an independent presidential commission – he cited the page number – that he said cleared the INC of charges of feeding false information.
The passage, however, deals with only a single source – code-named “Curveball” – who provided fabricated information on Saddam’s supposed mobile biological weapons facilities. The report concluded that “Curveball” wasn’t connected to the INC.
But Chalabi’s organization provided the Bush administration and some news organizations with other alleged Iraqi defectors who claimed that Saddam had hidden nuclear, chemical and biological warfare programs and was training Islamic extremists in assassinations, hijackings and bombings.
The defectors’ claims appeared in the Bush administration’s main public background paper laying out its case against Saddam, in the key prewar U.S. intelligence assessment on Iraq’s banned weapons programs and in a February 2003 speech to the U.N. Security Council by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Several Senate Democrats, including Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., demanded that Chalabi cooperate with the long-delayed second phase of a Senate Intelligence Committee probe into prewar intelligence. Chalabi said he’d offered in May 2004 to answer lawmakers’ questions and said he remains ready to do so.