On Fri, 28 May 2004, Dennis Perrin quoted Histopher Critchens saying:
> "As to the accusation that Chalabi has endangered American national
> security by slipping secrets to Tehran, I can only say that three days
> ago, I broke my usual rule and had a 'deep background' meeting with a
> very 'senior administration official.' This person, given every
> opportunity to signal even slightly that I ought to treat the charges
> seriously, pointedly declined to do so. I thought I should put this on
> record."
>
> So, I was chatting with Paul Wolfowitz the other day, and he said . . .
Exactly. Over the weekend, Wolfowitz, Feith, Perle and Myers all defended Chalabi against these accusations. Reporting their comments in private doesn't make them more true. This is the basest kind of reporting gone one lower by someone pretending even while doing it to be above it.
It seems clear from the fact that all the neocons are against it that this "passing secrets to Iran" trope is simply a devilishly smart bureaucratic move by anti-neo-con forces who see their chance to bring them down. It's not really about Iran or Chalabi. It's rather that graveness and plausibility of this accusation -- based on the indisputable fact that Chalabi has always had Iranian connections and that he has been publicly stamped as a bad character -- justifies an investigation; and an investigation, if carried through with even nominal thoroughness, will reveal that the neocons fed Chalabi classified information. Whether it went to Iran (and it probably didn't) is completely irrelevant; since it was all lies, there couldn't possibly be any breach.
But the finesse part is that while Chalabi was functionally acting not only as an operative, but as our chief operative, he wasn't officially cleared to see anything secret. And it's almost impossible that the neocons didn't tell him something classified in such a relationship. For one thing, all kinds of public information is classified (as Paul O'Neill found out). And in the second place, Chalabi was an utter incompetent who knew nothing abouat the country and needed to be given details to know where to look and how to make what he said sound plausible. They gave him stuff in order to help him mislead us.
But since he wasn't officially cleared to see anything, it will be the perfect thing to hang them with. I hope it works out. To get the neocons for passing secrets would be a lovely thing.
Even if it isn't something to bank on. What every happened to Plamegate, anyway?
Michael